POLAND, BOHEMIA, CROATIA, etc.).
The territories later to be known as Aus tria were inhabited by man 'from a very early date. Remarkable relics of prehistoric civilizations have been found at Hallstatt (q.v.) and elsewhere in Austria. About 400 B.C., Celtic tribes, the most powerful of which were the Taurisci, later known as the Norici, and the Boii, invaded and occupied the eastern Alps, Bohemia and the Hungarian plain. The Romans directed their arms across the Alps in the first century B.C., completing the con quest of the land south of the Danube with the subjugation of the Norici in 15-14 B.C. Their efforts to subjugate the territory north of this line, from which the Celts had been expelled by an invasion of Germanic tribes, notably the Marcomanni and Quadi, proved unavailing. The Danube was therefore fixed as the fron tier of Roman occupation, and the territories south of it were or ganized in the three provinces of Raetia, Noricum and Pannonia. Vindobona, afterwards Vienna, was already a place of importance under the Romans. This era was closed by the great national migrations of the 5th century A.D. In 432 the Huns settled in the plains of Pannonia, which were next occupied, after Attila's death (453) by the Ostro-goths. Hitherto Noricum had been ravaged by the barbarians on their forays into Italy, but not chosen by any for their home; but in 487 Odoacer, who was then master of Italy, abandoned his possessions north of the Alps and withdrew his garrisons, which were accompanied by the richer elements of the native population. The empire of the Heruli, which followed him, was short lived. The mountain lands west of the Enns were occupied by a Germanic tribe, the Bajuvari, the descendants of the earlier Marcomanni. The territory east of this line was oc cupied by the Lombards and, after their invasion of Italy in 568, by the Avars, who remained its overlords for three and a half centuries. Themselves numerically few, the Avars drove before them, or brought in their train, many Slavonic tribes, who grad ually peopled the Alpine valleys as far west as Raetia and Istria; Austria thus became the ethnographical meeting point of the Germans and the Slays. In 622, one Samo, said to be a Frankish merchant, united a number of Slavonic tribes on the western frontier of the Avars and led them to freedom. After his death in 668, the territories of Bohemia and Moravia in the north and Carantania in the south were semi-independent of the Avars.
The Germanic tribes, meanwhile, were laying the foundations of their later civilization. Shortly after settling in their new homes, the Bajuvari had acknowledged the supremacy of the Franks, while retaining a considerable degree of independence under their ducal house, the Aglolfingi ; an independence which became very full on the death of the Frank king Dagobert in 638. In 738 they became an important power when Boruch, duke of Carantania, acknowledged their suzerainty and accepted the Christian faith in return for help against the Avars. The rise of Bavaria was unwelcome to the ambitious Frank kings, and of ter the Saxons and Lombards had been subjugated, they turned against Bavaria in 787-788. Tassilo, the Bavarian duke, appealed to the Avars for help ; but he was deserted by his own subjects and forced to surrender to Charlemagne, who bestowed Bavaria on his brother-in-law, Gerold, and went on to destroy the Avars
Having thus pushed the frontiers of his empire far to the east, Charlemagne organized the newly-won territory in two large Marks, the "Mark im Ostland" north of the Drave and the "Mark of Friuli" south of that river (811).
The territories remained part of the German Reich for ioo years. Their most powerful neighbour, with whom there were frequent wars, was the empire of Great Moravia, which was founded about 828 and defied all efforts made to subjugate it, but was also not dangerous to the existence of the Mark. In
however, a more dangerous enemy appeared in the Danube valley in the shape of the Magyars. In 906 this formidable nation de stroyed the Moravian empire, and in 9o7 defeated the German forces gathered to resist them, slew Luitpold, the markgraf of the Ostmark, and overran his land. All trace of German civilization and colonization seems to have disappeared before them ; for although the mountains of Carantania escaped their forays, these wild recesses had probably been little affected by the German rule.
