Thread by @marinamaral2

Franz Joseph I - Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, and monarch of other states in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, from 2 December 1848 to his death.

He was the longest-reigning Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary.

Franz Joseph was born in the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna (on the 65th death anniversary of Francis of Lorraine), the eldest son of Archduke Franz Karl (the younger son of Holy Roman Emperor Francis II), and his wife Princess Sophie of Bavaria.

Because his uncle, from 1835 the Emperor Ferdinand, was weak-minded, and his father unambitious and retiring, the young Archduke "Franzl" was brought up by his mother as a future Emperor with emphasis on devotion, responsibility and diligence.

Franzl came to idolize his grandfather, der Gute Kaiser Franz, who had died shortly before the former's fifth birthday, as the ideal monarch.

At the age of thirteen, he started a career as a colonel in the Austrian army.

From that point onward, his fashion was dictated by army style and for the rest of his life he normally wore the uniform of a military officer.

Franz Joseph was soon joined by three younger brothers: Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian (the future Emperor Maximilian of Mexico); Archduke Karl Ludwig (father of Archduke Franz Ferdinand), and Archduke Ludwig Viktor; and a sister, Maria Anna, who died at the age of four.

Following the resignation of the Chancellor Prince Metternich during the Revolutions of 1848, the young Archduke, who it was widely expected would soon succeed his uncle on the throne, was appointed Governor of Bohemia on 6 April, but never took up the post.

Instead, Franz was sent to the front in Italy, joining Field Marshal Radetzky on campaign on 29 April, receiving his baptism of fire on 5 May at Santa Lucia. By all accounts he handled his first military experience calmly and with dignity.

Around the same time, the Imperial Family was fleeing revolutionary Vienna for the calmer setting of Innsbruck, in Tyrol. Soon, the Archduke was called back from Italy, joining the rest of his family at Innsbruck by mid-June.

It was at Innsbruck at this time that Franz Joseph first met his cousin Elisabeth, his future bride, then a girl of ten, but apparently, the meeting made little impression.

Following victory over the Italians at Custoza in late July, the court felt it safe to return to Vienna, and Franz Joseph travelled with them. Within a few months Vienna again appeared unsafe, and in September the court left once more, this time for Olomouc (Olmütz) in Moravia.

By now, Prince Alfred I of Windisch-Grätz, an influential military commander in Bohemia, was determined to see the young Archduke soon put on the throne.

It was thought that a new ruler would not be bound by the oaths to respect constitutional government to which Ferdinand had been forced to agree and that it was necessary to find a young, energetic emperor to replace the kindly, but mentally unfit Ferdinand.

By the abdication of his uncle Ferdinand and the renunciation of his father, the mild-mannered Franz Karl, Franz Joseph succeeded as Emperor of Austria at Olomouc on 2 December.

At this time he first became known by his second as well as his first Christian name. The name "Franz Joseph" was chosen to bring back memories of the new Emperor's great-granduncle, Emperor Joseph II, remembered as a modernizing reformer.

Under the guidance of the new prime minister Prince Schwarzenberg, the new emperor at first pursued a cautious course, granting a constitution in early 1849. At the same time, a military campaign was necessary against the Hungarians...

.... who had rebelled against Habsburg central authority in the name of their ancient liberties.

Franz Joseph was also almost immediately faced with a renewal of the fighting in Italy, with King Charles Albert of Sardinia taking advantage of setbacks in Hungary to resume the war in March 1849.

However, the military tide began to swiftly turn in favor of Franz Joseph and the Austrian whitecoats. Almost immediately, Charles Albert was decisively beaten by Radetzky at Novara and forced to sue for peace, as well as to renounce his throne.

In Hungary, the situation was more severe and Austrian defeat seemed imminent. Sensing a need to secure his right to rule, Franz Joseph sought help from Russia, requesting the intervention of Tsar Nicholas I.

Russian troops entered Hungary in support of the Austrians and the revolution was crushed by late summer of 1849.

With order now restored throughout his Empire, Franz Joseph felt free to renege on the constitutional concessions he had made, especially as the Austrian parliament meeting at Kremsier had behaved—in the young Emperor's eyes—abominably.

The 1849 constitution was suspended, and a policy of absolutist centralism was established, guided by the Minister of the Interior, Alexander Bach.

The next few years saw the seeming recovery of Austria's position on the international scene. Under Schwarzenberg's guidance, Austria was able to stymie Prussian scheming to create a new German Federation under Prussian leadership, excluding Austria.

After Schwarzenberg's premature death in 1852, he could not be replaced by statesmen of equal stature, and the Emperor himself effectively took over as prime minister.

