Franz Josef: The Last Great Emperor,
Franz Josef: The Last Great Emperor
Yet Franz Josef was more than just a mereobserver. Under his watch, Vienna became a culturalpowerhouse, gifting the world Freud, Klimt, Schiele, and Wittgenstein. He oversaw the creation of one of the greatestmultinational empires in history… and then lived long enough to sew the seeds of itsdestruction. A cipher to many, a semi-mythological figureto others, this is the life of Franz Josef, Europe’s last great emperor. Countdown to RevolutionIf you were suddenly blasted back in time to 1830, you would find yourself in a verydifferent world. Back then, there was no such thing as Italy. Germany was 39 weak states locked into analliance known as the German Confederation. But the biggest difference you’d see wouldbe the great, round blob slap bang in the middle of Europe. The blob covering not just northern Italy,but modern-day Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia, plus parts of Poland,Ukraine, and Romania. Known as the Austrian Empire, it was thisimperial blob that Franz Josef was destined to rule. Born on August 18, 1830, Franz Josef couldn’thave come at a better time.
His grandfather, Emperor Francis I, was nearingthe end of his life, and the line of succession was far from clear. While Francis had two sons, the future emperorFerdinand I and Franz Josef’s own dad Francis Charles, neither of them had so far producedan heir. So when young Franz Josef emerged, kickingand screaming into the light of day, the entire Habsburg royal family gave a collective sighof relief. They finally had their future emperor! Great though this was from a dynastic perspective,it was less great from the point of view of baby Franz Josef. From the moment he could talk, the young boywas forced to stuff his brain with all the knowledge a ruler could possibly need. This meant mastering military strategy. European history. It meant becoming fluent in not just German,French and Latin, but also Austria’s minority languages like Hungarian, Italian, Czech,and Polish. Under the watchful eye of his ambitious mother,Archduchess Sophie, young Franz Josef was forced to spend nearly every waking momentstudying, his progress meticulously monitored by Austria’s shadowy puppetmaster Metternich.
As a result, the boy grew up to be both obsessedwith duty, and utterly lacking in imagination. For his part, Metternich considered this awin. As far as he and Archduchess Sophie couldsee, their precious heir was shaping up to be the God-fearing military man they wantedrunning the empire. Little did they know that empire would soonbe forced to fight for its very life. Revolution! There’s a game you can play when your jobis producing history videos, and that game is to see how far you can get into the biographyof any 19th Century figure before you have to mention 1848. That’s because 1848 is the year Europe exploded. It started in February, when a French governmentban on banquets lit the spark on a massive pile of dynamite marked “Decades of PublicResentment”. The flames from the subsequent blast quicklyignited another box of TNT marked “Decades of Austrian Resentment,” which in turn ignitedanother box marked “Hungarian Resentment,” and another marked “Italian Resentment”,and so-on.
It was a chain reaction of revolution. A series of wildfires that combined into aEuropean inferno. And it would nearly consume young Franz Josef. At the moment the sparks from France’s 1848revolution landed on Vienna, Franz Josef was a 17 year old lad, and his uncle FerdinandI was on the throne. The revolutionary fire that blew up on March13 would change all that. That day, students excited by the news fromParis gathered in Vienna to demand a new, liberal constitution. In panic, Metternich ordered cavalry to attackthe crowd, triggering a riot. By 9pm that night, Austria’s puppetmasterhad resigned and fled the country. It was just the first in a series of shocksthat would bring Austria to its knees. In Hungary, the largest and most importantprovince of the Austrian Empire, liberals forced Ferdinand I to grant Hungary near totalautonomy or face war. In Italy, they went one step further and actuallywent to war.
The news caused such unrest in Vienna thatthe Habsburgs fled the city. But while most of the imperial family retreatedto safety, Franz Josef did the opposite. He went to Italy. That summer, Franz Josef personally foughtfor Austria, turning himself into a soldier hero. This was in great contrast to Emperor Ferdinand,who quickly made himself into a villain. That fall, Ferdinand sent the imperial armymarching on Vienna. The breathtaking bloodshed that resulted allowedthe Habsburgs to retake their capital, but it also left Ferdinand’s reputation in ruins. With Hungary now also at war with Austria,it was decided the useless emperor had to go. In December, 1848, Franz Josef’s mom, theArchduchess Sophia, and an ultra-reactionary known as Prince Felix zu Schwarzenberg stageda palace coup. They forced Ferdinand to step down, replacinghim with Franz Josef. For the 18-year old boy, it must’ve beena dizzying moment. Just six months earlier, he’d been a soldier,fighting in Italy. And now here he was, ruler of an empire thathad self-destructed like a Humpty Dumpty made of fissile plutonium.
