Background and establishment Following Hungary's defeat against the Ottoman Empire in the
Battle of Mohács of 1526, the Habsburg Empire became more involved in the Kingdom of Hungary, and subsequently assumed the Hungarian throne. However, as the Ottomans expanded further into Hungary, the Habsburgs came to control only a small north-western portion of the former kingdom's territory. Eventually, following the
Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718, all former territories of the Hungarian kingdom were ceded from the Ottomans to the Habsburgs. In the
revolutions of 1848, the Kingdom of Hungary called for greater self-government and later even independence from the
Austrian Empire. The ensuing
Hungarian Revolution of 1848 was crushed by the Austrian military with
Russian military assistance, and the level of autonomy that the Hungarian state had enjoyed was replaced with absolutist rule from Vienna. In the 1860s, the Empire faced two severe defeats: its loss in the
Second Italian War of Independence broke its dominion over a large part of Northern Italy (
Lombardy, Veneto,
Modena, Reggio,
Tuscany,
Parma and Piacenza) while defeat in the
Austro-Prussian War of 1866 led to the dissolution of the
German Confederation (of which the Habsburg emperor was the hereditary president) and the exclusion of Austria from German affairs. These twin defeats gave the Hungarians the opportunity to remove the shackles of absolutist rule. Realizing the need to compromise with Hungary in order to retain its great power status, the central government in Vienna began negotiations with the Hungarian political leaders, led by
Ferenc Deák. The Hungarians maintained that the
April Laws were still valid, but conceded that under the
Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, foreign affairs and defence were "common" to Austria and Hungary. On 20 March 1867, the newly
re-established Hungarian parliament at
Pest started to negotiate the new laws to be accepted on 30 March. However, Hungarian leaders received word that the Emperor's formal coronation as King of Hungary on 8 June had to have taken place in order for the laws to be enacted within the lands of the
Holy Crown of Hungary. On 28 July, Franz Joseph, in his new capacity as King of Hungary, approved and promulgated the new laws, which officially gave birth to the Dual Monarchy.
1866–1878: Beyond Lesser Germany of
Franz Joseph I and
Elisabeth Amalie at
Matthias Church,
Buda, 8 June 1867 The
Austro-Prussian War was ended by the
Peace of Prague (1866) which settled the "
German question" in favor of a
Lesser German Solution.
Count Friedrich Ferdinand von Beust, who was the foreign minister from 1866 to 1871, hated the Prussian chancellor,
Otto von Bismarck, who had repeatedly outmaneuvered him. Beust looked to France for avenging Austria's defeat and attempted to negotiate with Emperor
Napoleon III of France and Italy for an anti-Prussian alliance, but no terms could be reached. The decisive victory of the Prusso-German armies in the
Franco-Prussian war and the subsequent founding of the German Empire ended all hope of re-establishing Austrian influence in Germany, and Beust retired. After being forced out of Germany and Italy, the Dual Monarchy turned to the Balkans, which were in tumult as nationalistic movements were gaining strength and demanding independence. Both Russia and Austria–Hungary saw an opportunity to expand in this region. Russia took on the role of protector of Slavs and Orthodox Christians. Austria envisioned a multi-ethnic, religiously diverse empire under Vienna's control. Count
Gyula Andrássy, a Hungarian who was Foreign Minister (1871–1879), made the centerpiece of his policy one of opposition to Russian expansion in the Balkans and blocking Serbian ambitions to dominate a new
South Slav federation. He wanted Germany to ally with Austria, not Russia.
1877–1908: Congress of Berlin and Balkan instability (31%), were drafted into
special units of the
Austro-Hungarian Army as early as 1879 and were commended for their bravery in service of the Austrian emperor, being awarded more medals than any other unit. The military march "
Die Bosniaken kommen" was composed in their honor by
Eduard Wagnes. Russian
Pan-Slavic organizations sent aid to the Balkan rebels and so pressured the tsar's government to declare war on the Ottoman Empire in 1877 in the name of protecting Orthodox Christians.
