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1[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cuirassiers_autrichiens_2c_1815.png]]
2
3->''"That extraordinary empire known as the Austrian-Hungarian Dual Monarchy is less an Empire or a Kingdom or a State, than the personal property of the Habsburgs, whose hereditary talent for the acquisition of land is recorded on the map of Europe today!"''
4-->-- '''James W. Gerard (1867-1951), American diplomat'''
5
6''[[https://youtu.be/phyMWFmrChk Für Kaiser und König!]]''
7
8The Habsburg Empire was not a normal empire. Even when UsefulNotes/{{Austria}} was the premier power, its preeminence was not the same as that of [[UsefulNotes/TsaristRussia Russia under the Tsars]]. Rather the Habsburgs, one of the [[BlueBlood great houses of Europe]], were the feudal system taken to its logical extreme, with dozens of nations having no connection to one another except their joint allegiance to the Habsburg [[TheClan Family]]. (Note that the spelling "Hapsburg," common in older English translations, is not considered the most correct.) Therefore it is proper to refer to their state (and by extension its military) by reference to The Family. ([[UsefulNotes/TheMafia Not that one]] despite occasional resemblances.)
9
10The first Habsburg king was a warlord named Rudolph who was FeudalOverlord of an alpine fortress called ''Habichtsburg'' (now in UsefulNotes/{{Switzerland}} [[note]]The Habsburgs had terrible experiences with the Swiss, losing their home territories in what is now Switzerland, including the Aargau with Habsburg Castle, to the expanding Swiss Confederacy after the battles of Morgarten (1315) and Sempach (1386); the Duke of Austria Leopold III was also killed at Sempach. Habsburg Castle itself was finally lost to the Swiss in 1415.[[/note]]), which translates into English as "the Hawk's Castle", whence the name "Habsburg." He was elected "King of Germany" (''not'' Emperor of the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire [[note]]Frederick III (reigned 1452 – 1493) was the ''fourth'' king and first emperor from the House of Habsburg.[[/note]]) in Oct 1273, ''because'' of his lack of resources, which it was hoped would make him controllable. [[UnderestimatingBadassery As it turned out]], Rudolph had considerable military skill and sacked enough rebellious barons' castles to persuade them of the advisability of good order and loyalty to the crown. Rudolph and his son Albert both became Kings of Germany, but were never crowned Holy Roman Emperor. After Albert's assassination in May 1308, the house's fortunes sagged a little; the next king from the house was Albert II in 1438.
11
12The Habsburg family became known for its skill in diplomacy and acquired many possessions by marriage, giving rise to the motto "Let others wage wars, but you, merry Austria, marry!" (''Bella gerant alii, tu, felix Austria, nube!)''. At one time, by a merger with the Spanish royal family of Trastámara in the 15th century, the Habsburg crowned themselves at the head of the nascent Spanish Empire and became an entity with holdings in the Western as well as the Eastern hemisphere, becoming the first - and until its end the largest - "empire on which the sun never sets". The Spanish-based section of the family and the Austrian-based one were split, with UsefulNotes/CharlesV giving Spain and the Netherlands to his son UsefulNotes/PhilipII and the Central/Eastern European realms to his brother Ferdinand, albeit those would remain closely allied. Their union coincided with a golden age for both parties, though marked by an ever-present squeezing of resources from Spain and Italy to fund warring efforts against UsefulNotes/TheProtestantReformation in Northern Europe, which would be a perennial headache for the Mediterranean lower classes, much less inclined to fight unproductive conflicts in remote, unpronounceable countries. Philip would also briefly bring the Portuguese Empire to the team for (guess what) reasons of blood and marriages, forming the Iberian Union, although the Portuguese would end up later revolting and breaking away upon realizing that becoming a target for the Habsburg's enemies had turned the whole thing into a severe case of AwesomeButImpractical.