It was up to him to put that empire back togetheragain. Cracking DownThe arrival of Franz Josef on the throne was initially treated with optimism by his subjects. He was a fresh-faced teenager. Surely he had to be more progressive thanthe last guy? Oh boy, were these 19th Century dudes in fora rude awakening. Franz Josef’s main priority as emperor wasto end the war with Hungary. But he didn’t do this with negotiations. Instead, he called in the Russians. The Russian invasion both ensured that Hungarywould stay within the Austrian Empire, and that the Hungarians would never trust Viennaagain. It didn’t help that Franz Josef followedup Hungary’s defeat by having hundreds tried for sedition, driven into exile or executed. When an unemployed tailor tried to assassinateFranz Josef shortly after, it wasn’t the emperor who ordinary Hungarians expressedsympathy for, but his would-be assassin. Still, the crackdown Franz Josef launched- coordinated from behind the scenes by Archduchess Sophie and Prince Schwarzenberg - did havethe desired effect. Come the end of 1849, the fires of revolutionacross Europe had been reduced to smouldering embers.
In France, the years of chaos had seen theSecond Republic rise and then fall as Napoleon’s nephew, Napoleon III, seized power. In the German Confederation, the revolutionarieshad tried to unite all 39 states into a single thing called “Germany”, only to implodeover the question of whether Austria or Prussia should be its leader. But their efforts had at least brought onePrussian farmer into politics for the first time. Known as Otto von Bismarck, he and Franz Josefwere destined to collide with enough force to reshape Europe. For now, though, no-one could tell just howthe failed revolutions of 1848 were going to effect the future. In Austria, Franz Josef set about consolidatinghis power. Egged on by Archduchess Sophie and PrinceSchwarzenberg, he instituted a reign of neo-absolutism, characterized by an absolute lack of freedomof speech, a brutal secret police, and an invasion of organized religion into everyaspect of citizens’ lives. Yet even at this frankly autocratic stage,the young emperor did find it in his heart to do some good. Not long after taking power, he began dismantlingthe anti-Semitic laws that had kept Austria’s Jews confined to ghettoes and locked out ofpower.
The destruction of these discriminatory statuteswould eventually result in a flourishing of Jewish culture in Vienna. But it’s doubtful Franz Josef was thinkingmuch about all this in the early 1850s. That’s because 1853 was the year the emperorfell in love. The Three MusesIn the story of Franz Josef’s life, there are three key figures. The first, obviously, was his mother, ArchduchessSophie, who got him onto the throne. The second we’ve already met. Otto von Bismarck would shape the emperor’smiddle years, whether Franz Josef liked it or not. The third was an unassuming Bavarian girlof fifteen called Elisabeth. But you likely know her by her nickname: Sisi. A girl of jaw-dropping beauty with brown hairthat came down to her ankles, Sisi was the sort of girl words like “radiant” arereserved for. Franz Josef first met her in 1853, when hetraveled to Bavaria to propose to her older sister Helena. But the moment the 23 year old emperor gothis first look at Sisi, Helena metaphorically went out the window. Instead, Franz Josef proposed to the girlwho’d just knocked him head over heels. The marriage between Franz Josef and Sisiwas controversial for a number of reasons. Back in Vienna, Archduchess Sophie was enragedthat her son had ditched safe and suitable Helena for some teenage tramp. But it was also controversial in Bavaria,for the simple reason that the free-spirited Sisi didn’t want to marry this boring emperorany more than Sophie wanted her to. Nevertheless, Franz Josef and Sisi were marriedon April 24, 1854. While the emperor really would spend the restof his life devoted to his new wife, it would not be a happy marriage. But if you want to hear more about that, you’llhave to check out our Sisi video! Seriously, we’ve got a ton to get throughtoday. While we are gonna hear more about Sisi, wedon’t have time to do anything like justice to her story. However, we will mention one salient fact. Unlike her husband, the Hungarophile Sisiwas very popular in Budapest. In fact, it’s probably their marriage thatdid more than anything else to rehabilitate Franz Josef’s image.
