Chapter VIII: The Imperial Kingdoms (5)

The south-western frontier was thus fixed; but meanwhile the new state had advanced in other directions. ♦Luxemburg. 1443.♦ Philip’s last great acquisition was the duchy of _Luxemburg_. He now possessed the greater part of the Netherlands; but his dominions were still intersected by the bishoprics of Utrecht and Lüttich and the duchy of Geldern. ♦Geldern and Zutphen. 1472.♦ The duchy of Geldern and county of Zutphen were added by Charles the Bold. ♦Final annexation. 1543.♦ But they formed a precarious possession, lost and won more than once, down to their final annexation under Charles the Fifth. ♦Bishopric of Lüttich never annexed.♦ Of the two great ecclesiastical principalities by which the Burgundian possessions in the Netherlands were cut asunder, the bishopric of _Lüttich_, though its history is much mixed up with that of the Burgundian Dukes, and though it came largely under their influence, was never formally annexed. ♦Annexation of the bishopric of Utrecht, 1531; | and Friesland, 1515.♦ But the temporal principality of the Bishop of _Utrecht_ was secularized under Charles the Fifth. _Friesland_, the Friesland immediately east of the Zuyder Zee, was already reincorporated with the dominions of the prince who represented the ancient counts of Holland. ♦Dominions of Charles the Fifth.♦ The whole Netherlands were thus consolidated under the rule of Charles the Fifth. They were united with the far distant county of Burgundy, and with it they formed the Burgundian circle in the new division of the Empire. The bishopric of Lüttich, which intersected the whole southern part of the country, remained in the circle of Westfalia. ♦The seventeen provinces.♦ Seventeen provinces, each keeping much of separate being, were united under a single prince, and, since the treaty of Madrid, they were free from any pretensions on the part of foreign powers. The Netherlands formed one of the most compact and important parts of the scattered dominions of the Emperor who was also lord of Burgundy and Castile. ♦Their separation from the Empire.♦ But the final union of these lands under the direct dominion of an Emperor at once led to their practical separation from the Empire. ♦The possessions of Philip of Spain. 1555.♦ They passed, with all the remaining possessions and claims of the Burgundian House, to Philip of Spain, and they were reckoned among the crowd of distant dependencies which had come under the rule of the crowns of Castile and Aragon. In Spanish hands they acted less as a middle state than as a power which helped to hem in France on both sides. Had the great revolt of the Netherlands ended in the final liberation of the whole seventeen provinces, the middle state would have been formed in its full strength. ♦The War of Independence. 1568-1609.♦ As it was, the work of the War of Independence was imperfect. The northern provinces won their freedom in the form of a federal commonwealth. The southern provinces remained dependencies of Spain, to become the chosen fighting ground of European armies, the chosen plaything of European diplomacy.

♦The Seven United Provinces. 1578.♦

The end of the long war of independence waged by the northern provinces was the establishment of the famous federal commonwealth of the _Seven United Provinces_, _Holland_, _Zealand_, _Utrecht_, _Gelderland_, _Over-Yssel_, _Friesland_, and _Groningen_. These answered nearly to the dominions of the Counts of Holland and Bishops of Utrecht in earlier times. ♦Gelderland.♦ But besides these, part of the duchy of _Geldern_ formed one of the United Provinces, while its southern part shared the fate of the southern provinces. But, besides the United Seven, the Confederation also kept parts of Brabant, Geldern, and Flanders as common possessions. ♦Formal independence of the Empire. 1648.♦ The power thus formed, one which so long held an European importance quite disproportioned to its geographical extent, had under Burgundian rule become practically independent of the Empire, but it was only by the Peace of Westfalia that its independence was formally acknowledged. The maritime strength of the Confederation made it more than an European power. It became a colonizing power in three parts of the world. ♦Colonies of the Netherlands.♦ In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Seven Provinces extended their dominion over many points on the continent of India and over the neighbouring island of _Ceylon_, over the great equatorial islands of _Java_, _Sumatra_, and the _Moluccas_, over many points in _Guinea_ and southern Africa, and over part of _Guiana_ in South America. ♦New Netherland passes to England. 1664.♦ But the great North American settlement of _New Netherland_ passed to England, and _New Amsterdam_ became _New York_. ♦No real name for the county.♦ Singularly enough, this great power never had any strict geographical name. _Netherlands_ was too large, as it took in the whole of the Low Countries and not the emancipated provinces only. _Holland_ was too small, as being the name of one province only, though the greatest. ♦Use of the name _Dutch_.♦ And, by one of the oddest cases of caprice of language, in common English usage the name of the whole Teutonic race settled down on this one small part of it, and the men of the Seven Provinces came to be exclusively spoken of as _Dutch_.

