FRANCIS II. (1768-1835), the last Roman emperor, and, as Francis I., first emperor of Austria, was the son of Leopold II., grand-duke of Tuscany, afterwards emperor, and of his wife Maria Louisa, daughter of Charles III. of Spain. He was born at Florence on Feb. 12, 1768. In 1784 he was brought to Vienna to complete his education under the eye of his uncle the emperor Joseph II. Joseph is said to have treated his nephew with an impatient contempt which confirmed his natural timidity; but after the marriage of Francis to Elizabeth of Wurttemberg (1788) their relations improved. The death of his wife in childbirth on Feb. 18, 1790 was followed by the death of his uncle on the 20th; and Francis acted as regent with Prince Kaunitz until his father came from Florence. On Sept. 19, he married his first cousin Maria Theresa, daughter of Ferdinand, king of Naples, by whom he was the father of his successor Ferdinand I., of Maria Louisa, wife of Napoleon, and of the archduke Francis, father of the emperor Francis Joseph. After her death (1807) he married Maria Ludovica Beatrix of Este (18o8), and when she died he made a fourth marriage with Carolina Augusta of Bavaria (1816).
He succeeded in his twenty-fifth year to the Austrian domin ions and the empire on the death of his father on March 1, 1792. The dominions of the house of Austria, widely scattered in the Low Countries, Germany and Italy, were exposed to the attacks of the French revolutionary governments and of Napoleon. He was dragged into all the coalitions against France, and in the early days of his reign he had to guard against the ambition of Prussia, and the aggressions of Russia in Poland and Turkey. For long he had no adviser save such diplomatists as Prince Kaunitz and Thugut, who had been trained in the Old Austrian diplomacy. His own best quality was an invincible patience supported by re liance on the loyalty of his subjects, and a sense of his duty to the State. (For the general events of this reign till 1815 see