The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

§ 9. The Dominions of Austria.

We now come to one among these German states which have parted off from the kingdom of Germany whose course has been widely different from the rest, and whose modern European importance stands on a widely different level. As the Lotharingian and Frisian lands parted off on the north-west of the kingdom, as a large part of the Swabian lands parted off to the south-west of the kingdom, so the Eastern Mark, the mark of Austria, parted off no less, but with widely different consequences. ♦Origin of the name Oesterreich, Austria.♦ The name of Austria, Oesterreich—Ostrich as our forefathers wrote it—is, naturally enough, a common name for the eastern part of any kingdom. ♦Other lands so called.♦ The Frankish kingdom of the Merwings had its Austria; the Italian kingdom of the Lombards had its Austria also. We are half inclined to wonder that the name was never given in our own island either to Essex or to East-Anglia. But, while the other Austrias have passed away, the Oesterreich, the Austria, the Eastern mark, of the German kingdom, its defence against the Magyar invader, has lived on to our own times. It has not only lived on, but it has become one of the chief European powers. And it has become so by a process to which it would be hard to find a parallel. ♦Special position of the Austrian power.♦ The Austrian duchy supplied Germany with so many Kings, and Rome with so many Emperors, that something of Imperial character came to cleave to the duchy itself. Its Dukes, in resigning, first, the crown of Germany, and then all connexion with Germany, have carried with them into their new position the titles and bearings of the German Cæsars. ♦Union with Hungary.♦ The power which began as a mark against the Magyar came to have a common sovereign with the Magyar kingdom; and the Austrian duchy and Magyar kingdom, each drawing with it a crowd of smaller states of endless nationalities, have figured together in the face of modern Europe as the Austrian Empire or the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. ♦The so-called ‘Empire’ of Austria.♦ It is not easy, in drawing a map, to find a place for the ‘Empire’ of Austria. The Archduchy is there, and its sovereign has not dropped his archiducal title. A crowd of kingdoms, duchies, counties, and lordships, all acknowledging the sovereignty of the same prince, are there also. But it is not easy to find the geographical place of an ‘Empire’ of Austria, as distinct from the Archduchy. Nor is it easy to understand on what principle an ‘Empire’ of Austria can be understood as taking in all the states which happen to own the Hungarian King and Austrian Archduke as their sovereign. The matter is made more difficult when we remember that the title of ‘Hereditary Emperor of Austria’ was first taken while its bearer was still King of Germany and Roman Emperor-elect. ♦Union of separate states under the Austrian House.♦ But, putting questions like these aside, the gradual union of a great number of states, German and non-German, under the common rule of the archiducal house of Austria, by whatever name we call the power so formed, is a great fact both of history and of geography. A number of states, originally independent of one another, differing in origin and language and everything that makes states differ from one another, some of them members of the former Empire, some not, have, as a matter of fact, come together to form a power which fills a large space in modern history and on the modern map. ♦Lack of national unity.♦ But it is a power which is altogether lacking in national unity. It is a power which is not coextensive with any nation, but which takes in parts of many nations. It cannot even be said that there is a dominant nation surrounded by subject nations. ♦German, Magyar, and other races.♦ The Magyar nation in its unity, and a fragment of the German nation, stand side by side on equal terms, while Italians, Roumans, and Slaves of almost every branch of the Slavonic race, are grouped around those two. ♦No strictly federal tie.♦ There is no federal tie; it is a stretch of language to apply the federal name to the present relation between the two chief powers of Hungary and Austria. Nor can any strictly federal tie be said to unite Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, and Galicia. And yet these other members of the general body are not mere subject provinces, like the dominions of Old Rome. The same prince is sovereign of a crowd of separate states, two of which stand out prominently as centres among the rest. There is neither national unity, nor federation, nor mere subjection of one land or nation to another. All this has come by the gradual union by various means of many crowns upon the same brow. ♦Anomalous nature of the Austrian power.♦ The result is an anomalous power which has nothing else exactly like it, past or present. But the very anomaly makes the growth of such a power a more curious study.

