[Francis Joseph]. Emperor of Austria, king of Bohemia, and apostolic king of Hungary, the eldest son of the archduke Francis Charles, second son of the reigning emperor Francis I., being born on the 18th of August 1830. His mother, the archduchess Sophia, was daughter of Maximilian I., king of Bavaria. She was a woman of great ability and strong character, and during the years which followed the death of the emperor Francis was probably the most influential personage at the Austrian court; for the emperor Ferdinand, who succeeded in 1835, was physically and mentally incapable of performing the duties of his office; as he was childless, Francis Joseph was in the direct line of succession. During the disturbances of 1848, Francis Joseph spent some time in Italy, where, under Radetzky, at the battle of St. Lucia, he had his first experience of warfare. At the end of that year, after the rising of Vienna and capture of the city by Windischgrätz, it was clearly desirable that there should be a more vigorous ruler at the head of the empire, and Ferdinand, now that the young archduke was of age, was able to carry out the abdication which he and his wife had long desired. All the preparations were made with the utmost secrecy; on the 2nd of December 1848, in the archiepiscopal palace at Olmütz, whither the court had fled from Vienna, the emperor abdicated. His brother resigned his rights of succession to his son, and Francis Joseph was proclaimed emperor. Ferdinand retired to Prague, where he died in 1875.
The young emperor was during the first years of his reign completely in the hands of Prince Felix Schwarzenberg, to whom, with Windischgrätz and Radetzky, he owed it that Austria had emerged from the revolution apparently stronger than it had been before. The first task was to reduce Hungary to obedience, for the Magyars refused to acknowledge the validity of the abdication in so far as it concerned Hungary, on the ground that such an act would only be valid with the consent of the Hungarian parliament. A further motive for their attitude was that Francis Joseph, unlike his predecessor, had not taken the oath to observe the Hungarian constitution, which it was the avowed object of Schwarzenberg to overthrow. In the war which followed the emperor himself took part, but it was not brought to a successful conclusion till the help of the Russians had been called in. Hungary, deprived of her ancient constitution, became an integral part of the Austrian empire. The new reign began, therefore, under sinister omens, with the suppression of liberty in Italy, Hungary and Germany. In 1853 a Hungarian named Lebenyi attempted to assassinate the emperor, and succeeded in inflicting a serious wound with a knife. With the death of Schwarzenberg in 1852 the personal government of the emperor really began, and with it that long series of experiments of which Austria has been the subject. Generally it may be said that throughout his long reign Francis Joseph remained the real ruler of his dominions; he not only kept in his hands the appointment and dismissal of his ministers, but himself directed their policy, and owing to the great knowledge of affairs, the unremitting diligence and clearness of apprehension, to which all who transacted business with him have borne testimony, he was able to keep a very real control even of the details of government.