The rest of the 1850s passed in a blur ofblunders and babies. Blunders, because 1855 saw Franz Josef alienateboth his ally Russia and the guys he wanted to be his new BFFs, Britain and France, bydithering over taking part in the Crimean War. And babies, because, well, Sisi had threeof them. The first, Sophie, sadly died during a familyvisit to Hungary. The second, Gisela, sadly - from Franz Josef’sperspective, at least - was a girl, and therefore worthless in the ridiculous world of 19thCentury monarchs. The third, though, was when the emperor gotlucky. On April 21, 1558, Sisi gave birth to CrownPrince Rudolf. For Vienna, the arrival of the emperor’snew heir was cause for celebration. But while Franz Josef saw baby Rudolf as theguarantee his line would continue, he couldn’t have been aware of the darker truth. In just a few short decades, Crown PrinceRudolf was going to drive the Austrian court into deepest despair. Enter BismarckFor all the 86 long years of his life, Franz Josef would think of himself as a soldierfirst and an emperor second. So it’s ironic that the lowest point inhis reign came thanks to his appalling military skill.
A year after Crown Prince Rudolf was born,the Kingdom of Sardinia approached the flamboyant French dictator, Napoleon III, and suggestedteaming up to drive Austria out of Italy. To say the plot went to plan is to underestimatejust how blindly Franz Josef blundered into the trap. In response to Sardinian aggression, he personallyrode out at the head of a vast army, only to watch in horror as the French appearedon the horizon, blowing raspberries and telling him his mother was a hamster and his fathersmelled of elderberries. The catastrophic loss of the 1859 war sawAustria’s Italian possessions almost wiped out. Back home, Franz Josef was forced to callan assembly to write a new, more liberal constitution for the empire, lest the war’s outcome triggeranother 1848. Gone would be the secret police, and the ironfist. In their place would be a new, cuddly Austriathat didn’t hate its own subjects. The trouble was, that was easier said thandone. Franz Josef was under tremendous pressureto give concessions to the Hungarians, but that would mean giving concessions to thePoles and Czechs too, which would in turn mean the Austrian right going into rebellion. It seemed all that nationalist feeling releasedby 1848 hadn’t gone away. Keeping it from tearing apart the empire wouldbecome a full time job. But not everyone thought nationalism was adangerous thing. While Franz Josef tried to keep the tide of1848 from rising again, up in Prussia, Otto von Bismarck was wily enough to know thatthe only way to deal with a wave is by riding it. The 39 German states wanted to unite? Fine, he’d help them do it. But it would be on his terms. And that meant ensuring Austria had no partto play in the coming Germany. And so we come to the Schleswig-Holstein Question. The details of what this actually was aren’timportant.
Just know that Schleswig-Holstein were a pairof states bordering Denmark, that they had a question, and that in 1864 Bismarck answeredthat question by punching Prussia’s iron fist right through the exam paper. Importantly for our story, he convinced FranzJosef to help him do it. For Franz Josef it appeared an easy win. The joint invasion allowed Austria to occupyHolstein and helped Vienna cosy up to Prussia. But Bismarck was playing the long game, theone known as “Strengthen Prussia at Austria’s Expense”. As always, Bismarck played to win. In January, 1866, Bismarck accused Austriaof misrule in Holstein. Before long, the Iron Chancellor had whippedup tensions so skilfully that Franz Josef was forced to declare war. The Seven Weeks War was as short and one-sidedas its name suggests. Devoid of allies, Franz Josef could do nothingbut watch as the highly trained Prussian Army steamrollered Austria. The defeat was so colossal that Prussia wasable to force Austria out of the united Germany Bismarck was now actively building. In fact, the only reason the Seven Weeks Wardidn’t end with the Austrian Empire disintegrating is because Bismarck didn’t want to dealwith a failing state on his doorstep. But the damage had been done. Austria was now weak, and Franz Josef’sreputation was in tatters. It would take a miracle to hold everythingtogether after this. A miracle… or a Compromise.
