Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria and the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.

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Apostolic King of Hungary, Emperor Ferdinand of Austria, Emperor Franz-Joseph of Austria, Governor-President of the Kingdom of Hungary, Hungarian Revolution of 1848, King Ferdinand V of Hungary, Lajos Batthyány, Lajos Kossuth

From the Emperor’s Desk I: Hungarian Revolution of 1848 is very complex. What I have posted here is a basic retelling of the events and it’s relationship to Archduke Franz Joseph of Austria becoming both Emperor of Austria and Apostolic king of Hungary on December 2nd 1848.

The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 was was one of many European Revolutions of 1848 and it was closely linked to other revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas. Although the revolution failed, it is one of the most significant events in Hungary’s modern history, forming the cornerstone of modern Hungarian national identity.

In April 1848, Hungary became the third country of Continental Europe (after France (1791), and Belgium (1831)) to enact laws about democratic parliamentary elections. It thereafter set up a representative type of parliaments which replaced the old feudal estate–based parliamentary system.

Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria (Apostolic King Ferdinand V of Hungry)

Hungarian statesman Lajos Batthyány was part of a delegation of Hungarian Statesman to Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria who was also King Ferdinand V of Hungary, that insisted Hungary’s government be supreme in its territory.

Lajos Kossuth, another Hungarian Statesman, gave a speech to the government where he appealed to the hope of the Habsburgs, the incoming emperor: “our beloved Archduke Franz Joseph” (then seventeen years old), to perpetuate the ancient glory of the dynasty by meeting half-way the aspirations of a free people.

Kossuth at once became the leader of the European revolution; his speech was read aloud in the streets of Vienna to the mob which overthrew Metternich (March 13). When another delegation, this time from the Diet, visited Vienna to receive the assent of Emperor Ferdinand for their petition, Kossuth received the chief ovation.

On March 17, 1848 the Emperor assented to Kussoth’s terms and Batthyány created the first Hungarian Diet (Parliament). The new Hungarian government was no longer responsible to the King, but to the elected members of the Diet. In the new government Kossuth was appointed as the Minister of Finance.

On March 23, 1848, as head of government, Lajos Batthyány commended his administration to the Hungarian Diet. A significant advancement of Hungarian independence at this time was the passing of the April Laws.

Lajos Kossuth, Governor-President of the Kingdom of Hungary

The April Laws, also called March Laws, were a collection of laws legislated by Lajos Kossuth with the aim of modernizing the Kingdom of Hungary into a parliamentary democracy, and nation state. The imperative program included Hungarian control of its popular national guard, national budget and Hungarian foreign policy, as well as the removal of serfdom.

These laws were passed by the Hungarian Diet in March 1848 in Pozsony (Pressburg, now Bratislava, Slovakia) and signed by King Ferdinand V, (Emperor Ferdinand of Austria) at the Primate’s Palace in the same city on April 11, 1848.

Because of the Revolutions in Vienna during 1848, Archduke Franz Joseph of Austria replaced his uncle Ferdinand I of Austria on December 2nd, who was not of sound mind, as Emperor of Austria.

The new Emperor Franz Joseph wanted to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 and to restore the power of Habsburg Monarchy within Hungary. The Emperor didn’t recognize Lajos Batthyány’s second premiership, which had begun on September 25, 1848.

Another complication was that Franz Joseph was not recognized as the new “Apostolic King of Hungary” by the Hungarian Parliament, and he would not be not crowned “Apostolic King of Hungary” until 1867.

From a constitutional point of view, and according to the coronation oath, a crowned and anointed Hungarian King could not abdicate the Hungarian throne during his lifetime. If the king is alive but unable do his duty as ruler, a governor (or, in English, a regent) could be appointed to undertake the royal duties. Therefore, according to Hungarian law, the former Emperor of Austria legally remained King Ferdinand V of Hungary.

If there was no possibility of inheriting the throne automatically due to the death of the preceding king, (as King Ferdinand V was still alive), but the monarch was wanting to relinquish his throne and appoint another king before his death, there was technically only one legal solution: the parliament had the power to dethrone the monarch and elect his successor as the new Apostolic King of Hungary.