After ravaging central Europe, the Magyars were defeated on the Unstrut by King Henry (933) ; but they were only defini tively driven back into Hungary after the crushing defeat inflicted on them in 955 by King Otto the Great. Otto's step-son, Henry, was duke of Bavaria; and after the Battle of the Lech, Henry's son, Henry the Quarrelsome, organized a fresh Ostmark on the eastern frontiers of his duchy, and bestowed it on a member of his house. On the death of Otto the Great, however, Henry the Quarrelsome unsuccessfully disputed the German throne with Otto II., who deprived him of his duchy in favour of Otto of Swabia, and bestowed the Ostmark on a partisan of his own, Luitpold or Leopold of Babenberg (976).
This year (976) is cele brated by tradition, and justly, as marking the true birth of Austria, for it was under the Babenbergs that it began its long and steady rise to power. The position of the first Babenbergs was, however, modest enough. Their frontiers extended only from the Enns to the fringes of the Wienerwald and from Retz to the valley of the Piesting. Even within these narrow limits many enclaves were under other jurisdiction than theirs, since during previous centuries gifts of land or office had been liberally made in this district. The most important of these were the properties of the bishopric of Passau, which included such places as Mau tern, St. Polten and Stockerau. Other enclaves belonged to the bishopric of Regensburg or the Bavarian church, and to the great monasteries, of which Salzburg was the chief, and others, again, to lay families of Bavarian origin. Jurisdiction was exercised on many points, and claimed on more still throughout the whole Mark, by the great bishoprics of Salzburg, Aquileia and Passau, all of which lay outside its frontiers. Moreover the markgraf, like all vassals under the feudal system, held his Mark only in virtue of the office which he performed for the German king; he could at any time be deprived of it, and had no legal right to transmit it to his son. While the office was granted by the king, the land comprising the Ostmark was still regarded as pertaining to the dukes of Bavaria of which the markgrafs held three counties on their western frontiers.
On the other hand, the very dangers of Austria's exposed situa tion (the name Ostarrich is mentioned for the first time in 996 as its "popular appellation") proved a source of strength to its rulers. Unlike the holders of the northern marches, who were faced only by scattered, incoherent and heathen Slavonic tribes, they had as their neighbours the strong State of Bohemia, which had survived the collapse of the Moravian empire, and the new Magyar State, which showed an unexpected power of resistance, even in defeat, and consolidated its position by its timely conver sion to Christianity. These two States barred the way to any pre mature expansion of Ostmark. A small advance of the eastern frontier was checked in 1031 by the defeat of King Conrad II. by Stephen of Hungary, to whom the contested strip of land was restored. It was recovered for Germany in 1043 by Henry III., and a new and independent Mark, the "Neumark Oesterreich," was set up between the old frontier and the Leitha. In 5063 these lands were incorporated into the older Ostmark, being the first important acquisitions made by the Babenbergs.
The necessity of keeping a strong defence on the eastern fron tier against Bohemia, and more especially Hungary, obliged the German kings to grant the markgrafs of Austria exceptional privileges. Few exemptions were made from their authority in the Mark, and their hereditary right to the office, though not admitted in law, was in practice unquestioned from the first. As markgrafs they held the further advantage of not being obliged to grant out the counties attached to their Mark in fee, but were allowed to hold them in person, or administer them through officials appointed by themselves. At a time when the rights and privileges of other fiefs were falling into decay, those of the Babenbergs remained undiminished ; and meanwhile, as the other land-owning families in the district died out, they con solidated their position by securing the reversion of these estates, by purchase, marriage or investiture. Personally, too, they were bold, tenacious and hard-working, and able guardians of the marches. In a long series of forays with the Magyars they kept their frontiers intact, just as at home they held their own success fully in the constant struggle for power. In addition they earned the gratitude of a succession of German kings by their constant and loyal support.
Of the earlier Baben bergs, only Leopold II. (1075-95) deserted the Emperor Henry IV. in the investiture struggle, and was deprived of his fief in consequence (1 o81) . It was given to Vratislav II., duke of Bo hemia, but soon after Leopold was reconciled with the emperor and received his fief back (1083) . Leopold III.
