FRANCIS I

FRANCIS I (1768–1835), last Holy Roman Emperor as Francis II (1792–1806) and first emperor of Austria (1804–1835).

Francis I was born 12 February 1768 in Florence and died 2 March 1835 in Vienna. As his dual title suggests, Francis was a transitional figure from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth century. Unfortunately for him and his Austrian Empire, he himself failed to keep up with that transition.

Francis was the son of Leopold I, grand duke of Tuscany (1765–1790), and the nephew of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (r. 1765–1790). He was brought to Vienna in 1784 and given the education of an enlightened absolutist. Following Joseph II's premature death in 1790, Francis's father became Emperor Leopold II; his death on 1 March 1792 resulted in Francis's succession to the Habsburg patrimony, and coronation as Emperor Francis II on 14 July 1792.

The declaration of war by revolutionary France on Austria and Prussia on 20 April 1792 had already unleashed the forces of revolution and war that were to consume, among others, Francis's aunt, Marie-Antoinette, and then most of the European ancien régime. Defeat of Austria in the First Coalition War (1792–1797) and the Second Coalition War (1799–1801) resulted in the humiliating Treaty of Lunéville of 1801 and, eventually, the reorganization of the Holy Roman Empire in 1803. After further defeat in the Third Coalition War (1805) and the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine in July 1806, Francis abdicated as Holy Roman Emperor on 6 August 1806, declaring the empire dissolved. He had, however, already declared himself first "hereditary Emperor of Austria" on 11 August 1804, in response to Napoleon's becoming emperor of the French earlier that year. Hence Emperor Francis II became Emperor Francis I.

Francis met the minor threat of revolution in Austria with the brutal suppression of domestic opposition, as in the execution of the "Austrian Jacobins" in 1794. The traumatic military losses to the French, however, compelled him to embrace in 1806 the "nationalist" reform program of Count Johann Philipp Stadion-Warthausen. The military was modernized by Francis's brother, Charles (1771–1847). Reform was cut short, however, by the premature declaration of war in February 1809. Coordinated with a rebellion against Bavarian rule in Tyrol, the new war led to even more disaster. Charles handed Napoleon his first defeat in battle at Aspern-Essling, but the war was lost and the Treaty of Schönbrunn of 14 October 1809 reduced Austria to a French satellite. Abandoning reform, Francis appointed Count Clemens Metternich as foreign minister in 1809. Initially Metternich followed a pro-French line, arranging the marriage of Francis's eldest daughter, Marie Louise, to Napoleon and having Austria participate in the invasion of Russia in 1812. Once the tide had turned, however, Metternich adeptly changed sides and returned Austria to the anti-French coalition, which finally conquered the French in 1814. Francis I thus ended the French wars as the victorious host of the Vienna Congress (1814–1815), the nine-month-long conference at which Europe was "restored."

Austria emerged from the French Wars territorially larger and more integrated; Metternich, promoted to state chancellor by Francis in 1821, was regarded as the doyen of diplomacy and the "coachman of Europe." Through the Holy Alliance of 1815 and a series of Congresses (Aix-la-Chapelle, 1818; Troppau, 1821; Laibach, 1821; and Verona, 1822), Metternich imposed his "system," and hence an apparent Austrian hegemony, over Continental European affairs. The appearance of Austrian power was illusory. Austria had been severely damaged economically and financially by decades of war, with a state bankruptcy in 1811, and its economic recovery after 1815 lagged behind that of other European states. Austria, therefore, could never really afford its new responsibilities in Metternich's system.

Francis I himself was so traumatized by the experience of "revolution" and its consequences that his response after 1815 was to stop all political change wherever possible. Hence Austria was involved in suppressing national and liberal movements in Italy, Germany (notably in the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819), and elsewhere, which earned it the reputation of being the chief oppressor of the European peoples. At home as well, Francis backed a policy that valued loyalty and obedience above all else. He even refused to act on cosmetic reform measures that Metternich himself proposed. Although not averse to economic change, as shown by his favorable attitude to entrepreneurs, including Jewish financiers such as the Rothschilds, Francis rigidly opposed all political change and persisted in his bureaucratic but highly inefficient and procrastinating, absolutist practice.

The relative peace and prosperity of the "Biedermeier" period after 1815 meant that Francis I, with his reputed love of middle-class domesticity, enjoyed a quite good relationship with most of his subjects up to his death in 1835. Yet he was hated by the liberal and nationalist intelligentsias of his empire and of Europe, and his reactionary approach is usually seen as being a major cause of Austria's problems at midcentury.

See alsoCongress of Vienna; French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars; Metternich, Clemens von; Napoleonic Empire; Prussia; Restoration.

bibliography

Rumpler, Helmut, Eine Chance für Mitteleuropa. Vienna, 1997.

Sked, Alan. The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 1815–1918. London and New York, 1989.

Tritsch, Walther. Metternich und sein Monarch. Darmstadt, 1952.

Wheatcroft, Andrew. The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire. Harmondsworth, U.K., 1995.

Ziegler, Walter. "Franz I. von Österreich (1806–1835)." In Die Kaiser der Neuzeit, 1519–1918, edited by Ziegler and Anton Schindling, 309–328. Munich, 1990.

Steven Beller