1908: Bosnian Crisis The monarchy eventually
annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in October 1908 as a common holding of Cisleithania and Transleithania under the control of the
Imperial & Royal finance ministry rather than attaching it to either territorial government. The annexation in 1908 led some in Vienna to contemplate combining Bosnia and Herzegovina with Croatia to form a third Slavic component of the monarchy. The deaths of Franz Joseph's brother,
Maximilian (1867), and his only son,
Rudolf, made the Emperor's nephew,
Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne. The Archduke was rumoured to have been an advocate for this trialism as a means to limit the power of the Hungarian aristocracy. A proclamation issued on the occasion of its annexation to the Habsburg monarchy in October 1908 promised these lands constitutional institutions, which should secure to their inhabitants full civil rights and a share in the management of their own affairs by means of a local representative assembly. In performance of this promise a constitution was promulgated in 1910. The principal players in the
Bosnian Crisis of 1908–09 were the foreign ministers of Austria and Russia,
Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal and
Alexander Izvolsky. Both were motivated by political ambition; the first would emerge successful, and the latter would be broken by the crisis. Along the way, they would drag Europe to the brink of war in 1909. They would also divide Europe into the two armed camps that would go to war in July 1914. in 1898 Aehrenthal had started with the assumption that the Slavic minorities could never come together, and the Balkan League would never cause any damage to Austria. He turned down an Ottoman proposal for an alliance that would include Austria, Turkey, and Romania. However, his policies alienated the Bulgarians, who turned instead to Russia and Serbia. Although Austria had no intention to embark on additional expansion to the south, Aehrenthal encouraged speculation to that effect, expecting that it would paralyze the Balkan states. Instead, it incited them to feverish activity to create a defensive block to stop Austria. A series of grave miscalculations at the highest level thus significantly strengthened Austria's enemies. In 1914, Slavic militants in Bosnia rejected Austria's plan to fully absorb the area; they
assassinated the Austrian heir and precipitated World War I.
1914–1918: World War I Prelude to World War I is usually associated with the capture of
Gavrilo Princip, although some believe it depicts Ferdinand Behr, a bystander detained by mistake. The 28 June 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the Bosnian capital,
Sarajevo, excessively intensified the existing traditional religion-based ethnic hostilities in Bosnia. However, in Sarajevo itself, Austrian authorities encouraged violence against the Serb residents, which resulted in
anti-Serb riots in Sarajevo, in which Catholic Croats and
Bosnian Muslims killed two and damaged numerous Serb-owned buildings. Writer
Ivo Andrić referred to the violence as the "Sarajevo frenzy of hate." Violent actions against ethnic Serbs were organized not only in Sarajevo but also in many other larger Austro-Hungarian cities in modern-day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Austro-Hungarian authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina imprisoned and extradited approximately 5,500 prominent Serbs, 700 to 2,200 of whom died in prison. Four hundred sixty Serbs were sentenced to death and a predominantly Muslim special militia known as the
Schutzkorps was established and carried out the persecution of Serbs. , 29 June 1914 armoured train in 1914 Some members of the government, such as Minister of Foreign Affairs
Count Leopold Berchtold and Army Commander
Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, had wanted to confront the resurgent Serbian nation for some years in a preventive war, but the Emperor and Hungarian prime minister
István Tisza were opposed. The foreign ministry of Austro-Hungarian Empire sent ambassador
László Szőgyény to
Potsdam, where he inquired about the standpoint of the German emperor,
Wilhelm II, on 5 July and received a supportive response. The leaders of Austria–Hungary therefore decided to confront Serbia militarily before it could incite a revolt; using the assassination as an excuse, they presented a list of ten demands called the
July Ultimatum,
Wartime foreign policy and
Wilhelm IIwith military commanders during World War I The Austro-Hungarian Empire played a relatively passive diplomatic role in the war, as it was increasingly dominated and controlled by Germany. The only goal was to punish Serbia and try to stop the ethnic breakup of the Empire, and it completely failed. Starting in late 1916 the new Emperor Karl removed the pro-German officials and opened peace overtures to the Allies, whereby the entire war could be ended by compromise, or perhaps Austria would make a separate peace from Germany. The main effort was vetoed by Italy, which had been promised large slices of Austria for joining the Allies in 1915. Austria was only willing to turn over the Trentino region but nothing more. Karl was seen as a defeatist, which weakened his standing at home and with both the Allies and
Germany.