supported Henry V. against his father, Henry IV., and was re warded with the hand of the young king's sister Agnes, widow of the Hohenstaufen Frederick and mother of the later king, Conrad III. Through this marriage the house of Babenberg became allied with the Hohenstaufens, while through his sisters Leopold was also connected with the dukes of Bohemia and Carinthia, the markgraf of Steyr, the prince of Znaim, and other influential families. He had, indeed, raised his house to such eminence that on the death of Henry V., his name was put forward for the German throne; but he declined this dangerous honour, and both he and his son and successor, Leopold IV. (1136-41), proved re markably successful in holding aloof from the great feud between the Welf s and the Hohenstaufen which divided Germany. From it, indeed, they reaped only advantage ; for Conrad III., the step brother of Leopold V., bestowed on him in 1138 the duchy of Bavaria, of which he had deprived the Welf, Henry the Proud. After Leopold's death, his brother, Henry "Jasomirgott," so called from his favourite oath, held the duchy from 1143 to
when it was restored to the Welf, Henry the Lion, by Frederick Barbarossa. The Babenbergs were now strong enough to press for compensation ; and at the Investiture of Regensburg (Sept. 17, 1156) Henry renounced all rights of Bavaria over Austria, which Frederick thereupon raised to the rank of a duchy, invest ing it in Henry and his wife Theodora as a hereditary fief, capable of transmission in the female line, in default of heirs male ; while should the succession fail altogether, the duke received the right to nominate his successor. At the same time the dukes of Austria, being now the titular equals of those of Bavaria, incorporated in their domains the counties which they had formerly held from Bavaria, and thus extended their western frontier up to the pres ent boundary east of Passau. The duke now held exclusive juris diction in his territories, and his duties towards the emperor were limited to appearing at any Diet held in Bavaria, and to contribut ing a contingent for the imperial army in any campaign waged in the countries bordering on Austria (privilegium minus).
These very notable privileges aroused the jealousy of the mark grafs of Steyr, the wealthy and powerful house of Chiemgau, who had succeeded to the fiefs of the perished dynasty of Eppensteiner in 1122, and had since been pursuing a policy of patient and suc cessful acquisition which had made their dominions hardly less extensive than those of the Babenbergs. Ottakar III. of Steyr obtained for himself the ducal title in 118o; but being childless, he made a secret compact six years later with the Austrian duke, Leopold V., to whom he was related through his great-grand mother Elizabeth, daughter of Leopold II. of Austria, granting the latter his domains after his own death, subject to the king's approval. In 1192, Leopold V. duly entered into possession of this rich territory ; and although on his death in 1194 the two duchies were partitioned between his two sons, on the death of the older, Frederick I., they were again united in the person of the younger son, Leopold VI. (1198) . The union, like all the later unions with territories of any magnitude, was personal only; the Estates of each duchy retained their own especial and varying privileges and organization.
Leopold VI. acquired, by purchase or treaty, a number of smaller territories within or adjacent to his now stately domains. His son, Duke Frederick the Quarrelsome, was brought by his wife another important acquisition, whence he took the title of lord of Carniola. But he came near losing his whole domains, for after he had involved himself in disputes with his neighbours, his Estates and the emperor, he was placed under the ban, his domains invaded by the imperial armies, and his territory reduced at one time to the town of Wiener Neustadt and the adjacent castle of Starhemberg. Thanks to the disunity of his adversaries, he won back all he had lost, and negotiations were actually pro ceeding for the elevation of Austria and Styria into a single king dom, and Carniola into a duchy, when he was killed in a battle against the Hungarians (June 15, 1246), and with him the male line of Babenberg became extinct.
On the extinction of the Babenbergs, the Emperor Frederick II. claimed their duchies as vacant fiefs of the empire, and entrusted them to the administration, first of Count Eberstein, later of Otto II., duke of Bavaria, in Austria, and of Count Meinhardt of Gorizia in Styria. Pope Innocent IV., on the contrary, espoused the cause of Frederick the Quarrel some's surviving niece, Gertrude, wife of the markgraf of Mor avia, and after his death, that of her second husband, Hermann, markgraf of Baden. When both Hermann and the emperor died in 125o, the Estates of Austria met at Trubensee in 1251, and elected Ottakar, son of Wenceslaus I., king of Bohemia, while those of Styria elected Bela IV., king of Hungary. Although the rivals swore peace at Of en (Buda) in 1254, Ottakar expelled Bela in 126o and reunited the two duchies, with which he was invested (though not in legal form) by the German king, Richard earl of Cornwall, in 1262. Ottakar, who had become king of Bohemia in 12S3, ruled his domain wisely, being a particular patron of the towns, and added to it, in 127o, Carinthia, Carniola, and the Windisch Mark, by virtue of a compact made in 1268 with Ulrich III., duke of Carinthia, who died childless two years later. But his great power frightened the Electors of the Rhine, who saw the probability that the centre of gravity of central Europe would be shifted permanently to the east ; and on the death of Richard in 1272, they rejected Ottakar's nominee and chose in stead a man of great abilities but few possessions : Count Rudolph of Habsburg. Rudolph was crowned German king on Aug. 24, 1273.