The recognition of the separate status of Hungary, and the restoration of the Magyar constitution in 1866, necessarily made some change in his position, and so far as concerns Hungary he fully accepted the doctrine that ministers are responsible to parliament. In the other half of the monarchy (the so-called Cisleithan) this was not possible, and the authority and influence of the emperor were even increased by the contrast with the weaknesses and failures of the parliamentary system. The most noticeable features in his reign were the repeated and sudden changes of policy, which, while they arose from the extreme difficulty of finding any system by which the Habsburg monarchy could be governed, were due also to the personal idiosyncrasies of the emperor. First we have the attempt at the autocratic centralization of the whole monarchy under Bach; the personal influence of the emperor is seen in the conclusion of the Concordat with Rome, by which in 1855 the work of Joseph II. was undone and the power of the papacy for a while restored. The foreign policy of this period brought about the complete isolation of Austria, and the “ingratitude” towards Russia, as shown during the period of the Crimean War, which has become proverbial, caused a permanent estrangement between the two great Eastern empires and the imperial families. The system led inevitably to bankruptcy and ruin; the war of 1859, by bringing it to an end, saved the monarchy. After the first defeat Francis Joseph hastened to Italy; he commanded in person at Solferino, and by a meeting with Napoleon arranged the terms of the peace of Villafranca. The next six years, both in home and foreign policy, were marked by great vacillation. In order to meet the universal discontent and the financial difficulties constitutional government was introduced; a parliament was established in which all races of the empire were represented, and in place of centralized despotism was established Liberal centralization under Schmerling and the German Liberals. But the Magyars refused to send representatives to the central parliament; the Slavs, resenting the Germanizing policy of the government, withdrew; and the emperor had really withdrawn his confidence from Schmerling long before the constitution was suspended in 1865 as a first step to a reconciliation with Hungary. In the complicated German affairs the emperor in vain sought for a minister on whose knowledge and advice he could depend. He was guided in turn by the inconsistent advice of Schmerling, Rechberg, Mensdorff, not to mention more obscure counsellors, and it is not surprising that Austria was repeatedly outmatched and outwitted by Prussia. In 1863, at the Fürstentag in Frankfort, the emperor made an attempt by his personal influence to solve the German question. He invited all the German sovereigns to meet him in conference, and laid before them a plan for the reconstruction of the confederation. The momentary effect was immense; for some of the halo of the Holy Empire still clung round the head of the house of Habsburg, and Francis Joseph was welcomed to the ancient free city with enthusiasm. In spite of this, however, and of the skill with which he presided over the debates, the conference came to nothing owing to the refusal of the king of Prussia to attend.
The German question was settled definitively by the battle of Königgrätz in 1866; and the emperor Francis Joseph, with characteristic Habsburg opportunism, was quick to accommodate himself to the new circumstances. Above all, he recognized the necessity for reconciling the Magyars to the monarchy; for it was their discontent that had mainly contributed to the collapse of the Austrian power. He had already, in 1859, as the result of a visit to Budapest, made certain modifications in the Bach system by way of concession to Magyar sentiment, and in 1861 he had had an interview with Deák, during which, though unconvinced by that statesman’s arguments, he had at least assured himself of his loyalty. He now made Beust, Bismarck’s Saxon antagonist, the head of his government, as the result of whose negotiations with Deák the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 was agreed upon. A law was passed by the Hungarian diet regularizing the abdication of Ferdinand; at the beginning of June Francis Joseph signed the inaugural diploma and took the oath in Magyar to observe the constitution; on the 8th he was solemnly crowned king of Hungary. The traditional coronation gift of 100,000 florins he assigned to the widows and orphans of those who had fallen in the war against Austria in 1849.
Once having accepted the principle of constitutional government, the emperor-king adhered to it loyally, in spite of the discouragement caused by party struggles embittered by racial antagonisms. If in the Cisleithan half of the monarchy parliamentary government broke down, this was through no fault of the emperor, who worked hard to find a modus vivendi between the factions, and did not shrink from introducing manhood suffrage in the attempt to establish a stable parliamentary system. This expedient, indeed, probably also conveyed a veiled threat to the Magyar chauvinists, who, discontented with the restrictions placed upon Hungarian independence under the Compromise, were agitating for the complete separation of Austria and Hungary under a personal union only; for universal suffrage in Hungary would mean the subordination of the Magyar minority to the hitherto subject races. For nearly forty years after the acceptance of the Compromise the attitude of the emperor-king towards the Magyar constitution had been scrupulously correct. The agitation for the completely separate organization of the Hungarian army, and for the substitution of Magyar for German in words of command in Hungarian regiments, broke down the patience of the emperor, tenacious of his prerogative as supreme “war lord” of the common army. A Hungarian deputation which came to Vienna in September 1905 to urge the Magyar claims was received ungraciously by the emperor, who did not offer his hand to the members, addressed them in German, and referred them brusquely to the chancellor, Count Gołuchowski. This incident caused a considerable sensation, and was the prelude to a long crisis in Hungarian affairs, during which the emperor-king, while quick to repair the unfortunate impression produced by his momentary pique, held inflexibly to his resolve in the matter of the common army.