♦The Spanish Netherlands. 1578-1706.♦

Meanwhile the southern provinces, the greater part of Brabant and Flanders, with Artois, Hennegau or Hainault, Namur, Limburg, Luxemburg, and the southern part of Geldern,—taking in Antwerp at one end and Cambray at the other—remained under the sovereignty of the representatives of the Burgundian Dukes. That is, they remained an outlying dependency of the Spanish monarchy. But their southern frontier was open to constant aggressions on the part of France. ♦Dunkirk held by England. 1658-1662.♦ _Dunkirk_ indeed was for a moment held by England, as Calais and Boulogne had been in earlier times. ♦Cession of parts of Artois and of Gravelines, 1659;♦ By the Peace of the Pyrenees France obtained Arras and the greater part of Artois, leaving Saint Omer to Spain. ♦Dunkirk, 1662;♦ France also began to work her way up along the coast of Flanders, taking _Gravelines_ by virtue of the treaty, and presently adding Dunkirk by purchase from England. ♦Philippeville, Marienburg, Thionville.♦ The treaty also added to France several points along the frontiers of Hainault, Liège, and Luxemburg, including the detached fortresses of _Philippeville_ and _Marienburg_, and _Thionville_ famous in far earlier days. During the endless wars of Lewis’ reign, the boundary fluctuated with each treaty. ♦1668. | 1677.♦ Acquisitions were made by France at the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, some of which were surrendered, and others gained, by the Peace of Nimwegen. ♦Boundary fixed by the Peace of Utrecht. 1713.♦ At last the boundary was finally fixed by the Peace of Utrecht in the last days of Lewis. Parts of Flanders and Hainault were finally confirmed to France, which thus kept _Lille_, _Cambray_, and _Valenciennes_. ♦The Spanish Netherlands pass to Austria.♦ The provinces which had hitherto been Spanish now passed to the only surviving branch of the House of Austria, that which reigned in the archduchy and supplied the hereditary candidates for the Empire. ♦Annexed by France. 1792.♦ The first wars of the French Revolution added the Austrian Netherlands to France, and with them the bishopric of Lüttich which still so oddly divided them. ♦Kingdom of Holland. 1806-1810.♦ A later stage of the days of confusion changed the Seven United Provinces, enlarged by the addition of East Friesland, into a _Kingdom of Holland_, one of the states which the new conqueror carved out for the benefit of his kinsfolk. ♦Holland annexed by France. 1810-1813.♦ Presently the new kingdom was incorporated with the new ‘Empire,’ along with the German lands to the north-east of it. The Corsican had at last carried out the schemes of the Valois kings, and the whole Burgundian heritage formed for a moment part of France.

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At the general settlement of Europe, after the long wars with France, the restoration of the Low Countries as a middle state was a main object. ♦Kingdom of the Netherlands. 1814.♦ This was brought about by the union of the whole Netherlands into a single kingdom bearing that name. The southern boundary did not differ very greatly from that fixed by the Peace of Utrecht. ♦The boundaries.♦ As in the case of the Savoyard frontier, France kept a little more by the arrangements of 1814 than she finally kept by those of 1815. To the east, East-Friesland passed to Hannover, leaving the boundary of the new kingdom not very different from that of the two earlier powers which it represented, gaining only a small territory on the banks of the Maes. ♦Incorporation of Lüttich.♦ But the bishopric of Lüttich was incorporated with the lands which it had once parted asunder, and so ceased altogether to be German ground. ♦Grand Duchy of Luxemburg.♦ The new king, as we have already seen, entered the German confederation in his character of Grand Duke of _Luxemburg_, the duchy being somewhat shortened to the east in favour of Prussia. Lastly, after fifteen years of union, the new kingdom again split asunder. ♦Kingdom of Belgium. 1830-1831.♦ It was now divided into the kingdom of the Netherlands, answering to the old United Provinces, and the kingdom of Belgium, answering to the old Spanish or Austrian Netherlands. ♦Luxemburg divided.♦ But part of Limburg remained to the northern kingdom, and its sovereign also kept part of Luxemburg, as a district state, forming part of the German confederation. The western part of the duchy formed part of the kingdom of Belgium. ♦1867.♦ Later events, as has been already recorded, have severed the last tie between Germany and the Netherlands; they have wiped out the last survival of the days when the Counts of Holland and of Luxemburg were alike princes of the German kingdom.

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♦Effects of Burgundian rule.♦

The above may pass as a sketch of the fluctuations along the borderland in their European aspect. It is needless to go through every small shifting of frontier, or to recount in detail the history of small border principalities like _Saint Pol_ and _Bouillon_. The main historical aspect of these countries is their tendency, in all ages, to form somewhat of a middle system between two greater powers on either side of them. The guaranteed neutrality of Belgium and the guaranteed neutrality of Switzerland are alike survivals or revivals—it is hard to say which they should be called—of the instinctive feeling which, in the ninth century, called the Lotharingian kingdom into being. The modern form of this thousand-year old idea was made possible through the growth of the power of the Burgundian Dukes of the House of Valois.

The real historical work of those dukes was thus done in those parts of their dominions from which they did not take their name, but which took their name from them. The history of their other dominions may be told in a few words; indeed a great part of it has been told already. ♦Schemes of Charles the Bold.♦ The schemes of Charles the Bold for uniting his scattered dominions by the conquest of the duchy of Lorraine, for extending the power thus formed to the sea-board of the royal Burgundy, for forming in short a middle kingdom stretching from the Ocean to the Mediterranean, acting as a barrier alike between France and Germany and between France and Italy, remained mere schemes. They are important only as showing how deeply the idea or the memory of a middle state was still fixed in men’s minds. The conquests of Charles in Lorraine, his purchases in Elsass, were momentary possessions which hardly touch geography. But the fall of Charles, by causing the break-up of the southern dominion of his house, helped to give greater importance to its northern dominion. While the Netherlands grew together, the Burgundies split asunder. After the fall of Charles the fate of the two Burgundies was much the same as the fate of Flanders and Artois. Both were for a while seized by France; but the county, like Artois, was afterwards recovered for a season. The duchy of Burgundy was lost for ever; the county, along with the outlying county of Charolois, remained to those who by female succession represented the Burgundian Dukes, that is to Charles the Fifth and his Spanish son. The annexation of the Burgundian county, and with it of the city of Besançon, by Lewis the Fourteenth has been recorded in an earlier section.