On 18 February 1853, Franz Joseph survived an assassination attempt by Hungarian nationalist János Libényi. The emperor was taking a stroll with one of his officers on a city bastion when Libényi approached him and struck the emperor from behind with a knife straight at the neck.

Franz Joseph almost always wore a uniform, which had a high collar that almost completely enclosed the neck. The collars of uniforms at that time were made from a very sturdy material, precisely to counter this kind of attack.

Even though the Emperor was wounded and bleeding, the collar saved his life. Count O'Donnell struck Libényi down with his saber.

Libényi was subsequently put on trial and condemned to death. He was executed on the Simmeringer Heide.

After this unsuccessful attack, the Emperor's brother called upon Europe's royal families for donations to construct a new church on the site of the attack.

The church was to be a votive offering for the survival of the Emperor. It is located on Ringstraße in the district of Alsergrund close to the University of Vienna and is known as the Votivkirche.

The 1850s witnessed several failures of Austrian external policy: the Crimean War, the dissolution of its alliance with Russia, and defeat in the Second Italian War of Independence.

The setbacks continued in the 1860s with defeat in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, which resulted in the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867.

Political difficulties in Austria mounted continuously through the late 19th century and into the 20th century.

However, Franz Joseph remained immensely respected; the Emperor's patriarchal authority held the Empire together while the politicians squabbled among themselves.

The main foreign policy goal of Franz Joseph had been the unification of Germany under the House of Habsburg.

This was justified on grounds of precedence; from 1452 to the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, with only one period of interruption under the Wittelsbachs, the Habsburgs had generally held the German crown.

However, Franz Joseph's desire to retain the non-German territories of the Habsburg Austrian Empire in the event of German unification proved problematic.

There quickly developed two factions: one party of German intellectuals favoring a Greater Germany (Großdeutschland) under the House of Habsburg; the other favoring a Lesser Germany (Kleindeutschland).

The Greater Germans favored the inclusion of Austria in a new all-German state on the grounds that Austria had always been a part of Germanic empires, that it was the leading power of the German Confederation, and that it would be absurd to exclude eight million Austrian Germans

from an all-German nation state.

The champions of a lesser Germany argued against the inclusion of Austria on the grounds that it was a multi-nation state, not a German one, and that its inclusion would bring millions of non-Germans into the German nation-state.

If Greater Germany was to prevail, the crown would necessarily have to go to Franz Joseph, who had no desire to cede it in the first place to anyone else.

On the other hand, if the idea of a smaller Germany won out, the German crown could of course not possibly go the Emperor of Austria, but would naturally be offered to the head of the largest and most powerful German state outside of Austria—the King of Prussia.

The contest between the two ideas quickly developed into a contest between Austria and Prussia. After Prussia decisively won the Seven Weeks War, this question was solved; Austria lost no territories as long as they remained out of German affairs.

Franz Joseph's German identity was made explicitly clear during a meeting in August 1908 between himself and Edward VII when the latter tried to persuade him to abandon Austria-Hungary's alliance with Germany for co-operation with England.

Franz Joseph replied that he was a "loyal ally" and "I am a German prince."

On 28 June 1914 Franz Joseph's nephew and heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his morganatic wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, a Yugoslav nationalist of Serbian ethnicity, during a visit to Sarajevo.

When he heard the news of the assassination, Franz Joseph said that "one has not to defy the Almighty. In this manner, a superior power has restored that order which I, unfortunately, was unable to maintain."

While the emperor was shaken and interrupted his holiday to return to Vienna, he soon resumed his vacation at his imperial villa at Bad Ischl.

Initial decision-making during the "July Crisis" fell to Count Leopold Berchtold, the Austrian foreign minister; Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, the chief of staff for the Austro-Hungarian army and the other ministers.

The resolution of deliberations by the Austrian government during the weeks following the assassination of the Archduke was to give Serbia an ultimatum of itemized demands which it was virtually certain Serbia would be unable to comply with, serving as a "legal basis for war."

A week after delivery of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, on 28 July, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Within weeks, the Germans, Russians, French and British had all entered the fray which eventually became known as World War I.

Franz Joseph died in the Schönbrunn Palace on the evening of 21 November 1916, at the age of eighty-six.

His death was a result of developing pneumonia of the right lung several days after catching a cold while walking in Schönbrunn Park with the King of Bavaria.

He was succeeded by his grandnephew Charles I, who reigned until the collapse of the Empire following its defeat in 1918.

He is buried in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna, where flowers are still left by monarchists.

Following the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in 1914, Franz Joseph's daughter, Marie Valerie, noted that her father expressed his greater confidence in the new heir presumptive.

The emperor admitted, regarding the assassination: "For me, it is a relief from a great worry."

*Done*