Rudolph's primary mission was to break the power of the king of Bohemia, and he probably aspired from the first to secure the Austrian duchies for his own house, whose possessions, in Switzerland and Alsace, were modest. He proceeded with caution. In 1274 he questioned Ottakar's claims to the duchies, and in 1276, having twice summoned him to appear before the Imperial Diet, placed him under the ban. In 1276 he led the imperial forces into Austria and defeated Ottakar, who renounced his claims to the three duchies, and did homage to Rudolph for Bohemia and Moravia. Attempting two years later to recover his possessions, he was defeated and slain. In 1281, Rudolph appointed Albert, his eldest son, governor of Austria and Styria, retaining Carinthia in his own hand. On Dec. 27, 1282, he raised his two sons, Albert and Rudolph, to the ranks of princes of the empire, and invested them with Austria, Styria, Carniola, the Windisch Mark and Carinthia. In the fol lowing year the dual sovereignty was abolished, Albert, with his descendants, receiving the lands, while Rudolph was compensated by a sum of money. Finally, in 1286, Carinthia was separated from the other provinces and bestowed on Count Meinhardt of Gorizia, who was also count of Tirol.
The position of the first Habsburgs was in appearance much stronger than that of the Babenbergs, but in reality far less secure. The old feudal system under which the earlier dynasty had grown strong was in com plete decay. The power of the German king had followed that of the Holy Roman emperor into practical extinction. Little by little the kings had been forced into making, first the higher fiefs, and then the lower, hereditary. The power of landed nobles had replaced the old hierarchy of service ; and all that remained to the king was some small control over his weaker vassals, with the possibility of mediating in the quarrels of the stronger, to gether with the right of bestowing titles which were merely nominal. From 1438 until its abolition in 1804, the title of Holy Roman emperor was held, with one exception, only by the rulers of Austria ; but it was a shadow whence the life had departed. Nor did the Habsburgs recover as dukes the authority which they had lost as kings. As the feudal system decayed, that of Estates came into being; the internal history of the next centuries is that of struggle of the great divisions of society to secure power and privilege for themselves and to defend them against attack from above and below. By the close of the 13th century this process was already well advanced in Austria. The belief of the priv ileged classes in their right to a voice in affairs was shown by the revolts with which Albert had to deal; the revolt of the burghers of Vienna in 1288, of the Styrian nobles in 1292, and of the Austrian nobles in 1295. Albert, who was a strong and a hard man, dealt with these risings successfully; but throughout the 14th and 15th centuries the power of the Estates steadily in creased. This was due to two main causes : to family dissensions among the Habsburgs themselves, and above all, to their chronic penury. Whatever the legal position, the fresh funds of which they were continually in need could be obtained only with the consent of the Estates, who made each application the occasion for exacting confirmation or extension of their privileges. By the beginning of the 15th century the process of evolution was com plete. The Estates of the church, the landed nobility, the burgh ers, and (in the Tirol alone) the free peasants had acquired a definite status and organization, and a considerable control over public affairs. The power of the sovereign was correspondingly diminished, while the unprivileged classes were sinking into in creasing misery. For most of the inhabitants of Austria, the later middle ages were a time of great wretchedness, full of class warfare, oppression and hatred, which found their outlet at last in the religious wars which filled much of the period. Nor was this all. The advance of the Turks cut away Vienna's eastern trade, besides threatening more directly the Austrian provinces themselves. The Black Death ravaged Austria in
1369 and 1381; the transition to the more general use of currency, instead of payment in kind, caused a prolonged economic crisis of the utmost severity; and the degeneration of the free peasantry into a class of oppressed and exploited serfs was disastrous, not only for themselves, but for the whole country.
