Franz Joseph I

• 1. Half Past Three

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  On the evening of the 21st of November 1916, inside Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, Emperor Franz Joseph I gave his valet a final instruction. "Tomorrow morning, at half past three." Those were his last words. He was 86 years old.

  Franz Joseph I, also written Francis Joseph I, had been Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary for almost 68 years. He had also ruled the other states of the Habsburg monarchy. How does a man arrive at the end of such a reign still planning his next dawn?

  Why was a teenager handed an empire in a year of revolutions? Why did one of his own kingdoms deny that he was its king at all? What did he lose along the way, and what did he set in motion at the very end?

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• 2. Raised to Rule

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  Franz Joseph was born on the 18th of August 1830 at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. He was the eldest son of Archduke Franz Karl and Sophie, a princess of Bavaria. His uncle Ferdinand reigned as emperor from 1835 but was disabled by seizures. His father was unambitious and retiring.

  Sophie therefore took charge. She was politically ambitious, and she raised the boy everyone called "Franzi" as a future emperor. Her lessons stressed devotion, responsibility and diligence.

  Until he turned seven, little Franzi stayed in the care of a nanny, called the "Aja", named Louise von Sturmfeder. Then came the "state education". Its central aims were a sense of duty, religiosity and dynastic awareness. The theologian Joseph Othmar von Rauscher taught him that rulership came from divine grace. On that view, the people needed no share in power through parliaments.

  The workload was enormous. The educators Heinrich Franz von Bombelles and Colonel Johann Baptist Coronini-Cronberg began with 18 hours of study each week. By the age of 16 the load had grown to 50 hours.

  Languages dominated the timetable. He learned French, the diplomatic language of the time, along with Latin and Ancient Greek. The most important tongues of the monarchy were Hungarian, Czech, Italian and Polish. He also studied mathematics, physics, history and geography. Law and political science came later, and physical training completed the programme.

  On his 13th birthday he was appointed Colonel-Inhaber of Dragoon Regiment No. 3. His lessons turned toward basic strategy and tactics. Army style then shaped his wardrobe for good, and he normally dressed as an officer for the rest of his life.

  He was not an only child. Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian was born in 1832, Karl Ludwig in 1833 and Ludwig Viktor in 1842. A sister, Maria Anna, was born in 1835 and died at the age of 4. Ferdinand Maximilian would one day become Emperor of Mexico, and Karl Ludwig would father Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

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• 3. A Throne in Revolution

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  Prince Klemens von Metternich, the Austrian Chancellor, resigned between March and April 1848 as revolution spread. It was widely expected that the young archduke would soon succeed his uncle. On the 6th of April 1848 he was named Governor of Bohemia, though he never took up the post.

  Instead he was sent to the front in Italy. He joined Field Marshal Radetzky on campaign on the 29th of April. His baptism of fire came on the 5th of May at Santa Lucia, and by all accounts he handled it calmly and with dignity.

  At Innsbruck in Tyrol, where the imperial family had fled from revolutionary Vienna, he rejoined his relatives by mid-June. There he first met his cousin Elisabeth, then a girl of 10. The meeting apparently made little impression on him.

  Austria's victory over the Italians at Custoza in late July made the court feel safe enough to return to Vienna. Within a few weeks the city again seemed unsafe. In September the court left for Olmütz in Moravia.

  There Alfred, Prince of Windisch-Grätz, an influential military commander in Bohemia, pushed for the young archduke to take the throne. A new ruler, it was thought, would not be bound by the oaths to respect constitutional government that Ferdinand had been forced to swear. Ferdinand was kindly but mentally unfit, and the court wanted someone young and energetic.

  On the 2nd of December 1848, at Olmütz, Ferdinand abdicated and Franz Karl renounced his own claim. Franz Joseph became Emperor of Austria at the age of eighteen. From this moment he was known by his second Christian name as well as his first.

  The double name was deliberate. It recalled his great-granduncle Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790, who was remembered as a modernising reformer.

  Under the new prime minister, Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg, the emperor at first took a cautious course. He granted a constitution in March 1849. That same month King Charles Albert of Sardinia saw Habsburg setbacks in Hungary and resumed the war in Italy. Radetzky beat him decisively at Novara, and Charles Albert had to sue for peace and renounce his throne. Hungary, however, would prove a far harder problem.