However, owing to the legal and military tensions between the Diet and the new Emperor, the Hungarian parliament did not grant Franz Joseph this honour. This issue also formed a solid legal foundation to the Hungarian resistance. If Franz Joseph was not the legal successor and Apostolic King of Hungary his orders and decrees could be ignored by the Hungarian resistance.

After his accession the new Emperor revoked all the concessions that had been granted through the April Laws without any legal competence. This unconstitutional act irreversibly escalated the conflict between the Hungarian parliament and Franz Joseph.

Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria and Apostolic King of Hungary

The following Austrian military campaign that ensued against the Kingdom of Hungary resulted in the fall of the pacifist Batthyány government (who sought agreement with the court) and led to the sudden emergence of Lajos Kossuth’s followers in the parliament, who demanded the full independence of Hungary.

Batthyány realized that he could not compromise with the Emperor, so on October 2, 1849 he resigned and nominated Miklós Vay as his successor. At the same time, Batthyány resigned his seat in parliament.

Instead of Miklós Vay, as the head of the government, from this time until the collapse of the revolution, Lajos Kossuth, replaced Lajos Batthyány and became Head of State of the Kingdom of Hungary, and became the de facto and de jure ruler of the country as the Governor-President. With the exception of Kázmér Batthyány, (an Hungarian politician, who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and no relation to Lajos Batthyány) all members of the new cabinet were Kossuth’s supporters. Emperor Franz Joseph also outlawed Governor-President Lajos Kossuth.

The Austrian military intervention in the Kingdom of Hungary resulted in strong anti-Habsburg sentiment among Hungarians, thus the events in Hungary grew into a war for total independence from the Habsburg dynasty.

After a series of serious Austrian defeats in 1849, the Austrian Empire came close to the brink of collapse. The young emperor Franz Joseph I had to call for Russian help in the name of the Holy Alliance. Emperor Nicholas I answered, and sent a 200,000 strong army with 80,000 auxiliary forces. Finally, the joint army of Russian and Austrian forces defeated the Hungarian forces. After the restoration of Habsburg power, Hungary was placed under martial law.

From the Emperor’s Desk II: in the coming days I will post about the fates of Lajos Batthyány and Lajos Kossuth along with the 1867 Compromise between the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary which led to the creation of the dual monarchy.

December 2, 1848: Archduke Franz Joseph of Austria Succeeds to the Throne of the Austrian Empire.

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Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, Elisabeth of Bavaria, Emperor Ferdinand of Austria, Emperor Franz Ferdinand of Austria, Holy Roman Emperor Franz II, Kingdom of Hungary, Revolution of 1848, Sophie of Bavaria

From the Emperor’s Desk: although this blog post is about the accession of Emperor Franz Joseph on the throne of the Austrian Empire during the revolutions of 1848, I will not be addressing the complicated relationship between Franz Joseph and the kingdom of Hungary which was also going through a revolutionary period in 1848. I will deal with the accession of Franz Joseph as king of Hungary in a separate blog post on Monday.

Franz Joseph I (August 18, 1830 – November 21, 1916) was Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia and the other states of the Habsburg monarchy from December 2, 1848 until his death on November 21, 1916. In the early part of his reign, his realms and territories were referred to as the Austrian Empire, but were reconstituted as the dual monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867. From May 1, 1850 to August 24, 1866, Franz Joseph was also President of the German Confederation.

Franz Joseph was born August 18, 1830 in the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna (on the 65th anniversary of the death of his Great-Great-Grandfather Emperor Franz I of Lorraine) as the eldest son of Archduke Franz Charles (the younger son of Holy Roman Emperor Franz II), and his wife Princess Sophie of Bavaria. Archduke Franz Joseph was born during the reign of his grandfather Emperor Franz of Austria, who was the last Holy Roman Emperor Franz II.

Because his uncle, reigning from 1835 as the Emperor Ferdinand, was weak-minded, and his father unambitious and retiring, the mother of the young Archduke “Franzi” brought him up as a future Emperor, with emphasis on devotion, responsibility and diligence.

Since no issue from the marriage of the heir to the throne were expected, Archduke Ferdinand (Emperor from 1835), his next elder brother Archduke Franz Charles was to continue the succession of the Habsburgs, which is why the birth of his son Franz Joseph at the Viennese court was given special importance.