Homefront The heavily rural empire did have a small industrial base, but its major contributions were manpower and food. Nevertheless, Austria–Hungary was more urbanized (25%) than its actual opponents in the war, like the Russian Empire (13.4%), Serbia (13.2%) or Romania (18.8%). Furthermore, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had also more industrialized economy and higher GDP per capita than the Kingdom of Italy, which was economically the far most developed actual opponent of the Empire. On the home front, food grew scarcer and scarcer, as did heating fuel. Hungary, with its heavy agricultural base, was somewhat better fed. The army conquered productive agricultural areas in Romania and elsewhere, but refused to allow food shipments to civilians back home. Morale fell every year, and the diverse nationalities gave up on the empire and looked for ways to establish their own nation states. Inflation soared, from an index of 129 in 1914 to 1589 in 1918, wiping out the cash savings of the middle class. In terms of war damage to the economy, the war consumed about 20 percent of the
gross domestic product. The dead soldiers amounted to about four percent of the 1914 labor force, and the wounded ones to another six percent. Compared to the major countries in the war, the death and casualty rates were toward the high end regarding the present-day territory of Austria.
Theaters of operations The Austro-Hungarian Empire conscripted 7.8 million soldiers during the war. General von Hötzendorf was the Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff. Franz Joseph I, who was much too old to command the army, appointed
Archduke Friedrich von Österreich-Teschen as Supreme Army Commander (Armeeoberkommandant), but asked him to give Von Hötzendorf freedom to take any decisions. Von Hötzendorf remained in effective command of the military forces until Emperor Karl I took supreme command himself in late 1916 and dismissed Conrad von Hötzendorf in 1917. Meanwhile, economic conditions on the home front deteriorated rapidly. The empire depended on agriculture, and agriculture depended on the heavy labor of millions of men who were now in the army. Food production fell, the transportation system became overcrowded, and industrial production could not successfully handle the overwhelming need for munitions. Germany provided a great deal of help, but it was not enough. Furthermore, the political instability of the multiple ethnic groups within the empire now ripped apart any hope for national consensus in support of the war. Increasingly there was a demand for breaking up the empire and setting up autonomous national states based on historic, language-based cultures. The new emperor sought peace terms from the Allies, but his initiatives were vetoed by Italy.
Serbian front 1914–1916 in Serbia, pictured in August 1914, was the first target of the
Austro-Hungarian punitive expedition and the site of many
atrocities committed against the local population. At the start of the war, the army was divided into two: the smaller part attacked Serbia, while the larger part fought against the formidable
Imperial Russian Army. The invasion of Serbia in 1914 was a disaster: by the end of the year, the Austro-Hungarian Army had taken no territory, but had lost 227,000 out of a total force of 450,000 men. However, in the autumn of 1915, the Serbian Army was defeated by the Central Powers, which led to the occupation of Serbia. Near the end of 1915, in a massive rescue operation involving more than 1,000 trips made by Italian, French and British steamers, 260,000 Serb soldiers were transported to
Brindisi and
Corfu, where they waited for the chance of the victory of Allied powers to reclaim their country. Corfu hosted the Serbian government in exile after the collapse of Serbia and served as a supply base for the Greek front. In April 1916 a large number of Serbian troops were transported in British and French naval vessels from Corfu to mainland Greece. The contingent numbering over 120,000 relieved a much smaller army at the
Macedonian front and fought alongside British and French troops.
