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Franz joseph i of austria4/7/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Austria had issued ultimatums several times and mobilized troops during the Balkan Wars at a financial cost it could ill afford. Hopes that Bulgaria might crush the Serbs had been dashed by the Second Balkan War even worse, the events of 1912-13 had seriously undermined Austria-Hungary’s Romanian alliance. In the event of a war with Russia, Austria-Hungary now faced the prospect of having to fight on a second front in the south. Yet, the growing power of an increasingly assertive Serbian “Piedmont” after the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 worried the monarchy leadership. Moreover, in 1913, a government-sponsored party easily won most of the Serbian seats in the Bosnian diet. The dangers of Southern Slav irredentism may have been exaggerated by the alarmism of war hawks within the Austrian leadership after all, Croats, Serbs and Bosnian Muslims, with all their differences, comprised only six out of the empire’s 54 million inhabitants. ![]() Romanians and Serbs, however, were attracted by the economically more backward, but politically independent nation-states that had won their freedom from Ottoman rule during the 19 th century. German and Italian irredentism was contained by alliances with their potential sponsors Poles and Ukrainians generally preferred Austrian rule to Russian despotism Czechs and Slovaks, for the time being, had nowhere else to turn. As a multinational empire, Austria-Hungary was surrounded by irredentist movements on all sides. This blissful state of affairs ceased as soon as the survival of the Ottoman Empire was endangered. It benefited from the classic age of imperialism, in which attention was centered on parts of the world where Austrian interests were not at stake. Austria-Hungary did not take part in the scramble for Africa (or any other part of the world). In matters of foreign policy, Francis Joseph joined Germany in the Dual Alliance of 1879 and concluded less solid treaties with Italy (1882) and Romania (1883). While delegating routine administration to the governments in Vienna and Budapest, Francis Joseph thus managed to defend his prerogatives in terms of foreign policy and army command. However, since 1867, foreign policy and army administration were subject to scrutiny by a toothless parliamentary substitute, the so-called delegations, committees of both the Austrian and Hungarian parliaments, with a heavy dose of members from the House of Lords. Austria was turned into Austria-Hungary in 1867 and “neo-absolutism” into constitutional monarchy, with the trend towards parliamentary government gaining speed in Hungary, but being stopped in its tracks in Austria after the 1890s. These defeats also cost him absolute power domestically. In 1859, he authorized an ultimatum against Piedmont in 1866 he risked war against Prussia. During the revolutionary upheavals of 1848, he served for a few weeks with Josef Graf Radetzky’s (1766-1856) army in Italy and took part in the campaign against Hungary, famously entering Györ over a wooden bridge still smoldering with fire. Francis Joseph I, Emperor of Austria (1830-1916) experienced his share of war during the early years of his reign. ![]()
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