Charles I of Austria

Biography

Charles was born in 1887 at Persenbeug Castle in Lower Austria, the son of Archduke Otto and Princess Maria Josepha of Saxony and a grand-nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph. He was taught privately and at Vienna's Schottengymnasium, then served as an army officer, mostly in Bohemia, while studying law and political science in Prague. In 1911 he married Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma.

The assassination of his uncle Franz Ferdinand in 1914 made him heir presumptive. During the First World War he commanded an army corps in the 1916 offensive against Italy and then an army group on the eastern front. He succeeded Franz Joseph on 21 November 1916 and was crowned King of Hungary at the end of that year.

In 1917 he opened secret peace contacts with France through his brother-in-law Prince Sixtus; when the approach became public in April 1918 it embarrassed him and bound Austria-Hungary more tightly to Germany. His October 1918 offer to turn the Austrian lands into a federation could not stop the empire breaking apart, and after the armistice in November he withdrew from government without formally abdicating.

The Austrian republic later deposed the Habsburgs and banished him. From exile in Switzerland he twice tried in 1921 to regain the Hungarian throne but was blocked by the regent Miklós Horthy. He was then sent to Madeira, where he died of respiratory failure in 1922. The Catholic Church beatified him in 2004.