The country of Austria, now mentioned, people should have the same impression in their minds as switzerland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and other small European countries. But if you go back 300 years, Austria's national size and influence will surprise you! At that time it was called "a must in Europe"!
Contemporary Austria has shrunk considerably
For hundreds of years in the Middle Ages, the german states had been preventing the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire from obstructing their local privileges, and in 1356, the first emperors were eliminated, forming a system of seven electors, in which the emperors thereafter had to be elected from among the seven most powerful princely lords. But then, in 1438, the Grand Duke of Austria, one of the seven electors, became emperor, and he came from the Habsburg family. After that, the Habsburgs used the resources of the hereditary territories of Austria to monopolize the imperial throne of the Holy Roman Empire through marriage, bribery, military politics, etc. (until 1806, when it was defeated and abolished by Napoleon).
Over the centuries, Austrian lords spared no effort to introduce monarchical centralization throughout the empire, although they often failed. But within the holy Roman Empire, no state had as much influence as Austria.
After the arrival of the Habsburg Maximilian (1493-1519), it continued to promote several important marriages. As a result, when his grandson Charles V came to power in 1519, he inherited the territories of Austria, the Netherlands and part of France, Burgundy, Castile and Aragon in Spain, the whole of Spanish America and the possessions scattered in the Mediterranean and Italy, Charles V was known as Charles I in Spain, and by the time philip II (reigned 1556-1598), the Habsburgs had inherited Portugal, and the Habsburg Empire had reached its peak. In 1526, Ottoman Turkey defeated Hungary, and in order to gain allies against Turkey, Hungary elected Charles V's brother Ferdinand as King of Hungary. Ferdinand's Hungary was still unable to resist the Turks, so the influence of the Holy Roman Empire naturally penetrated into Hungary to help resist the pagan Turks.
More than 100 years after 1526, the Turkish whale devoured Hungary, and in 1683, the Ottoman Turkish army attacked the city of Vienna, a war that evolved into a battle of destiny between the Christian and Islamic worlds. As a result, the German states, Poland, the pope, Venice, and Russia all contributed money to help Austria, and the result was a great defeat of the Ottoman Turkish army. After that, the Turks could no longer afford to covet Western Europe.
In 1699, Turkey was forced to cede much of Hungary, Transnesia, and Croatia to Austria, while retreating permanently to Romania and the Balkans.
The ancestral court of the Habsburgs is in Austria
After defeating the Ottoman Turks in the east, Austria began to recover territories occupied by France in the west, and it also participated in the War of the Spanish Succession. By 1714, under a post-war treaty, Austria had acquired Belgium in the Spanish Netherlands, Milan in Italy, and Naples.
When Austria turned to the East again, it achieved an even more glorious victory: Austria captured Belgrade, invaded Wallachia on the west bank of the Black Sea, and the border with the Turks in 1739 lasted until the 20th century.
By around 1740, Austria had become an extremely vast new empire centered on the Danube River in the center, including Belgium, Italy, the Kingdom of Hungary, and Bohemia (present-day Czechoslovakia). The court, government and army of the Austrian Habsburgs were filled with a large number of Hungarians, Czechs, Croats and Italian nobles, which was an international or non-national state at that time, which was a well-deserved "European must". Even if Bismarck's Prussia later unified Germany and excluded Austria from Germany, Austria was just as powerful in Central Europe.
In the second half of the 19th century Austria advanced toward Eastern Europe
Since then, the history has changed, European wars have been frequent, austria, the "must of Europe", has been dispersed, and Central Europe has become a free channel for coming and going freely, so Prussia has risen, and the influence of Tsarist Russia has also penetrated deep into the hinterland of Europe!