For the space of 150 years from this period, the house of Austria underwent various changes, too te dious to mention, sometimes very critical, but gene rally ending favourably, until, in 1496, all the pro vinces which had belonged to• it, excepting the Swiss cantons, were united into one sovereignty, along with many other rich countries, in the person of Maximi han, emperor elect in Germany, and king of the Romans. This took place 200 years after the Austrian prOvincas had been divided among the descendants of Rudolf of Habsburg. Maximilian married Mary, the only child of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, and heiress of his valuable states in France, Flanders, ancton the Rhixe. By her he had a son and heir, Philip the Handsome, v.ho es poused Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand, king of Ar ragon, and of Isabella, queen of Castile. This Phi lip was father of the celebrated Charles V., who suc ceeded, in 1516, to an aggregate of European power superior to that of any monarch since the the death of Charlemagne. Charles V. had a younger brother, Ferdinand, and a sister, Mary, who married Louis II., king of Hungary and Bohemia. Ferdinand espoused, in his turn, Anne, sister of his brother-in-law Louis ; and thus, by a double marriage, the way was paved for the annexation of Hungary and Bohemia to the Austrian states. The marriages took place at Lintz, in Upper Austria, on the 27th of May 1521.
Louis, of Hungary and Bohemia, fell in the battle of Mohatsch, in 1527, and Ferdinand contrived to get himself crowned king of Hungary and of Bohemia towards the end of that year. He, and his succes sors, however, have not enjoyed those two kingdoms in tranquillity since their incorporation with the Aus. trian provinces. They carried on, for 150 years, until the peace of Carlowitz, almost constant wars with the Turks for them ; and the frontiers of Hun gary, towards Turkey, were not definitively fixed un til our own times.
In 1522, Charles V. yielded up to his brother Fer dinand all the German provinces, excepting the Low Countries;which he inherited in right of his grand mother, Mary of Burgundy ; and thus the Austrian line was divided into two branches, the German and the Spanish. His brother procured him to be elect ed king of the Romans in 1530. Ferdinand died in 1564, after having addca the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, with Moravia, part of Silesia, and se-. veral. other smaller principalities, to the Austrian empire.
The three sons of Ferdinand of Austria, viz. Max imilian, Ferdinand, and Charles, divided his domi nions among them.. The. eldest was emperor of Ger many, and archduke of Austria. The descendant of Charles, the youngest son of Ferdinand, also named Ferdinand II., reunited once more, in 1619, under his authority, almost all the provinces which were possessed by Ferdinand, his grandfather. This Fer dinand began the 30 years war against the Protes tants, and carried it on during the remainder of his life. Under him served Tilly, Wallenstein, and other eminent captains, against Gustavus Adolphus and his heroic generals. He fixed it as a law in his family-succession, that all his territories should de scend to one, by right of primogeniture, and soon thereafter died, in 1637.
Ferdinand III. succeeded his father, and put an end, in 164.8, to the 30 years war, by the famous Treaty of Westphalia, which constituted, for a long time, the basis of the public law of Germany.
Leopold I. succeeded Ferdinand III. in 1657, and reigned as emperor and archduke of Austria for 48 years, till 1705.
Joseph I. ascended the throne of Germany as em peror and archduke, on the death of his father Leo pold I., and, aided by our great countryman Marl borough, raised the house of Austria's power to its ancient pitch. He died in 1711, and was succeeded by his brother, who assumed the name of Charles VL The wars which Charles carried on in Germany, Ita ly, and Spain, against Louis XIV., and others, made his conspicuous, and immortalised the talents of his principal general, Prince Eugene of Savoy. This prince commanded also against the Turks, and compelled them to sue for the peace or Passarowitz, in 1718, the most splendid and honourable which Austria had ever made. Charles VI. expired, after a turbulent reign, on the 20th of October 1740, leaving his eldett daughter, the celebrated Maria Theresa, who was married to the young duke of Lorraine, heiress of all his possessions. In Charles was extinct the last of the family of Rudolf of Habs burg in the male line : With Maria Theresa's son, Joseph II., who was proclaimed king of the Romans in 1764, commenced the second royal house of the Austrian family, viz. the house of Lorraine. Maria
Theresa, whose heroic conduct, and inconsistent and tumultuous political career, are well known, died on the 29th of November 1780, leaving her vast empire, and an army of 300,000 men, to her son Joseph, now mentioned.
Of all the princes pf the house of Austria, none laboured with more sincere ardour to promote the welfare of the people than Joseph II., and yet of none was the reign so disastrous to his country. He was not always mistaken in the views which he took of the best interests of his subjects, nor perhaps in his conceptions of the means of improving their condi tion ; but his precipitancy and rashness ultimately defeated all his projects. He wished, at the same time, to ameliorate the internal government and ad ministration of his vast emptre, and also to extend its limits ; to cultivate the lands which he possessed in superfluity, and to acquire new territories ; to civi lize the millions of savages under his sceptre, and yet -to reduce other millions under it also ; and to finish every thing before it was well begun. Forgetting -the example of his wise and great predecessor Ru dolf of Habsburg, as well as of his illustrious con temporary Frederick of Prussia, who never studied the value of any thing so much as that of time,* le either rush,d prematurely upon enterprises which required much delicate caution to render them pa latable to his people ; or, on the other hand, neglect ed the application of means, which, if properly timed, might secure the complete accomplishment of his projects. He appeared, indeed,-all his life not to know, that time is one of the greatest and most es sential elements in human institutions ; and that what may be prudent at one period, may even, among the same people, denote absolute madness at another. He pulled dawn churches, monasteries, and nunne ries, in one part of his dominions ; and overset all an cient investitures in another ; while, in a third, he proved himself the determined and bitter enemy of all that savoured of innovation. In Bohemia and Hungary he favoured the Protestants, and disgusted his Catholic subjects ; while in Flanders, where pub lic opinion had made eminent advances in the career of complete civilization, refinement, and tolerance in matters of religion, he followed a very different course : thus contriving; by a singularly unfortunate species of political blundering, to alienate the affec tions of the great majority of his subjects, without conferring any essential benefit on the remaining part of them. To this we may add, his contempt for the feelings, or, as he called them, the prejudices of his subjects, and for what every wise prince will always treat with mildness, if not with respect, their ancient usages, customs, and superstitions. He certainly ap peared in Austria a great deal too soon, and before that country was ripe for the schemes of improvement, which, in a more civilized nation, might perhaps have been practicable. Had that nation possessed a more intimate acquaintance with modern ideas, and with the literature which has been diffused over the great er part of northern Europe in our times, he would very probably have produced something among them like the French revolution. The French monarch did not prevent, or could not prevent, that tremen dous explosion ; but the Austrian would himself have accelerated and increased it. The acting causes of the French revolution were, quite foreign to the government, and beyond its 'controul ; in Austria, the sources of the impending change were in the go vernment itself, and yet their results have been al most equally fatal, in the first instance, to the tran quillity and happiness of both nations. Joseph's in novations would have produced fire and fermentation in France, but they excited, at the moment, only a passive species of dislike and disgust in Austria, Hungary, and Flanders ; which afterwards degene rated into a sort of apathy, and intellectual and mo ral palsy, when the hour of trial arrived. His wars, or quarrels, with Turkey, Prussia, Bavaria, and Flanders, accordingly terminated in a manner which gave no good presage of the state of his empire as a first rate power. He died on the 20th of February 1790, in the midst of preparations against Prussia and Turkey, which promised no better Consequences than his former ill-concerted schemes. He left no children, and was succeeded by his brother, Leo pold II., then grand duke of Tuscany.