In his relations with the Slavs the emperor displayed the same conciliatory disposition as in the case of the Magyars; but though he more than once held out hopes that he would be crowned at Prague as king of Bohemia, the project was always abandoned. In this, indeed, as in other cases, it may be said that the emperor was guided less by any abstract principles than by a common-sense appreciation of the needs and possibilities of the moment. Whatever his natural prejudices or natural resentments, he never allowed these to influence his policy. The German empire and the Italian kingdom had been built up out of the ruins of immemorial Habsburg ambitions; yet he refused to be drawn into an alliance with France in 1869 and 1870, and became the mainstay of the Triple Alliance of Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy. His reputation as a consistent moderating influence in European policy and one of the chief guarantors of European peace was indeed rudely shaken in October 1908, the year in which he celebrated his sixty years’ jubilee as emperor, by the issue of the imperial rescript annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Habsburg dominions, in violation of the terms of the treaty of Berlin. But his opportunism was again justified by the result. Europe lost an ideal; but Austria gained two provinces.
In his private life the emperor was the victim of terrible catastrophes—his wife, his brother and his only son having been destroyed by sudden and violent deaths. He married in 1854 Elizabeth, daughter of Maximilian Joseph, duke of Bavaria, who belonged to the younger and non-royal branch of the house of Wittelsbach. The empress, who shared the remarkable beauty common to all her family, took little part in the public life of Austria. After the first years of married life she was seldom seen in Vienna, and spent much of her time in travelling. She built a castle of great beauty and magnificence, called the Achilleion, in the island of Corfu, where she often resided. In 1867 she accompanied the emperor to Budapest, and took much interest in the reconciliation with the Magyars. She became a good Hungarian scholar, and spent much time in Hungary. An admirable horsewoman, in later years she repeatedly visited England and Irland for the hunting season. In 1897 she was assassinated at Geneva by an Italian anarchist; previous attempts had been made on her and on her husband during a visit to Trieste.
There was one son of the marriage, the crown prince Rudolph (1857–1889). A man of much ability and promise, he was a good linguist, and showed great interest in natural history. He published two works, Fifteen Days on the Danube and A Journey in the East, and also promoted illustrated work giving a full description of the whole Austro-Hungarian monarchy; he personally shared the labours of the editorial work. In 1881 he married Stéphanie, daughter of the king of the Belgians. On 30th January 1889 he committed suicide at Mayerling, a country house near Vienna. He left one daughter, Elizabeth, who was betrothed to Count Alfred Windischgrätz in 1901. In 1900 his widow, the crown princess Stéphanie, married Count Lonyay; by this she sacrificed her rank and position within the Austrian monarchy. Besides the crown prince the empress gave birth to three daughters, of whom two survive: Gisela (1856–1932), who married a son of the prince regent of Bavaria; and Marie Valerie (1868–1924), who married the archduke Franz Salvator of Tuscany.
See J. Emmer. Kaiser Franz Joseph (2 vols., Vienna, 1898); J. Schnitzer, Franz Joseph I. und seine Zeit (2 vols., ib., 1899); Viribis unitis. Das Buch vom Kaiser, with introduction by J. A. v. Halfert, ed. M. Herzig (ib., 1898); R. Rostok, Die Regierungszeit des K. u. K. Franz Joseph I. (3rd ed. ib., 1903).—[Unattributed author].
