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Bible Encyclopedias
Habsburg
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or or Hapsburg, the name of the famous family from which have sprung the dukes and archdukes of Austria from 1282, kings of Hungary and Bohemia from 1526, and emperors of Austria from 1804. They were also Roman emperors and German kings from 1438 to 1806, and kings of Spain from 1516 to 1700, while the minor dignities held by them at different times are too numerous to mention.
The name Habsburg, a variant of an older form, Habichtsburg (hawk's castle), was taken from the castle of Habsburg, which was situated on the river Aar not far from its junction with the Rhine. The castle was built about 1020 by Werner, bishop of Strassburg, and his brother, Radbot, the founder of the abbey of Muri. These men were grandsons of a certain Guntram, who, according to some authorities, is identical with a Count Guntram who flourished during the reign of the emperor Otto the Great, and whose ancestry can be traced back to the time of the Merovingian kings. This conjecture, however, is extremely problematical. Among Radbot's sons was one Werner, and Werner and his son Otto were called counts of Habsburg, Otto being probably made landgrave of upper Alsace late in the 11th or early in the 12th century. At all events Otto's son Werner (d. 1167), and the latter's son Albert (d. 1199), held this dignity, and both landgraves increased the area of the Habsburg lands. Albert became count of Zurich and protector of the monastery of Sackingen, and obtained lands in the cantons of Unterwalden and Lucerne; his son Rudolph, having assisted Frederick of Hohenstaufen, afterwards the emperor Frederick II., against the emperor Otto IV., received the county of Aargau. Both counts largely increased their possessions in the districts now known as Switzerland and Alsace, and Rudolph held an influential place among the Swabian nobility. After his death in 1232 his two sons, Albert and Rudolph, divided his lands and founded the lines of Habsburg-Habsburg and Habsburg-Laufenburg. Rudolph's descendants, counts of Habsburg-Laufenburg, were soon divided into two branches, one of which became extinct in 1408 and the other seven years later. Before this date, however, Laufenburg and some other districts had been sold to the senior branch of the family, who thus managed to retain the greater part of the Habsburg lands.
Rudolph's brother Albert (d. 1239), landgrave of Alsace, married Hedwig of Kyburg (d. 1260), and from this union there was born in 1218 Rudolph, the founder of the greatness of the house of Habsburg, and the first of the family to ascend the German throne. Through his mother he inherited a large part of the lands of the extinct family of Zahringen; he added in other ways to his possessions, and was chosen German king in September 1273. Acting vigorously in his new office, he defeated and killed his most formidable adversary, Ottakar II., king of Bohemia, in 1278, and in December 1282 he invested his sons, Albert and Rudolph, with the duchies of Austria and Styria, which with other lands had been taken from Ottakar. This was an event of supreme moment in the history of the Habsburgs, and was the first and most important stage in the process of transferring the centre of their authority from western to eastern Europe, from the Rhine to the Danube. On Rudolph's death in July 1291 the German crown passed for a time away from the Habsburgs, but in July 1298 it was secured by his son, Albert, whose reign, however, was short and uneventful. But before 1308, the year of Albert's death, the long and troubled connexion of the Habsburgs with Bohemia had already begun. In 1306 Wenceslas III., the last Bohemian king of the Pfemyslide dynasty, was murdered. Seizing the opportunity and declaring that the vacant kingdom was an imperial fief, King Albert bestowed it upon his eldest son, Rudolph, and married this prince to Elizabeth, widow of Wenceslas II. and stepmother of Wenceslas III. But Rudolph died in 1307, and his father's attempt to keep the country in his own hands was ended by his murder in 1308.
Albert's successor as German king was Henry of Luxemburg (the emperor Henry VII.), and this election may be said to initiate the long rivalry between the houses of Habsburg and Luxemburg. But the immediate enemy of the Habsburgs was not a Luxemburg but a Wittelsbach. Without making any definite partition, Albert's five remaining sons spent their time in governing their lands until 1314, when one of them, Frederick called the Fair, forsook this comparatively uneventful occupation and was chosen by a minority of the electors German king in succession to Henry VII. At the same time the Wittelsbach duke of Bavaria, Louis, known to history as the emperor Louis the Bavarian, was also chosen. War was inevitable, and the battle of Mihldorf, fought in September 1322, sealed the fate of Frederick. Louis was victorious: his rival went into an honourable captivity, and the rising Habsburg sun underwent a temporary eclipse.
