486. Origins.—The original Austria was a mark, or border county, lying along the south bank of the Danube, east of the river Enns, and founded by Charlemagne as a bulwark of the Frankish kingdom against the Slavs. During the ninth century the territory was overrun successively by the Moravians and the Magyars, or Hungarians, and all traces of Frankish occupation were swept away. At the middle of the tenth century, however, following Otto the Great's signal triumph over the Hungarians on the Lech in 955, the mark was reconstituted; and from that point the development of modern Austria is to be traced continuously. The name Österreich, i.e., "eastern empire" or "dominion," appears in a charter as early as 996.

The first notable period of Austrian history was that covered by the rule of the house of Babenberg. The government of the mark was intrusted by the Emperor Otto II. to Leopold of Babenberg in 976, and from that date to the extinction of the family in 1246 the energies of the Babenbergs were absorbed principally in the enlargement of the boundaries of their dominion and in the consolidation of its administration. In 1156 the mark was raised by King Frederick I. to the dignity of a duchy, and such were the privileges conferred upon it that the duke's only obligation consisted in the attending of any Imperial diet which should be held in Bavaria and the sending of a contingent to the Imperial army for such campaigns as should be undertaken in countries adjoining the duchy.

487. The Establishment of Hapsburg Dominion, 1276.—In 1251—five years after the death of the last Babenberg—the estates of the duchy elected as duke Ottakar, son of Wenceslaus I., king of Bohemia. In 1276, however, Duke Ottakar was compelled to yield his three dominions of Austria, Styria, and Carinthia to Rudolph of Hapsburg, who, in 1273, upon the breaking of the Interregnum, had become German king and emperor; and at this point began in Austria the rule of the illustrious Hapsburg dynasty of which the present Emperor Francis Joseph is a representative. Under the adroit management of Rudolph the center of gravity of Hapsburg power was shifted permanently from the Rhine to the Danube, and throughout the remainder of the Middle Ages the history of Austria is a story largely of the varying fortunes of the Hapsburg interests. In 1453 the duchy was raised to the rank of an archduchy, and later in the century the Emperor Maximilian I. entertained plans for the establishment of an Austrian electorate, or even an Austrian kingdom. These plans were not carried into execution, but the Austrian lands were constituted one of the Imperial circles which were created in 1512, and in 1518 representatives of the various Austrian Landtage, or diets, were gathered for the first time in national assembly at Innsbrück.

488. Austro-Hungarian Consolidation.—In 1519 Maximilian I. was succeeded in the archduchy of Austria, as well as in the Imperial office, by his grandson Charles of Spain, known thenceforth as the Emperor Charles V. To his brother Ferdinand, however. Charles resigned the whole of his Austrian possessions, and to Austrian affairs he gave throughout his reign but scant attention. Ferdinand, in turn, devoted himself principally to warfare with the Turks and to an attempt to secure the sovereignty of Hungary. His efforts met with a measure of success and there resulted that affiliation of Austria and Hungary which, though varying greatly from period to period in strength and in effect, has been maintained to the present day. During a century succeeding Ferdinand's accession to the Imperial throne in 1556, the affairs of Austria were inextricably intertwined with those of the Empire, and it was only with the virtual disintegration of the Empire in consequence of the Thirty Years' War that the Hapsburg sovereigns fell back upon the policy of devoting themselves more immediately to the interests of their Austrian dominion.

The fruits of this policy were manifest during the long reign of Leopold I., who ruled in Austria from 1655 to 1705 and was likewise emperor during the last forty-eight years of this period. At the close of a prolonged series of Turkish wars, the Peace of Karlowitz, January 26, 1699, added definitely to the Austrian dominion Slavonia, Transylvania, and all Hungary save the banat of Temesvár, and thus completed the edifice of the Austrian monarchy.[646] The period was likewise one of internal consolidation. The Diet continued to be summoned from time to time, but the powers of the crown were augmented enormously, and it is to these years that scholars have traced the origins of that thoroughgoing bureaucratic régime which, assuming more definite form under Maria Theresa, continued unimpaired until the revolution of 1848. It was in the same period that the Austrian standing army was established.