In the last years of his reign Francis Joseph continued to strive to preserve peace for his realm, while maintaining the prestige of Austria-Hungary and her position as a Great Power. Perceiving that this aim was threatened by the confusion reigning in the Balkans, he agreed to the plan of his Foreign Minister, Aehrenthal, to take advantage of the Young Turk movement to annex the territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina occupied in 1878, and to embody them permanently in the monarchy. During the serious crisis following on the annexation Francis Joseph backed Aehrenthal with the whole weight of his influence, and subsequently supported him in his endeavours to restore friendly relations with the Great Powers which had been signally disturbed by the annexation, and to put an end to the risk of international conflicts. By his personal intervention he in fact repeatedly succeeded during the years 1908 to 1914 in averting dangers threatening the peace of Europe. When in 1912 the Balkan wars, which he had untiringly but unsuccessfully striven to avert, began, he thought they were the gale before the hurricane, and when, in August 1913, the Peace of Bucharest provided a provisional settlement he expressed the opinion that this peace was only the breathing space before a fresh war. The behaviour of the Serbs filled him with the greatest anxiety. When the murder of the heir to the throne, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, led the Vienna Government to take energetic measures against Serbia, Francis Joseph hesitated to follow, and it was with a heavy heart that he gave his consent to the dispatch of the severe ultimatum to Serbia, and, after its rejection, to the declaration of war. He did not believe that the war could be localized, as he would have wished it to be, and was pessimistic about the chances of a world war. Even then he was of the opinion that “war is beyond our strength,” and said he would be glad if the monarchy escaped “with a black eye.” The attitude of the rulers of Italy and Rumania offended him deeply, and strengthened his doubt of a favourable outcome of a war against an ever-increasing number of adversaries. Francis Joseph stood immovably by the alliance with Germany, to whose ruler he was bound by a friendship based on reciprocal liking; it never occurred to him to separate from his ally. He would never have agreed to a separate peace; yet he favoured and supported every endeavour to put an end to the war by a peace which should safeguard the interests of all his allies and the position of Austria-Hungary as a Great Power.
In all questions affecting the constitution of the monarchy, and in particular the relations between Austria and Hungary, Francis Joseph continued in the later years of his reign to stand by the principles of the Ausgleich of 1867. He would not consider the federalization of the Empire, but stood unmoved on the basis of dualism. He went a long way to meet the efforts of the Hungarian Government for independence, but refused energetically during this period demands tending towards the severing of the remaining bonds between the two halves of the monarchy, especially that of the united army. In the increasingly violent conflicts between the different nationalities inhabiting the Cis-Leithan territories Francis Joseph stood above party. This was all the easier for him on account of his indifference towards all the nationalities of his vast realm, even towards the Germans, although to the end of his life he felt himself to be a German prince. As in the earlier part of his reign, so in the last decade, the separate nationalities were favoured or neglected, but always played off one against the other. The meaning of viribus unitis for Francis Joseph was to use all in the interests of the dynasty. But national consciousness had grown so strong that this policy had no success. The concessions which he granted in the years just before the war to the Slav peoples increased their self-confidence, and led them to make ever greater demands, the non-fulfilment of which caused a weakening of their sentiment for the dynasty. As the differences between the national parties represented in the Austrian Parliament became in the course of years so great that there was no prospect of effective cooperation, Francis Joseph ignored parliamentary activity from 1914 onwards. Experience of the World War led the old Emperor to recognize that he had done the Austrian-Germans an injustice; but isolated attempts to alter the trend of affairs had no lasting effect, and in the end he let things take their course. When he died, severe inroads had been made on the affection of the Austrian peoples; what remained was only just sufficient to disguise the disappearance of loyalty to the dynasty.
As years went on the Emperor became more and more lonely. His son had committed suicide in 1889, his wife had been murdered in 1898; of his brothers only the youngest was still alive, and he resided at a distance and in the strictest seclusion. There had never been any cordial relationship with the heir to the throne, Francis Ferdinand; and with the years, especially after Francis Ferdinand had married Countess Sophie Chotek, the estrangement between the two men increased, so that personal intercourse became rare. Among the remaining members of the Imperial House Francis Joseph only cared to frequent the circles of his two daughters, Gisela and Marie Valerie, and their children. He was bound by ties of true friendship to Katherina Schratt, formerly an actress at the Burgtheater, and in her society he spent his sparingly measured hours of recreation. The summer he usually spent at the watering place of Ischl, and there he devoted himself to the chase, the only pleasure for which he cared passionately to the end of his life.