§ 9. _The Dominions of Austria._

We now come to one among these German states which have parted off from the kingdom of Germany whose course has been widely different from the rest, and whose modern European importance stands on a widely different level. As the Lotharingian and Frisian lands parted off on the north-west of the kingdom, as a large part of the Swabian lands parted off to the south-west of the kingdom, so the _Eastern Mark_, the mark of _Austria_, parted off no less, but with widely different consequences. ♦Origin of the name _Oesterreich_, _Austria_.♦ The name of _Austria_, _Oesterreich_—_Ostrich_ as our forefathers wrote it—is, naturally enough, a common name for the eastern part of any kingdom. ♦Other lands so called.♦ The Frankish kingdom of the Merwings had its _Austria_; the Italian kingdom of the Lombards had its _Austria_ also. We are half inclined to wonder that the name was never given in our own island either to Essex or to East-Anglia. But, while the other Austrias have passed away, the _Oesterreich_, the _Austria_, the Eastern mark, of the German kingdom, its defence against the Magyar invader, has lived on to our own times. It has not only lived on, but it has become one of the chief European powers. And it has become so by a process to which it would be hard to find a parallel. ♦Special position of the Austrian power.♦ The Austrian duchy supplied Germany with so many Kings, and Rome with so many Emperors, that something of Imperial character came to cleave to the duchy itself. Its Dukes, in resigning, first, the crown of Germany, and then all connexion with Germany, have carried with them into their new position the titles and bearings of the German Cæsars. ♦Union with Hungary.♦ The power which began as a mark against the Magyar came to have a common sovereign with the Magyar kingdom; and the Austrian duchy and Magyar kingdom, each drawing with it a crowd of smaller states of endless nationalities, have figured together in the face of modern Europe as the _Austrian Empire_ or the _Austro-Hungarian Monarchy_. ♦The so-called ‘Empire’ of Austria.♦ It is not easy, in drawing a map, to find a place for the ‘Empire’ of Austria. The Archduchy is there, and its sovereign has not dropped his archiducal title. A crowd of kingdoms, duchies, counties, and lordships, all acknowledging the sovereignty of the same prince, are there also. But it is not easy to find the geographical place of an ‘Empire’ of Austria, as distinct from the Archduchy. Nor is it easy to understand on what principle an ‘Empire’ of Austria can be understood as taking in all the states which happen to own the Hungarian King and Austrian Archduke as their sovereign. The matter is made more difficult when we remember that the title of ‘Hereditary Emperor of Austria’ was first taken while its bearer was still King of Germany and Roman Emperor-elect. ♦Union of separate states under the Austrian House.♦ But, putting questions like these aside, the gradual union of a great number of states, German and non-German, under the common rule of the archiducal house of Austria, by whatever name we call the power so formed, is a great fact both of history and of geography. A number of states, originally independent of one another, differing in origin and language and everything that makes states differ from one another, some of them members of the former Empire, some not, have, as a matter of fact, come together to form a power which fills a large space in modern history and on the modern map. ♦Lack of national unity.♦ But it is a power which is altogether lacking in national unity. It is a power which is not coextensive with any nation, but which takes in parts of many nations. It cannot even be said that there is a dominant nation surrounded by subject nations. ♦German, Magyar, and other races.♦ The Magyar nation in its unity, and a fragment of the German nation, stand side by side on equal terms, while Italians, Roumans, and Slaves of almost every branch of the Slavonic race, are grouped around those two. ♦No strictly federal tie.♦ There is no federal tie; it is a stretch of language to apply the federal name to the present relation between the two chief powers of Hungary and Austria. Nor can any strictly federal tie be said to unite Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, and Galicia. And yet these other members of the general body are not mere subject provinces, like the dominions of Old Rome. The same prince is sovereign of a crowd of separate states, two of which stand out prominently as centres among the rest. There is neither national unity, nor federation, nor mere subjection of one land or nation to another. All this has come by the gradual union by various means of many crowns upon the same brow. ♦Anomalous nature of the Austrian power.♦ The result is an anomalous power which has nothing else exactly like it, past or present. But the very anomaly makes the growth of such a power a more curious study.

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♦The Eastern Mark.♦

The beginnings of the Austrian state are to be found in the small _Mark_ on the Danube, lying between Bohemia, Moravia, and the Duchy of Kärnthen or Carinthia. It appears in its first form as an appendage to Bavaria.[17] This mark Frederick Barbarossa raised into a duchy, under its first duke Henry the Second, and it was enlarged to the westward at the expense of Bavaria by the addition of the lands above the Enns. ♦Duchy of Austria, 1156.♦ Thus was formed the original _Duchy of Austria_, the duchy of the Dukes of the House of Babenberg. It had not long risen to ducal rank before it began to extend itself at the expense of states which had hitherto been of greater moment than itself. Itself primarily a mark against the Magyar, Austria had to the south of it the lands where the German Kingdom marched at once upon the Magyar, the Slave, and the Kingdom of Italy. ♦Duchy of Carinthia.♦ Here lay the great Duchy of Carinthia, a land where the population was mainly Slave, though on this frontier the Slavonic population had been brought into much earlier and more thorough subjection to the German Kings than the Slaves on the north-eastern frontier. ♦Duchy of Styria, 1180;♦ At the time of the foundation of the duchy of Austria, the Carinthian duchy had begun to split in pieces, and its northern part, hitherto the _Upper Carinthian Mark_, grew into the Duchy of _Steyermark_ or _Styria_. ♦united to Austria, 1192.♦ Twelve years later, Leopold the Fifth of Austria inherited the duchy of Styria, a duchy greater than his own, by the will of its duke Ottokar. Carinthia itself went on as a separate duchy; but it now took in only a narrow territory in the south-western part of the old duchy, and that broken up by outlying possessions of the archbishops of Salzburg and other ecclesiastical lords. ♦The county of Görz.♦ To the south grew up a considerable power in the hands of the counts of _Görz_ or _Gorizia_ on the Italian border. ♦Ecclesiastical position of its Counts.♦ The possessions of these counts stretched, though not continuously, from Tyrol to Istria, and their influence was further enlarged by their position as advocates of the bishoprics of _Trent_ and _Brixen_ and of the more famous patriarchate of _Aquileia_. These are the lands, the marchlands of Germany towards its eastern and south-eastern neighbours, which came by gradual annexations to form the German possessions of the Austrian power. But the further growth of that power did not begin till the duchy itself had passed away to the hands of a wholly new line of princes.

