Holy Roman Emperor Francis II.
The Austrian Empire was a large multiethnic state in central Europe with its capital in Vienna. The core of the empire, the Grand Duchy of Austria, was first established as a margraviate, or border region, of the Duchy of Bavaria by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I after defeating the Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955. Austria was detached from Bavaria and made a separate duchy by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1156.
In 1278, the Duchy of Austria came under the rule of the Habsburgs, a Swiss noble house, at the same time that Rudolf of Habsburg was elected Holy Roman Emperor. The Habsburgs continued to rule Austria, and by a series of marriage alliances were able to expand their domains to include Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, Spain, southern Italy, and the Netherlands. Duke Albert V of Austria was elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1438, and with two exceptions, every Holy Roman Emperor after him was a Habsburg. Under Albert's cousin and successor, Frederick III, Austria was made an archduchy.
The marriage of Frederick's son Maximilian to the daughter of Philip the Bold of Burgundy in 1477 added the Netherlands to the Habsburg domains. The marriage of Maximilian's son Philip to Joanna of Castile added southern Italy, Spain, and Spain's colonial empire in America and the Pacific. The marriage of Philip's son Ferdinand to the sister of Louis II of Hungary added Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia. Ferdinand was named Archduke of Austria by his older brother Charles in 1521. Since Charles left his lands in Spain, the Netherlands, and southern Italy to his son Philip, Ferdinand's descendants ruled only the Habsburg domains in central Europe, as well as being Holy Roman Emperors. Under the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, the Netherlands were transferred from the Spanish Habsburgs to the Austrian Habsburgs. In 1700 the last Spanish Habsburg ruler, King Charles II, died with no heirs, and Spain passed to the French House of Bourbon.
In the eighteenth century, the Austrian Habsburgs fought a series of wars with the Kingdoms of Prussia and Great Britain. The last of these, known as the Habsburg War in Europe, began when Marie Antoinette, widow of King Louis XVI of France and regent for their son Louis XVII, signed a secret alliance with her nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II in April 1794. The Franco-Austrian alliance invaded Prussia a year later, touching off the Habsburg War. The war ended in defeat for France and Austria, and in the 1799 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Prussia annexed Austrian territory, the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, and a Germanic Confederation that excluded the Habsburg lands was created under Prussian leadership. Francis II responded by proclaiming himself the Emperor Francis I of the Austrian Empire.
The threat of an impending war between Austria and the Germanic Confederation in 1815 kept the nations of Europe, including Spain, from intervening in the Mexican Civil War. Sobel does not indicate whether the war took place, but it seems likely that if it did, Austria suffered another defeat. When a wave of revolutionary chaos and mob rule swept through Europe during the Bloody Eighties, Austria was particularly hard-hit, with widespread looting in Vienna. The standard of living fell significantly in Austria as a result, worse than anywhere else in Europe except the Italian kingdoms.
When the Russian Revolution broke out in 1900 and the Russian Empire began to disintegrate, Austria was one of the European powers, along with Britain, France, and the Germanic Confederation, to intervene militarily to bring the fighting to an end. Sobel makes no further mention of Austria after this, which may mean that intervention in Russia brought about the final collapse of the Habsburg monarchy and the breakup of the Austrian Empire.