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• 4. Hungary and the Knife

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  The Kingdom of Hungary held something no other Habsburg land could claim, an old historic constitution that limited the power of the crown. Since the 13th century it had steadily increased the authority of parliament. The Hungarian reform laws, known as the April laws, rested on 12 points covering modern civil and political rights and economic and social reform.

  Ferdinand had ratified them. The young Franz Joseph then "revoked" them. Hungarians argued that he had no legal competence to do so, since a monarch could not cancel parliamentary laws already signed.

  The new Austrian Stadion Constitution made matters worse. It was accepted by the Imperial Diet of Austria, where Hungary had no representation. It also tried to abolish the Diet of Hungary, which had been the supreme legislative power there since the late 12th century.

  On the 7th of March 1849 came an imperial proclamation in the emperor's name. Hungary was to be divided into five military districts, and the Principality of Transylvania was to be reestablished. The moderate Batthyány government, which sought agreement with the court, fell. Followers of Lajos Kossuth rose in its place and demanded full independence.

  The legal quarrel went deeper. On the 7th of December 1848 the Diet of Hungary refused to acknowledge the new king's title, "as without the knowledge and consent of the diet no one could sit on the Hungarian throne". It called the nation to arms.

  In France or the United Kingdom, a reign began the moment the predecessor died. In Hungary a coronation was indispensable, and without one the kingdom remained "orphaned". By the coronation oath, a crowned king could not give up the throne while alive. So Ferdinand was still the legal king of Hungary. Only parliament could dethrone him and elect another, and it declined to do so. That gave the revolt an excuse of legality, and Kossuth became elected regent-president.

  By 1849 the revolutions in the Austrian territories had been suppressed, but in Hungary defeat seemed close. Franz Joseph asked Tsar Nicholas I for help, "to prevent the Hungarian insurrection developing into a European calamity". He kissed the tsar's hand in Warsaw on the 21st of May 1849.

  Nicholas acted in the name of the Holy Alliance. He sent an army of 200,000 men with 80,000 auxiliary forces, led by General Ivan Paskevich. The joint Russian and Austrian army defeated the Hungarians. Hungary was then placed under brutal martial law. Lajos Batthyány died, and there were executions in Arad.

  With order restored, the emperor felt free to go back on his constitutional promises. The Austrian parliament meeting at Kremsier had behaved, in his eyes, abominably. The 1849 constitution was suspended. Interior Minister Alexander Bach then guided a policy of absolutist centralism.

  On the 18th of February 1853, a Hungarian nationalist named János Libényi attacked the emperor. Franz Joseph was strolling along a city bastion with one of his officers, Count Maximilian Karl Lamoral O'Donnell. Libényi came up behind him and struck at the neck with a knife.

  The emperor almost always wore a uniform, and its high collar nearly enclosed the neck. Collars of that time were made of very sturdy material, precisely to turn aside such blows. Franz Joseph was wounded and bleeding, but the collar saved his life. O'Donnell struck Libényi down with his sabre.

  The rewards followed quickly. O'Donnell had been a count only through Irish nobility, and he was now made a Count of the Habsburg monarchy. A butcher named Joseph Ettenreich, who happened to be nearby, overpowered the attacker. The emperor later raised him to the nobility as Joseph von Ettenreich. Libényi was condemned for attempted regicide and executed on the Simmeringer Heide.

  The emperor's brother, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, asked Europe's royal families for donations to build a church on the site. It became the Votivkirche, on the Ringstraße in the Alsergrund district near the University of Vienna. In Prague, a new statue of St. Francis of Assisi, the emperor's patron saint, went up on Charles Bridge. It was donated by Count Franz Anton von Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky, the first minister-president of the Austrian Empire.

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• 5. Compromise and Crowns

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  After Schwarzenberg died prematurely in 1852, no statesman of equal stature replaced him. The emperor effectively became his own prime minister. Needing to borrow money on foreign markets, he relented in 1861 and issued the February Patent, which set out the empire's constitution.

  The 1850s had brought failures abroad, including the Crimean War and the breakup of the alliance with Russia. Then came defeat in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. That defeat pushed the monarchy toward the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867.

  Hungary's political leaders went into the talks with two goals. They wanted the traditional legal and political status of the Hungarian state back, lost after the revolution. They also wanted the revolutionary parliament's reform laws restored.

