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Habsburgs: Austrian Habsburgs
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The Habsburgs eventually lost the last of their Swiss lands (including the Habsburg castle) in the early 15th century, but their centre of interests had shifted eastwards to Austria long before. In 1273 Rudolf, Count of Habsburg, was elected German King. Five years later, after he had defeated Ottokar II, King of Bohemia, in a battle at Dürnkrut in Lower Austria on 26 August 1278, he took the Austrian lands under his own administration. Austria and its associated crown lands were ruled by Habsburgs from that date until 1918, an incredible dynastic reign of 640 years by a single family.
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In the eighteenth century the male line of Austrian Habsburgs died out and Maria Theresa became Archduchess of Austria. The Silesian War (1740-1748) and the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) were fought to maintain the rule of Habsburg lands. The Habsburg dynasty was continued by Maria Theresa's son, Joseph II, succeeded by his nephew, Francis II.
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To secure their imperial status in Germany against Prussian enterprises, the Habsburgs exerted themselves to consolidate and to expand their central European bloc of territory. For this purpose Tuscany and the Netherlands were practically irrelevant. Tuscany in fact was kept separate from the ancient Habsburg inheritance: when the emperor Francis I died (1765), his eldest son, the emperor Joseph II, became coregent with his mother of the Austrian dominions, but Joseph's brother Leopold became grand duke of Tuscany; and similarly when Leopold succeeded to Joseph's titles (1790), his own second son succeeded to Tuscany as Ferdinand III. Thereafter the Tuscan branch of the Habsburgs remained distinct from the senior or imperial line.
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The first two thirds of the eighteenth century were not among the Habsburgs' happiest times. In 1700 the family had lost control of Spain altogether, on the death of King Carlos lI (10). Moreover, during the mid-eighteenth century and the War of the Austrian Succession, the Electoral College bared its fangs and voted for an anti-Habsburg Emperor (Charles VII) for the first time since the 1400s. What the electors had not predicted was the determination and popularity of the Habsburg heiress Maria Theresa. Although the 1749 Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle compelled her to surrender the crucial territory of Silesia to Frederick the Great, Maria Theresa succeeded in having her handbag husband made Emperor Francis I once Charles VII obligingly died young; and she provided her Central European dominions with their first real matriarch.
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Although the Habsburgs were robustly anti-Hitler, there is disquiet in republican Austria at the idea of the Nazi restitution fund being used to aid the former royal ruling family when many Holocaust victims are still awaiting compensation. Austrian governments have previously said that they oppose paying money from the fund to the Habsburgs.
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For the first time, Ottoman political agents were willing to accept the legitimacy of the Habsburgs� status and demands. For example, it was concluded that both rulers should regard each other as having the same status. Now, the Ottomans would call Rudolph II and the inheritors of his title �the Habsburg Emperor� instead of �the King of Vienna,� and the Austrian would only pay the tributes to the Ottomans one final time.
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Austrian Habsburgs