♦Momentary union of Austria and Bohemia.♦

The first change was one which brought about for a moment from one side an union which was afterwards to be brought about in a more lasting shape from the other side. This was the annexation of Austria by the kingdom of _Bohemia_. ♦Bohemia a kingdom, 1158.♦ That duchy had been raised to the rank of a kingdom, though of course without ceasing to be a fief of the Empire, a few years after the mark of Austria had become a duchy. The death of the last duke of Austria of the Babenberg line led to a disputed succession and a series of wars, in which the princes of Bavaria, Bohemia, and Hungary all had their share. ♦Ottokar of Bohemia annexes Austria and Styria, 1252-1262. | Carinthia, 1269.♦ In the end, between marriage, conquest, and royal grant, Ottokar king of Bohemia obtained the duchies of Austria and Styria, and a few years later he further added Carinthia by the bequest of its Duke. Thus a new power was formed, by which several German states came into the power of a Slavonic king. ♦Great power of Ottokar.♦ The power of that king for a moment reached the Baltic as well as the Hadriatic; for Ottokar carried his arms into Prussia, and became the founder of Königsberg. But this great power was but momentary. Bohemia and Austria were again separated, and Austria, with its indefinite mission of extension over so many lands, including Bohemia itself, passed to a house sprung from a distant part of Germany.

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♦House of Habsburg.♦

We have now come to the European beginnings of the second House of Austria, the house whose name seems to have become inseparably connected with the name of Austria, though the spot from which that house drew its name has long ceased to be an Austrian possession. This is the house of the Counts of _Habsburg_. They took this name from their castle on the lower course of the Aar, in the north-west corner of the Aargau, in that southern Swabian land where the Old League of High Germany was presently to arise, and so greatly to extend itself at the cost of the power of Habsburg. ♦Union of Habsburg, Kyburg, and Lenzburg.♦ By an union of the lands of Habsburg with those of the Counts of _Kyburg_ and _Lenzburg_, a considerable, though straggling, dominion was formed. It stretched in and out among the mountains and lakes, taking in Luzern, and forming a dangerous neighbour to the free city of Zürich. ♦Their possession in Elsass.♦ Besides these lands, the same house also held _Upper Elsass_ with the title of Landgrave, a dominion separated from the other Swabian lands of the House by the territory of the free city of Basel. ♦Rudolf king, 1273. | His victories over Ottokar, 1276-1278. | Albert of Habsburg Duke of Austria and Styria, 1282.♦ The lord of this great Swabian dominion, the famous Rudolf, being chosen to the German crown, and having broken the power of Ottokar, bestowed the duchies of Austria and Styria on his son Albert, afterwards King. ♦Meinhard Duke of Carinthia and Count of Tyrol, 1286.♦ Carinthia at first formed part of the same grant; but it was presently granted to Meinhard Count of Görz and Tyrol. Görz passed to another branch of the house of its own Counts. Three powers were thus formed in these regions, the duchies of _Austria_ and _Styria_, the duchy of _Carinthia_ with the county of _Tyrol_, and the county of _Görz_.

♦Scattered territories of the House of Habsburg.♦

Thus under Albert the possessions of the House of Habsburg were large, but widely scattered. The two newly acquired eastern duchies not only gave its princes their highest titles, but they formed a compact territory, well suited for extension northward and southward. ♦Falling off of the Swabian lands.♦ But among the outlying Swabian territories, though some parts remained to the Austrian House down to the end of the German Kingdom, the tendency was to diminish and gradually to part off altogether from Germany. In the lands south of the Rhine this happened through union with the Confederates; in the Alsatian lands it happened at a later stage through French annexation.

♦Connexion of Austria with the Empire.♦

It is to be hoped that it is no longer needful to explain that the hereditary lands of the House of Habsburg or Austria had no inherent connexion with the German Kingdom and Roman Empire of which they were fiefs, beyond the fact that they were among its fiefs. They were further connected with it only by the accident that, from Rudolf onwards, many princes of that house were chosen Kings, and that, from the middle of the fifteenth century, onwards, all the Kings were chosen from that house and from the house into which it merged by female succession. It is to be hoped that there is no longer any need to explain that every Emperor was not Duke of Austria, and that every Duke of Austria was not Emperor. But it may be needful to explain that every Duke of Austria was not master of the whole dominions of the House of Austria. ♦Divisions of the Austrian dominions.♦ The divisions, the reunions, the joint reigns, which are common to the House of Austria with other German princely houses, become at once more important and more puzzling in the case of a house which gradually came to stand above all the others in European rank. The caution is specially needful in the case of the Swabian lands, as the history of the Confederates is liable to be greatly misunderstood, if every Duke of Austria who appears there is taken for the sole sovereign of the Austrian dominions. It is needless to go here through all these shiftings between princes of the same house. Through all changes the unity of the house and its possessions was maintained, even while they were parted out or held in common by different members of the house. But it is important to bear in mind that some of the Dukes of Austria who figure in the history of Switzerland were rather Landgraves of Elsass or Counts of Tyrol than Dukes of Austria in any practical sense.

