The Habsburgs were the most powerful and most extensive royal family in European history, ruling the Alsace Territory, the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Spain, Austria-Hungary, the Spanish American Territory, and the Swiss state of Allgäu. At its peak, it was the undisputed top hegemon of Europe, and even forced Catholic France to choose a secret peace with ottoman Turkey, and its power is evident.
Rising from the Middle Ages, after the Frankish and German kingdoms, the Habsburgs established the Eagle Castle (i.e. Habsburg) in the canton of Allgäu (northern Switzerland) in the early 11th century, hence the name. So how did the Habsburgs, which once occupied the border between France, Germany and Switzerland today, grow and develop, and then dominate Europe and even influence the course of world history? In this article, let's sort out the rise and fall of this family that has ruled for a long time and spanned vast space.
※Origin: From Frankish Alsace?※
With the decline of ancient Rome, the empire gradually divided into east and west. However, under the impact of the "Crisis of the 3rd Century", the Western Roman Empire soon began to disintegrate. At this time, the Franks, a powerful tribe of Germans, took the opportunity to expand their territory, defeated the Huns, Avars and other Germanic tribes successively, and established the Merovingian dynasty of the Frankish kingdom. By 496 AD, the Frankish king Clovis had expanded his territory to Alsace and northern Switzerland, conquering the Germanic tribe of the Alemanni (also known as the Alamanids). In the 6th century AD, Alsace became the domain of the ancestors of the Habsburgs, whose ancestors were the Frankish Regional Dukes of Alsace.
In 800 AD, charles, the Frankish Carolingian monarch, was crowned emperor, and the history was called "Charlemagne". However, the prosperity and decline, only a few decades later, the Treaty of Verdun divided the empire into three parts, and the Frankish Empire ended. Alsace at this time became the territory of the Middle Franks, but was soon divided between the Kingdoms of West Francia and East Francia, and in 870 the Treaty of Morsen was incorporated into the Duchy of Swabian of the Holy Roman Empire (which evolved from East Francia). In this context, the ancestors of the Habsburg family set out from Alsace and gradually expanded to the canton of Allgäu in northern Switzerland, about to write their own family history.
Rise: Build Eagle Castle in northern Switzerland?※
After seizing northern Switzerland, the Bishop of Strasbourg, Werner (the ancestor of the Habsburg family), chose the site to establish the Eagle Castle, which gave the family its name and gradually expanded from its base to the entire East Franconian region. Earlier, King Otto I of Germany (formerly the Kingdom of East Francia) was crowned by the Pope in 962 AD, regaining the glory of Charlemagne of the Frankish Empire. During the reign of Frederick I (also known as Redbeard, Barbarossa, from which Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union was derived), the name of the country was changed to the Holy Roman Empire. After many twists and turns, after the Otto, Franconia and Hohenstaufen dynasties, the German region fell into a period of great vacancy, which provided an excellent historical opportunity for the Habsburgs who were entrenched in the Eagle Castle.
Interestingly, the Habsburgs were able to ascend to the throne as Holy Roman Emperor not because of military conquest, but because of the compromise of many forces. It turned out that since the Holy Roman Empire entered the period of great vacancy, thieves and chaos had seriously affected the control of the Roman Church over the regions, and Pope Gregory X was deeply frightened. Therefore, in 1273, he ordered that if the various princes of the German region could not resolve their differences, they must elect a new emperor to maintain order and stability. Of all the powers, the most powerful was Bohemia, but the rest of the princes were unwilling to submit to such a powerful monarch, so they chose Rudolf, Count of Habsburg, who seemed harmless. In this way, the Holy Roman Empire entered the reign of the Habsburgs.
Growing: Thriving in Germany?※
In the eyes of the German princes, a little count from the barren mountains of northern Switzerland would naturally become a puppet he supported, but the 55-year-old Rudolf was by no means an idle man, he had long sought to regain his ancestral property from the church, and now he was a king (not crowned emperor, but according to the custom, he was already called the Emperor of Shenluo), naturally "soaring into the sky and making a splash". Rudolf's first sword was the most powerful Bohemian lord of germany, Eutuka, who annexed large areas of the latter's territory and occupied large areas of Austrian territory by force, purchase, coercion, and marriage. Moreover, Rudolf's son Albrecht I, without the approval of the parliamentarians (who were held by the lords) and the pope, actually used his own strength to quell the rebellion and seize the throne.
