Others of Maria Teresa’s descendants, besides Joseph, held the title of Emperor, but as the Germanic states grew more united among themselves this tended to become an empty dignity. It was dropped at last by Francis II., who ascended the throne in 1792. But before that, Francis had gone through the terrible wars of the Napoleonic era, and had been shorn of all his dominions beyond Austria and its immediate dependencies. The first of his outlying dominions to be taken by the French was the Netherlands, in the same year that he became sovereign.
At that time Francis ruled also in Lombardy, and it was not to be supposed that Buonaparte would allow any country so near France to remain untouched; he spread his tentacles over it in 1796, and it became the Cisalpine Republic. The Austrians did not give up without a struggle; they made a strong resistance but were outplayed at every turn. This laid the way to Vienna open to the French, and they immediately took advantage of it, marching through the Tyrol. Austria thereupon concluded peace, giving up all idea of recovering her possessions in the Low Countries, and agreeing to recognise the Cisalpine Republic, in return for which she received the Venetian territory. But the greatest advantage Austria received for thus declaring herself on the side of the conqueror was the province of Dalmatia, which gave her access to the sea and had long been coveted by her.
The people of Austria, however, had to be reckoned with, and this peace was altogether opposed to their wishes; after violent uprisings they broke through the neutrality, and joining Russia and Prussia declared war on France. This led to the disastrous defeats of Marengo and Hohenlinden in 1800, and on the latter occasion between four and five thousand Austrians were left dead on the field and seven thousand were taken prisoners. Austria once again cried out for peace and abandoned the Tyrol to the French without the consent of the Tyrolese themselves, who had very different views on the subject. It was in 1804 that Francis II. dropped the title of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, which had become an empty form, and adopted instead that of Emperor of Austria, which he made hereditary; no one seems to have objected, and as Buonaparte had a few months before declared himself Emperor of the French, the two newly created emperors agreed to recognise each other’s titles. Very shortly after Austria was again drawn into opposition to her temporary ally by England and Russia, and took up arms once more against the French. This was followed by the disastrous field of Ulm, with a humiliating capitulation on the part of the Austrians. The Archduke Charles then succeeded General Mack, who had been deprived of his command and condemned to ten years’ imprisonment. Napoleon entered Vienna and established his headquarters in the Imperial palace. The Russians and Austrians together met him once more in full fight at Austerlitz, where they were again badly beaten, losing fifteen thousand killed, and ten thousand prisoners. This was called the battle of the Three Emperors, for they were all present in person.
Austria now lay under the heel of the French, and a peace was signed at Pressburg in December 1805. By this Austria agreed, among other things, to give up her recent possession of Dalmatia; she ceded the Tyrol to Bavaria, and received instead Salzburg, which lay on her frontier and had been ever coveted. We shall see in the chapters on the Tyrol how the Tyrolese regarded this generosity at their expense! It was not till 1809 that the struggle, as a national struggle, was again renewed and war once more declared against France. The result of this was that for a second time the French entered Vienna as conquerors and Napoleon established himself there. The terrible battle of Aspern, in which neither side could claim a victory, left the Colossus with more respect for the fighting powers of his enemies, for it is said that he remarked once, “He who has not seen the Austrians at Aspern has seen nothing.” The fate of the empire hung on the next move, which was accomplished at Wagram on July 5, 1809. The Archduke Charles had placed himself in a fine strategic position on the hills above Vienna, and waited for the French to cross the river, yet in spite of this the Austrians were smashed to pieces. Their bravery is evinced by the fact that forty thousand dead and wounded were left on the field, but nothing could withstand the genius of the Man of War who had let loose his hounds upon them. The peace of Schönbrunn, signed in October, gave up to the conqueror over forty-three thousand square miles of territory, including the Tyrol, which the Austrians had once again attempted to save. Austria lay prone, and it is greatly to her credit that after an interval she once again agreed with the allies, Prussia and Russia, to make another desperate struggle for liberty, even though Napoleon had married the daughter of Francis II.
This princess, Maria Louisa, was of a despicable character, and did not deserve a better fate. She was the mother of the boy afterwards known as the King of Rome and the Duke of Reichstadt. She died at Vienna in 1847.
Metternich, the celebrated Austrian minister, played a large part in affairs during this unhappy time; he was born in 1773 and was not in reality an Austrian, having first seen the light in the Rhenish provinces, at a small village from which he took his name. The European nations, by now banded together in resistance to their common foe, met in consultation; three great armies were formed, one in the Netherlands of English, Dutch, and Prussians, with Wellington and Blücher in command; another on the Rhine, of Austrians, Russians, and Germans; and a third in Italy, chiefly of Austrians. This was in 1815, and the result was made known in the world-famous battle of Waterloo, at which no Austrian happened to be present.
At the end of the war Austria had indeed been deprived of her Netherlands possessions, but she had instead Dalmatia, and also Venetia,—which was not finally reft from her until 1866,—and her hereditary dominions in the Tyrol and in Carinthia and Carniola were secured to her. She was compact and welded together, and instead of suffering from the long protracted trials which she had endured, she came out the stronger from them.