  The Compromise partly restored Hungarian sovereignty. Hungary was no longer subject to the Austrian Empire and became an equal partner. The deal ended 18 years of absolutist rule and military dictatorship. Franz Joseph was crowned King of Hungary on the 8th of June 1867. On the 28th of July he promulgated the laws that formally created the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.

  The emperor later said, "There were three of us who made the agreement: Deák, Andrássy and myself." Yet Empress Elisabeth, known as Sisi, played a large part. She was fluent in Hungarian and deeply sympathetic to the Hungarian cause. She built close ties with Hungarian leaders such as Count Gyula Andrássy and worked quietly to move her husband toward conciliation.

  Political trouble in Austria grew through the late 19th century. Even so, the emperor stayed immensely respected, and his patriarchal authority held the empire together while politicians squabbled.

  The Czechs received no such settlement. Bohemian representatives had hoped, from 1848 onward, that their historical state rights would be recognised by a coronation of the new ruler as King of Bohemia in Prague. The last such coronation had taken place in 1836. Before the 19th century the Habsburgs had ruled Bohemia by hereditary right, and a separate ceremony had not been thought necessary.

  On the 14th of April 1861, Franz Joseph received a Bohemian Diet delegation and told them in Czech: "I will have myself crowned King of Bohemia in Prague, and I am convinced that a new, indissoluble bond of trust and loyalty between My throne and My Bohemian Kingdom will be strengthened by this holy rite." The talks failed that year over unsolved constitutional problems. In 1866, after the defeat at Königgrätz, his visit to Prague was a huge success, shown by the many new photographs taken.

  The dual monarchy of 1867 then left the Czechs and their aristocracy without the recognition they had hoped for. Bohemia stayed among the Austrian Crown Lands. Protest took the form of street demonstrations, resolutions from district representations and open-air mass meetings, mostly in big cities such as Prague. The Czech newspaper Národní listy complained that the Czechs were uncompensated for wartime suffering, while their state rights were tossed aside.

  Hopes revived in 1870-71. In an Imperial Rescript of the 26th of September 1870, the emperor again spoke of the glory of the Bohemian Crown and his intention to hold a coronation. Under Minister-President Karl Hohenwart, the government of Cisleithania negotiated fundamental articles on the Bohemian Crown's place in the monarchy.

  On the 12th of September 1871 the emperor announced: "Having in mind the constitutional position of the Bohemian Crown and being conscious of the glory and power which that Crown has given us and our predecessors… we gladly recognise the rights of the kingdom and are prepared to renew that recognition through our coronation oath." The composer Bedřich Smetana wrote the opera Libuše for the occasion. The ceremony never happened. The creation of the German Empire, plus opposition from German-speaking liberals and from Hungarians, doomed the articles. Hohenwart resigned, and nothing changed.

  Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk sat in the Reichsrat from 1891 to 1893 for the Young Czech Party, and again from 1907 to 1914 for the Realist Party he founded in 1900. He did not campaign for the independence of Czechs and Slovaks from Austria-Hungary. In Vienna in 1909 he helped the defence of Hinko Hinković in a fabricated trial of prominent Croats and Serbs. The accused were sentenced to more than 150 years in total, plus a number of death penalties.

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• 6. Rivals, Allies and Bosnia

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  The Second Italian War of Independence in 1859 and the Third in 1866 cost Austria its influence over Tuscany and most of its claim to Lombardy-Venetia. All of it passed to the Kingdom of Sardinia. The sharper contest was with Prussia over Germany.

  From the 1st of May 1850 to the 24th of August 1866, Franz Joseph was also president of the German Confederation. His main foreign policy goal was German unification under the House of Habsburg. The claim rested on precedent, because from 1452 to the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 the Habsburgs had generally held the German crown, with one brief break under the House of Wittelsbach.

  The difficulty was that Franz Joseph wanted to keep his non-German territories in any united Germany. Two camps formed. Supporters of a Greater Germany wanted Austria inside, arguing that it would be absurd to exclude eight million Austrian Germans. Supporters of a Lesser Germany said Austria was a multi-nation state, and that its inclusion would bring millions of non-Germans into a German nation state.

  If the Greater Germans won, the crown would go to Franz Joseph. If the Lesser Germans won, it would go to the King of Prussia. The debate became a contest between Austria and Prussia. Prussia won the Seven Weeks War, and the Peace of Prague of the 23rd of August 1866 settled the German Question in its favour. Austria lost no territory, so long as it stayed out of German affairs.