Expansion of Austria Under the Early Habsburgs.—Over other German States Austria preserved, indeed, the advantage which had been hers under the Babenbergs. Less than ever was it possible now for the crowded States of the west to expand to any real extent ; but the east remained a more promising field. The Habsburgs themselves chiefly retarded the growth of their own power by their unfortunate family policy; the system of primogeniture was unknown among them, and at first attempts were made to establish a common rule of two or more brothers. This proving impracticable, in 1355 Albert II. issued a family ordinance which admitted the right of all members of the family to rule. For over a century the Austrian lands were divided be tween different members of the family (for details see HABS BURG), and they were only reunited by Maximilian I. The quarrels between the brothers occupied much of their time, and meanwhile the title of German king, although held by Albert I. and his son Frederick, then passed for a century to the house of Luxembourg. The first real advance made by the Habsburgs was in 1335, when, as a result of a secret agreement made five years previously, Albert II. (1314-58) and Otto (1314-39) who were then ruling Austria and Styria in common, obtained definite possession of Carinthia, as of Carniola, which had been pawned to the count of Gorizia, and of south Tirol. The privilegium de non evocando, which was obtained by Duke Albert, gave the dukes of Austria further privileges in the empire ; but these were too little for Otto's ambitious successor, Rudolph IV.
Irritated by the omission of Austria iri the Golden Bull of 1356 from the list of Electoral States, Rudolph produced a series of forged privileges, purporting to go back to Roman times, de signed to give the duke of Austria a status superior to that of any other vassal of the empire. The Emperor Charles IV., while con firming in general fashion the rights of the Habsburgs, refused to acknowledge the forged privilegium majus, and the result was a breach between him and Rudolph, who, however, gained a solid success in 1363 when Margeret Maultasch, duchess of Tirol, made over her dominions to him and his brothers.
A dark period followed Rudolph's death. His succession was divided between his brothers Albert III. (1365-95) and Leopold III. (1365-86), and this partition led to a long and devastating dispute between the two lines which they founded. The disunion in the ruling house led to a formidable increase in the power of the nobles, and civil wars from which the Tirol and Vienna suf fered particularly heavily. Leopold, indeed, secured the posses sions of the counts of Gorizia in Istria and the Windisch Mark (1374) and of parts of Vorarlberg (1375), while in 1382 Trieste submitted voluntarily, to escape the encroachments of Venice: but his defeat at Sempach in 1386 presaged the loss of the Habsburg dominions in Switzerland. The glory of the dy nasty, but not the prosperity of the lands, was suddenly restored in 1437 by the death of Sigismund of Luxembourg, king of Ger many, Bohemia and Hungary, who bequeathed all three crowns to his son-in-law, Albert V. Albert, however, died two years later. His heir, Ladislaus Postumus, was born after his death, and his second cousin Frederick, of the Styrian line, acted as guardian both for Ladislaus and his first cousin, Sigismund of Tirol, who was also a minor.
Frederick's prolonged reign was one of almost ceaseless strife with the Estates, his neighbours and his jealous family. In 1446 a revolt of the nobles of the Tirol forced him to release Sigismund from tutelage, and a similar and more serious movement broke out in Ladislaus' domains in 1451, headed by the wealthy adventurer Rudolph Eitzing and Ladislaus' uncle, Count Ulrich Cilli, and supported by strong parties among the Estates of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary. In 1452 this league besieged the emperor in Wiener Neustadt and forced him to release Ladislaus, who now became nominal ruler over his wide domains, while the actual power was wielded in Austria by Ulrich, and in Bohemia and Hungary by national regents in the persons of George Podiebrad and John Hunyadi respectively. When Ulrich was killed in 1456, the emperor succeeded to the wide estates of his house ; but the death of Ladislaus in the fol lowing year opened up a period of strife and civil war between Frederick and his brother Albert, which was only ended by Al bert's death in 1463. The Styrian and Austrian possessions were now at last reunited under Frederick; but Hungary and Bohemia, on the death of Ladislaus, had broken away and had elected national kings : George Podiebrad in Bohemia and Matthias Cor vinus, the son of Hunyadi, in Hungary. The latter, a ruler of ex ceptional ability, actually drove Frederick from Vienna in 1485, established his own residence there, and incorporated large parts of Austria, Styria and Carinthia in the kingdom of Hungary.