489. Development of Autocracy Under Maria Theresa, 1740-1780.—The principal threads in Austrian history in the eighteenth century are the foreign entanglements, including the war of the Spanish Succession, the war of the Austrian Succession, and the Seven Years' War, and the internal measures, of reform and otherwise, undertaken by the successive sovereigns, especially Maria Theresa (1740-1780) and Joseph II. (1780-1790). For Austria the net result of the wars was the loss of territory and also of influence, among the states of the Empire, if not among those of all Europe. On the side of internal affairs it may be observed simply that Maria Theresa became virtually the founder of the unified Austrian state, and that, in social conditions generally, the reign of this sovereign marks more largely than that of any other the transition in the Hapsburg dominions from mediæval to modern times. Unlike her doctrinaire son and successor, Joseph, Maria Theresa was of an eminently practical turn of mind. She introduced innovations, but she clothed them with the vestments of ancient institutions. She made the government more than ever autocratic, but she did not interfere with the nominal privileges of the old estates. In Hungary the constitution was left untouched, but during the forty years of the reign the Diet was assembled only four times, and government was, in effect, by royal decree. Joseph II. assumed the throne in 1780 bent primarily upon a policy of "reform from above." Utterly unacquainted with the actual condition of his dominions and unappreciative of the difficulties inherent in their administration, the new sovereign set about the sweeping away of the entire existing order and the substituting of a governmental scheme which was logical enough, to be sure, but entirely impracticable. The attempt, as was inevitable, failed utterly.

490. Austria and France, 1789-1815.—Leopold II. inherited, in 1790, a dominion substantially as it was at the death of Maria Theresa. Prior to his accession Leopold had acquired a reputation for liberalism, but apprehension aroused by the revolution in France was of itself sufficient to turn him promptly into the traditional paths of Austrian autocracy. His reign was brief (1790-1792), but that of his son and successor, Francis II., which continued through the revolutionary epoch, was essentially a continuation of it, and from first to last there was maintained with complete success that relentless policy of "stability" so conspicuously associated later with the name of Metternich. Hardly any portion of Europe was less affected by the ideas and transformations of the Revolution than was Austria.

Having resisted by every means at her disposal, including resort to arms, the progress of revolution, Austria set herself firmly, likewise, in opposition to the ambitions of Napoleon. Of the many consequences of the prolonged combat between Napoleon and the Hapsburg power, one only need be mentioned here. August 11, 1804, Francis II., archduke of Austria and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, assumed the name and title of Francis I., emperor of Austria. To the taking of this step the Hapsburg monarch was influenced in part by Napoleon's assumption, three months previously, of the title of emperor of the French, and in part by anticipation that the Holy Roman Empire would soon be subverted completely by the conqueror. The apprehension proved well-founded. Within two years it was made known definitely that the Napoleonic plan of international readjustment involved as one of its principal features the termination, once for all, of an institution which, as Voltaire had already said, was "no longer holy, Roman, or an empire." August 6, 1806, the title and functions of Holy Roman Emperor were relinquished formally by the Austrian monarch. The Austrian imperial title of to-day, dates, however, from 1804.

II. Hungarian Political Development to 1815

491. Beginnings.—According to accounts which are but indifferently reliable, the Magyars, or Hungarians, lately come as invaders from Asia, made their first appearance in the land which now bears their name in the year 895. Certain it is that during the first half of the tenth century they terrorized repeatedly the populations of Germany and France, until, in 955, their signal defeat at the Lechfeld by the German king (the later Emperor Otto I.) checked effectually their onslaughts and re-enforced the disposition already in evidence among them to take on a settled mode of life. In the second half of the tenth century they occupied definitely the valleys of the Danube and the Theiss, wedging apart, as do their descendants to this day, the Slavs of the north and those of the Balkan regions.