13
14The Habsburg imperial forces were always a motley and colorful patchwork of levies from their various possessions as well as mercenaries. They probably reached their greatest height of prestige during the UsefulNotes/ItalianWars, in which they took on France - previously the most feared army in Europe - and its various allies, and utterly, brutally crushed both of them under heel, using to full effect the tactical innovations their Spanish branch had previously acquired from the work of UsefulNotes/GonzaloFernandezDeCordoba. This ushered in almost a century of continuous Habsburg dominance in Europe, represented by the famous Spanish model of multi-national armies known as ''tercios'' and the combined naval power of their coastal properties, a reign that only began to slip during UsefulNotes/TheEightyYearsWar and UsefulNotes/ThirtyYearsWar decades later. The former war saw a portion of the Habsburg Netherlands painfully breaking away to form the Dutch Republic after a century of fighting, only leaving in Austrian hands the provinces later known as Belgium, while the latter saw brilliant but ruthless general Albrecht von Wallenstein fight on against the enemies of the Empire and win a number of battles, only to lose his position due to anti-Imperial Western intervention hammering his army coupled with an overweening personal ambition. Furthermore, the next century would see the Habsburg suffering a massive setback, this time the extinction of their Spanish branch for [[HeirClubForMen lack of male issue]] (and [[UsefulNotes/CharlesIIOfSpain health]]), ultimately leaving the Spanish throne in the hands of their enemies, French House of Bourbon in the UsefulNotes/WarOfTheSpanishSuccession[[note]]UsefulNotes/MariaTheresa was the last Habsburg ruler from the main male line.[[/note]]. Without their global reach, endless natural resources and privileged access to the Mediterranean, the Habsburg saw their power drastically reduced in a way they would never recover from.
15
16After that the Habsburg forces mostly just scrapped by. They could always field a decent army, but rarely a BadassArmy, though exceptional generals like Tilly, Eugene of Savoy, or Archduke Charles of Austria-Teschen occasionally won outstanding victories. It was, however, always a colorful force and had as one of its most interesting features a number of [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Proud Warrior Races]] from Central Europe and the Balkans, such as the Hussars from Hungary and the Grenzers from Croatia, Serbia and Romania. Slightly less romantic were the rather stolid [[UsefulNotes/WeAreNotTheWehrmacht ethnic Germans]] from Austria and allied states. Unfortunately, being a "colorful" force was also its own downfall. The diversity in the armed forces, comprised of conscripts from dozens of ethnicities together speaking more than ten languages often made command and control difficult. They won few spectacular battles, but they did keep the Empire together until UsefulNotes/WorldWarI which ushered in the end of the Habsburgs as a state and the end of their military, a time by which the Austro-Hungarian forces were probably one of the ''worst'' armies in Europe. Before Russia's domestic collapse in 1917, the Russian Army under Brusilov utterly smashed their Austro-Hungarian opponents in Ukraine, to the point that UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany had to bail them out. The Austrians also suffered embarrassing defeats at the hands of the much smaller Serbian army, again only managing to occupy the country with substantial German aid. The Austro-Hungarian army had considerably more success against the incompetent Italians, to the point Germany felt it could only trust Austria to hold the Italian Front... but even there, in the end, they ''still'' managed to lose! It should be mentioned that many of the Austro-Hungarian soldiers were Slavs, and were understandably reluctant to fight against other Slavs for the sake of German or Hungarian masters.
17
18One rather odd victory they had was Lissa, in which they defeated the Italian fleet in the war with Prussia and Italy in the nineteenth century -- probably the only naval battle the Central-European Habsburgs ever won. Also, while their battleships did practically nothing during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, the tiny Austrian submarine force managed to pull off some amazing stunts; Captain Von Trapp (made popular in Film/TheSoundOfMusic) was their greatest submarine ace. Another peculiarity noted by historians was that by the end of WWI, the Austro-Hungarian Army "laid down their arms" (rather than ''surrendered''); they ''outlasted the Empire they served.''
19
20Rather amazingly, the last Austrian Crown Prince, Otto von Habsburg (or Otto Habsburg-Lothringen in Austria)[[note]]he - like the rest of the Habsburgs - was legally barred from using the [[TheVonTropeFamily 'von']] in the Austrian Republic after their official abrogation of the nobility in 1919[[/note]] lived until the ripe old age of 98, [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/04/otto-von-habsburg-obituary dying on the 4th of July, 2011]] . Had he actually succeeded his father on the throne he would have [[LongRunner reigned for 88 years, becoming the longest reigning monarch in history by a huge margin (The record holder, Louis XIV reigned for 72 years).]] A politician of UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion, he allegedly once punched [[UsefulNotes/TheTroubles Ian Paisley]] after the latter insulted UsefulNotes/ThePope as ''the Antichrist'' in the European Parliament.