However, the Habsburgs' path to growth soon suffered a setback. As mentioned above, Rudolf's throne was jointly elected by the German princes, which meant that the lords and nobles in the entire empire were still very powerful. When Albrecht I was assassinated, all the suffragettes began to conspire to suppress the Habsburgs, a move that reached its peak during the reign of Charles IV of Bohemia. Charles IV, by decree, directly disqualified the Habsburgs of their electorate.
※Transfer: Based in Austria?※
Just as the Habsburgs lost the throne of the Holy Roman Empire for a century, the newly rising Swiss Confederation began to expand northwards, which led to the destruction of the Habsburg family base, Eagle Castle. Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of two generations of Rudolf I and Albrecht I, the family heritage is still there. Since then, the habsburg family's base has officially been transferred from The Eagle Castle in Switzerland to Vienna in Austria. The territory left behind by the ancestors was so vast that the family continued to expand on the basis of Austria and Stilich, and in the middle of the 14th century began to call itself the "Grand Duke".
The Habsburgs called themselves the "Grand Duke of Austria" in order to compete with the German Electors as a way to show their identity. Of course, this title was naturally not recognized by Emperor Charles IV. So the Habsburgs began to prepare with two hands and two plans. On the one hand, they belonged to different family members of the Duchy of Austria and the Principality of Outer Austria to prepare for the future; on the other hand, they threw out a mysterious document to highlight the noble Christian status of the family. The former was intended to guard against the unexpected, while the latter further enhanced the legal rationality of the Austrian Grand Duke's succession to the throne. Since then, the spread of branches and the deification of blood have become the tricks of the successors of the Habsburg dynasty.
Ascension: Coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor?※
At the beginning of the 15th century, when the Hussite War broke out in Bohemia, although martin Luther was still a century away from the Reformation, the bohemian (i.e., Czech) people had begun to demand church reform and waged a war with the triple attributes of peasant revolt, religious reformation and national liberation. The Hussite War was seen as a threat by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, and he went around asking for help, and the Habsburg patriarch, Archduke Albrecht V of Austria (later King Albrecht II of Syra, Hungary and Bohemia), took the opportunity to offer to marry the emperor's daughter and take the throne of Hungary. In this way, the Habsburgs re-ascended to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire and became monarchs of the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary and the Kingdom of Bohemia.
Immediately after quelling the civil unrest, the Habsburgs sent troops to Hungary to defend against the Ottomans and become the shield of Christ in Europe. However, due to Albrecht's dysentery and death, a series of new changes have taken place in the situation. Although the Duke of Austria and the Throne of Thera were succeeded by Frederick III, the only surviving son of the Habsburgs who owned the Hungarian and Bohemian kings, Ladislaus, was killed shortly after birth. Since then, Frederick III and Matthias I have fought several battles over the position of Duke of Austria and King of Hungary.
Frederick III inherited the gifts of his ancestor Rudolf IV, was confident in the nobility of the family lineage, and traced the genealogy back to Julius Caesar of Rome and Priamus, king of Troy. He was convinced that the Habsburgs would conquer the whole world, but they were besieged several times by the people of Vienna in the royal palace. The marriage of close relatives in order to maintain the purity of blood resulted in the survival of only two of Frederick III's many children, and he had to carefully consider the marriage of his son Maximilian.
*?Sanba: Marriage between Spain and Hungary?※
Under Frederick III's arrangement, Mahmilian married Mary, daughter of the bankrupt Duke of Burgundy, "Charles the Bold", thus incorporating the Duchy of Burgundy into the territory of the Habsburgs, opening the way for the next step of capturing the Netherlands. Then Mahmione and Mary's son, the handsome Philippe, married Juana, Crown Prince of Spain, in 1496, and gave Marie's dowry to the Duchy of Burgundy to the Spanish royal family, from which Spain entered the Habsburg period. At the same time, Mahmilian's grandson Ferdinand I (who would later succeed holy Roman Emperor) married Anne, lord of Bohemia, and married granddaughter Lord Maria to Louis II, King of Hungary and Bohemia.