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may be defined as a time during which the Austrian House on the whole steadily advanced in the Eastern part of its dominions and steadily fell back in the Western. But in the course of the fourteenth century an acquisition was made which, without making them absolutely continuous, brought them into something more like geographical connexion with one another. ♦Acquisition of Carinthia and Tyrol, 1335.♦ This was the acquisition of the Duchy of Carinthia and County of _Tyrol_, the latter of which lands lay conveniently between the Eastern and Western dominions of the house. ♦Extent of the Austrian territory.♦ These now stretched continuously from the Bohemian frontier to Istria, and they threw out, in the form of Tyrol and the Swabian lands, a scattered, but nearly continuous, territory stretching to the borders of Lorraine and the county of Burgundy. The Austrian possessions now touched the eastern gulf of the Hadriatic and came into the neighbourhood of the Dalmatian Archipelago. ♦Commendation of Trieste, 1382.♦ Somewhat later they reached the main Hadriatic itself, when the city of _Trieste_, hitherto disputed between the commonwealth of Venice and the patriarchs of Aquileia, commended itself to the Austrian Duke Leopold as its lord. This is the same Leopold who four years later fell at Sempach. By this time the Swabian possessions had been increased north of the Rhine, while south of the Rhine the Austrian dominion was steadily giving way. ♦Loss of Thurgau, 1460.♦ The Confederates and their several cantons advanced in every way, by purchase and conquest, till, after the loss of Thurgau, the House of Austria kept nothing south of the Rhine except the towns known as the _Waldstädte_.

By this time the division of the estates of the house had taken a more lasting shape. One branch reigned in Austria, another in Carinthia and Styria, a third in Tyrol and the other western lands. At this time begins the unbroken series of Austrian elections to the German and Imperial crowns. ♦Albert the Second, king, 1437-1440.♦ The first was Albert the Second, Duke of Austria. ♦Frederick the Third, king, 1440; Emperor, 1452. | Archduke of Austria, 1453.♦ Then Frederick the Third, the first Emperor of the House, united the Austrian and Carinthian duchies, and raised Austria to the unique rank of an Archduchy. ♦Siegmund, Count of Tyrol, &c., 1429-1496.♦ Meanwhile, Siegmund Count of Tyrol held the western lands, and appears as Duke of Austria in Confederate and Burgundian history. He there figures as the prince who lost Thurgau to the Confederates and who mortgaged his Alsatian lands to Charles the Bold. ♦Maximilian, King of the Romans, 1486; Archduke, 1493; Count of Tyrol, 1496; Emperor-elect, 1508.♦ In Maximilian the whole possessions of the house of Austria were united. ♦Beginning of union with lands beyond the Empire.♦ But by this time the affairs of the purely German lands which had hitherto formed the possessions of the Austrian house had begun to be mixed up with the succession to lands and kingdoms beyond the Empire, and with lands which, though technically within the Empire, had a distinct being of their own. In the course of the fifteenth century the house of Austria, hitherto simply one of the chief German princely houses, put on two special characters. ♦Succession of Austrian Kings and Emperors.♦ It became, as we have already seen, the house which exclusively supplied kings and Emperors to Germany and the Empire. And it became, by virtue of its hereditary possessions rather than of its Imperial position, one of the chief European powers. For a while the greatest of European powers, it has remained a great European power down to our own time.

♦Union with Bohemia and Hungary.♦

The special feature in the history of the house of Austria from the fifteenth century onwards is its connexion—a connexion more or less broken, but still constantly recurring till in the end it becomes fully permanent—with the kingdom of Bohemia within the Empire and with the kingdom of Hungary beyond its bounds. These possessions have given the Austrian power its special character, that of a power formed by the union under one prince of several wholly distinct nations or parts of nations which have no tie beyond that union. The Austrian princes, originally purely German, equally in their Swabian and in their Austrian possessions, had already, by the extension of their power to the south, obtained some Slavonic and some Italian-speaking subjects. Still, as a power, they were purely German. ♦Various acquisitions of Austria.♦ But in the period which begins in the fifteenth and goes on into the nineteenth century, we shall see them gradually gathering together, sometimes gaining, sometimes losing—gaining and losing by every process, warlike and peaceful, by which territory can be gained or lost—a crowd of kingdoms, duchies, and counties, scattered over all parts of Europe from Flanders to Transsilvania. But it is the acquisition of the two crowns of Bohemia and Hungary which, above all others, gave the House of Austria its special position as a middle power, a power belonging at once to the system of Western and to the system of Eastern Europe. Among the endless shiftings of the states which have been massed together under the rule of the House of Habsburg, that house has more than once been at the same moment the neighbour of the Gaul and the neighbour of the Turk; and it has sometimes found Gaul and Turk arrayed together against it. Add to all this that, though the connexion between the house of Austria and the Empire was a purely personal one, renewed in each generation by a special election, still the fact that so many kings of Hungary and archdukes of Austria were chosen Emperors one after another, caused the house itself, after the Empire was abolished, to look in the eyes of many like a continuation of the power which had come to an end. The peculiar position of the Austrian house could hardly have been obtained by a mere union of Hungary, Austria, and the other states under princes none of whom were raised to Imperial rank. Nor could it have been obtained by a series of mere dukes of Austria, even though they had been chosen Emperors from generation to generation. It was through the accidental union under one sovereign of a crowd of states which had no natural connexion with each other, and through the further accident that the Empire itself seemed to become a possession of the House, that the House of Habsburg, and its representative the House of Lorraine, have won their unique position among European powers.