♦The Eastern Mark.♦

The beginnings of the Austrian state are to be found in the small Mark on the Danube, lying between Bohemia, Moravia, and the Duchy of Kärnthen or Carinthia. It appears in its first form as an appendage to Bavaria.[17] This mark Frederick Barbarossa raised into a duchy, under its first duke Henry the Second, and it was enlarged to the westward at the expense of Bavaria by the addition of the lands above the Enns. ♦Duchy of Austria, 1156.♦ Thus was formed the original Duchy of Austria, the duchy of the Dukes of the House of Babenberg. It had not long risen to ducal rank before it began to extend itself at the expense of states which had hitherto been of greater moment than itself. Itself primarily a mark against the Magyar, Austria had to the south of it the lands where the German Kingdom marched at once upon the Magyar, the Slave, and the Kingdom of Italy. ♦Duchy of Carinthia.♦ Here lay the great Duchy of Carinthia, a land where the population was mainly Slave, though on this frontier the Slavonic population had been brought into much earlier and more thorough subjection to the German Kings than the Slaves on the north-eastern frontier. ♦Duchy of Styria, 1180;♦ At the time of the foundation of the duchy of Austria, the Carinthian duchy had begun to split in pieces, and its northern part, hitherto the Upper Carinthian Mark, grew into the Duchy of Steyermark or Styria. ♦united to Austria, 1192.♦ Twelve years later, Leopold the Fifth of Austria inherited the duchy of Styria, a duchy greater than his own, by the will of its duke Ottokar. Carinthia itself went on as a separate duchy; but it now took in only a narrow territory in the south-western part of the old duchy, and that broken up by outlying possessions of the archbishops of Salzburg and other ecclesiastical lords. ♦The county of Görz.♦ To the south grew up a considerable power in the hands of the counts of Görz or Gorizia on the Italian border. ♦Ecclesiastical position of its Counts.♦ The possessions of these counts stretched, though not continuously, from Tyrol to Istria, and their influence was further enlarged by their position as advocates of the bishoprics of Trent and Brixen and of the more famous patriarchate of Aquileia. These are the lands, the marchlands of Germany towards its eastern and south-eastern neighbours, which came by gradual annexations to form the German possessions of the Austrian power. But the further growth of that power did not begin till the duchy itself had passed away to the hands of a wholly new line of princes.

♦Momentary union of Austria and Bohemia.♦

The first change was one which brought about for a moment from one side an union which was afterwards to be brought about in a more lasting shape from the other side. This was the annexation of Austria by the kingdom of Bohemia. ♦Bohemia a kingdom, 1158.♦ That duchy had been raised to the rank of a kingdom, though of course without ceasing to be a fief of the Empire, a few years after the mark of Austria had become a duchy. The death of the last duke of Austria of the Babenberg line led to a disputed succession and a series of wars, in which the princes of Bavaria, Bohemia, and Hungary all had their share. ♦Ottokar of Bohemia annexes Austria and Styria, 1252-1262. Carinthia, 1269.♦ In the end, between marriage, conquest, and royal grant, Ottokar king of Bohemia obtained the duchies of Austria and Styria, and a few years later he further added Carinthia by the bequest of its Duke. Thus a new power was formed, by which several German states came into the power of a Slavonic king. ♦Great power of Ottokar.♦ The power of that king for a moment reached the Baltic as well as the Hadriatic; for Ottokar carried his arms into Prussia, and became the founder of Königsberg. But this great power was but momentary. Bohemia and Austria were again separated, and Austria, with its indefinite mission of extension over so many lands, including Bohemia itself, passed to a house sprung from a distant part of Germany.

♦House of Habsburg.♦

We have now come to the European beginnings of the second House of Austria, the house whose name seems to have become inseparably connected with the name of Austria, though the spot from which that house drew its name has long ceased to be an Austrian possession. This is the house of the Counts of Habsburg. They took this name from their castle on the lower course of the Aar, in the north-west corner of the Aargau, in that southern Swabian land where the Old League of High Germany was presently to arise, and so greatly to extend itself at the cost of the power of Habsburg. ♦Union of Habsburg, Kyburg, and Lenzburg.♦ By an union of the lands of Habsburg with those of the Counts of Kyburg and Lenzburg, a considerable, though straggling, dominion was formed. It stretched in and out among the mountains and lakes, taking in Luzern, and forming a dangerous neighbour to the free city of Zürich. ♦Their possession in Elsass.♦ Besides these lands, the same house also held Upper Elsass with the title of Landgrave, a dominion separated from the other Swabian lands of the House by the territory of the free city of Basel. ♦Rudolf king, 1273.
His victories over Ottokar, 1276-1278.
Albert of Habsburg Duke of Austria and Styria, 1282.♦ The lord of this great Swabian dominion, the famous Rudolf, being chosen to the German crown, and having broken the power of Ottokar, bestowed the duchies of Austria and Styria on his son Albert, afterwards King. ♦Meinhard Duke of Carinthia and Count of Tyrol, 1286.♦ Carinthia at first formed part of the same grant; but it was presently granted to Meinhard Count of Görz and Tyrol. Görz passed to another branch of the house of its own Counts. Three powers were thus formed in these regions, the duchies of Austria and Styria, the duchy of Carinthia with the county of Tyrol, and the county of Görz.

♦Scattered territories of the House of Habsburg.♦