Francis Joseph I

I

Introduction

Francis Joseph I (German Franz Josef) (1830-1916), emperor of Austria (1848-1916) and king of Hungary (1867-1916), the last important ruler of the Habsburg dynasty. During his reign the Austro-Hungarian Empire experienced an increasing paralysis of its domestic politics and a steady decline of its standing as a Great Power. Francis Joseph’s policies played a major role in the events that led to World War I (1914-1918).

II

Early Years and Accession to the Throne

Francis Joseph was born in Vienna on August 18, 1830, the eldest son of Archduke Francis Charles, who was brother and heir of Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I. Ferdinand, who was feeble-minded and had epilepsy, was not expected to produce an heir. As a result Francis Joseph was groomed for the throne. His ambitious mother, Archduchess Sophie of Bavaria, devised a grueling training regimen for him, which anticipated the challenge that awaited him. In addition to physical and military exercises, he received lessons in German, Hungarian, Czech, French, Italian, Polish, religion, diplomacy, law, and several other subjects. Not a natural scholar and occasionally ill from overwork, the future emperor was nevertheless formed by these early years. Throughout his reign, Francis Joseph retained a capacity for endless paperwork, a love for things military, a belief in the political principles expounded by his conservative tutors, and a determination to uphold the dignity of his Catholic court.

Francis Joseph came to the throne on December 2, 1848, in circumstances that shaped his subsequent reign. The Revolutions of 1848 had brought the Austrian Empire to the brink of collapse. Twice the imperial family had to flee Vienna. The empire’s territories in Italy, Hungary, and Bohemia were in open revolt. In Germany, the Frankfurt Parliament and Prussia challenged Austria’s former preeminence. The Habsburg dynasty’s empire was saved by the army and by a group of conservative politicians led by the cold-blooded prime minister Prince Felix zu Schwarzenberg. Soon after his appointment, Schwarzenberg arranged for Francis Joseph, rather than his father Francis Charles, to succeed the feeble-minded Emperor Ferdinand, who abdicated. Having thus started his reign under Schwarzenberg’s tutelage, the 18-year-old emperor committed himself to a lifelong defense of his dynastic realm and its pivotal institution, the military.

III

Francis Joseph’s Empire and the Great Powers

After a successful start—Francis Joseph’s government defeated the revolution at home and re-established Austria’s authority among the German states—Austria’s international situation deteriorated. Francis Joseph’s failure to support Russia during the Crimean War earned Russia’s wrath and had a ruinous effect on Austria’s finances. In 1859 Francis Joseph fell into a trap to oust the Austrians from Italy, which was set for him by French ruler Napoleon III and Piedmontese patriot Camillo Cavour. (Piedmont, now part of Italy, was then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia.) French and Piedmontese troops defeated Austrian forces at the battles of Magenta (June 4, 1859) and Solferino (June 24). Without support from his German confederates, Francis Joseph had to surrender Lombardy to Napoleon, who passed it on to Piedmont (see Italian Unification).

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North of the Alps, Austria’s position proved equally precarious. A national movement aiming at a united Germany reemerged in 1859 (see German Unification). After 1862 Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck harnessed this movement to eject Austria from an alliance of German-speaking states. Having involved Austria in a Prussian war against Denmark in 1864, Bismarck precipitated a Prussian war against Austria in 1866 (Seven Weeks’ War). Even though Francis Joseph’s troops twice defeated Prussia’s ally Italy, the Prussian victory at Königgrätz (also known as Sadowa) on July 3 proved decisive. The peace agreed in Prague on August 23, 1866, was relatively lenient, but still sealed Austria’s exclusion from a Prussian-dominated Germany. In addition, Austria handed over the province of Venetia to the Kingdom of Italy.

For a time, after losing its spheres of interest in Germany and Italy, Austria directed its foreign policy chiefly toward the explosive field of Balkan politics. At the Congress of Berlin, chaired by Bismarck in 1878, Austria and Britain forced Russia to relinquish most of the spoils of her recent victory over Turkey (Russo-Turkish Wars). Austria was authorized to occupy the formerly Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1879 Germany and Austria concluded an alliance. Henceforth, three key components shaped the course of Austrian foreign policy: (1) its long-term alliance with Germany; (2) its relationship with Russia, which wavered from renewed alliance to limited cooperation to outright hostility; and (3) its keen interest in the affairs of the Balkans. Austro-Russian relations eventually broke down in 1908 and 1909 when Austria—with German backing and despite furious Russian protests—annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina. During the subsequent Balkan Wars, the Russian-backed kingdom of Serbia emerged as the main thorn in Francis Joseph’s side.

IV

Francis Joseph’s Domestic Policies

The nationality issue was the sorest point of the Austrian empire, and the almost obsessive concern with which the emperor and his advisors viewed Serbia reveals the intersection of foreign and domestic policies. Austria had millions of Slavic subjects, in Serbia and elsewhere. The imperial constitution Francis Joseph decreed in March 1849 had imposed a centralized government, which soon had absolute power (see Absolutism). However, in the wake of his foreign political setbacks Francis Joseph had to make concessions to the liberal and national aspirations of his peoples. After the loss of Lombardy, the emperor yielded what he called “a little parliamentarism” in 1860 and 1861.

The defeat by Prussia in 1866 necessitated more far-reaching reforms. The Ausgleich (“Compromise”) of 1867 transformed the Austrian Empire into the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary with Francis Joseph as emperor of Austria and king of Hungary. Under the dual monarchy, Hungary had complete independence in internal affairs, but the two countries—linked largely through the person of the emperor-king—acted jointly in foreign affairs. Francis Joseph and the leadership of the Hungarian Diet (legislature) had negotiated the Ausgleich without consulting the peoples of the monarchy, a fact painfully felt by the sizable Slavic populations having to defer to the dominant German and Magyar (Hungarian) populations in both halves of the monarchy. In Hungary a harsh policy of Magyarization (forced assimilation into Magyar culture) stoked the fires of Slavic nationalism. In the Austrian part of the empire, Slav obstruction paralyzed parliamentary life. As a result the domestic politics of Francis Joseph’s realm consisted largely of successive prime ministers—hand-picked by the emperor—stalling in a mire of opposition, bureaucratic procrastination, and barren compromise.

Francis Joseph played a key role at the heart of this system. Forever in uniform, forever at his desk, and insisting on an outdated court ceremonial, he conveyed the image of an honest and benign father of his peoples. The old emperor’s personal tragedies, which included the suicide of his son Rudolph in 1889 and the assassination of his wife Elizabeth (“Sissi”) in 1898, contributed to his popularity, which hid the largely negative effect his rigid and deeply conservative outlook had on Austro-Hungarian politics. Jealously defending his prerogatives and conceding change with the utmost reluctance, he treated the nationality problem “more as an opportunity for power than as a problem to solve,” in the words of one historian. However, the very extent to which Francis Joseph had become the irreplaceable embodiment of the empire betrays his failure as a statesman. After more than 60 years on the throne he was no closer to overcoming the fundamental difficulties that had troubled his Habsburg inheritance at the outset.

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