The first hints, so to speak, of a coming union between the Hungarian and Bohemian kingdoms and the Austrian duchy began, as we have seen, in the days of Ottokar. A Bohemian king had then held the Austrian duchy, while a Hungarian king had for a moment occupied part of Styria. ♦Relations with Hungary and Bohemia.♦ But the later form which the union was to take was not that of the Bohemian or the Hungarian reigning over Austria, but that of the Austrian reigning over Hungary and Bohemia. The duchy was not to be added to either of the kingdoms; but both kingdoms were in course of time to be added to the duchy. The growth of both Hungary and Bohemia as kingdoms will be spoken of elsewhere. We have now to deal only with their relations to the Austrian House. ♦Rudolf, son of Albert, King of Bohemia, 1306.♦ For a moment, early in the fourteenth century, an Austrian prince, son of the first Austrian King of Germany, was actually acknowledged as King of Bohemia. But this connexion was only momentary. The first beginnings of anything like a more permanent connexion begin a hundred and thirty years later. ♦Albert the Second, King of Hungary and Bohemia, 1438.♦ The second Austrian King of Germany wore both the Hungarian and the Bohemian crowns by virtue of his marriage with the daughter of the Emperor and King Siegmund. The steps towards the union of the various crowns are now beginning. ♦Siegmund, King of Hungary, 1386; King of the Romans, 1414; King of Bohemia, 1419; Emperor, 1433.♦ Siegmund was the third King of Bohemia who had worn the crown of Germany, the second who had worn the crown of the Empire. Under his son-in-law, Hungary, Bohemia, and Austria were for a moment united with the German crown; in the next reign, as we have seen, begins the lasting connexion between Austria and the Empire. But the Hungarian and Bohemian kingdoms parted again. ♦Wladislaus Postumus, Duke of Austria, 1440-1457; King of Hungary and Bohemia, 1453-1457.♦ One Austrian King, the son of Albert, reigned at least nominally over both kingdoms, as well as over the special Austrian duchy. But the final union did not come for another eighty years. The Turk was now threatening and conquering. At Mohacz Lewis, king of the two kingdoms, fell before the invaders. ♦Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, 1519; King of Hungary and Bohemia, 1527; King of the Romans, 1531; Emperor-elect, 1556. | Permanent union of Bohemia.♦ His Bohemian kingdom passed to Ferdinand of Austria, and from that day to this, unless we except the momentary choice of the Winter King, the Palatine Frederick, the Bohemian crown has always stayed in the House of Austria. And for many generations it has been worn by the actual sovereign of the Austrian archduchy.

♦Effects of the union with Hungary.♦

The acquisition of the crown of Hungary was of greater importance. It at once put the Austrian House into a wholly new position; it gave it its new later character of a middle state between Eastern and Western Europe. The duchy had begun as a mark against the Turanian and heathen invaders of earlier times. Those Turanian and heathen invaders had long before settled down into a Christian kingdom; they had latterly become the foremost champions of Christendom against the Turanian and Mahometan invaders who had seized the throne of the Eastern Cæsars. ♦Mission against the Turk.♦ With the crown of Hungary, the main duty of the Hungarian crown, the defence of Christendom against the Ottoman, passed to the Archdukes and Emperors of the Austrian House. ♦The Austrian kings in Hungary.♦ But for a long time Hungary was a most imperfect and precarious possession of its Austrian Kings. ♦1526-1699.♦ For more than a century and a half after the election of Ferdinand, his rule and that of his successors was disputed and partial. They had from the very beginning to strive against rival kings, while the greater part of the kingdom and of the lands attached to the crown was either held by the Turk himself or by princes who acknowledged the Turk as their superior lord. These strictly Hungarian affairs, as well as the changes on the frontier towards the Turk, will be spoken of elsewhere. ♦Peace of Passarowitz, 1718.♦ It was not till the eighteenth century that the Austrian Kings were in full possession of the whole Hungarian kingdom and all its dependencies.

♦Acquisition of Görz, 1500.♦

Meanwhile the Austrian power had been making advances in other quarters. At the end of the fifteenth century the Austrian possessions at the north-east of the Hadriatic were greatly enlarged by the addition of the county of _Görz_, which carried with it the fallen city of Aquileia. ♦New position towards Italy.♦ A more direct path towards Italian dominion was thus opened. The wars of the League of Cambray made no permanent addition to Austrian dominion in this quarter; but the master of Trieste and Aquileia, whose territory cut off Venice from her Istrian possessions, might already almost pass for an Italian sovereign. ♦Dominions of Charles the Fifth.♦ Under Charles the Fifth the House of Austria became, as we have seen, possessed of a vast Italian dominion. But after him it passed away alike from the Empire and the German branch of the house, to become part of the heritage of the Austrian Kings of Spain. ♦Austrian rule in Italy.♦ It was not, as we have already seen, till the beginning of the eighteenth century that either an Emperor or a reigning archduke again obtained any territory within the acknowledged bounds of Italy. The fluctuations of Austrian rule in Italy, from the acquisition of the Duchy of Milan down to our own day, have been already told in the Italian section. Lombardy and Venetia are now again Italian; but Austria still keeps the north-east corner of the great gulf. She still keeps Görz and Aquileia, Trieste and all Istria, to say nothing of the dangerous way which her frontier still stretches on Italian ground in the land of Trent and Roveredo.

