Austria - Franz Joseph I - Emperor: 2 December 1848- 18
November 1916 -
Silver Forint 29mm (12.1 grams) Struck in 1881
Laureate head of Franz right.
Coat of arms.
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Franz
Joseph I (-German, I.
Ferenc József in
Hungarian,
in
English
Francis Joseph I, see the
name in other languages; 18 August 1830 – 21 November 1916) was as Emperor
of
Austria,
King of Bohemia and Apostolic King of
Hungary from
1848 until 1916.[1]
Early life
Franz Joseph was born in the
Schönbrunn Palace in
Vienna, the
oldest son of
Archduke Franz Karl (the younger son of
Holy Roman Emperor Francis II), and his wife
Princess Sophie of Bavaria. Because his uncle, from 1835 the Emperor
Ferdinand, was weak-minded, and his father unambitious and retiring, the
young Archduke "Franzl" was brought up by his mother as a future Emperor with
emphasis on devotion, responsibility and diligence. Franzl came to idolize his
grandfather, der Gute Kaiser Franz, who had died shortly before the
former's fifth birthday, as the ideal monarch. At the age of 13, young Archduke
Franz started a career as a colonel in the Austrian army. From that point
onward, his fashion was dictated by army style and for the rest of his life he
normally wore the uniform of a junior officer.
Franz Joseph was soon joined by three younger brothers: Archduke Ferdinand
Maximilian (born 1832, the future Emperor
Maximilian of Mexico);
Archduke Karl Ludwig (born 1833), and
Archduke Ludwig Viktor (born 1842), and a sister, Maria Anna (born 1835),
who died at the age of four.
Following the resignation of the Chancellor
Prince Metternich during the
Revolutions of 1848, the young Archduke, who it was widely expected would
soon succeed his uncle on the throne, was appointed Governor of
Bohemia on 6
April, but never took up the post. Instead, Franz was sent to the front in
Italy, joining
Field Marshal Radetzky on campaign on 29 April, receiving his
baptism of fire on 5 May at
Santa
Lucia. By all accounts he handled his first military experience calmly and
with dignity. Around the same time, the Imperial Family was fleeing
revolutionary
Vienna for the calmer setting of
Innsbruck,
in
Tyrol. Soon,
the Archduke was called back from Italy, joining the rest of his family at
Innsbruck by mid-June. It was at Innsbruck at this time that Franz Joseph first
met his cousin
Elisabeth, Duchess in Bavaria, his future bride, then a girl of ten, but
apparently the meeting made little impact.
Following victory over the Italians at
Custoza in late July, the court felt safe to return to Vienna, and Franz
Joseph travelled with them. But within a few months Vienna again appeared
unsafe, and in September the court left again, this time for
Olmütz in
Moravia. By now,
Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz, the influential military commander in
Bohemia, was determined to see the young Archduke soon put onto the throne. It
was thought that a new ruler would not be bound by the oaths to respect
constitutional government to which Ferdinand had been forced to agree, and that
it was necessary to find a young, energetic emperor to replace the kindly, but
mentally unfit Emperor.
It was thus at Olmütz on 2 December that, by the abdication of his uncle
Ferdinand and the renunciation of his father, the mild-mannered Franz Karl,
Franz Joseph succeeded as Emperor of Austria. It was at this time that he first
became known by his second as well as his first given name. The name "Franz
Joseph" was chosen deliberately to bring back memories of the new Emperor's
great-granduncle, Emperor
Joseph II, remembered as a modernizing reformer.
Imperial
absolutism, 1848–1860
Under the guidance of the new prime minister
Prince Schwarzenberg, the new emperor at first pursued a cautious course,
granting a constitution in early 1849. At the same time, military campaigns were
necessary against the
Hungarians,
who had rebelled against Habsburg central authority under the name of their
ancient liberties. Franz Joseph was also almost immediately faced with a renewal
of the fighting in Italy, with King
Charles Albert of Sardinia taking advantage of setbacks in Hungary to resume
the war in March 1849. Soon, though, the military tide began to turn in favor of
Franz Joseph and the Austrian whitecoats. Almost immediately, Charles Albert was
decisively beaten by Radetzky at
Novara, and forced both to sue for peace and to abdicate his throne. In
Hungary, the situation was more grave and Austrian defeat was quite possible.
Franz Joseph, sensing a need to secure his right to rule sought help from a
reactionary Russia. With this Russian aid the Hungarian revolution was crushed
by late summer of 1849. With order now restored throughout the Empire, Franz
Joseph felt free to go back on the constitutional concessions he had made,
especially as the Austrian parliament, meeting at
Kremsier, had behaved, in the young Emperor's view, abominably. The 1849
constitution was suspended, and a policy of absolutist centralism was
established, guided by the Minister of the Interior,
Alexander Bach.
The next few years saw the seeming recovery of Austria's position on the
international scene following the near disasters of 1848–1849. Under
Schwarzenberg's guidance, Austria was able to stymie
Prussian
scheming to create a new German Federation under Prussian leadership, excluding
Austria. After Schwarzenberg's premature death in 1852, he could not be replaced
by statesmen of equal stature, and the Emperor effectively took over himself as
prime minister.