For more than a century after Frederick's death in 1330 the Habsburgs were exiles from the German throne. But they were not inactive. In 1335 his two surviving brothers, Albert and Otto, inherited Carinthia and part of Carniola by right of their mother, Elizabeth; in 1363 Albert's son Rudolph received Tirol; and during the same century part of Istria, Trieste and other districts were acquired. All King Albert's six sons had died without leaving male issue save Otto, whose family became extinct in 1344, and Albert, the ancestor of all the later Habsburgs. Of Albert's four sons two also left no male heirs, but the remaining two, Albert III. and Leopold III., were responsible for a division of the family which is of some importance. By virtue of a partition made upon their brother Rudolph's death in 1365 Albert and his descendants ruled over Austria, while Leopold and his sons took Styria, Carinthia and Tirol, Alsace remaining undivided as heretofore.
Towards the middle of the 15th century the German throne had been occupied for nearly a hundred years by members of the Luxemburg family. The reigning emperor Sigismund, who was also king of Hungary and Bohemia, was without sons, and his daughter Elizabeth was the wife of Albert of Habsburg, the grandson and heir of Duke Albert III., who had died in 1395. Sigismund died in December 1437, leaving his two kingdoms to his son-in-law, who was crowned king of Hungary in January 1438 and king of Bohemia in the following June. Albert was also chosen and crowned German king in succession to Sigismund, thus beginning the long and uninterrupted connexion of his family with the imperial throne, a connexion which lasted until the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. He did not, however, enjoy his new dignities for long, as he died in October 1 439 while engaged in a struggle with the Turks. Albert left no sons, but soon after his death one was born to him, called Ladislaus, who became duke of Austria and king of Hungary and Bohemia. Under the guardianship of his kinsman, the emperor Frederick III., the young prince's reign was a troubled one, and when he died unmarried in 1457 his branch of the family became extinct, and Hungary and Bohemia passed away from the Habsburgs, who managed, however, to retain Austria.
Leopold III., duke of Carinthia and Styria, who was killed in 1386 at the battle of Sempach, had four sons, of whom two only, Frederick and Ernest, left male issue. Frederick and his only son, Sigismund, confined their attention mainly to Tirol and Alsace, leaving the larger destinies of the family in the hands of Ernest of Carinthia and Styria (d. 1424) and his sons, Frederick and Albert and after the death of King Ladislaus in 1457 these two princes and their cousin Sigismund were the only representatives of the Habsburgs. In February 1440 Frederick of Styria was chosen German king in succession to his kinsman Albert. He was a weak and incompetent ruler, but a stronger and abler man might have shrunk from the task of administering his heterogeneous and unruly realm. Although very important in the history of the house of Habsburg, Frederick's long reign was a period of misfortune, and the motto which he assumed, A.E.I.O.U. (Austriae est imperare orbi universo), seemed at the time a particularly foolish boast. He acted as guardian both to Ladislaus of Hungary, Bohemia and Austria, and to Sigismund of Tirol, and in all these countries his difficulties were increased by the hostility of his brother Albert. Having disgusted the Tirolese he gave up the guardianship of their prince in 1446, while in Hungary and Bohemia he did absolutely nothing to establish the authority of his ward; in 1452 the Austrians besieged him in Vienna Neustadt and compelled him to surrender the person of Ladislaus, thus ending even his nominal authority. When the young king died in 1457 the Habsburgs lost Hungary and Bohemia, but they retained Austria, which, after some disputing, Frederick and Albert divided between themselves, the former taking lower and the latter upper Austria. This arrangement was of short duration. In 1461 Albert made war upon his brother and forced him to resign lower Austria, which, however, he recovered after Albert's death in December 1463. Still more unfortunate was the German king in Switzerland. For many years the Swiss had chafed under the rule of the Habsburgs; during the reign of Rudolph I. they had shown signs of resentment as the kingly power increased; and the struggle which had been carried on for nearly two centuries had been almost uniformly in their favour. It was marked by the victory of Morgarten over Duke Leopold I. in 1315, and by that of Sempach over Leopold III. in 1386, by the conquest of Aargau at the instigation of the emperor Sigismund early in the 15th century, and by the final struggle for freedom against Frederick III. and Sigismund of Tirol. Taking advantage of some dissensions among the Swiss, the king saw an opportunity to recover his lost lands, and in 1443 war broke out. But his allies, the men of Zurich, were defeated, and when in August 1444 some French mercenaries, who had advanced to his aid, suffered the same fate at St Jakob, he was compelled to give up the struggle. A few years later Sigismund became involved in a war with the same formidable foemen; he too was worsted, and the "Perpetual Peace" of 1474 ended the rule of the Habsburgs in Switzerland. This humiliation was the second great step in the process of removing the Habsburgs from western to eastern. Europe. In 1453, just after his coronation as emperor at Rome, Frederick legalized the use of the title archduke, which had been claimed spasmodically by the Habsburgs since 1361. This title is now peculiar to the house of Habsburg.
