Ten Minute History The Austro Hungarian Empire Short Documentary

1848 and the Austrian Empire is having some trouble. This trouble occurred on March the 13th in Vienna when a crowd, mostly made up of students, demanded more rights than the government obliged, by shooting them, which led to riots. This riot was part of the larger trend of revolutions which swept across Europe in 1848. To oversimplify, they were largely concerned with improving the working lives of the peasantry, increasing democratic representation, and in many cases wanted to form states along national, ethnic and linguistic lines. This was bad news for the Austrian Empire since it was very diverse. It included many ethnic groups such as Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Ukrainians called Ruthenians at the time, Poles known as Galicians, Croats, Serbs, Italians, Romanians and many, many others. Some of these people wanted better representation and others preferred outright independence. The events of 1848 spread outside of Vienna quickly. On March the 15th in the city of Pest, revolutionaries demanded extra rights and soon after declared Hungarian independence, but importantly declared that Ferdinand would still be their king. The central government struggled to respond effectively and in Italy, the Austrian army withdrew from most of the revolting Italian states. This left them wide open for invasion, which the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia did soon after. The Imperial army marched into Hungary, was pushed back to Vienna and counterattacked. In December, the Minister President of Austria, Felix Furtzenberg, persuaded Emperor Ferdinand I to abdicate. Ferdinand was succeeded by his nephew, Franz Josef I, who wanted a strong response and soon after appealed to Russia for help. In the June of 1849, Russian troops entered Hungary, who had little chance resisting both empires. The Hungarian revolution was crushed, the invasion of Italy was repulsed and by 1852, the central government in Vienna had a firm grip over all of its territories again. Franz Josef essentially now ruled as an absolute monarch, relying on men like Schwarzenberg to enforce his will. Schwarzenberg was an exceptional statesman, but in 1852 his career suffered a slight setback when he died. So Austria was indebted to Russia for its help with putting down the Hungarian revolt and Russia expected help in return. Russia asked for this during the Crimean War, but Austria refused and the war was a Russian defeat. Austria's refusal to aid Russia meant that relations between the two soured hugely, which would eventually have consequences. In 1859, the Austrians were goaded into declaring war on Piedmont-Sardinia, who the French quickly came to the aid of. Long story short, the Austrians lost and surrendered Lombardy, the empire's wealthiest province, to Piedmont-Sardinia. Furthermore, the financial strains of war meant that the banking sector collapsed and with it, the government. The bankers refused to loan any more money until a constitution was created and so Franz Josef begrudgingly chose to begin reforms. These reforms culminated in 1861 with a compromise which frankly pleased no one. Franz Josef kept his control over military and foreign affairs, but most legislative and bureaucratic powers were transferred to the reformed imperial council. The imperial council, the parliament, was split into two houses. A house of deputies, which saw representatives elected by a complex system which favoured the wealthy and the Germans, and a house of lords, whose members were appointed by Franz Josef. The conservatives weren't happy because they'd lost some of their powers, the liberals weren't happy because they'd gained very little in terms of meaningful reform, and the emperor wasn't happy because he'd lost quite a bit of his own power. So, having failed in Italy, the Austrians attempted to find better fortune in Germany. This went terribly and ended in Austria losing a war with Prussia in 1866 over some territory in Schleswig-Holstein. The Austrians were defeated because they hadn't adapted to the new technologies and because the Italians had joined the Prussians. Austria lost Venice but gave it to France because they felt the Italians hadn't earned it before France gave it to them anyway. The Austrians were thereafter excluded from German affairs and at home this defeat was so destabilising it looked like it could tear the empire apart and so Franz Josef desperately tried to compromise with the ever restless Hungarians. This led to the 1867 Ausgleich between the Austrian and Hungarian halves of the empire which led to the creation of the Dual Monarchy, better known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The empire was split into two with the Hungarians ruling this area and the Austrians ruling this. These two were to be governed as separate entities with different governments and laws. The only thing they shared was a common foreign policy, military and ruler since Franz Josef was now both the Emperor of Austria and the King of Hungary. The terms of the agreement were to be renegotiated every ten years in further Ausgleichs which meant that pressing issues, most importantly army funding, could have the potential of tearing the Dual Monarchy apart. The other peoples of the empire criticised the agreement since they wanted autonomy too and many Austrians believed it gave the Hungarians too much power. To a certain extent this was kind of true since during the Franco-Prussian War, Franz Josef wanted to aid the French but the Hungarians refused, wanting no part in the war and so nothing happened except for the unification of Germany. In 1868 the army was reformed but compared to the other great powers, Austria-Hungary's military budget was still very small. In Hungary similar educational reforms were made but a lot of this was part of the Hungarianisation of the kingdom and attempt to homogenise the languages and identities of the people who lived there by making them Hungarian. Austria-Hungary now turned its attention to the Balkans. After the Ottomans were defeated by the Russian Empire in 1878, Austria-Hungary occupied the province of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This caused an even greater rift with the Russians who now saw the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a challenger to its interests in the Balkans. Incidentally, 1878 also marked the year that Pest