The Emperor had long enjoyed excellent health. It was not until he had passed his seventy-fifth year that disease of the respiratory organs began. In 1911 this became so serious that a catastrophe was feared. All the preparations for Francis Ferdinand’s accession were made. But the old Emperor recovered; and his physical as well as his mental energy improved from year to year, so that he was able in the first two years of the World War to transact fully all the business of government. It was only in the year 1916 that his faculties began to fail. He died peacefully of a fresh attack of his old malady on the 21st of November 1916.
Francis Joseph was not one of those of whom contemporaries, especially those at a distance, form any definite impression. The reserve which he observed even towards the great majority of his advisers made it more difficult to penetrate his real nature. He had a deep sense of his exalted position as a ruler. To the end of his days he remained profoundly convinced that the Empire over which he ruled was his empire, and the peoples his peoples. This conception of the majesty of the office bestowed on him by God found expression in his bearing. He always maintained a regal attitude. He showed kindliness and winning courtesy to everyone. Nothing was farther from him than posing, and no one ever heard him utter sonorous phrases; but he avoided any kind of intimacy even in his intercourse with members of the Imperial House, and, even with them, knew how to maintain his distance. His intellectual gifts were not remarkable, but he possessed sound common sense and wit. He had a strikingly good memory for persons and events. As a ruler he was a model of the sense of duty. From early morning to evening he attended to business with clocklike regularity, and dealt with all the documents laid before him with the greatest punctuality. This industry and his exact memory made him one of the best authorities in all Government affairs. He sometimes startled his ministers by his intimate knowledge of the details of the business in hand, and occasionally embarrassed them. But he went no further than the details, and lacked the power of surveying the whole. He also lacked, especially in his later years, the ability to take the initiative in important questions, to form independent resolutions and to carry them to their logical conclusions. In an ever-increasing degree he left the decision to his responsible ministers. He was not without skill in the choice of his advisers, but had an instinctive dislike for men whom he felt to be his intellectual superiors. He also disliked people of proud and upright character, and even within the family circle he preferred those who were more subservient. He was essentially cold in temperament, with great self-control increased by practice. Among the European rulers he enjoyed, during the last decades of his reign, great respect, which he owed to his age, experience, personal amiability, blameless conduct, and above all the fact that his word could always be relied upon. He was a faithful son of the Catholic Church, and looked up with reverence to the Holy Father; but, quite in the spirit of the traditions of his House, he guarded the rights of the dynasty and of the State with the utmost tenacity, even against the pope. He took no interest in the arts and sciences, being in this respect more of a Lorrainer than a Habsburg; but whenever he expressed an opinion on these subjects, he showed a decided aversion from the modern tendencies.
It is not yet possible to give a complete picture of Francis Joseph’s character, as the necessary references are not available. Up to 1921 practically none of his correspondence had been published. For the period up to 1908 there is the elaborate publication Francis Joseph I., by different authors. His biography has been written by R. P. Mahaffy, Francis Joseph (1908); Baron Eugen d’Albon, Vom Kaiser (1909); Smolle, Unser Kaiser (1908). A successful attempt to draw a sketch of the Emperor, based on information from ministers, generals, and other officials who were in close touch with him, was made by H. Friedjung under the title “Kaiser Franz Josef I.” in Historische Aufsätze (1919, pp. 493 seq.). The numerous popular publications which appeared soon after the death of Francis Joseph are of no historical value. The same is true of Kaiser Franz Josef und sein Hof, Erinnerungen und Schilderungen aus den nachgelassenen Papieren eines persönlichen Ratgebers, published and translated by L. Schneider (1919).—[Alfred Francis Pribram].