♦Burgundian possessions.♦

These last named possessions still abide as traces of the Austrian advance in these regions, and its fluctuations there have been among the most important facts of modern history. Another series of Austrian acquisitions in the West of Europe have altogether passed away. The great Burgundian inheritance passed to the House of Austria. ♦Maximilian and Philip.♦ But it was only for a short time, in the persons of Maximilian and Philip, that it was in any way united to the actual Austrian Archduchy. ♦The Austrian Netherlands.♦ After Charles the Fifth the Burgundian possessions passed, like those in Italy, to the Spanish branch of the House, and, just as in Italy, it was not till the eighteenth century that actual Emperors or archdukes again reigned over a part of the Netherlands. ♦Loss of Elsass.♦ Before this time the Alsatian dominion of Austria had passed away to France, and the remnant of her Swabian possessions passed away, as we have seen, in the days of general confusion. The changes of her territory in Germany during that period have been already spoken of. Her acquisitions in Eastern Europe will come more fully elsewhere; but a word must be given to them here. ♦Loss of Silesia, 1740. | Final partition of Poland, 1772.♦ Looking at the House of Austria simply as a power, without reference to the German or non-German character of its dominions, the loss of _Silesia_ may be looked on as counterbalanced by the territory gained from Poland at the first and third partitions. ♦Galicia and Lodomeria.♦ The first partition gave the Austrian House a territory of which the greater part was originally Russian rather than Polish, and in which the old Russian names of _Halicz_ and _Vladimir_ were strangely softened into a _Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria_. ♦Third partition, 1795. | New-Galicia.♦ The third partition added _Cracow_ and a considerable amount of strictly Polish territory. These last passed away, first to the Duchy of Warsaw, and then to the restored Kingdom of Poland. ♦Annexation of Cracow, 1846.♦ But Galicia has been kept, and it has been increased in our day by the seizure of the republic of Cracow. These lands lie to the north of the Hungarian kingdom. Parted from them by the whole extent of that kingdom, and adjoining that kingdom at its south-west corner lie the coast lands of Austria on the Hadriatic. ♦Dalmatia, 1797.♦ By the Peace of Campoformio, Austria took _Dalmatia_ strictly so called, and the other Venetian possessions as far south as Budua. ♦Recovered, 1814. | Ragusa, 1814.♦ These lands, lost in the wars with France, were won again at the Peace, with the addition of _Ragusa_ and its territory.

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This account of the gains and losses of a power which has gained and lost in so many quarters is necessary somewhat piecemeal. It may be well then to end this section with a picture of the Austrian power as it stood at several points of the history of the last century and a half, leaving the fluctuating frontier towards the Turk to be dealt with in our survey of the more strictly Eastern lands.

♦Reign of Maria Theresa, 1740-1780.♦

We will begin at a date when we come across a sovereign whose position is often strangely misunderstood, the Empress-Queen Maria Theresa—Queen in her own right of Hungary and Bohemia, Empress by the election of her husband to the Imperial Crown. ♦Her hereditary dominions.♦ The Pragmatic Sanction of her father Charles the Sixth made her heiress of all his hereditary dominions. That is, it made her heiress, within the Empire, of the kingdom of Bohemia with its dependencies of Moravia and Silesia—of the Archduchy of Austria with the duchies, counties, and lordships of Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Tyrol, Görz, and Trieste—of Constanz and a few other outlying Swabian points—as also of Milan, Mantua, and the Austrian Netherlands, lands which it needs some stretch, whether of memory or of legal fiction, to look on as being then in any sense lands of the Empire. Altogether beyond the Empire, it gave her the Kingdom of Hungary with its dependent lands of Croatia, Slavonia, and Transsilvania or Siebenbürgen. These hereditary dominions, lessened by the loss of Silesia, increased by the addition of Galicia, she handed on to their later Kings and Archdukes. Her marriage transferred those hereditary dominions, it indirectly transferring the Empire itself, to a new family, the House of Lorraine. The husband of Maria Theresa, Francis, who had exchanged his duchy of Lorraine for that of Tuscany, was in truth the first Lotharingian Emperor. After him came three Emperors of his house, under the third of whom the succession of Augustus and Charles came to an end.

♦Austrian dominions in 1811.♦

We may take another view of the Austrian territory at the moment when the French power in Germany was at its height. The Roman Empire and the German kingdom had now come to an end; but their last sovereign still, with whatever meaning, called himself Emperor of his archduchy, though without dropping his proper title of Archduke. ♦New use of the name _Austria_.♦ From this time the word Austria was used, commonly but inaccurately, to take in all the possessions of the House of Austria. And, as all the possessions of the House of Austria were now geographically continuous, it became more natural to speak of them by a single name than it had been when the dominions of that house in Italy and the Netherlands lay apart from the great mass of Austrian territory. And at this moment, when the Empire had come to an end and when the German Confederation had not yet been formed, there was no distinction between German and non-German lands. The ‘Empire’ of Francis the Second or First, as it stood at the time of Buonaparte’s greatest power, had, as compared with the hereditary dominions of Maria Theresa, gone through these changes. Tyrol and the Swabian lands had passed to other German princes; Salzburg had been won and lost again. In Italy the Venetian possessions had been won and lost, and they, together with the older Italian possessions of Austria, had passed to the French kingdom of Italy. France in her own name had encroached on the Austrian dominions at two ends. She had absorbed the Austrian Netherlands at one corner, the newly won territory of Dalmatia at another. This last territory, with parts of Carinthia and Carniola, and with the Hungarian kingdom of Croatia, received, on passing to France, the name of the _Illyrian Provinces_. Illyrian they were in the widest and most purely geographical sense of that name. But this use of the Illyrian name was confusing and misleading, as tending to put out of sight that the true representatives of the old Illyrian race dwell to the south, not only of Carinthia and Carniola, but of Dalmatia itself. The loss of the Austrian possessions in this quarter brought back the new Austrian ‘Empire’ to the condition of the original Austrian duchy. It became a wholly inland dominion, without an inch of sea-coast anywhere.