The Dual MonarchyFor the Hungarians, watching Austria get kickedaround by Bismarck was the last straw. In late 1866, they basically told Vienna “look,we’re doing this independence thing.” In Vienna, panic descended. Some seriously counseled going to war withthe Hungarians, consequences be damned. But Franz Josef was through being a loser. Ignoring his conservative advisors, he insteadlooked to his own wife, Sisi, a long time Hungarophile. With her support, and that of the court liberalswho surrounded her, Franz Josef managed to get the hawks to abandon their war plans. In place of those plans, Vienna and Budapestnegotiated a compromise. The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 wasa masterpiece of diplomatic footwork. It split the Austrian Empire into two separatestates: Austria (also called Cisleithania) and Hungary (also called Transleithania). They each had their own constitutions, theirown systems of government, and their own monarchical structures. The key was that the Austrian Emperor andthe Hungarian King would henceforth be the same person: Franz Josef. Joint ministries would also govern defense,foreign affairs, and finance. It was tiptoeing to the edges of independence,but not quite jumping. From this, the Austro-Hungarian Empire wasborn. For Franz Josef, this meant not just savinghis empire from near-certain collapse, but being crowned King of Hungary in a lavishceremony. Barely twenty years earlier, he’d been awarrior emperor, demanding the insurrectionist Hungarians be hanged for treason. Now, here he was, sat alongside his Hungarophilewife, accepting the elevation of Hungary to partner in empire. To his credit, Franz Josef accepted the worldhad changed. That December, 1867, he gave Austria the constitutionit had been begging for since 1848.
The new constitution laid out citizens’fundamental rights. It established Austria’s first supreme court. It guaranteed the independence of the judiciary. The message was clear. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was a different,more liberal beast to the Austrian Empire. However, we shouldn’t kid ourselves thateverything was cool. Although the new constitution placed greatemphasis on rule via elected representatives, it maintained a veto that Franz Josef coulduse on any law. And he did, a lot. There was also still the national question. When the Hungarians were elevated to equals,the Czechs were understandably all like “yeah, how come we don’t get any of that action?”. Over on the Hungarian side, things were evenmore vexed. While the “Austro” part of Austro-Hungarygave equal language rights to its minorities, the Hungarians were all about stuff beingHungarian. That meant Romanians, Slovenes and Serbs allhaving to learn the language. Still, the new empire was broadly a success. As Bismarck forged the German Empire fromblood and iron, here was Austro-Hungary, rising instead from compromise.
It was this iteration of the empire that wouldgive the world the grandeur of Imperial Vienna; the secession movement of architecture; andthe founding of psychoanalysis. Unfortunately for Franz Josef, this goldenage would also coincide with the darkest period of his life. Goodbye, My LoveWhat’s remarkable with hindsight is that we can see the storm clouds gathering overboth Austro-Hungary and Franz Josef even during the good times. On the empire side, there’s the occupationof Bosnia by Austro-Hungarian troops in 1878, that sparked Serbian fury. There’s also the treaty Franz Josef drewup with Otto von Bismarck in 1879. The one that stipulated the two states wouldfight on each other’s side in any European war. But it was the personal side of things thatlikely hit Franz Josef hardest. It started in 1872, when his mother, ArchduchessSophie, finally passed away. But it really took off in 1881, when youngCrown Prince Rudolf – remember him? – finally married Princess Stephanie ofBelgium. You’re probably thinking something like“well that doesn’t sound so tragic,” but sadly it was. Rudolf was an introverted, melancholy ladwho didn’t want to marry this boring princess. He took to having affairs, sliding deeperinto unhappiness as he cut himself off from the outside world. It was in this state that he met BaronessMary. A 17-year old romantic, Mary was drawn tothe gloomy, melancholic side of Rudolf. The two began an affair in which they guidedone another ever further into heartache and depression. Finally, on January 30, 1889, the pair retreatedto Rudolf’s hunting lodge.