Assassination
attempt in 1853
On 18 February, 1853, the Emperor survived an
assassination attempt by Hungarian nationalist
János Libényi. The emperor was taking a stroll with one of his officers,
Maximilian Karl Lamoral O'Donnell, on a city-bastion,
when Libényi approached him. He immediately struck the emperor from behind with
a knife straight at the neck. Franz Joseph almost always wore a uniform, which
had a high collar that almost completely enclosed the neck. It so happened that
the collar of his uniform was made out of very sturdy material. Even though the
Emperor was wounded and bleeding, the collar saved his life. Count O'Donnell
(descendant of the Irish noble dynasty
O'Donnell of Tyrconnell[2])
struck Libényi down with his sabre.[3]
O'Donnell, hitherto only a Count by virtue of his Irish nobility, was thereafter
made a Count of the
Habsburg Empire, conferred with the Commander's Cross of the Royal Order of
Leopold, and his customary O'Donnell arms were augmented by the initials and
shield of the ducal House of Austria, with additionally the double-headed eagle
of the Empire. These arms are emblazoned on the portico of no. 2 Mirabel Platz
in Salzburg,
where O'Donnell built his residence thereafter. Another witness who happened to
be nearby, the butcher Joseph Ettenreich, quickly overwhelmed Libényi. For his
deed he was later elevated to nobility by the Emperor and became
Joseph von Ettenreich. Libényi was subsequently put on trial and condemned
to death for attempted
regicide.
He was executed on the
Simmeringer Haide. After the unsuccessful attack the Emperor's brother
Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph, the later Emperor of
Mexico, called
upon Europe's Royal families for donations to a new church on the site of the
attack. The church was to be a
votive offering for the rescue of the Emperor. It is located on
Ringstraße
in the district of
Alsergrund
close to the
University of Vienna, and is known as the
Votivkirche.
Marriage
It was generally felt in the court that the Emperor should marry and produce
heirs as soon as possible. Various potential brides were considered:
Princess Elisabeth of Modena,
Princess Anna of Prussia and
Princess Sidonia of Saxony.[4]
Although in public life the Emperor was the unquestioned director of affairs, in
his private life his formidable mother still had a crucial influence. She wanted
to strengthen the relationship between the Houses of
Habsburg and
Wittelsbach, and hoped to match Franz Joseph with her sister
Ludovika's eldest daughter,
Helene ("Nené"), four years the Emperor's junior. However, the Emperor
became besotted with Nené's younger sister,
Elisabeth ("Sisi"), a girl of sixteen, and insisted on marrying her instead.
Sophie acquiesced, despite some misgivings about Sisi's appropriateness as an
imperial consort, and the young couple were married on 24 April, 1854 in
St. Augustine's Church,
Vienna.
Their married life was not happy. Sisi never really adapted herself to the
court and always had disagreements with the Royal Family; their first daughter
Sophie died as an infant; and their only son,
Crown Prince Rudolf, died, allegedly by
suicide in
1889, in the infamous
Mayerling
Incident. The Empress was an inveterate traveler, horsewoman, and fashion
mavin who was rarely seen in Vienna. She was stabbed to death by an Italian
anarchist in 1898; Franz Joseph never fully recovered from the loss. According
to the future Empress-Consort
Zita
of Bourbon-Parma he usually told his relatives: "You'll never know how
important she was for me" or, according to some sources, "She will never know
how much I loved her" (although there is no definite proof he actually said
this).
The 1850s witnessed several failures of Austrian external policy: the
Crimean
War and break-up with Russia, and defeat in the
Second Italian War of Independence. The setbacks continued in the 1860s with
defeat in the
Austro-Prussian War of 1866, which resulted in the
Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867.
Political difficulties in Austria mounted continuously through the late 1800s
and into the 20th century. But Franz Joseph remained immensely respected. His
patriarchal authority held the Empire together while the politicians squabbled.
Later
reign and death
In 1885 Franz Joseph met
Katharina Schratt,
a leading actress of the Vienna stage, and she became his mistress. This
relationship lasted the rest of his life, and was, to a certain degree,
tolerated by Sisi. Franz Joseph built Villa Schratt in
Bad Ischl
for her, and also provided her with a small palace in Vienna.
After the death of Rudolf, the heir to the throne was his nephew
Archduke Franz Ferdinand. When Franz Ferdinand decided to marry a mere
countess, Franz Joseph opposed the marriage strenuously, and insisted that it
must be
morganatic; he did not even attend the wedding. After that, the two men
disliked and distrusted each other.
In 1903, Franz Joseph's veto of
Cardinal Rampolla's election to the papacy was transmitted to the conclave
by Cardinal
Jan Puzyna. It was the last use of such a veto, because new
Pope Pius
X provided penalties for such.
In 1914, Franz Ferdinand was
assassinated in Sarajevo, leading to
World
War I. When he heard the news of the assassination, Franz Joseph said that "in
this manner a superior power has restored that order which I unfortunately was
unable to maintain."
Franz Joseph died in the
Schönbrunn Palace in 1916, aged 86, in the middle of the war. He is said to
have died singing
"Gott erhalte, Gott beschütze, Unsern Kaiser" ("God Save the Emperor").
He was succeeded by his grandnephew
Karl. But two years later, after defeat in World War I, the
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy dissolved.[5]
His 68-year reign is the third-longest in the recorded history of Europe
(after those of
Louis XIV of
France and
Johannes II, Prince of Liechtenstein).
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