The reverses suffered by the Habsburgs during the reign of Frederick III. were many and serious, but an improvement was at hand. The emperor died in August 1493, and was followed on the imperial throne by his son Maximilian I., perhaps the most versatile and interesting member of the family. Before his father's death Maximilian had been chosen German king, or king of the Romans, and had begun to repair the fortunes of his house. He had married Mary, daughter and heiress of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy; he had driven the Hungarians from Vienna and the Austrian archduchies, which Frederick had, perforce, allowed them to occupy; and he had received Tirol on the abdication of Sigismund in 1490. True it is that upon Mary's death in 14.82 part of her inheritance, the rich and prosperous Netherlands, held that her husband's authority was at an end, while another part, the two Burgundies and Artois, had been seized by the king of France; nevertheless, after a protracted struggle the German king secured almost the whole of Charles the Bold's lands for his son, the archduke Philip, the duchy of Burgundy alone remaining in the power of France after the conclusion of the peace of Senlis in 1493. Maximilian completed his work by adding a piece of Bavaria, Gorz and then Gradiska to the Habsburg lands.
After Sigismund's death in 1496 Maximilian and Philip were the only living male members of the family. Philip married Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and died in 1506 leaving two sons, Charles and Ferdinand. Charles succeeded his father in the Netherlands; he followed one grandfather, Ferdinand, as king of Spain in 1516, and when the other, Maximilian, died in 1519 he became the emperor Charles V., and succeeded to all the hereditary lands of the Habsburgs. But provision had to be made for Ferdinand, and in 1521 this prince was given the Austrian archduchies, Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola; in the same year he married Anne, daughter of Wladislaus, king of Hungary and Bohemia, and when his childless brother-in-law, King Louis, was killed at the battle of Mohacs in August 1526 he claimed the two kingdoms, both by right of his wife and by treaty. After a little trouble Bohemia passed under his rule, but Hungary was more recalcitrant. A long war took place between Ferdinand and John Zapolya, who was also crowned king of Hungary, but in 1538 a treaty was made and the country was divided, the Habsburg prince receiving the western and smaller portion. However, he was soon confronted with a more formidable foe, and he spent a large part of his subsequent life in defending his lands from the attacks of the Turks.
The Habsburgs had now reached the summit of their power. The prestige which belonged to Charles as head of the Holy Roman Empire was backed by the wealth and commerce of the Netherlands and of Spain, and by the riches of the Spanish colonies in America. In Italy he ruled over Sardinia, Naples and Sicily, which had passed to him with Spain, and the duchy of Milan, which he had annexed in 1535; to the Netherlands he had added Friesland, the bishopric of Utrecht, Groningen and Gelderland, and he still possessed Franche-Comte and the fragments of the Habsburg lands in Alsace and the neighbourhood. Add to this Ferdinand's inheritance, the Austrian archduchies and Tirol, Bohemia with her dependent provinces, and a strip of Hungary, and the two brothers had under their sway a part of Europe the extent of which was great, but the wealth and importance of which were immeasurably greater. Able to scorn the rivalry of the other princely houses of Germany, the Habsburgs saw in the kings of the house of Valois the only foemen worthy of their regard.