  In 1873, two years after German unification, Franz Joseph joined the League of Three Emperors with Emperor Wilhelm I of Germany and Emperor Alexander II of Russia. Alexander III replaced Alexander II in 1881. German chancellor Otto von Bismarck designed the league to keep the peace of Europe, and it lasted intermittently until 1887.

  The emperor was one of the most prominent Roman Catholic rulers in Europe, and a fierce enemy of Freemasonry. In 1903 he vetoed the election of Cardinal Mariano Rampolla to the papacy. Cardinal Jan Puzyna de Kosielsko carried the veto to the conclave. It was the last use of such a veto, because the new Pope Pius X banned them and threatened excommunication for any attempt.

  The Balkans proved more dangerous. In the mid-1870s violent rebellions against Ottoman rule broke out, and the Turks answered with oppressive reprisals. Tsar Alexander II wanted to intervene and reached an agreement with Austria-Hungary. Under the Budapest Convention of 1877, Russia would annex southern Bessarabia, while Austria-Hungary stayed benevolently neutral. In return, Russia accepted Austria-Hungary's annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

  Just 15 months later, Russia imposed the Treaty of San Stefano on the Ottomans. It broke the Budapest deal by calling for joint Russian and Austrian occupation. The 1878 Treaty of Berlin overturned it and allowed sole Austrian occupation, without settling the provinces' final status. The Three Emperors' League agreement of 1881 had Germany and Russia endorse the right to annex. By 1897 Russia had withdrawn its support, and its foreign minister, Count Mikhail Muravyov, said annexation would raise "an extensive question requiring special scrutiny".

  In 1908 the Russian foreign minister, Alexander Izvolsky, offered his support for a third time. His price was Austrian backing for opening the Bosporus and the Dardanelles to Russian warships. Austria's foreign minister, Alois von Aehrenthal, pursued the offer, and they reached an understanding at the Buchlau Conference on the 16th of September 1908. Izvolsky had acted without telling Tsar Nicholas II, his government or other powers, including Britain, France and Serbia.

  Franz Joseph signed the annexation proclamation on the 6th of October 1908. A diplomatic crisis erupted. Serbs and Italians demanded compensation, and the Austro-Hungarian government refused. The crisis ended only with a revision of the Treaty of Berlin in April 1909, and tensions with the Serbs grew worse.

  On the 28th of June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his morganatic wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were shot in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a Yugoslav nationalist of Serbian ethnicity. The emperor heard the news from his adjutant, who recorded his reaction in a diary: "one has not to defy the Almighty. In this manner a superior power has restored that order which I unfortunately was unable to maintain."

  The emperor was shaken and interrupted his holiday to return to Vienna. He soon resumed it at his Kaiservilla in Bad Ischl. Early decisions in the "July Crisis" fell to foreign minister Count Leopold Berchtold, General Staff chief Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf and other ministers. They chose an ultimatum of itemised demands meant to reveal the conspirators.

  Serbia's reply was vague on details. In Vienna it was seen as a matter of security and prestige, partly because the Black Hand had terrorised Bosnia for years. Franz Joseph was hesitant. But Conrad von Hötzendorf, long an advocate of war against Serbia, got his way once Franz Ferdinand was no longer there to block the general staff.

  War was declared on the 28th of July, a week after the ultimatum went out. Within weeks the Germans, Russians, French and British had all joined in, and the conflict became the First World War. On the 6th of August, Franz Joseph signed the declaration of war against Russia.

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• 7. Family and Grief

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  Princess Elisabeth of Modena, Princess Anna of Prussia and Princess Sidonia of Saxony were all considered as brides. The court felt the emperor should marry and produce heirs quickly. In public life he was the unquestioned director of affairs, but in private his mother still held crucial influence.

  Sophie came from the House of Wittelsbach and wanted to strengthen ties with the Habsburgs. She hoped to match her son with Helene, known as "Néné", the eldest daughter of her sister Ludovika. Helene was four years the emperor's junior.

  But Franz Joseph fell deeply in love with Néné's younger sister Elisabeth, "Sisi", a beautiful girl of 15, and insisted on marrying her. Sophie gave way despite doubts about Sisi's suitability. The couple married on the 24th of April 1854 in St. Augustine's Church, Vienna.