Russian front 1914–1917 in 1915 On the
Eastern front, the war started out equally poorly. The government accepted the Polish proposal of establishing the
Supreme National Committee as the Polish central authority within the empire, responsible for the formation of the
Polish Legions, an auxiliary military formation within the Austro-Hungarian Army. The Austro-Hungarian Army was defeated at the
Battle of Lemberg and the great fortress city of
Przemyśl was besieged and fell in March 1915. The
Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive started as a minor German offensive to relieve the pressure of the Russian numerical superiority on the Austro-Hungarians, but the cooperation of the Central Powers resulted in huge Russian losses and the total collapse of the Russian lines and their long retreat into Russia. The Russian Third Army disintegrated. In summer 1915, the Austro-Hungarian Army, under a unified command with the Germans, participated in the successful Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive. From June 1916, the Russians focused their attacks on the Austro-Hungarian Army in the
Brusilov Offensive, recognizing the latter's numerical inferiority. By the end of September 1916, Austria–Hungary mobilized and concentrated new divisions, and the successful Russian advance was halted and slowly repelled; but the Austrian armies took heavy losses (about 1 million men) and never recovered. Nevertheless, the huge losses in men and
materiel inflicted on the Russians during the offensive contributed greatly to the
Russian Revolution of 1917 and caused an economic crash in the Russian Empire. The
Act of 5 November 1916 was then proclaimed to the
Poles jointly by the Emperors
Wilhelm II of Germany and Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary. This act promised the creation of the
Kingdom of Poland out of the territory of
Congress Poland, envisioned by its authors as a
puppet state controlled by the Central Powers, with the nominal authority vested in the
Regency Council. The origin of that document was the dire need to draft new recruits from German-occupied Poland for the
war with Russia. Following the
Armistice of 11 November 1918 ending the World War I, in spite of the previous initial total dependence of the kingdom on its sponsors, it ultimately served against their intentions as the cornerstone
proto state of the nascent
Second Polish Republic, the latter composed also of territories never intended by the Central Powers to be ceded to Poland. The
Battle of Zborov (1917) was the first significant action of the
Czechoslovak Legions, which fought for the independence of Czechoslovakia against the Austro-Hungarian Army.
Italian front 1915–1918 on 3 November 1918, after the
Battle of Vittorio Veneto. Italy's victory marked the end of the war on the
Italian Front and secured the dissolution of Austria–Hungary. In May 1915, Italy attacked Austria–Hungary. Italy was the only military opponent of Austria–Hungary which had a similar degree of industrialization and economic level; moreover, her army was numerous (≈1,000,000 men were immediately fielded), but suffered from poor leadership, training and organization.
Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna marched his army towards the
Isonzo River, hoping to seize Ljubljana, and to eventually threaten Vienna. However, the
Royal Italian Army were halted on the river, where
four battles took place over five months (23 June – 2 December 1915). The fight was extremely bloody and exhausting for both sides. On 15 May 1916, Austrian Chief of Staff Conrad von Hötzendorf launched the
Strafexpedition ("
punitive expedition"): the Austrians broke through the front and occupied the
Asiago plateau. The Italians managed to resist and in a counteroffensive seized Gorizia on 9 August. Nonetheless, they had to stop on the
Carso, a few kilometres away from the border. At this point, several months of indecisive
trench warfare ensued (analogous to the
Western front). As the Russian Empire collapsed as a result of the
Bolshevik Revolution and the
Russians ended their involvement in the war, Germans and Austrians were able to transfer much of their manpower to the Western and Southern fronts from the erstwhile Eastern fighting. On 24 October 1917, Austrians (now enjoying decisive German support) attacked at
Caporetto using new infiltration tactics; although they advanced more than in the direction of Venice and gained considerable supplies, they were halted and could not cross the
Piave River. Italy, although suffering massive casualties, recovered from the blow, and a
coalition government under
Vittorio Emanuele Orlando was formed. Italy also enjoyed the support of the Entente: by 1918, large amounts of war materials and a few auxiliary American, British, and French divisions arrived in the Italian battle zone. Cadorna was replaced by General
Armando Diaz; under his command, the Italians retook the initiative and won the decisive
Second Battle of the Piave River (15–23 June 1918), in which some 60,000 Austrian and 43,000 Italian soldiers were killed. The final battle at
Vittorio Veneto was lost by 31 October 1918 and the armistice was signed at
Villa Giusti on 3 November.
Romanian front 1916–1917 On 27 August 1916, Romania declared war against Austria–Hungary. The
Romanian Army crossed the borders of eastern Hungary (Transylvania), but despite initial successes, by November 1916, the Austro-Hungarian, German, Bulgarian, and Ottoman armies had defeated the Romanian and Russian armies, and occupied the southern part of Romania (including
Oltenia,
Muntenia and
Dobruja). Within three months of the war, the Central Powers approached
Bucharest, the Romanian capital. On 6 December, Bucharest was captured, and part of the population moved to the unoccupied Romanian territory, in
Moldavia, together with the Romanian government, royal court and public authorities, which relocated to
Iași. In 1917, after several defensive victories (managing to stop the German-Austro-Hungarian advance), with Russia's withdrawal from the war following the October Revolution, Romania was forced to drop out of the war.