When Charles V. abdicated he was succeeded as emperor, not by his son Philip, but by his brother Ferdinand. Philip became king of Spain, ruling also the Netherlands, Franche-Comte, Naples, Sicily, Milan and Sardinia, and the family was definitely divided into the Spanish and Austrian branches. For Spain and the Spanish Habsburgs the 17th century was a period of loss and decay, the seeds of which were sown during the reign of Philip II. The northern provinces of the Netherlands were lost practically in 1609 and definitely by the treaty of Westphalia in 1648; Roussillon and Artois were annexed to France by the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, while Franche-Comte and a number of towns in the Spanish Netherlands suffered a similar fate by the treaty of Nijmwegen in 1678. Finally Charles II., the last Habsburg king of Spain, died childless in November 1700, and his lands were the prize of the War of the Spanish Succession. The Austrian Habsburgs fought long and valiantly for the kingdom of their kinsman, but Louis XIV. was too strong for them, and by the peace of Rastatt Spain passed from the Habsburgs to the Bourbons. However, the Austrian branch of the family received in 1714 the Italian possessions of Charles II., except Sicily, which was given to the duke of Savoy, and also the southern Netherlands, which are thus often referred to as the Austrian Netherlands; and retained the duchy of Mantua, which it had seized in 1708.
Ferdinand I., the founder of the line of the Austrian Habsburgs, arranged a division of his lands among his three sons before his death in 1564. The eldest, Maximilian II., received Austria, Bohemia and Hungary, and succeeded his father as emperor; he married Maria, a daughter of Charles V., and though he had a large family his male line became extinct in 1619. The younger sons were Ferdinand, ruler of Tirol, and Charles, archduke of Styria. The emperor Maximilian II. left five sons, two of whom, Rudolph and Matthias, succeeded in turn to the imperial throne, but, as all the brothers were without male issue, the family was early in the 17th century threatened with a serious crisis. Rudolph died in 1612, the reigning emperor Matthias was old and ill, and the question of the succession to the Empire, to the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, and to the hereditary lands of the Habsburgs became acute. Turning to the collateral branches of the family, the sons of the archduke Ferdinand were debarred from the succession owing to their father's morganatic marriage with Philippine Welser, and the only hope of the house was in the sons of Charles of Styria. To prevent the Habsburg monarchy from falling to pieces the emperor's two surviving brothers renounced their rights, and it was decided that Ferdinand, a son of Charles of Styria, should succeed his cousin Matthias. The difficulties which impeded the completion of this scheme were gradually overcome, and the result was that when Matthias died in 1619 the whole of the lands of the Austrian Habsburgs was united under the rule of the emperor Ferdinand II. Tirol, indeed, a few years later was separated from the rest of the monarchy and given to the emperor's brother, the archduke Leopold, but this separation was ended when Leopold's son died in 1665.
The arbitrary measures which followed Ferdinand's acquisition of the Bohemian crown contributed to the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, but in a short time the Bohemians were subdued, and in 1627, following a precedent set in 1547, the emperor declared the throne hereditary in the house of Habsburg. The treaty of Westphalia which ended this war took comparatively little from the Habsburgs, though they ceded Alsace to France; but the Empire was greatly weakened, and its ruler was more than ever compelled to make his hereditary lands in the east of Europe the base of his authority, finding that he derived more strength from his position as archduke of Austria than from that of emperor. Ferdinand III. succeeded his father Ferdinand II., and during the long reign of the former's son, Leopold I., the Austrian, like the Spanish, Habsburgs were on the defensive against the aggressive policy of Louis XIV., and in addition they had to withstand the assaults of the Turks. In two ways they sought to strengthen their position. The unity of the Austrian lands was strictly maintained, and several marriages kept up a close and friendly connexion with Spain. A series of victories over the sultan during the later part of the 17th century rolled back the tide of the Turkish advance, and the peace of Karlowitz made in 1699 gave nearly the whole of Hungary to the Habsburgs. Against France Austria was less successful, and a number of humiliations culminated in 1714 in the failure to secure Spain, to which reference has already been made.