merged with the neighbouring city of Buda, becoming Budapest. The Liberals didn't back the addition of these new territories and so the Emperor turned to a man called Edward von Taff who created a political coalition of minorities known as the Iron Ring. This managed to keep the Liberals out of power and importantly meant that the Empire took a much friendlier position towards its Slavic population. This worried the new German Empire who wanted a German-dominated Austria-Hungary. The Chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck, wanted to keep the Empire on side So Taff began to roll back some of the Liberal reforms such as shortening the length of mandatory education, giving the minorities of the Empire, particularly the Czechs, greater autonomy, strengthening the Catholic Church and passing anti-socialist legislation. The late 19th century was a difficult time for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1889, Franz Josef's son, Crown Prince Rudolf, committed suicide, meaning Franz Josef's brother, Karl Ludwig, became heir. Karl Ludwig would catch typhoid in 1898 and die, leaving his son and Franz Josef's nephew, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, as heir. The question of the minorities continued to plague the Empire and Taff was eventually ousted. His replacement didn't do much better and so the Emperor appointed a man called Kazimir Budenny in 1895. Budenny attempted to bring about reforms in Bohemia, giving the Czechs greater language rights and autonomy. The Bohemian government was dominated by German speakers who didn't want Czech to be an official language and so, riots. Budenny was removed by Franz Josef in 1897, but the problem continued. In Hungary, the liberals were still in control and continued the process of Hungarianisation, which in 1902 spread to the army. The Hungarians wanted their part of the Austro-Hungarian army to speak Hungarian instead of German. Franz Josef did not like this and after a great deal of arguing and threats, the army remained unreformed. At this point, the Empire was rapidly industrialising and even though it wasn't at the same level as, say, Britain or France, the areas around Vienna and Prague were very close. In terms of foreign policy, Austria-Hungary took a different approach to the other great powers. It didn't participate in the Scramble for Africa and didn't make much of an effort to secure a global empire simply because it lacked the navy to protect one. Closer to home, the Empire was worried about being too reliant on Germany and so sought to improve relations with Russia. This went terribly since in 1908, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia, which to put it mildly, upset the great powers, especially Russia, since they weren't consulted. This meant that the only ally the Austro-Hungarian Empire had left was the German Empire and that the other great powers no longer felt the need to include them in international affairs. The monarchy's weak position meant its neighbours eyed the territories, which included their fellow countrymen, and so the Empire needed to assert its prestige again, especially in the Balkans. One way of doing this was by sending the heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, to Bosnia. As everyone knows, it was here he was assassinated on June 28th 1914 at the hands of Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb who wanted the liberation of all Slavs from Austria-Hungary. The murder of the heir to the throne was seen as, to put it mildly, not okay and so Serbia, whose responsibility is debated, had to be punished with war. The decision to go to war was aided by the blank cheque the German Empire had given Franz Josef, which gave unconditional German backing to any actions he took. Franz Josef was mostly interested in keeping his dynasty's honour intact. He gave Serbia an ultimatum, Serbia said no to some of the terms, and so war, specifically the First World War. To summarise the war for Austria-Hungary, it went terribly. The army was disorganised and underfunded and the Empire was filled with political squabbles. When Austria-Hungary did win major battles, it was largely due to the intervention of allies like Bulgaria and especially Germany, who increasingly began to dominate the Empire's policies. The many minorities of the Empire, with some outside help, began to demand independence and this threatened to tear the Empire apart. To make matters more complicated, Franz Josef took this opportune moment to kick the bucket and was succeeded by Charles I, who was unprepared for the role. By 1918, the Empire was tearing itself apart and despite the promises of Charles to make the Empire a federation of equals, it collapsed towards the end of the year. An Armistice was signed in November, but by that point the Dual Monarchy had effectively ceased to exist and Charles I entered exile, ending 600 years of Habsburg rule over Austria. In the aftermath of the First World War, the Allied powers, mostly France and Britain, signed a series of treaties which dismembered the Empire. The 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye carved up the Austrian lands and the 1920 Treaty of Trianon did the same to the Kingdom of Hungary. Hungary in particular suffered and lost all of this, notably Transylvania to Romania, which still contained a sizeable Hungarian population. Hungary had attempted to keep Charles as their king, but were forbidden by the Allies, and in the end, after a brief stint of communism, settled on a regency led by Admiral Miklos Horthy. Austria tried to join Germany, but was forbidden and so became a republic. It also lost the territory of Tyrol and Istria to the Kingdom of Italy, but this did not please the Italians, who wanted more. Many of the Slavic lands in the South were given to the newly formed Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Czechoslovakia was established and the brand new Polish Republic gained these lands too, including the areas with the majority Ukrainian population. So the Austro-Hungarian Empire had come to an end and with it its long rule of Habsburg Monarchy. The new order set up in the wake of the collapse of the Dual Monarchy would only remain for about 20 years until all of the borders were redrawn again, this time mostly by the Third Reich. I hope you enjoyed this episode and thank you for watching. There's a list of books in the description if you'd like to learn more.