Because of this, under The Arrangement of Maximilian, during the reign of his other grandson, Charles V (Carlos I of Spain), the Habsburgs had become the hegemon of Europe. Since then, a great dynasty encompassing the colonies of the Spanish Netherlands (Netherlands and Belgium), Spain, Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, the Holy Roman Empire, Austria, Alsace, Burgundy and Spanish America has emerged. In 1526, Charles V's younger brother, Ferdinand I, took advantage of the Ottomans' inability to occupy Hungary for long and succeeded to the thrones of Hungary, Moravia, and Bohemia as brother-in-law of King Louis of Hungary. Such a large dynasty was on the map of Europe, and at the same time, in order to deal with the invasion of the Protestants and the Ottoman Empire, it was still constantly conquest, which made the same Catholic France feel uneasy, which made it secretly ally with the Ottomans against the Austrians.
Decline: The Loss of Spirit and Blood? ※
Charles V's hegemony was partly the marriage of successive Habsburgs, but the Martin Luther Reforms also began at this time. The growing protestantism eventually led to the German Peasants' War of 1524-1526, and many princes of the Holy Roman Empire used Lutheranism to develop their power. By the end of Charles V, he chose to abdicate, leaving the throne and Austria to his younger brother Ferdinand I. For a long time thereafter, Austria maintained tolerance towards Protestantism until 1618.
The second "Throw Out of the Window Incident" in the Czech Republic radically intensified the contradictions between Catholicism and Protestantism within the Empire. This quickly became a civil war between the German Protestant and Catholic princes, and quickly engulfed the major European countries. Protestant and Orthodox countries such as Britain, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark chose to support Protestant princes, and Habsburg in-laws countries such as Spain and Poland chose to support Catholic princes and royalty. The Pope of Rome naturally sided with the Catholic Church, while France, which was also Catholic, supported the Protestant camp in order to oppose the Habsburgs, and the Netherlands, which fought for its independence, made the same choice. Beginning in 1618, the Habsburg war against France was fought until 1648, when everyone was exhausted, a series of treaties were signed and the Westphalian system was established.
The establishment of the Westphalian system marked the establishment of the Balance of Power in Europe, and also meant that the supremacy of the Habsburg monarchy and the catholicism of the Roman Church were widely questioned in Europe. In addition, in order to maintain the purity of the family lineage, the Habsburg royal family married long-term close relatives, which led to many genetic diseases in the descendants of the family. More importantly, many members of the Habsburg family had an extinction, and in 1700 the Spanish Habsburg dynasty triggered the Spanish War of Succession between the French Bourbons and the Austrian Habsburgs (1701-1714), which ended with the victory of the Bourbons; in 1740, the Austrian Habsburgs led to the War of the Austrian Succession, but fortunately the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty of the Side Branch successfully withstood the pressure.
Since then, however, the geopolitical situation of the Habsburgs in Europe has been basically defensive, gradually transforming from the "shield of Europe" to the "ragdoll empire". In the Seven Years' War and the Napoleonic Wars that followed, the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty was the losing side, and even the imperial title of the Holy Roman Empire was forcibly removed. The rise of Prussia further prompted Austria to be excluded from the plans for German unification. In 1867, in order to defuse the impact of the Austro-Prussian War on the empire, the Austrian Empire changed its name to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and established the Dual Austrian-Hungarian Rule Model, but it was defeated and dismembered in World War I half a century later. Since then, the Habsburgs have gradually faded from the stage of history.
In summary, the Habsburg family inherited the establishment of a new European order in the context of the Frankish era, the heyday of the Holy Roman Empire, and the age of the Great Navigation, and was a country that had a profound influence on Europe and even the world. The early Habsburg ancestors cut through thorns and thorns, successively established family bases such as Eagle Castle and Austria, and were able to ascend to the throne of Shenluo twice and become the hegemon of Europe. However, the excessive obsession with the nobility of blood failed to keep pace with the times, and eventually lost its cultural and economic advantages in the context of the Reformation and the Great Navigation, and finally suffered the fate of extinction and exile.