The hostility of Austria and France, or rather of Habsburg and Bourbon, outlived the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1717 Spain conquered Sardinia, which was soon exchanged by Austria for Sicily; other struggles and other groupings of the European powers followed, and in 1735, by the treaty of Vienna, Austria gave up Naples and Sicily and received the duchies of Parma and Piacenza. These surrenders were doubtless inevitable, but they shook the position of the house of Habsburg in Italy. However, a domestic crisis was approaching which threw Italian affairs into the shade. Charles VI., who had succeeded his brother, Joseph I., as emperor in 171r, was without sons, and his prime object in life was to secure the succession of his elder daughter, Maria Theresa, to the whole of his lands and dignities. But in 1713, four years before the birth of Maria Theresa, he had first issued the famous Pragmatic Sanction, which declared that the Habsburg monarchy was indivisible and that in default of male heirs a female could succeed to it. Then after the death of his only son and the birth of Maria Theresa the emperor bent all his energies to securing the acceptance of the Pragmatic Sanction. Promulgated anew in 1724, it was formally accepted by the estates of the different Habsburg lands; in 1731 it was guaranteed by the imperial diet. By subordinating every other interest to this, Charles at length procured the assent of the various powers of Europe to the proposed arrangement; he married the young princess to Francis Stephen, duke of Lorraine, afterwards grand-duke of Tuscany, and when he died on the 10th of October 1740 he appeared to have realized his great ambition. With the emperor's death the house of Habsburg, strictly speaking, became extinct, its place being taken by the house of Habsburg-Lorraine, which sprang from the union of Genealogical Table Of The House Of Habsburg-Lorraine.
I I (see below.) Joseph I I I I I Ferdinand I. Francis Charles (1833-1905). Leopold Ernest Sigismund Rainer Henry emperor of Austria (1802-1878). I (1823-1898). (1824-1899). (182.6-1891). (b. 1827). (1828-1891).
(1793-1875). 1Joseph Augustus (b. 1872).
I I I I I Francis Joseph, Maximilian, Charles Louis Louis Victor I I emperor of Austria emperor of Mexico (1833-1896). (b. 1842). Joseph Francis Ladislaus I (b. 1830). (1832-1867). (b. 1895). (b. 1901). Ferdinand, duke of Modena Rudolph (1754-i 806).
(1858-1889). Francis FerdinandOtto Ferdinand I I I I I I (b. 1863). (1865-1906). Charles Louis Albert, Charles Ferdinand William Francis IV. Maximilian Ferdinand (b. 1868). duke of Teschen (1818-1874), (1827-1894), duke of Modena Joseph (1781-1850).
(1817-1895). (1779-1846). (1782-1863).
Charles Francis Joseph Maximilian Eugene I I I I I (b. 1887). (b. 1895). Frederick Charles Stephen Eugene Francis V., Ferdinand duke of Teschen (b. 1860). (b. 1863). duke of Modena (1821-1849).
(b. 1856). I (1819-1875).
I I I I Albert Charles Albert Leo Charles William (b. 1 8 97). (b. 1888). (b. 1893). (b. 1895).
I (1769-1824).
Tuscany.
Ferdinand III., grand-duke of Tuscany (1769-1824).
Leopold II., grand-duke of Tuscany.
(1797-1870).
Ferdinand IV. Louis Salvator Charles Salvator John Nepomuck Salvator grand-duke of Tuscany (b. 1847). (1839-1892). (1852-1891).
(b. 18 35). I I I 1 1 r I I 1 Leopold Salvator Francis Salvator Albert Salvator Leopold Ferdinand Joseph Ferdinand Peter Ferdinand Henry Ferdinand (b. 1863). (b. 1866). (1871-1896).
(b. 1872). (b. 1874). (b. 1878). I I I I I I I Francis Charles Salvator Hubert Salvator Theodore Salvator Clement Salvator Godfrey George (b. 1893). (b. 1894). (b. 1899). (b. 1904).
(b. 1902). (b. 1905).
I I 1 I Rainer Charles Leopold Antony Francis Joseph (b. 1895). (b. 1897). (b. 1901). (b. 1905).
Maria Theresa (1717-1780) =Francis I., emperor (1708-1765).
I I I I Joseph II., emperor Leopold II., emperor Maximilian, elector of Cologne (1741-1790). (1747-1792). (1756-1801).
I I I I I I Joseph Antony John Rainer Louis Rudolph (1776-1847). (1780-1835). (1782-1859). (1783-1853). (1784-1864). (1788-1831).