21
22House members who have their own pages:
23* UsefulNotes/MaximilianI
24* UsefulNotes/CharlesV
25* UsefulNotes/PhilipII
26* UsefulNotes/JohnOfAustria
27* UsefulNotes/PhilipIII
28* UsefulNotes/PhilipIV
29* UsefulNotes/CardinalInfanteFerdinand
30* UsefulNotes/CharlesIIOfSpain
31* UsefulNotes/MariaTheresa (last ruler from the main male line)
32* UsefulNotes/MarieAntoinette
33* UsefulNotes/ElisabethOfAustria
34
35----
36!!Tropes as depicted in fiction:
37
38* AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs: Vienna was occupied by the Hungarian Black Army from 1485 to 1490. More famously, the Ottomans attempted it twice, being defeated in both sieges. The Swiss seized Habsburg Castle in 1415 and held onto it ever since.
39* BornInTheWrongCentury: Austria under the Habsburgs had the strange honor of being seen as both [[{{Ruritania}} bafflingly backward for its time]] and oddly ''progressive'' for the era, which tends to show in works and folklore involving the Empire. Among other things, the Empire pre-UsefulNotes/WorldWarI was a multicultural and multinational hotbed...in an Europe where ethnic nationalism and the effects of the "Springtime of Nations" were still in vogue.
40* CoolHorse: The famous Lipizzaner stallions of the Spanish Riding School, which even merited a Creator/{{Disney}} movie, ''[[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057312/ Miracle of the White Stallions]]''.
41* {{Determinator}}: Tends to be shown as this trope as well. Given that until UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, Austria/Austria-Hungary had gone through ''centuries'' of threats that would have torn up other countries. This could also apply to the Austro-Hungarian military, which for all its weaknesses effectively ''outlasted their own Empire.''
42* FairForItsDay: Despite being historically a deeply Catholic, decidedly anti-democratic realm that flirted with feudalism and absolutism at times where both were considered hopelessly antiquated concepts, the Austrian Empire became, [[HegemonicEmpire by necessity]], a European trailblazer in terms of religious, ethnic, political and national integration. Towards the end of its existence, the Empire ''encouraged'' the use of regional cultures and tongues, to the point of forcing its bureaucrats to learn one or more languages. The national anthem had no less than fourteen[[note]]German, Hungarian, Czech, Italian, Illyrian, Croatian, Serbian, Polish, Slovenian, Romanian, Greek, Aramaic, Ruthenian and Hebrew[[/note]] official versions. Jews also prospered under the Habsburgs, with places such as Czernowitz (modern-day Chernivtsi, Ukraine) becoming international centres of Judeo-European culture. During World War 1, a record-breaking percentage of the officer corps was made up of Jews, and the troops were tended to by Catholic, Protestant, Christian Orthodox, Jewish and Muslim chaplains alike. Archduke Franz Ferdinand's [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Greater_Austria plans]] for a [[TheFederation United States of Greater Austria]], while [[WhatCouldHaveBeen never realised]], served as a major influence for the [[UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion Pan-European movement and later the EU]]. Unfortunately, the simmering nationalist, supremacist and fundamentalist elements in the constituent nations (and, in particular, [[UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler one of their most famous disciples]]) ended up [[BalkaniseMe destroying the Empire from within]] and directly kicked off decades of UsefulNotes/{{Fascism}} and more than a century of ethnic, religious and political strife across Central and Eastern Europe.
43* FolkHero: [[WarriorPrince Prince Eugene of Savoy]], undoubtedly Austria's best military commander during the 17th and 18th centuries, has a German folksong, ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg78Px9Uoic Prinz Eugen, der edle Ritter]]'' ("Prince Eugene, the noble knight") about him, which details his recapture of Belgrade from the Turks in 1717.
