The Habsburg Empire 1700-1918

Jean Berenger,C.A. Simpson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317895725
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This is the eagerly awaited second volume of Jean Bérenger's history of the Habsburgs. It covers the last two centuries of their rule and provides a compelling account of the fluctuations of Habsburg dynastic power and its disintegration after World War One. Bérenger gives a rich portrait of Habsburg greatness under Maria Theresa and Joseph II and shows how their successors proved more adroit at riding the tide of nationalism in their multi-ethnic empire than is often recognised.

CHAPTER ONE

The War of the Spanish Succession (1665–1713)

Charles II of Spain, on 2 October 1700, a month before he died and already in a much weakened state, named his successor in his will and so achieved the most significant act of his thirty-five-year reign. The king had yielded to pressure from cardinal Portocarrero and the Castilian national party and by disinheriting his uncle, the emperor Leopold I, he had barred the cadet branch of the Habsburg family from what it saw as its rightful inheritance and distanced himself from the House of Habsburg. The Spanish nation wanted to preserve the Spanish monarchy of Charles V and Philip II and would not countenance any division of Spanish territories. The Council of Spain knew that the Austrian monarchy, for all its recent victories in Hungary, was incapable of successfully defending its Madrid ally in the war which then seemed inevitable.

The great powers had completed the final stages of their plans directed against the Habsburgs. Louis XIV of France and William of Orange, as king of England, elaborated a compromise solution which found no favour with the Castilian patriots. They proposed that Leopold I should receive the Spanish crown and compensate his Bourbon cousins, the descendants of Maria Theresa, the Spanish infanta and wife of Louis XIV, by giving them the House of Austria’s entire Italian patrimony. Since Philip IV’s death, the Madrid government had been firmly opposed to any division of Charles II’s possessions and had advocated the alternative plan of making the heir the duke of Anjou, Louis XIV and Maria Theresa’s grandson, on sole condition that he guaranteed the integrity of the Spanish monarchy. Charles II’s decision in his will was surprising and marked the subordination of the dynastic principle to the idea of the nation. It had a decisive effect on how the Habsburgs in the future maintained the balance of power in Europe. The interests involved were so great and so conflicting that to find a peaceful settlement was a great challenge, even though the question of a successor to Charles II had exercised the chancelleries of Europe since the signing of the Peace of the Pyrenees in 1659. Why this was the case becomes clearer when all the negotiations relating to the Spanish succession are examined.¹

THE DYNASTIC PROBLEM

Philip IV, immortalized by Velazquez’s portraits, had not, for all his manifest carnality, produced many heirs by his two marriages. From his marriage to the Bourbon princess Isabella, the daughter of Henry IV of France, only the infanta Maria Theresa had survived. The infante don Balthazar Charles had died while still a youth. By his second marriage to the archduchess Maria Anna, he had a daughter, the infanta Margarita Theresa who married her maternal uncle, Leopold I, and one son, the infante don Charles who was born after the Peace of the Pyrenees and came to the throne in 1665 at the age of four with his mother Maria Anna as regent. At Philip IV’s death in September 1665, the future of the Spanish dynasty seemed bleak since the sole representative of the senior branch was a sickly, epileptic child. The courts of Europe expected this ‘child-king’ would die before his tenth birthday and that the question of the Spanish succession would soon be posed. The cadet branch of the Habsburg family was reduced to Leopold I who had a delicate constitution and at the age of twenty-five was still without an heir. It had long been envisaged that Leopold would marry his cousin, the infanta Maria Theresa, and so Vienna took the Franco-Spanish marriage of 1659 as an insult and a catastrophe for the dynasty. Leopold decided to ask for the hand of Maria Theresa’s younger sister who had been born in 1650. The Spanish court replied that it was desirable to wait in such matters and did not make marriage arrangements for the infanta Margarita Theresa until 1666 and then insisted that Leopold settle at Madrid, a condition which the young emperor refused to fulfil. He received his wife at Vienna with joy and surrounded her with affection. Their marriage was a rare success among those of contemporary sovereigns. The empress had delicate health and found it hard to bear the chilling fogs of Vienna and the annual pregnancies which the interests of state imposed upon her. The archduke Ferdinand, born in November 1667, survived but a few months. Only the archduchess Maria Antonia lived to adulthood and in 1682 married the elector of Bavaria, Max Emanuel, and bore him a son, Ferdinand.

