Elizabeth

Elizabeth (of Austria-Hungary)

Elizabeth (of Austria-Hungary) (1837-1898), empress of Austria and queen of Hungary. Elizabeth was born Amelia Eugenia Elizabeth near Munich, Germany, to Duke Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria. In 1854 she married Francis Joseph I of Austria, and they had four children. Elizabeth was popular with the people because of her beauty, charm, and generosity. However, the strict etiquette of the Austrian court, the domineering attitude of her mother-in-law, and her unhappy married life proved unbearable to the sensitive and unconventional empress-queen, and she insisted on spending several months abroad each year.

Elizabeth took little interest in public affairs, except in matters involving the Magyars, who then ruled Hungary. She learned the difficult Magyar (Hungarian) language and helped arrange the compromise of 1867, by which Hungary was raised to equal status with Austria in the empire of Austria-Hungary. In 1898 Elizabeth was assassinated in Geneva, Switzerland, by Luigi Luccheni, an Italian anarchist who stabbed her with a shoemaker's awl.

Francis Joseph I

Francis Joseph I (German Franz Josef) (1830-1916), emperor of Austria (1848-1916) and king of Hungary (1867-1916), the last important ruler of the Habsburg dynasty; his policies played a major role in the events that led to World War I (1914-1918).

Francis Joseph was born in Vienna, the eldest son of Archduke Francis Charles, who was brother and heir of Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I. Because Francis Charles renounced his right to the throne, Francis Joseph became emperor when Ferdinand abdicated during the revolution of 1848. With Russian help, he and his prime minister, Felix, prince zu Schwarzenberg, restored order in the empire and reestablished Austrian dominance in the German Confederation. In 1854 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, with whom he had one son and three daughters. Francis Joseph's failure to support Russia in the Crimean War (1853-1856) permanently damaged Austro-Russian relations. In the decade that followed, Austria lost most of its Italian possessions, as well as its position of leadership in Germany. Weakened by these reverses, Francis Joseph began to negotiate with Hungary on its demands for autonomy. In 1866 Transylvania was reunited with Hungary. In 1867 Austria and Hungary agreed to create a dual monarchy in which the two countries would be equal partners. Under the empire of Austria-Hungary, as it was known after 1867, Hungary had complete independence in internal affairs, but the two countries acted jointly in foreign affairs. The same year, Francis Joseph and Elizabeth were formally crowned king and queen of Hungary.

As the dual monarch, Francis Joseph planned to grant some form of self-government to the Austrian Slavs, but the German and Hungarian elites who controlled the empire opposed the plan. The resulting dissatisfaction among Francis Joseph's Czechoslovakian and Serbian subjects further weakened the Habsburg realms and caused increased friction with Russia, which championed the cause of Europe's Slavic peoples. Beginning in the 1870s, Austria-Hungary gradually became subservient to its powerful neighbor and ally, the Prussian-dominated German Empire.

Francis Joseph's later years were marked by a series of tragedies in his family. In 1889 his only son and heir to the throne, Archduke Rudolf, committed suicide; in 1898 his wife was assassinated by an Italian anarchist; and in 1914 his nephew, Francis Ferdinand, who had replaced Rudolf as heir to the throne, was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist. The murder of Francis Ferdinand precipitated the crisis between Austria-Hungary and Germany on the one hand, and Serbia and Russia on the other, that led to World War I. Francis Joseph did not live to see Austria's defeat in the war and the extinction of the Habsburg monarchy.