Archduke Franz Charles was physically as well as mentally of weak constitution and was therefore hardly suitable for a reign. For this reason, Franz Joseph was consistently built up as a potential successor to the imperial throne by his politically ambitious mother from early childhood.

Up to the age of seven, little “Franzi” was brought up in the care of the nanny (“Aja”) Louise von Sturmfeder. Then the “state education” began, the central contents of which were “sense of duty”, religiosity and dynastic awareness. The theologian Joseph Othmar von Rauscher conveyed to him the inviolable understanding of rulership of divine origin (divine grace), which is why no participation of the population in rulership in the form of parliaments is required.

During the Revolutions of 1848, the Austrian Chancellor Prince Metternich resigned (March–April 1848). The young Archduke, who (it was widely expected) would soon succeed his uncle on the throne, was appointed Governor of Bohemia on April 6, 1848, but never took up the post. Sent instead to the front in Italy, he joined Field Marshal Radetzky on campaign on April 29, receiving his baptism of fire on May 5 at Santa Lucia.

On December 2, 1848, Franz Joseph’s uncle, Emperor Ferdinand of Austria abdicated the throne at Olomouc, as part of Minister President Felix zu Schwarzenberg’s plan to end the Revolutions of 1848 in Hungary. At this point also came the renunciation of the rights to the throne of his father, the mild-mannered Archduke Franz Charles and Archduke Franz Joseph then acceded to the throne.

At this time, he first became known by his second as well as his first Christian name. The name “Franz Joseph” was chosen to bring back memories of the new Emperor’s great-granduncle, Emperor Joseph II (Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790), remembered as a modernising reformer.

Also, the new emperor wanted to be known as Emperor Franz III, however he soon realized that the ordinal number “III” was associated with the old Holy Roman Empire and he would therefore be Emperor Franz II of Austria. However, if he had called himself Emperor Franz II many of his advisors believed that would cause confusion since his grandfather was the last Holy Roman Emperor with the name Franz II and that was 42 years ago but still in the memory of the Austrian people. Therefore he chose to be known as Emperor Franz Joseph.

It was generally felt in the court that the Emperor should marry and produce heirs as soon as possible. Various potential brides were considered, including Princess Elisabeth of Modena, Princess Anna of Prussia and Princess Sidonia of Saxony. Although in public life Franz Joseph was the unquestioned director of affairs, in his private life his mother still wielded crucial influence.

The young Empress Elisabeth of Austria 1855.

His mother Sophie wanted to strengthen the relationship between the Houses of Habsburg and Wittelsbach—descending from the latter house herself—and hoped to match Franz Joseph with her sister Ludovika’s eldest daughter, Helene (“Néné”), who was four years the Emperor’s junior.

However, Franz Joseph fell deeply in love with Néné’s younger sister Elisabeth (“Sisi”), a beautiful girl of fifteen, and insisted on marrying her instead. Sophie acquiesced, despite her misgivings about Sisi’s appropriateness as an imperial consort, and the young couple were married on April 24, 1854 in St. Augustine’s Church, Vienna.

Marriage of Franz Joseph and Elisabeth
Their marriage would eventually prove to be an unhappy one; though Franz Joseph was passionately in love with his wife, the feeling was not mutual. Elisabeth never truly acclimatized to life at court, and was frequently in conflict with the imperial family. Their first daughter Sophie died as an infant, and their only son Rudolf died by suicide in 1889 in the infamous Mayerling Incident.

Reign

Largely considered to be a reactionary, he spent his early reign resisting constitutionalism in his domains. The Austrian Empire was forced to cede its influence over Tuscany and most of its claim to Lombardy–Venetia to the Kingdom of Sardinia, following the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859 and the Third Italian War of Independence in 1866.

Although Franz Joseph ceded no territory to the Kingdom of Prussia after the Austrian defeat in the Austro-Prussian War, the Peace of Prague (August 23, 1866) settled the German Question in favour of Prussia, which prevented the unification of Germany from occurring under the House of Habsburg.

Franz Joseph was troubled by nationalism during his entire reign. He concluded the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, which granted greater autonomy to Hungary and created the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary.