In 1835 Francis II. died and was succeeded by his son, Ferdinand IV., who in 1848 abdicated in favour of his nephew, Francis Joseph, the present ruler of the Dual Monarchy. However, Francis Joseph did not come to an easy inheritance, for Hungary was racked with the strain of trying to burst the limits imposed on her, in order to give her nationality free play. It was in this struggle that the great leader Kossuth came to the front, and in 1848 laws were passed allowing to Hungary a responsible ministry, parliaments to be held annually in Budapest, popular representation and freedom of the press; but nevertheless Hungary was soon again in the throes of revolution. The Croats, Serbs, and the Wallachs of Transylvania rose against her. The turmoil ended in a war between Austria and Hungary, in which Kossuth was the moving spirit on the Hungarian side. But when Russia joined her might to that of Austria, Hungary was ground between two mills and had no chance. Kossuth fled to Turkey, and thence later journeyed to England and the United States, preaching his cause. He died in exile in Italy in 1894, at the age of ninety-two.
In 1867 Hungary was granted a separate constitution and recognised fully as a separate kingdom. It was then ratified by Act of Parliament “That Hungary in the spirit of the constitution is an independent country and does not belong to the countries included in the Austrian Empire.”
The titles of the present Austrian ruler are extraordinarily numerous; besides being Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary he is King of Bohemia, Galicia, Croatia, Slavonia, Illyria, and Dalmatia; Prince of Transylvania; Margrave of Moravia; Duke of Upper and Lower Silesia, of Lorraine, of Salzburg, of Styria, Carinthia, Bukowina, and Carniola; Count of the Tyrol, Graditz, and Gradiska, and even this does not exhaust the list of titles. Among them is the purely fanciful one of King of Jerusalem and that of Count of Hohenhembs, under which, as Countess, the unfortunate Empress was travelling incognito when murdered.
The two chief powers in the Germanic states were the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia, and it was recognised by all the smaller states that the Presidency of the Diet, as it was called, must fall to one of these two. In 1865 Prussia and Austria came to grips over the question of Schleswig-Holstein, and in “The Seven Weeks’ War” the Austrians were decisively beaten. So important was this war in the history of modern Europe that it must be described somewhat more at length, as it settled for our own time the question of the power of the German and Austrian monarchs.
In 1864 Austria and Prussia together wrenched from Denmark the provinces of Schleswig-Holstein and the Duchy of Lauenburg, and almost immediately thereafter difficulties ensued regarding the administration of them. After a while it was agreed that Austria should take over the administration of Holstein and Prussia that of Schleswig, but when mischief is brewing between two nations who have for years been rubbing up against each other’s sore points, any settlement can only be temporary, and this arrangement ended in a further quarrel. Almost before the other states had realised what was happening, Prussian troops had invaded Austrian territory by way of Saxony and Bohemia. This was in June 1866, and no amount of reasoning on the part of Austria could have averted it, the Prussians were ripe for a fight, and under the leadership of their great general, Von Moltke, were confident of victory. On paper indeed Austria seemed to have quite as good a show as her aggressive neighbour, for many of the smaller states, such as Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Saxony, Hanover, Baden, and the two Hesses were on her side, but Prussia had secured the alliance of Italy, always in a state of irritation against Austria on account of her coterminous border. She now intervened, with the effect of causing a dispersal of Austrian troops through the necessity of being on guard in the south. The Prussians advanced almost without opposition through Saxony, and were careful to treat the inhabitants of the country fairly so as to secure their co-operation.
In Bohemia the Austrians made some resistance but the luck was against them. The action at Podoll, where the river Iser is 100 yards wide, was an instance of this. The Austrians held the village and were determined to make a stand. The Prussians were better armed, however, and particularly had an advantage in the rapid fire of their needle-guns or breech-loading rifles, then just coming into use, while the Austrians still carried muzzle-loaders.
The Prussians had arrived just as night was closing in, and though the Austrians had the shelter of the houses in which they were entrenched, they were pressed back, and mercilessly outplayed by the German Jägers.
The contest ended in a clear victory for the Prussians. Close on five hundred unwounded Austrian prisoners were next morning marched up to headquarters, and the Austrian loss in killed and wounded was very considerable. The medical officers officially reported the proportion of wounded Austrians to wounded Prussians as five to one.
Besides the great strategist, Von Moltke, the Prussians possessed an able leader in Prince Frederick Charles, the brother of the King, to say nothing of the Crown Prince.
The Austrian cavalry, consisting of the Hussars and Dragoons, especially the Windischgrätz Dragoons, were among the most famous in the world, but again and again in desperate hand-to-hand encounters, sometimes in narrow streets, hemmed in, they met their match in the Prussian Uhlans and the Dragoons of their enemies.