There they made a suicide pact before Rudolfshot Mary dead and turned the gun on himself. And, just like that, Franz Josef’s onlymale heir was gone. The shock of the incident destroyed the imperialfamily. Never happy in Vienna, Sisi now fled the city,casting herself out into the world, wanting only to be reunited with her dead son. She got her wish just nine years later, whenan anarchist stabbed her to death while she was out walking in Geneva. With her death, Franz Josef was suddenly alone. By now a man in his late 60s, the emperorhad reached a level of popularity with his subjects his younger self couldn’t havedreamed of. In the imperial court, though, it was anotherstory. With Rudolf gone, Franz Josef had been forcedto make his nephew, Franz Ferdinand, his heir. This was a problem, as Franz Ferdinand waspretty much the most unpopular man in Austria. Everyone who met him invariably wound up hatinghim. He was pompous, stuffy, awkward, angry, andonly happy when he was out hunting. Yet, there’s an argument to be made thatFranz Josef couldn’t have picked a better heir. Franz Ferdinand was a dick. But he was also shrewd. He could see that the empire’s future layin more federalism. That he could shore up support by elevatingthe Czechs and Serbians to joint equals with the Austrians and Hungarians. There’s even a school of thought that, hadFranz Josef been assassinated instead of Sisi, and Franz Ferdinand taken his place, theremight even still be an Austro-Hungary today. But that’s not what happened. For all his bright ideas, Franz Ferdinandwould not go down in history as the man who saved the empire. Rather, he would go down in history as theman whose death killed millions.
The End of it AllBy the dawn of the 20th Century, decades of heartbreak had taken their toll on Franz Josef. The emperor had withdrawn from politics, settlinginto his role as a figurehead of empire. This would’ve been great if he actuallywas a figurehead. But he was an integral part of the system. Without Franz Josef’s input, the empirebegan a period of listless drifting known as Fortwusteln. While culture continued to thrive in Vienna,the only thing of significance to really happen before the 1910s was when Austria annexedBosnia in 1908, kicking off a crisis that nearly led to war. But while war was avoided in 1908, it wouldn’tbe kept at bay for much longer. On June 28, 1914, the empire’s heir, FranzFerdinand, was visiting the newly-annexed province of Bosnia when a Bosnian-Serb terroristshot him dead.
The assassination sent shockwaves throughVienna. When evidence emerged that the Serbian intelligenceservices may have had a black hand in the killing, Franz Josef was forced to act. At the advice of the hawks in his court, theemperor drew up an ultimatum to Serbia that was effectively impossible to follow. In response, Russia and France gleefully announcedthey would defend Serbian honor from this Austrian aggression. Which made Germany declare they’d defendAustrian honor. Which made Britain… Well, you know the rest. On July 28, 1914, Franz Josef signed the decreedeclaring war on Serbia. It would be the last major act he’d undertakeas emperor. The declaration effectively started WWI, notthat we should blame something so complex on poor old Franz Josef. At hundreds of points, somebody in Serbia,or Russia, or France, or Germany, or Britain could’ve blinked and averted catastrophe. That they didn’t was a failing that wentbeyond one doddering old emperor. Although Franz Josef didn’t live to seeit, the declaration would kill his beloved empire. In 1918, as the war drew to a close, the manynationalities of Austro-Hungary all made a break for it, shattering the empire for good. But, by this point, Franz Josef was no longeraround.
On November 21, 1916, the elderly emperorhad died of pneumonia, passing away in the same palace he’d been born in. His funeral procession on November 30 wouldbe the last time his empire came together in unity. Even at the time, people felt it was the endof an era. Two years later, it would all be gone. From our vantage point of the 21st Century,we can see that Franz Josef was a flawed man. While he instituted reforms that turned theautocratic Austrian Empire into a powerhouse of culture, he only did so when his hand wasforced. Equally, while he was a decent general, wecan also see that he was hopeless when faced with a great strategic mind like that of Ottovon Bismarck. What do we mean, then, when we call him theLast Great Emperor? Well, there are different ways of defininggreat. For some, that means a person who is exceptional,someone like Napoleon. But it can also mean someone who embodiesa certain way of being. Franz Josef grew up in a world where emperorswere father figures who looked after their subjects, neither the tyrants of yesterdaynor the mere symbols of today. By sheer dint of his long life, he becameone of the very last of this type, a widely beloved figure who managed to unite multiplenationalities under his rule, even as he still took an active hand in empire. He may have been unimaginative, obsessed withduty, and too slow to recognize the need for change. But Franz Josef was likely the last greatemperor Europe will ever see. With his death, an entire age was lost forever.
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