Franz Joseph I of Austria

Biography

Franz Joseph was born at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna in 1830, the eldest son of Archduke Franz Karl and Princess Sophie of Bavaria. Because his uncle Emperor Ferdinand was incapable of ruling and his father had no ambition, his mother raised him to be emperor, with a heavy programme of languages, law and military training. During the revolutions of 1848 he served briefly with Radetzky's army in Italy.

On 2 December 1848, at Olmütz, Ferdinand abdicated and Franz Joseph took the throne at eighteen, as part of the government's plan to end the Hungarian revolution. In 1854 he married his cousin Elisabeth of Bavaria. In his early reign he resisted constitutional government, and he lost Lombardy after the war of 1859 and Venetia in 1866, while defeat by Prussia in 1866 ended Austrian leadership in Germany.

In 1867 he agreed the Compromise with Hungary, which turned his realm into the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, and he was crowned King of Hungary. Decades of peace followed, but also personal loss: his brother Maximilian was executed in Mexico in 1867, his son Rudolf died by suicide in 1889 and his wife was assassinated in 1898.

His later foreign policy looked to the Balkans; in 1908 he annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, setting off an international crisis. After his heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, starting the chain of declarations that became the First World War. He died at Schönbrunn in 1916 after a reign of nearly 68 years and was succeeded by his grand-nephew Charles.