He ruled peacefully for the next 45 years, but personally suffered the tragedies of the execution of his brother Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico in 1867, the murder-suicide of his son Crown Prince Rudolf and his mistress Mary Vetsara in 1889, the assassination of his wife Empress Elisabeth (“Sisi”) in 1898, and the assassination of his nephew and heir-presumptive, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in 1914.

After the Austro-Prussian War, Austria-Hungary turned its attention to the Balkans, which was a hotspot of international tension because of conflicting interests of Austria with not only the Ottoman but also the Russian Empire.

The Bosnian Crisis was a result of Franz Joseph’s annexation in 1908 of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had already been occupied by his troops since the Congress of Berlin (1878).

On June 28, 1914, the assassination of his nephew Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo resulted in Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war against the Kingdom of Serbia, which was an ally of the Russian Empire. That activated a system of alliances declaring war on each other, which resulted in World War I.

Emperor Franz Joseph died in 1916, after ruling his domains for almost 68 years. He was succeeded by his grandnephew as Emperor Charles I of Austria and as King Charles IV of Hungary. The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed in 1918 at the end of World War I.

December 2, 1848: Abdication of Austrian Emperor Ferdinand and the Accession of Archduke Franz Joseph on the Imperial Throne.

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Archduke Franz Charles of Austria, Archduke Franz Joseph of Austria, Emperor Ferdinand of Austria, Emperor Franz of Austria, Ferdinand of the Two-Sicilies, Holy Roman Emperor Franz II, Prince Felix zu Schwarzenberg, Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, Revolutions of 1848, Sophie of Bavaria

On this date Emperor Ferdinand of Austria abdicated the throne in favor of his nephew, Archduke Franz Joseph who ascended the throne and would reign for nearly 68 years.

Ferdinand I (April 19, 1793 – June 29, 1875) was the eldest son of Franz II, Holy Roman Emperor and Maria Theresa de Bourbon of Naples and Sicily. Possibly as a result of his parents’ genetic closeness (they were double first cousins), Ferdinand suffered from hydrocephalus, neurological problems including epilepsy, and a speech impediment. He was educated by Baron Josef Kalasanz von Erberg, and his wife Countess Josephine von Attems.

Ferdinand succeeded to the throne of the Habsburg Empire on the death of his father Emperor Franz of Austria on March 2, 1835. Previously his father was known as Franz II, the last Holy Roman Emperor, who abdicated that throne in August of 1806. As ruler of Austria, Emperor Ferdinand was also President of the German Confederation, King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia (as Ferdinand V), King of Lombardy–Venetia and holder of many other lesser titles.

Due to his rocky, passive but well-intentioned character, he gained the sobriquet The Benign or The Benevolent.

Emperor Ferdinand was incapable of ruling his empire because of a mental deficiency, so his father, before he died, made a will promulgating that Ferdinand should consult his uncle Archduke Ludwig on all aspects of internal policy and urged him to be influenced by Prince Metternich, Austria’s Foreign Minister.

Ferdinand’s abdication came as a result of Revolutions of 1848 that swept across most of Europe.

The Revolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire were a set of revolutions that took place in the Austrian Empire from March 1848 to November 1849. Much of the revolutionary activity had a nationalist character: the Empire, ruled from Vienna, included ethnic Germans, Hungarians, Slovenes, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Ruthenians (Ukrainians), Romanians, Croats, Venetians (Italians) and Serbs; all of whom attempted in the course of the revolution to either achieve autonomy, independence, or even hegemony over other nationalities.

The nationalist picture was further complicated by the simultaneous events in the German states, which moved toward greater German national unity. Besides these nationalists, liberal and even socialist currents resisted the Empire’s longstanding conservatism.

Photo of Emperor Ferdinand of Austria

The early rumblings

The events of 1848 were the product of mounting social and political tensions after the Congress of Vienna of 1815. During the “pre-March” period, the already conservative Austrian Empire moved further away from ideas of the Age of Enlightenment, by restricting freedom of the press, limited many university activities, and banned fraternities.