Leopold’s second marriage to his cousin, Claudia Felicitas of the Tyrol, was without issue and it was only by his third marriage that the dynasty’s future was finally assured. Unable to find an archduchess to marry, in 1676 he took as his wife Eleanora of the Palatinate-Neuburg who belonged to a collateral branch of the House of Wittelsbach. This empress was robust and gave birth to two sons, the archdukes Joseph and Charles, who in due course both succeeded as emperor. Always a firm believer in divine providence, Leopold decided to dedicate his first-born to Joseph, Christ’s human father, and so introduced a new Christian name to the House of Austria. The birth of the archduke Charles in 1686 assured the dynasty’s future. He was destined by his father for the Spanish throne should Charles II die without issue. His elder brother, the archduke Joseph, was elected king of the Romans in 1690 and was called upon to perpetuate the German line of the family and so make it the senior branch.

Charles II, however, lived on. He led a reasonably normal life and in 1679, to seal French-Spanish reconciliation following the Dutch war, he married Marie Louise d’Orleans, the eldest daughter of Louis XIV’s brother. The young queen was made welcome and for a few years shook Charles II from his melancholy and made him lively and cheerful. She died in 1689, having reputedly been poisoned at the German party’s instigation by countess Soissons, prince Eugene of Savoy’s mother, who was knowledgeable on the subject of poisons and had quite wisely left the country. The German party then triumphed by marrying Charles II to one of the empress Eleanora’s sisters, Maria Anna of Neuburg. The novennas, pilgrimages and devotions undertaken that the king might father an heir proved of no avail and Charles II remained impotent. The Spanish succession again became an issue during the War of the League of Augsburg. This eased the way for the Peace of Ryswick (1697) which was based on compromise. Louis XIV showed moderation and renounced the réunions in return for recognition of French sovereignty over Alsace and Strasbourg.^*

THE FIRST PARTITION TREATY (1668)²

According to the dynastic principle of the House of Austria, if its senior branch became extinct, the whole inheritance would fall to the cadet branch. This meant that Leopold I stood to become sole heir, since at the time of their marriages Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII, and Maria Theresa, wife of Louis XIV, had renounced any claims to the Habsburg patrimony. Mazarin, however, at the time of the Peace of the Pyrenees in 1659, had made renunciation conditional upon receipt of 300 000 ducats as dowry and so had effectively made it null since in 1660 the Spanish treasury was incapable of handing over such a large sum of money. It is often overlooked that the most important consequence of the Peace of 1659 was not the annexation of Artois and Roussillon but the Spanish marriage and all the expectations it raised.

In 1666 the French government published Le traité des droits de la reine Marie-Thérèse and so showed that it had not renounced the inheritance and that a movement was already afoot to make good its claims. The War of Devolution (1667–68) enabled Louis XIV to reach a compromise with his brother-in-law Leopold I who had not been in a position to rush to the aid of the Spanish Netherlands, despite the urgent appeals of the regent, his sister Maria Anna, and the governor, the marquis Castel-Rodrigo. The Flanders campaign of 1667 under Louis XIV and Turenne’s command was made all the more smooth by Spain’s lacking the men and money necessary to resist the French army successfully.^3** During the summer of 1667, the secret conference held many discussions but the imperial army for the most part had been demobilized at the end of the Turkish war to reduce the strain on the treasury. The head of the council, Wenceslas Lobkowitz, opposed attempts to send veteran regiments to Flanders and with respect to the future succession, persuaded the emperor to negotiate a secret treaty of partition. Louis XIV gave Gremonville, his resident at Vienna, full authority. After heated discussions, he managed to secure a compromise in exchange for the promise of a cardinal’s hat for the prince of Auersperg, the former principal minister of Ferdinand III who had remained at the head of ‘the Spanish party’. Leopold I recognized Maria Theresa’s rights to her brother’s patrimony and in return for this concession Louis XIV abandoned Spain and the Indies to the emperor while accepting compensation in Italy, the Netherlands and the Iberian peninsula. Louis XIV would receive the whole of Navarre and so recover its southern part which Ferdinand of Aragón had conquered in 1512. He would also receive Rosas in Catalonia, the Spanish presidios in north Africa, Naples and Sicily, which guaranteed France’s preponderance in the western Mediterranean and eased commercial relations with the Levant. Finally, the treaty promised Louis XIV the Burgundian circle, the Spanish Netherlands and the Franche-Comté as well as the distant Philippines. The emperor Leopold would have Milan and the port of Finale in Liguria which guaranteed communications between Austria and Spain. Leopold would be free to give all or part of this inheritance to one of his children.

The promise of French military aid for the emperor when he eventually took possession of his patrimony was of vital importance. The two new allies undertook to persuade the Madrid government to agree to this settlement. Leopold sent the marquis of Grana to the regent Maria Anna to present her with the fait accompli while Condé invaded the Franche-Comté in early February 1668 and forced Spain to accept the idea of partition. The Bourbons and the Habsburgs of Vienna for the first time found themselves in the same camp against the Habsburgs of Madrid. The final clause, which was intended to ensure the operation’s success, was kept a closely guarded secret. The Austrian monarchy’s relative weakness meant that Leopold I would gain the most from the treaty. European politics resembled a family quarrel around a death-bed.