Role of Hungary , Romania Although the Kingdom of Hungary comprised only 42% of the population of Austria–Hungary, the thin majority more than 3.8 million soldiersof the Austro-Hungarian armed forces were conscripted from the Kingdom of Hungary during the First World War. Roughly 600,000 soldiers were killed in action, and 700,000 soldiers were wounded in the war. Austria–Hungary held on for years, as the Hungarian half provided sufficient supplies for the military to continue to wage war. The Austrians viewed the
German army favorably; on the other hand, by 1916 the general belief in Germany was that Germany, in its alliance with Austria–Hungary, was "shackled to a corpse". The operational capability of the Austro-Hungarian army was seriously affected by supply shortages, low morale and a high casualty rate, and by the army's composition of multiple ethnicities with different languages and customs.
1918: Demise, disintegration, dissolution envisaged the Habsburg Empire as being made up of five Kingdoms, in a last desperate attempt to save the Monarchy. " of the Austrian Empire, published in
Kraków in late 1918. Translation:"Overwhelmed with joy, until recently enslaved and now free Nations announce that their wicked step-mother AUSTRIA the WITCH, operated in
William's Clinic, died from senility after severe spasms, cursed by all those who had the infelicity of having to do with her. Her dreadful funeral took place during these days in the fields of Macedonia, on the
Piave River and across the
Rhine. Let her rest in eternal peace and may she never raise from the dead.
POLES,
CZECHO-
SLOVAKS,
YUGOSLAVS Funeral home
Wilson & Co." By 1918, the economic situation had deteriorated and governmental failure on the homefront ended popular support for the war. The Austro-Hungarian monarchy collapsed with dramatic speed in the autumn of 1918. Leftist and pacifist political movements organized strikes in factories, and uprisings in the army had become commonplace. As the war went on, the ethnic unity declined; the Allies encouraged breakaway demands from minorities and the Empire faced disintegration. However, on 18 October, United States Secretary of State
Robert Lansing replied that autonomy for the nationalities – the tenth of the Fourteen Points – was no longer enough. In fact, a
Czechoslovak provisional government had joined the Allies on 14 October. The South Slavs in both halves of the monarchy had already declared in favor of uniting with Serbia in a large South Slav state in the 1917
Corfu Declaration signed by members of the
Yugoslav Committee. The Croatians had begun disregarding orders from Budapest earlier in October. Lansing's response was, in effect, the death certificate of Austria–Hungary. During the Italian battles, the Czechoslovaks and Southern Slavs declared their independence. With defeat in the war imminent after the Italian offensive in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto on 24 October, Czech politicians peacefully took over command in Prague on 28 October (later declared the birth of Czechoslovakia) and followed up in other major cities in the next few days. On 30 October, the Slovaks did the same. On 29 October, the Slavs in both portions of what remained of Austria–Hungary proclaimed the
State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and declared that their ultimate intention was to unite with Serbia and Montenegro in
a large South Slav state. On the same day, the Czechs and Slovaks formally proclaimed the establishment of Czechoslovakia as an independent state. On 17 October 1918, the
Hungarian Parliament voted in favour of terminating the union with Austria. The most prominent opponent of continued union with Austria, Count
Mihály Károlyi, seized power in the
Aster Revolution on 31 October. Charles was all but forced to appoint Károlyi as his Hungarian prime minister. One of Károlyi's first acts was to formally repudiate the compromise agreement on 31 October, effectively terminating the personal union with Austria and thus officially dissolving the Austro-Hungarian state. By the end of October, there was nothing left of the Habsburg realm but its majority-German Danubian and Alpine provinces, and Karl's authority was being challenged even there by the German-Austrian state council. Karl's last Austrian prime minister,
Heinrich Lammasch, concluded that Karl's position was untenable. Lammasch persuaded Karl that the best course was to relinquish, at least temporarily, his right to exercise sovereign authority. On 11 November, Karl issued a carefully worded proclamation in which he recognized the Austrian people's right to determine the form of the state and "relinquish(ed) every participation" in Austrian state affairs. On the day after he announced his withdrawal from Austrian politics, the German-Austrian National Council proclaimed the
Republic of German Austria. Károlyi followed suit on 16 November, proclaiming the
Hungarian Democratic Republic. ==Government==