  The marriage proved unhappy. Franz Joseph was passionately in love, but the feeling was not mutual. Elisabeth never truly adjusted to court life and often clashed with the imperial family. She was an inveterate traveller, horsewoman and fashion lover who was rarely seen in Vienna. She was obsessed with preserving her beauty, followed bizarre routines and strenuous exercise, and suffered ill health.

  They had four children. Their first daughter, Sophie, died as an infant. Gisela, Rudolf and Marie Valerie followed. In 1875 Franz Joseph also became principal heir to the substantial fortune of his uncle Ferdinand, mostly Bohemian estates of the Duke of Reichstadt.

  In 1867 his brother Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, was executed. In 1885 he met Katharina Schratt, a leading actress of the Vienna stage. She became his friend and confidante for the rest of his life. He built Villa Schratt for her in Bad Ischl and gave her a small palace in Vienna.

  Their bond lasted 34 years and remained platonic. Elisabeth tolerated it to a degree.

  In 1889 the emperor's only son Rudolf died by suicide in the infamous Mayerling Incident. Then in 1898 an Italian anarchist stabbed Elisabeth to death on a visit to Geneva. A few days after the funeral, Robert of Parma wrote that it was pitiful to look at the emperor, who showed great energy in his immense pain. At times, he wrote, one could see the immensity of his grief.

  Franz Joseph never fully recovered. The future empress Zita of Bourbon-Parma recalled him telling relatives: "You'll never know how important she was to me." Some sources give it as: "You will never know how much I loved this woman."

  Archduke Franz Ferdinand became heir presumptive in 1896, after the deaths of his cousin Rudolf and of his own father, Karl Ludwig. Relations with the emperor had always been contentious. They worsened when Franz Ferdinand announced he wished to marry Countess Sophie Chotek. The emperor would not even consider it, because she was merely of noble rank, not dynastic rank.

  Letters from imperial family members begged him through the fall and winter of 1899 to relent. He stood his ground, then consented in 1900. The marriage would be morganatic, and any children would be barred from the succession. The couple wed on the 1st of July 1900 at Reichstadt. Neither the emperor nor any archduke attended, and afterwards the two men disliked and mistrusted each other.

  The emperor's personal attendant remembered in his memoirs that "thunder and lightning always raged when they had their discussions." After the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie in 1914, Marie Valerie noted that her father seemed more confident in the new heir, his grandnephew Archduke Charles. Franz Joseph told her: "For me, it is a relief from a great worry."

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• 8. Last Hours and Legacy

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  A cold caught while walking in Schönbrunn Park with King Ludwig III of Bavaria began the final illness. Several days later pneumonia developed in the right lung. Though sick, Franz Joseph was determined to rise at his usual hour, which is why his last words concerned the morning. He is buried in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna.

  His grandnephew Charles I & IV succeeded him. Charles reigned until the empire collapsed in 1918 after defeat in the First World War.

  The emperor's titles filled a long list. As Emperor of Austria he was also King of Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Galicia and many other realms, including a claim to King of Jerusalem. The list went on through archduchies, duchies, margraviates and counties. His name also changed with the language. Hungarians wrote Ferenc József, Czechs František Josef, and Italians Francesco Giuseppe.

  He became a Knight of the Golden Fleece in 1844. He founded the Order of Franz Joseph on the 2nd of December 1849, and the Order of Elizabeth in 1898. Foreign honours were many. Sweden made him an honorary general of its army in 1888, and Britain made him a Field Marshal on the 1st of September 1903. That rank lasted until 1914.

  He took two mottos. For Austria it was "Viribus Unitis", meaning "With united forces". For Hungary it was "Virtutis Confido", meaning "My trust in the ancient virtue".

  His name still marks the map. The Austro-Hungarian North Pole expedition named Franz Josef Land in the Russian Arctic after him in 1873. The Franz Josef Glacier on New Zealand's South Island carries it too. In 1872 he founded the Franz Joseph University in Kolozsvár, today Cluj-Napoca. It later moved to Szeged and became the University of Szeged.

  For a time his face appeared on labels of Polish Żywiec Zdrój bottled water, until the Abrahamów ridge replaced it. And every year around his birthday, the Mitteleuropean People's Festival is held in some places. It calls itself a "spontaneous, traditional and brotherly meeting among peoples of the Central-European Countries". There are ceremonies, music, dances, wine and food tasting, and traditional costumes.

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