The Franco-Austrian rapprochement was short-lived since it was bitterly opposed by the emperor’s council and prince Lobkowitz became increasingly isolated. For the moment, the partition treaty enabled Louis XIV to satisfy himself with some places in Flanders and in May 1668 to sign the Peace of Aixla-Chapelle.

FRANCO-GERMAN RIVALRY⁴

The Rhineland princes, after the devastation of the Thirty Years War, valued peace above all else and feared a renewal of the conflict between France and the House of Austria. It was the elector of Mainz, Philip of Schönborn, who in 1665 proposed that the Spanish inheritance be divided. The War of Devolution provoked dismay and alarm at the rise of French imperialism. It was impossible to revitalize the League of the Rhine, the masterpiece of Mazarin’s diplomacy. A fact which is often overlooked is that the occupation of the duchy of Lorraine by the French army in 1670 led to a deterioration in Franco-German relations. The duke of Lorraine, the elderly Charles IV, and his nephew, the future victor at Vienna and Buda, took refuge in Germany and passed into the emperor’s service. The German party led by the chancellor Hocher and Montecuccoli, the president of the War Council, reduced Schwarzenberg and Lobkowitz’s influence and Leopold suspected the French of having fomented the Hungarian revolt. The Dutch war led to the end of good relations and Lobkowitz’s disgrace. There were no other champions of a French alliance at the Viennese court until the eighteenth century when Kaunitz came to power under the empress Maria-Theresa. Relations deteriorated to such an extent that Leopold forbade the use of French as ‘the language of his enemies’.

The Dutch war revealed the new system of continental alliances. It began as a small-scale operation carefully planned by Hugues de Lionne, but the French attack upon the United Provinces grew into a European conflict. Leopold I concluded an alliance with the United Provinces, former rebels against the House of Austria, and went to the help of the Spanish Netherlands. Louis XIV could count on active support only from the bishop of Münster and the elector of Cologne. Leopold I declared war on France in 1673 and the imperial troops under Montecuccoli’s command forced Turenne to retreat into Franconia. The following year, the Empire declared war and decreed a boycott of French merchandise. The army of the circles with Bournonville’s imperial troops and the Brandenburg army invaded Alsace in autumn 1674. A little earlier, the emperor had had Fürstenberg, the future cardinal and Louis XIV’s agent in Germany, arrested and imprisoned at Wiener Neustadt.⁵

Turenne gave orders to burn the Palatinate as part of a plan to protect Alsace by depriving the enemy of all possible sources of food and so impeding the German advance. This prompted an indignant letter from the palatine, Charles Louis, whose restoration France had effected by the terms of the Treaty of Westphalia. This single incident signified a complete reversal of the situation a quarter-century earlier; it was now the Habsburgs who appeared to the German princes as the defenders of German liberties, of justice and of peace. Louis XIV’s government did not completely grasp this change so prejudicial to French interests, but Leopold I had the wit to turn it to his advantage. Louvois put his faith in brute force and intimidation while the king underestimated the dignity and patriotism of those ministers and princes whom he hoped to turn into his clientele with gratuities and pensions.^6* The situation deteriorated after the Peace of Nijmegen (1678) when Louis XIV went on the defensive and employed questionable, but according to his principles, justifiable means. Using selected historic documents and playing with the term ‘dependencies’, which was then current but ambiguous, he launched his policy of réunions. To guarantee the security of the north-east frontier, the Chambers of Réunions compelled numerous Rhineland princes to declare themselves vassals of the French crown; those who demurred saw their patrimonies ‘re-united’ by force.⁷ Leopold I undertook the defence of the Empire and also of Spain, which was able to hold on to Luxemburg until 1684. The Spanish party and Charles of Lorraine thought that the emperor’s policies were too mild. In April 1682 they wanted the imperial army to be sent to the Rhine to attack France and so to retake Strasbourg and save Luxemburg.

The League of Augsburg enabled Leopold I in 1686 to put together a coalition made up of dissatisfied elements and Louis XIV’s enemies, namely the princes of the Empire including the elector of Brandenburg, the United Provinces, Spain and even Sweden whose king had suffered through Louis’s policy of réunions. The burning of the Palatinate in 1689, which this time was not simply the result of a general’s initiative but a concerted plan ordered from Versailles, led to a change in Louis XIV’s image which had already lost much of its lustre in Protestant Germany following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

This was why Leopold I no longer found himself isolated when he again raised the issue of who would succeed Charles II in Spain. The birth of the archduke Charles also helped the emperor since it was his second son who would be brought up to become king of Spain, thus dispelling fears that Charles V’s mighty empire might be reconstituted and ending any pretensions to universal monarchy. In addition, in 1689 William of Orange and the United Provinces had promised Leopold military and naval support to seize the wh...