As the revolutionaries of 1848 were marching on the palace, he is supposed to have asked Metternich for an explanation. When Metternich answered that they were making a revolution, Ferdinand is supposed to have said “But are they allowed to do that?” (Viennese German: Ja, dürfen’s denn des?) He was convinced by Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg to abdicate in favour of his nephew, Archduke Franz Joseph (the next in line was Ferdinand’s younger brother Archduke Franz Charles, but he was persuaded to waive his succession rights in favour of his son)

The reason Archduke Franz Charles was the heir was due to the fact that Emperor Ferdinand didn’t have any children. When Ferdinand married Princess Maria Anna of Savoy, the court physician considered it unlikely that he would be able to consummate the marriage. When he tried to consummate the marriage, he had five seizures.

Therefore the heir to the throne was his brother Archduke Franz Charles of Austria (December 17, 1802 – March 8, 1878). He was the father of two emperors: Franz Joseph I of Austria and Maximilian I of Mexico. Through his third son Charles Ludwig, he was the grandfather of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria – whose assassination sparked the hostilities that led to the outbreak of World War I – and the great-grandfather of the last Habsburg emperor Charles I.

Archduke Franz Charles of Austria

Franz Charles was born in Vienna, the third son of Emperor Franz of Austria by his second marriage with Princess Maria Theresa from the House of Bourbon, daughter of King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies and Maria Carolina of Austria. Archduchess Maria Carolina was the thirteenth child of Empress Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria, Queen of Hungry etc and Emperor Franz I. Archduchess Maria Carolina was also a sister to Archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria, Queen Consort to Louis XVI of France and Navarre.

On November 4, 1824 in Vienna Archduke Franz Charles married Princess Sophie of Bavaria from the House of Wittelsbach, a daughter of King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria by his second wife Caroline of Baden. Sophie’s paternal half-sister, Caroline Augusta of Bavaria was by this time Franz Charles’ stepmother, having married his thrice-widowed father, Emperor Franz, in 1816. The Wittelsbachs condoned the unappealing manners of Sophie’s husband in consideration of the incapability of his elder brother Ferdinand and Sophie’s chance to become Austrian Empress.

A young Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria

Franz Charles was an unambitious and generally ineffectual man, although he was, together with his uncle Archduke Ludwig, a member of the Geheime Staatskonferenz council, which after the death of Emperor Franz ruled the Austrian Empire in the place of his mentally ill brother Ferdinand from 1835 to 1848.

The decisions, however, were actually made by the Minister of State Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich and his rival Count Franz Anton von Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky. His wife Sophie had already transferred her ambitions, when she urged Franz Charles to renounce his claims to the throne at the time of his brother’s abdication on December 2, 1848, allowing their eldest son Archduke Franz Joseph to take the Imperia Throne of the vast Austrian Empire.

At this time, he first became known by his second as well as his first Christian name. The name “Franz Joseph” was chosen to bring back memories of the new Emperor’s great-granduncle, Emperor Joseph II (Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790), remembered as a modernising reformer.

Also, the new emperor wanted to be known as Franz III, however he realized that the ordinal number “III” was associated with the old Holy Roman Empire and he would therefore be Emperor Franz II of Austria, but it was believed that would cause confusion since his grandfather was the last Holy Roman Emperorwith the name Franz II.

November 21, 1916: Death of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, King of Hungary

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Archduke Franz Charles of Austria, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, Emperor Ferdinand of Austria, Felix zu Schwarzenberg, Franz Joseph of Austria, Katharina Schratt, King of Croatia and Bohemia, King of Hungary, Sarajevo, Sisi, Sophie of Bavaria, World War I

Franz Joseph I (August 18, 1830 – November 21, 1916) was Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia, and monarch of other states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, from December 2, 1848 until his death. From May 1, 1850 to August 24, 1866 he was also President of the German Confederation. He was the longest-reigning ruler of Austria and Hungary, as well as the sixth-longest-reigning monarch of any country.

Franz Joseph was born August 18, 1830 in the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna (on the 65th anniversary of the death of Franz of Lorraine, Holy RomanEmperorFranz I) as the eldest son of Archduke Franz Charles (the younger son of Holy Roman Emperor Francis II), and his wife Princess Sophie of Bavaria.

His mother, Princess Sophie of Bavaria (1805 – 1872) was born to King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria and his second wife Caroline of Baden. She was the identical twin sister of Princess Maria Anna of Bavaria, Queen of Saxony as wife of Friedrich August II of Saxony.

