Franz Joseph

Franz Joseph (born August 18, 1830, Schloss Schönbrunn, near Vienna, Austria—died November 21, 1916, Schloss Schönbrunn) was the emperor of Austria (1848–1916) and king of Hungary (1867–1916), who divided his empire into the Dual Monarchy, in which Austria and Hungary coexisted as equal partners. In 1879 he formed an alliance with Prussian-led Germany, and in 1914 his ultimatum to Serbia led Austria and Germany into World War I.

Early years

Franz Joseph was the eldest son of Archduke Francis Charles and Sophia, daughter of King Maximilian I of Bavaria. As his uncle Emperor Ferdinand (I) was childless, Franz Joseph was educated as his heir-presumptive. In the spring of 1848 he served with the Austrian forces in Italy, where Lombardy-Venetia, supported by King Charles Albert of Sardinia, had rebelled against Austrian rule. When revolution spread to the capitals of the Austrian Empire, Franz Joseph was proclaimed emperor at Olmütz (Olomouc) on December 2, 1848, after the abdication of Ferdinand—the rights of his father, the archduke, to the throne having been passed over. Hopes of a revival of monarchist sentiments were raised by his radiant, youthful appearance.

Of all his mentors, the old chancellor Klemens, Fürst (prince) von Metternich, probably exerted the most lasting influence on Franz Joseph. A more profound influence, however, was that of his wife, the duchess Elizabeth of Bavaria. He married her in 1854 and remained deeply attached to her throughout a stormy marriage.

Neo-absolutism, 1841–59

During the first 10 years of his reign, the era of so-called neo-absolutism, the emperor—aided by such outstanding advisers as Felix, prince zu Schwarzenberg (until 1852), Leo, Graf (count) von Thun und Hohenstein, and Alexander, Freiherr (baron) von Bach—inaugurated a very personal regime by taking a hand both in the formulation of foreign policy and in the strategic decisions of the time. Together with Schwarzenberg, who had become prime minister and foreign minister in 1848, Franz Joseph set out to set his empire in order.

In external affairs Schwarzenberg achieved a powerful position for Austria; in particular, with the Punctation of Olmütz (November 1850), in which Prussia acknowledged Austria’s predominance in Germany. In home affairs, however, Schwarzenberg’s harsh rule and the formation of an intolerant police apparatus evoked a latent mood of rebellion. This mood became more threatening after 1851, when the government withdrew the promise of a constitution, given in 1849 under the pressure of the revolutionary troubles. That retraction had long aftereffects and led to the liberals’ permanent distrust of Franz Joseph’s rule. In 1853 there was an attempt on the emperor’s life in Vienna and in a riot in Milan.

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After Schwarzenberg’s death (1852), Franz Joseph decided not to replace him as prime minister and took a greater part in politics himself. Austria’s mistaken policy during the Crimean War originated largely with the emperor, torn between gratitude to Russia for its help in quelling a rebellion in Hungary in 1849 and the advantage the monarchy might derive from siding with Great Britain and France. The mobilization of a part of the Austrian Army in Galicia on the borders of Russia in retrospect turned out to have been a grave error. It gained no friends for Austria among the Western powers but lost considerable goodwill that Tsar Nicholas I had earlier harboured for Franz Joseph.

At home, neo-absolutism resulted in a civil service staffed by highly competent experts who tried to meet the emperor’s high standards but whose limitations nevertheless became increasingly obvious in 1859–60 as they attempted to deal with the empire’s complex financial problems. Army expenditures had to be curtailed in 1859, when a series of ill-fated wars began that seriously shook Austria’s military reputation. Moreover, the police regime proved to be impracticable in the long run. Thus the government made critical military decisions against a background of many unresolved problems in finances and home affairs. For many of these decisions, especially the unfortunate outcome of the war of 1859 against the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Empire of France, the emperor was responsible. After provoking Austria into war, Camillo Benso, conte di Cavour, the prime minister of Sardinia, planned to use the French Army to oust Austria from Italy. When the imperial commander in chief proved incapable, Franz Joseph himself took over the supreme command, but he could not prevent the defeat of Solferino (June 24, 1859). Dismayed by Prussia’s demand that, as a condition of its intervention on the emperor’s side, the Austrian Army be placed under Prussian command, Franz Joseph hastily concluded the Peace of Villafranca in July 1859, under which Lombardy was ceded to Sardinia. Unreconciled to this settlement, Franz Joseph adopted a foreign policy that prepared the way for a passage at arms with Italy and Prussia, by which he hoped to regain for Austria its former position in Germany and Italy, as it had been established by Metternich in 1814–15.

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The years of decision, 1859–70

The mood of crisis after the defeat of 1859 caused Franz Joseph to pay renewed attention to the constitutional question. A period of experiments—alternating between federalistic and centralistic charters—kept the country in a permanent state of crisis until 1867. The congress of princes at Frankfurt in 1863, for which the reigning heads of all German states assembled with the sole exception of the king of Prussia, was a high point in Franz Joseph’s life. Yet the absence of the Prussian king demonstrated that Prussia no longer regarded Austria as the leading German power.

Franz Joseph had vainly tried to postpone the decision for predominance in Germany by entering into a comradeship-in-arms with Prussia in a war against Denmark in 1864. After their victory, squabbles arose between them, and war with Prussia became inevitable. The conclusion of an alliance between Italy and Prussia pointed up the dangerous possibility that both foreign-policy problems might have to be faced at the same time, yet Franz Joseph failed in his attempt to avoid an armed conflict at least with Italy. In June 1866 Austria concluded a possibly unique agreement with Napoleon III of France that stipulated that Austrian-held Venetia was to be given to the Kingdom of Sardinia regardless of the outcome of the impending war with Prussia. As the emperor considered it incompatible with the army’s honour to cede a province without fighting, war with Italy broke out despite the agreement. In later years, Franz Joseph characterized his policy of yielding territory with one hand while fighting for it with the other as honest but stupid, whereas the chancellor Friedrich Ferdinand, Graf (count) von Beust, called the agreement the most shocking document that he had ever seen. Although its defeat in the war with Prussia that the Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarck had forced on the unprepared monarchy caused Austria no territorial loss in the north, it nevertheless sealed Austria’s expulsion from Germany. The victories gained by the Austrian Army in the south, moreover, could not prevent the loss of Venetia, so that Austria found itself expelled from Italy as well.

The appointment of the Saxon premier, Beust, as Austrian prime minister in 1867 shows that initially Franz Joseph was once again unwilling to accept the decision. Beust’s cherished project of an Austrian-French-Italian alliance against Prussia did not materialize, however, and in 1870 the attitude of the Hungarian prime minister, Gyula, Gróf (count) Andrássy, coupled with the rapid military successes of Prussia, prevented Austria from joining in the Franco-German War at the side of France. Andrássy, appointed imperial foreign minister after Beust’s dismissal in 1871, inaugurated the policy of close collaboration with Germany that later became the cornerstone of Franz Joseph’s foreign policy.