On June 29 the King left Berlin and on July 1, arriving at the army headquarters in Bohemia, he assumed supreme command of the three Prussian armies then engaged in the war.
Two days later was fought the supreme action of the war in the battle of Königgratz or, as it is better known, Sadowa, which settled for ever the leadership of the Germanic states. At first the Austrians were stationed in the village of Sadowa, but being driven out by a rush, they retired into the wood above, and held it strongly, and here a fierce struggle with the bayonet followed.
The Prussians advanced against the nearest trees, but did not at first make much impression, for the Austrians being here again concealed, the fire of the needle-gun did not tell, and a whole battery placed at the far end of the wood fired through the trees, and told on the Prussian ranks with awful effect. But the assailants fought on and at last broke down the obstacles at the entrance, and then dashed in.
Affairs did not apparently go more favourably for the Prussians in the centre. The whole of the First Army was severely engaged, with the exception of eight batteries of artillery and cavalry, which were still held in reserve.
When Chlum was taken the Crown Prince advanced to the help of his generals against Lissa wood, and encouraged by this reinforcement, which had so unexpectedly turned the tables on the foe, the Prussians of the First Army leapt to the charge and made for the Austrian batteries, which had previously done them so much damage. The Austrians, thus cornered, attempted to escape and made their way down to the hollow ground on the other side. But even then, though mowed down by the needle-guns, the Austrians were not beaten. Even when the Prussian artillery was brought up and sent its shells bursting over the heads of the retreating soldiers the retreat never became a rout. Terrible fighting followed, as the Austrians took up their position in the valley and played their batteries on the pursuers. The manner in which the Austrians worked their artillery on this occasion provoked the admiration of their enemies and passed into a proverb. The cavalry on both sides met in a tremendous collision, but for the Austrians the day was lost, and thenceforth they retreated, and the pursuit was continued to the Elbe.
One hundred and seventy-four guns, twenty thousand prisoners, and eleven standards, fell into the hands of the conquerors. The total loss of the Austrian army amounted to almost forty thousand men, while that of the Prussians was not ten thousand.
Worse equipped, worse generalled, but equally brave, to the point of foolhardiness, the Austrians lost none of their morale in such a battle.
This was not the end of the war, but it practically decided it. There were many other actions of less importance, but none to equal Sadowa. Thenceforth the Prussian army steadily advanced on Vienna.
An armistice was proclaimed when the Prussians were already in sight of Vienna, at Wagram, where Napoleon had won his victory. Here, on July 25, they were drawn close together, “like a crouching lion ready to spring upon the Danube should the negotiations for peace fail.”
This was what they saw: On the right lay the rounded hill of the Bisamberg studded with vineyards, cornfields, and woods, among which vain search with glasses was made to discover any signs of hostile batteries. Beyond the Bisamberg could be seen the narrow gorge from which the Danube issues, and further still the rough, rugged recess of the hills above Klosterneuberg, rising steeply up from the water’s edge, with their summits capped with heavy masses of dark green foliage, and their sides sprinkled over with fir trees. A little to the left and at the foot of the hills the city of Vienna lay sparkling in the sun; the tops of the steeples and the roofs of the houses glittered in the bright flood of light. Far away on the left front spread the Marchfeld, beyond which could be seen the dim blue line of hills which gird the valley south of the Danube, while directly to the left the dark Carpathians towered up to the sky.
Those who know Vienna will recognise the unchanged contours of the country, even fifty years after that summer day when the tired way-worn German soldiers lay panting in the heat, watching the great city as a cat watches a mouse, and waiting the word of command. Would it come in time? The armistice had but two days more to run! And they who had at one time thirsted to get at their enemy’s capital and so to seize the nation by its throat were now wearied of war, they were many leagues from home, and had had their fill of bloodshed. On the evening of the 26th the welcome news arrived, peace had been made, and there was but one feeling throughout the whole army,—the feeling contained in the word “home.”
The victory left Prussia supreme among the German states for, included in the terms of peace, among other things, was the condition that Austria should retire from the Germanic confederation, leaving her great rival undisputed master.
It was during this war that Hanover made so brave an attempt to play up to Austria, and not being backed properly by the other smaller states, found herself in a pitiable position at the mercy of Prussia. It was then that the kingdom of Hanover was absorbed by Prussia and never restored to the King, though he was allowed to live elsewhere in Germany. The feud thus begun is in the way of being healed at the present time by the marriage of the German Emperor’s only daughter with the ex-heir of the House of Hanover.
The relations between Austria and Italy were also changed by this war, though that must be further considered when we come to the Tyrol.
The Prussian King was undisputed lord of the German confederation, but he aimed at more than that, and by the brain and audacity of his counsellor Bismarck he attained his aim, for in 1871 he was hailed as German Emperor, reigning as an hereditary ruler over the Germanic states, and thus began the second German Empire.
In 1888 the Triple Alliance was formed, between Italy, Germany, and Austro-Hungary, each nation pledging itself to assist either of the others if attacked.