FRANCIS JOSEPH I, emror of tria and king of Hungary: b. 18 Aug. 1830; d. Schoenbrunn Castle, 21 Nov. 1916. He was the eldest son of Archduke Francis Charles and nephew of Ferdinand I, who reigned from 1835 to 1848. On the abdication of the latter and the renunciation of the crown by his father, Francis Joseph was proclaimed emperor on 2 Dec. 1848. He was then 18 years old, was the unanimous choice of the Austrian court and it was believed that his popularity would help har monize the various conflicting interests. He had been educated very carefully under the super vision of his grandfather, the father-in-law of Napoleon I. He had mastered not only the classical and modern languages but nearly all the dialects of his polyglot fatherland. He had studied Roman, civil and canon law, chemistry and mechanics. He served in the field under Radetzky in Italy in 1848 and officers of high rank had taught him tactics, strategy and the art of making plans. He was fond of sport and exercise and won the first prize in a shoot ing competition with expert Tyrolese marksmen, guild.
who made him one of their ild.
At home he was opposed Kossuth in Hun gary, by Count Cavour in Italy and later by Bismarck in Prussia.
He made little or no effort to propitiate Kossuth or his followers, and in April 1849, four months after his coronation, Hungary was declared a republic. Simultaneously Francis Joseph proclaimed a new constitution which abolished all the ancient rights of the nation.
The Hungarian General Georgei defeated the emperor's troops in successive engagements and the emperor was forced to seek help from Tsar Nicholas. The latter responded promptly with 80,000 troops, which turned the tide of the war, and in August 1849 Kossuth was in, flight and the Hungarian forces in complete subjec tion, Georgei having surrendered with a rem nant of 5,000 men from his army.
In Italy the emperor's General Radetzky quelled the uprising speedily and Francis Joseph followed the dual victory by promulgating a new constitution. This totally failed to work, and two years later Austria became again an absolute despotism. The emperor took °Viribus Unitis' for his motto and let it be known that the state was to be as highly centralized as France under Louis XIV. Hungary and all the other provinces were governed from Vienna.
In 1855 a concordat was concluded with the Pope by which extraordinary priyileges were conferred on the Roman Catholic Church in Austria. In 1859 the diplomacy of Cavour, the
great Minister of Victor Emmanuel of Sar dinia, and Louis Napoleon's zeal for military renown forced upon Austria the war with France and most of the Italian states. At Magenta and Solferino, Francis Joseph himself fighting in the latter battle and displaying con spicuous bravery, the Austrians were decisively defeated by the French army under Marshal MacMahon. The war resulted in the loss of Lombardy to Austria and only the intercession of Bismarck, watchful of Louis Napoleon's prestige, saved Venetia.
In 1866 Bismarck forced Francis Joseph into the disastrous Seven Weeks War, the pretext of which was a dispute with Prussia over the succession in Schleswig-Holstein. The Austrian emperor had the satisfaction of humiliating Italy, which took sides with Prussia, by decisive victories on land and sea, but this was small recompense for the crushing defeat sustained at the hands of the Prussians at Sandowa, or Koeniggratz. This one battle brought Francis Joseph to a treaty which solidified both Ger many and Italy at his expense. To Italy, despite his victories there, he was forced to cede Venice through Napoleon III of France as intermedi ary; to Prussia he lost the last trace of the ancient Hapsburg hegemony over the German states and the ghost of the Holy Roman Empire was laid forever.
The immense loss of prestige following the war was accompanied by serious disaffection at home. The emperor and his ministers forth with abandoned their policy of absolutism and promulgated a constitution for the Austro Hungarian monarchy. Under it the emperor was crowned King of Hungary at Budapest in 1867. The form of monarchy adopted then re mains in force to-day, and generally the method of governing the dual monarchy is the same. There has been bitter strife since then, with in cessant demands for reforms and continual dis turbances in the legislative assemblies, hut the influences and strength of purpose of the em peror have served to keep the empire together and even to retrieve much of the prestige lost in the Seven Weeks War. In 1878 the congress of Berlin gave Austria the former Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, so that the emperor, notwithstanding his losses of ter ritory in Italy, concluded his life as ruler of a territory more extensive than that he possessed in the beginning.