'Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor' (
German language: ''Franz II, Heiliger Römischer Kaiser'') (
12 February,
1768 –
2 March,
1835) was the last
Holy Roman Emperor, ruling from
1792 until
6 August,
1806, when he dissolved the Empire after the disastrous defeat of the
Third Coalition by
Napoleon at the
Battle of Austerlitz. In
1804 he founded the
Austrian Empire and became 'Francis I of Austria' (''Franz I.''), the first
Emperor of Austria, ruling from
1804 to
1835, so later he was named the one and only ''Doppelkaiser'' (double emperor) in history. For the two years between 1804 and 1806 Francis used the title and style ''by the grace of God 'elected' Roman Emperor, always August, 'hereditary' Emperor of Austria'' and he was called the ''Emperor of both Germany and Austria''. Francis I continued his leading role as an opponent of Napoleonic France in the
Napoleonic Wars, and suffered several more defeats after Austerlitz, the most severe of which led to his delivering his daughter,
Marie Louise of Austria, as a bride in a reluctant
marriage of state.
Francis was a son of
Emperor Leopold II (1747 – 1792) and his wife
Maria Luisa of Spain (1745 – 1792, daughter of
Charles III of Spain.
Early Life
Francis was born in
Florence, the capital of
Tuscany where his father reigned as
Grand Duke from 1765–90. Though he had a happy childhood surrounded by his many siblings,
[1] his family knew Francis was likely to be a future Emperor (his uncle
Joseph had no surviving issue from either of his two marriages), and so in 1784 the young Archduke was sent to the Imperial Court in
Vienna to educate and prepare him for his future role.
[1]
Emperor Joseph himself took charge of Francis's development, and his disciplinarian regime was a stark contrast to the indulgent Florentine Court of Leopold. The Emperor wrote that Francis was "stunted in growth", "backward in bodily dexterity and deportment", and "neither more nor less than a spoiled mother's child". Joseph concluded that "…the manner in which he was treated for upwards of sixteen years could not but have confirmed him in the delusion that the preservation of his own person was the only thing of importance."
[1]
Joseph's
martinet method of improving the young Francis were "fear and unpleasantness".
[1] The young Archduke was isolated, the reasoning being that this would make him more self-sufficient as it was felt by Joseph that Francis "fail[ed] to lead himself, to do his own thinking". Nonetheless, Francis greatly admired his uncle, if rather feared him.
[1] To complete his training, Francis was sent to join an army regiment in
Hungary and he settled easily into the routine of military life.
[1]
After the death of Joseph II in
1790, Francis's father became Emperor. He had an early taste of power while acting as Leopold's deputy in Vienna while the incoming Emperor traversed the Empire attempting to win back those alienated by his brother's policies.
[1] The strain told on Leopold, and by the winter of
1791 he became ill. He gradually worsened throughout early
1792, and, on the afternoon of
1 March Leopold died, at the relatively young age of 44. Francis, just past his 24th birthday, was now Emperor much sooner than he had expected.
Emperor
As the leader of the large multi-ethnic
Habsburg Empire, Francis felt threatened by
Napoleon's call for liberty and equality in
Europe. Francis had a fraught relationship with
France. His aunt
Marie Antoinette died under the
guillotine at the beginning of his reign. Francis, on the whole, was indifferent to her fate (she was not close to his father Leopold, and Francis had never met her).
Georges Danton attempted to negotiate with the Emperor for Marie Antoinette's release from captivity, but Francis was unwilling to make any concessions in return.
[8] Later, he led Austria into the
French Revolutionary Wars and was defeated by Napoleon. By the
Treaty of Campo Formio, he ceded the left bank of the
Rhine to
France in exchange for
Venice and
Dalmatia. He again fought against France during the
Second Coalition, and, after meeting crushing defeat at
Austerlitz, agreed to the
Treaty of Pressburg, which effectively dissolved the
Holy Roman Empire, weakening the
Austrian Empire and reorganizing present-day
Germany under a Napoleonic imprint.
In
1809, Francis attacked France again, hoping to take advantage of the
Peninsular War embroiling Napoleon in Spain. He was again defeated, and this time forced to ally himself with Napoleon, ceding territory to the Empire, joining the
Continental System, and wedding his daughter
Marie-Louise to the Emperor. Francis essentially became a
vassal of the Emperor of the French. The
Napoleonic wars drastically weakened Austria and threatened its preeminence among the states of Germany, a position that it would eventually cede to
Prussia.
In
1813, for the fourth and final time, Austria turned against France and joined
Great Britain,
Russia, and
Prussia in their war against Napoleon. Austria played a major role in the final defeat of France—in recognition of this, Francis, represented by
Clemens von Metternich, presided over the
Congress of Vienna, helping to form the
Concert of Europe and the
Holy Alliance, ushering in an era of
conservatism and
reactionism in Europe. The
German Confederation, a loose association of
Central European states was created by the Congress of Vienna in
1815 to organize the surviving states of the Holy Roman Empire. The Congress was a personal triumph for Francis, where he hosted the assorted dignitaries in comfort,
[1] though Francis undermined his allies
Tsar Alexander and
Frederick William III of Prussia by negotiating a secret treaty with the restored French king
Louis XVIII.
[1]
The federal
Diet met at
Frankfurt under Austrian
presidency (in fact the Habsburg Emperor was represented by an Austrian 'presidential envoy').
Domestic Policy
The events of the French Revolution impressed themselves deeply into the mind of Francis, and he came to distrust 'radicalism' in any form.
[1] In 1794, a '
Jacobin' conspiracy was discovered in the Austrian and Hungarian armies.