Because his uncle, reigning from 1835 as the Emperor Ferdinand, was weak-minded, and his father unambitious and retiring, the mother of the young Archduke “Franzi” brought him up as a future Emperor, with emphasis on devotion, responsibility and diligence.

Since no descendants were to be expected from the marriage of the heir to the throne, Archduke Ferdinand (emperor from 1835), his next elder brother Franz Charles was to continue the succession of the Habsburgs, which is why the birth of his son Franz Joseph at the Viennese court was given special importance.

Franz Charles was physically as well as mentally of weak constitution and was therefore hardly suitable for a reign. For this reason, Franz Joseph was consistently built up as a potential successor to the imperial throne by his politically ambitious mother from early childhood.

It was generally felt in the court that the Emperor should marry and produce heirs as soon as possible. Various potential brides were considered, including Princess Elisabeth of Modena, Princess Anna of Prussia and Princess Sidonia of Saxony.

Although in public life Franz Joseph was the unquestioned director of affairs, in his private life his mother still wielded crucial influence. Sophie wanted to strengthen the relationship between the Houses of Habsburg and Wittelsbach—descending from the latter house herself—and hoped to match Franz Joseph with her sister Ludovika’s eldest daughter, Helene (“Néné”), who was four years the Emperor’s junior.

Helene was the eldest daughter of Maximilian Joseph, Duke in Bavaria and Princess Ludovika of Bavaria.

However, Franz Joseph fell deeply in love with Néné’s younger sister Elisabeth (“Sisi”), a beautiful girl of fifteen, and insisted on marrying her instead. Sophie acquiesced, despite her misgivings about Sisi’s appropriateness as an imperial consort, and the young couple were married on April 24, 1854 in St. Augustine’s Church, Vienna.

Their marriage would eventually prove to be an unhappy one; though Franz Joseph was passionately in love with his wife, the feeling was not mutual. Elisabeth never truly acclimatized to life at court, and was frequently in conflict with the imperial family. Their first daughter Sophie died as an infant, and their only son Rudolf died by suicide in 1889 in the infamous Mayerling Incident.

In 1885 Franz Joseph met Katharina Schratt, a leading actress of the Vienna stage, and she became his friend and confidante. This relationship lasted the rest of his life, and was—to a certain degree—tolerated by Elisabeth. Franz Joseph built Villa Schratt in Bad Ischl for her, and also provided her with a small palace in Vienna. Though their relationship lasted for thirty-four years, it remained platonic.

In December 1848, Franz Joseph’s uncle Emperor Ferdinand abdicated the throne at Olomouc, as part of Minister President Felix zu Schwarzenberg’s plan to end the Revolutions of 1848 in Hungary.

Franz Joseph then acceded to the throne. Largely considered to be a reactionary, he spent his early reign resisting constitutionalism in his domains. The Austrian Empire was forced to cede its influence over Tuscany and most of its claim to Lombardy–Venetia to the Kingdom of Sardinia, following the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859 and the Third Italian War of Independence in 1866.

Although Franz Joseph ceded no territory to the Kingdom of Prussia after the Austrian defeat in the Austro-Prussian War, the Peace of Prague (August 23, 1866) settled the German Question in favour of Prussia, which prevented the unification of Germany from occurring under the House of Habsburg.

Franz Joseph was troubled by nationalism during his entire reign. He concluded the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, which granted greater autonomy to Hungary and transformed the Austrian Empire into the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.

He ruled peacefully for the next 45 years, but personally suffered the tragedies of the execution of his brother Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico in 1867, the suicide of his son Crown Prince Rudolf in 1889, the assassination of his wife Empress Elisabeth (“Sisi”) in 1898, and the assassination of his nephew and heir-presumptive, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in 1914.

After the Austro-Prussian War, Austria-Hungary turned its attention to the Balkans, which was a hotspot of international tension because of conflicting interests with the Russian Empire. The Bosnian Crisis was a result of Franz Joseph’s annexation in 1908 of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had been occupied by his troops since the Congress of Berlin (1878).

On June 28, 1914, the assassination of his nephew Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo resulted in Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war against the Kingdom of Serbia, which was an ally of the Russian Empire. That activated a system of alliances which resulted in World War I. The Emperor died in 1916, after ruling his domains for almost 68 years. He was succeeded by his grandnephew Charles.