A Short History of Austria-Hungary and Poland (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Short History of Austria-Hungary and Poland

The empire of Austria, as the official designation of the territories ruled by the Habs burg monarchy, dates back only to 1804, when Francis II., the last of the Holy Roman emperors, proclaimed himself emperor of Austria as Francis I. His motive in doing so was to guard against the great house of Habsburg being relegated to a position inferior to the parvenus Bonapartes, in the event of the final collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, or of the possible election of Napoleon as his own successor on the throne of Charlemagne. The title emperor of Austria, then, replaced that of Imperator Romanorum semper Augustus when the Holy Empire came to an end in 1806. From the first, however, it was no more than a title, which represented but ill the actual relation of the Habsburg sovereigns to their several states. Magyars and Slavs never willingly recognized a style which ignored their national rights and implied the superi ority of the German elements of the monarchy to the Germans it was a poor substi tute for a title which had represented the political unity of the German race under the Holy Empire. For long after the Vienna Congress of 1814 - 1815 the Kaiser as such exercised a powerful influence over the imaginations of the German people outside the Habsburg dominions but this was because the title was still surrounded with its ancient halo and the essential change was not at once recognized. The out come of the long struggle with Prussia, which in 1866 finally broke the spell, and the proclamation of the German empire in 1871 left the title of emperor of Austria stripped of everything but a purely territorial significance. It had, moreover, by the compact with Hungary of 1867, ceased even fully to represent the relation of the emperor to all his dominions and the title which had been devised to cover the whole of the Habs burg monarchy sank into the official style of the sovereign of but a half while even within the Austrian empire proper it is resented by those peoples which, like the Bohemians, wish to obtain the same recognition of their national independence as was conceded to Hungary. In placing the account of the origin and development of the Habsburg monarchy under this heading, it is merely for the sake of convenience.

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