[1] The leaders were put on trial, but the verdicts only skirted the perimeter of the conspiracy. Francis's brother
Alexander Leopold (at that time
Palatine of Hungary) wrote to the Emperor admitting "Although we have caught a lot of the culprits, we have not really got to the bottom of this business yet." Nonetheless, two officers heavily implicated in the conspiracy were
hanged and
gibbeted, while many others were sentenced to imprisonment (where many died in the conditions).
[1]
Francis was by nature suspicious,
[1] and set up an extensive network of police spies and censors to monitor dissent
[1] (in this he was following his father's lead, as the Grand Duchy of Tuscany had the most effective secret police in Europe).
[1] Even his family did not escape attention. His brothers, the Archdukes
Charles and
Johann had their meetings and activities spied upon.
[1] Censorship was also prevalent. The author
Franz Grillparzer, a Habsburg patriot, had one play suppressed solely as a 'precautionary' measure. When Grillparzer met the censor responsible, he asked him what was objectionable about the work. The censor replied "Oh, nothing at all. But I thought to myself 'One can never tell'."
[1]
Francis presented himself as a open and approachable monarch (he regularly set aside two mornings each week to meet his imperial subjects, regardless of status, by appointment in his office, even speaking to them in their own language),
[1] but his will was sovereign. In
1804, he had no compunction about announcing that through his authority as Holy Roman Emperor, he declared he was now Emperor of Austria (at the time a geographical term that had little resonance).
[1] Two years later, Francis personally wound up the moribund Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Both actions were of dubious constitutional legality.
[1]
Later Years
Francis was a devoted family man, and a main point in the political testament he left for his son and heir
Ferdinand was "Preserve unity in the family and regard it as one of the highest goods".
[1] In many portraits (particularly those painted by
Peter Fendi) he was portrayed as the patriarch of a loving family, surrounded by his children and grandchildren.
[1]
On
March 2 1835, 43 years and a day after his father's death, Francis died of a sudden fever aged 67, in the presence of many of his family and with all the religious comforts.
[1] His funeral was magnificient, with his Viennese subjects respectfully filing past his coffin in
St. Stephen's Cathedral for three days.
[1] Francis was interred in the traditional resting place of Habsburg monarchs, the
Kapuziner Imperial Crypt in Vienna's Neue Markt Square.
Ancestry
Marriages
He married four times:
# On
January 6,
1788, to
Elisabeth of Württemberg (
April 21,
1767 –
February 18,
1790), who died bearing a short-lived daughter,
Ludovika Elisabeth of Austria (
1790–
91)
# On
August 15,
1790, to his first cousin
Maria Teresa of the Two Sicilies (
June 6,
1772 –
April 13,
1807), daughter of King
Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies and his double first cousin (both were grandchildren of Empress
Maria Theresa and shared all of their other grandparents in common), with whom he had twelve children, but only seven reached adulthood:
#
★
Marie-Louise (
1791–
1847), wife of
Napoleon Bonaparte
#
★
Ferdinand I (
1793–
1875), his successor
#
★
Archduchess Marie Caroline of Austria (
1794-
1795)
#
★
Archduchess Caroline Ludovika of Austria (
1795-
1799)
#
★
Maria Leopoldina (
1797–
1826), who married
Pedro I of Brazil
#
★
Maria Clementina (
1798–
1881), who married her maternal uncle Prince Leopoldo of the Two Sicilies (son of King
Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies)
#
★
Archduke Josef Franz Leopold of Austria (
1799-
1807)
#
★
Marie Caroline, Crown Princess of Saxony (
1801–
32), who married King
Frederick Augustus II of Saxony.
#
★
Franz Karl (
1802–
78), whose children included
Franz Joseph I of Austria and
Maximilian I of Mexico
#
★
Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria (
1804–
1858)
#
★
Archduke Johann Nepomuk of Austria (
1805-
1809)
#
★
Archduchess Amalie Theresa of Austria (
1807)
# On
January 6,
1808, he married again to another first cousin,
Maria Ludovika of Austria-Este (
December 14,
1787 –
April 7,
1816) with no issue. She was the daughter of
Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Este and Maria Beatrice d'
Este, Princess of
Modena.
# On
October 29,
1816, to
Karoline Charlotte Auguste of Bavaria (
February 8,
1792 –
February 9,
1873) with no issue. She was daughter of
Maximilian I of Bavaria and had been previously married to
William I of Württemberg.
He is buried in tomb number 57 in the
Imperial Crypt in Vienna, surrounded by his four wives.
After
1806 he used the titles: "We, Francis the First,
by the grace of God Emperor of Austria;
King of Jerusalem,
Hungary,
Bohemia,
Dalmatia,
Croatia,
Slavonia,
Galicia and
Lodomeria; Archduke of
Austria; Duke of
Lorraine,
Salzburg,
Würzburg,
Franconia,
Styria,
Carinthia and
Carniola; Grand Duke of
Cracow; Grand Prince of
Transylvania; Margrave of
Moravia; Duke of
Sandomir,
Masovia,
Lublin, Upper and Lower
Silesia,
Auschwitz and
Zator,
Teschen and
Friule; Prince of
Berchtesgaden and
Mergentheim; Princely Count of Habsburg,
Gorizia and
Gradisca and of the
Tyrol; and Margrave of Upper and Lower
Lusatia and in
Istria".
References
Books
★
Fraser, Antonia - '' : Phoenix 2002, ISBN 0-75381-305-X
★ Wheatcroft, Andrew - ''The Habsburgs : Embodying Empire'' : Penguin 1996, ISBN 0-14-023634-1
Notes
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