♦Austria at the peace. 1814-5.♦

We have already seen how Austria won back her lost Italian and Dalmatian territory, and so much of her lost German territory as was geographically continuous. ♦Ragusa and Cattaro.♦ Released from her inland prison, provided again with a great sea-board on both sides of the Hadriatic, she now refused to Ragusa the restoration of her freedom, and filched from Montenegro her hard-won haven of Cattaro. The recovered lands formed, in the new nomenclature of the Austrian possessions, the kingdoms of Lombardy and Venice, of Illyria, and of Dalmatia. The last was an ancient title of the Hungarian crown. The Kingdom of Illyria was a continuation of the affected nomenclature which had been bestowed on the lands which formed it under their French occupation. We have already traced the driving out of the Austrian power from Lombardy and Venetia, its momentary joint possession in Sleswick, Holstein, and Lauenburg. ♦Cracow, 1846.♦ The only other actual change of frontier has been the annexation of the inland commonwealth of Cracow, to match the annexation of the sea-faring commonwealth of Ragusa. ♦Separation of Hungary, 1848.♦ The movement of 1848 separated Hungary for a moment from the Austrian power. ♦Recovery of Hungary, 1849.♦ Won back, partly by Russian help, partly by the arms of her own Slavonic subjects, the Magyar kingdom remained crushed till Austria was shut out alike from Germany and from Italy. ♦Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, 1867.♦ Then arose the present system, the so called _dualism_, the theory of which is that the ‘Austro-Hungarian Monarchy’ consists of two states under a common sovereign. By an odd turning about of meanings, Austria, once really the _Oesterreich_, the Eastern land, of Germany, has become in truth the Western land, the _Neustria_, of the new arrangement. With the Hungarian kingdom are grouped the principality of Transsilvania and the kingdoms of Slavonia and Croatia. The Austrian state is made up of _Austria_ itself—the archduchy with the addition of _Salzburg_—the duchy of _Styria_, the county of _Tyrol_, the kingdoms of _Bohemia_, _Galicia_ and _Lodomeria_, _Illyria_, and _Dalmatia_ with _Ragusa_ and _Cattaro_. These last lands are not continuous. Thus two states are formed. ♦Modern Austria.♦ In one the dominant German duchy has Slavonic lands on each side of it, and an Italian fringe on its coast. ♦Modern Hungary.♦ In the other state, the ruling Magyar holds also among the subjects of his crown the Slave, the Rouman, and the outlying Saxon of Siebenbürgen. ♦Herzegovina, Bosnia, and Spizza, 1878.♦ Add to this that the latest arrangements of all have added to the Austrian dominions, under the diplomatic phrase of ‘administration,’ the Slavonic lands of _Herzegovina_ and _Bosnia_, while the kingdom of Dalmatia is increased by the harbour of _Spizza_. A power like this, which rests on no national basis, but which has been simply patched together during a space of six hundred years by this and that grant, this and that marriage, this and that treaty, is surely an anachronism on the face of modern Europe. Germany and Italy are nations as well as powers. Austria, changed from the _Austria_ of Germany into the _Neustria_ of Hungary, is simply a name without a meaning.

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We have thus gone through the geographical changes of the three Imperial kingdoms, and of the states and powers which were formed by parts of those kingdoms falling away, and in some cases uniting themselves with lands beyond the Empire. They have all to some extent kept a common history down to our own time. We have now to turn to another land which parted off from the Empire in like manner, but which parted off so early as to become a wholly separate and rival land, with an altogether independent history of its own.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Unless we except the small part of Flanders held by the Confederation.

[13] On the marks, see Waitz, _Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichten_, vii. 62, et seq.

[14] No influence was more powerful for this end than the _Zollverein_ or customs union, which gradually united most of the German states for certain purposes. But as it did not affect the boundaries or the governments of sovereign states, it hardly concerns geography. Neither do the strivings after more perfect union in 1848 and the following years.

[15] Compare the mention of Rudolf in the letter of Cnut, on his Roman Pilgrimage, in Florence of Worcester, 1031. He is there ‘Rodulphus rex, qui maxime ipsarum clausurarum dominatur.’

[16] That Aosta was strictly Burgundian appears from the ‘Divisio Imperii, 806’ (Pertz, Leges, i. 141), where Italy is granted whole to Pippin, Burgundy is divided between Charles and Lewis; but it is provided that both Charles and Lewis shall have success to Italy, ‘Karolus per vallem Augustanam quæ ad regnum ejus pertinet.’ The Divisio Imperii of 839 is still plainer (Pertz, Leges, i. 373, Scriptores, i. 434). There the one share takes in ‘Regnum Italiæ partemque Burgundiæ, id est, vallem Augustanam,’ and certain other districts. So Einhard (Vita Karoli, 15) excludes Aosta from Italy. ‘Italia tota, quæ ab Augusta Prætoria usque in Calabriam inferiorem, in qua Græcorum et Beneventanorum constat esse confinia, porrigitur.’ As Calabria was not part of Italy in this sense, so neither was Aosta.

[17] See Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, iv. 73.