Although treated with so little consideration in Austria, Fred erick had enhanced its dignity by confirming, as emperor, the forged privileges put forward by Rudolph 10o years previously. Thus in 1453 Austria received the title of an
with many privileges within the empire, and was declared indivisible, the principle of primogeniture being introduced into the succes sion. The beneficiary of these innovations, Frederick's son and successor, Maximilian (1459-1519), was as brilliant a figure as his father had been a pathetic one, and inaugurated an entirely new era in Austrian history.
The rise of the duchy of Burgundy under Philip the Good and Charles the Bold had inspired Frederick with the idea of using this new power as a counterweight against the increasing unruliness of the princes of the empire. To this end, Maximilian had been married in 1477 to Maria, daughter and heiress of Charles the Bold, to whose lands in Burgundy, Flanders and Luxembourg he succeeded on the death of his father-in-law in 1482. The position of the Habsburgs on the two flanks of Germany was now commanding indeed ; but it was also dangerous; and Maximilian's early years were spent in constant struggles in the west, not only with the Flemish Estates, but also with France, whose long hostility towards Austria dates from the Burgundian marriage. Fortunately he was able rapidly to consolidate his po sition in Austria. Elected German king in 1486, in 1490, on the death of Matthias Corvinus, he drove the Hungarians out of Austria and restored the old frontier, and in the same year his cousin, Sigismund of Tirol, abdicated in his favour. On the death of his father he was elected emperor, and united all the Austrian possessions in his own hand, later augmenting them slightly by the heritage of the counts of Gorizia, whose line became extinct (I Soo), some districts in north Tirol, the prize of the War of the Bavarian Succession (1505) and some small districts won by war from Venice (1516) .
It was largely with the purpose of making his Austrian do minions into a compact and reliable base for his more ambitious plans elsewhere that Maximilian introduced the administrative reforms which were his abiding legacy to Austria proper. "Austria," as he found it, consisted of an agglomeration of prov inces, united only in the person of their common sovereign, whose relations towards, and authority in, each were governed by the varying rights of the several Estates. For this system—the out come of mediaeval evolution—Maximilian attempted to intro duce government by permanent State officials in the provinces, linked up to a central authority; while matters of common inter est to several provinces should be discussed by deputies of each at a "brotherly union." To some degree, Maximilian was success ful: but after his provincial "colleges" had been made a perma nent institution in 1501, the Estates awoke to the threat to their particularism and privileges. Their suspicious hostility was aroused. At the Innsbruck Diet of 1518, Maximilian was forced to retract some of his reforms, and his successor reaped the fruit of the animosity he had aroused.
Yet the march of time was with the emperor; and the chief reason why Austria failed to develop into a compact German State was Maximilian's own preference for grandiose schemes to shed lustre on his house and justify his imperial title. Yet in these projects, in which he exhausted his dominions, he was seldom successful. His reforms in Germany were opposed by the Elec tors, who frustrated his plan to get the Tirol made into an Elec torate. The Swiss Federation, of ter a long struggle, broke finally away from the empire. The Italian campaigns ended with minute territorial gains, and the deep hostility of Venice—an important matter in view of the advance of the Turks. France had become an implacable enemy, and the attempt to rouse Europe to a cru sade against the Turks ended in failure. The transformation of Austria into a super-national world-power was due only to Max imilian's own marriage and that of his children and grandchildren. The marriage of his son Philip to Joan, infanta of Castille (1496) and of his daughter Margeret to John of Aragon (1497) made the Habsburgs heirs to the new power of Spain; while at the congress of Vienna (1515) Maximilian arranged marriages (which were consummated in 1521 and 1522 respectively) between his grand children, Maria and Ferdinand and Louis and Anna, the children and heirs of Vladislav III., king of Bohemia and Hungary. Thus when he died, on Jan. 12, 1519, Maximilian had already prepared the way for the great transformation which was to follow.