44-->''Als Prinz Eugenius dies vernommen,\
45Ließ er gleich zusammenkommen\
46Sein' Gen'ral und Feldmarschall.\
47Er tät sie recht instruieren,\
48Wie man sollt' die Truppen führen\
49Und den Feind recht greifen an.''
50* FromNobodyToNightmare: How the dynasty is sometimes portrayed. Given how it rose from a relatively obscure noble house in what is now Switzerland to becoming sovereigns of the Danubian realms until the end of World War I.
51* IHaveManyNames: Depending on the time period and whoever's describing it, the Habsburg Empire has been referred to as the Habsburg Monarchy, Danube Monarchy, Austrian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Dual Monarchy, or simply TheEmpire.
52* KickedUpstairs[=/=]ReassignmentBackfire: The Habsburgs initially gained the Imperial throne of the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire amidst a [[DecadentCourt conniving nobility]] who thought they could manipulate the new Emperor into forwarding their own agenda. By the time the HRE was dissolved in the Napoleonic Wars however, the Empire had long become synonymous with Austria and the Habsburgs in particular; with one exception, the position was held by a Habsburg in continuous succession in the later centuries of the HRE.
53* ModestRoyalty: The Habsburgs, at least later on, were also depicted as this compared to most other royal houses in Europe. Franz Joseph's quarters in particular were said to be relatively spartan and bare-bones, reflecting his military background.
54* MultinationalTeam: The Habsburg Empire tends to be depicted as in real life as a veritable multinational, multicultural and multi-religious domain with a predominantly German (and later, Hungarian) veneer, in contrast to the more homogeneous UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany.
55* TheRemnant: The Habsburg realms tend to be seen as one to the old Holy Roman Empire.
56* {{Ruritania}} : Often thought to have inspired this trope. Justified a bit, but more often than not, even its contemporaries didn't do the research and thought of the country as far more backwards, ignorant and undeveloped [[RealityIsUnrealistic than it was in reality]].
57* TokenEnemyMinority: Prince Eugene of Savoy was French by birth.
58* WhatCouldHaveBeen: The myriad possible fates of the Austro-Hungarian Empire open up a can of "what ifs" used in AlternateHistory fiction. One major concept that's speculated on is UsefulNotes/FranzFerdinandOfAustria's plan for [[TheFederation the United States of Greater Austria]], which would've divided the empire into 14 states and 14 semi-autonomous German enclaves within several of the non-German states, giving each of the major nationalities within the empire at least one state of their own instead of only the German Austrians and the Hungarians having that status. Such a multi-ethnic federation would've been practically the European Union in miniature. Rather fittingly, multiple Habsburgs are to this day active in various pan-European organisations.
59----
60
61!!Appearances in fiction:
62
63* Creator/ErichVonStroheim's ''Film/TheWeddingMarch'' is about an aristocratic Austrian cavalry officer who falls in love with a working-class girl, in the last days before the Great War breaks out in 1914.
64* Captain von Trapp in ''Film/TheSoundOfMusic'' (and in RealLife) was a former Habsburg officer.
65* ''Film/TheIllusionist2006'': It takes place in turn of the century Vienna involving a dramatized retelling of the Mayerling Incident.
66* ''Sunshine'': A 1999 Hungarian film staring Creator/RalphFiennes follows a Jewish family through three different successive eras, with the first set during the final years of the Habsburg Empire. The following ones take place before UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and during the 1956 Revolution respectively, long after the Monarchy fell.
67* The Habsburg Empire exists in ''VideoGame/EuropaUniversalis'' and is a fan favorite. There was a fan write-in campaign to keep Austria's traditional white color for ''Victoria II''.
68* The Habsburgs are also around in the ''[[VideoGame/CrusaderKings Crusader Kings II]]'' and [[VideoGame/CrusaderKingsIII its sequel]], although in 1066 they only rule a single county in Switzerland. Recreating the Habsburg empire from this humble origin is a common challenge among players.
69* The first ''VideoGame/VictoriaAnEmpireUnderTheSun'' features them as one of the major obstacles for Prussia/an Italian state to unify Germany and Italy, respectively.
70* Although ''VideoGame/HeartsOfIron'' takes place [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII during the immediate period]] after the empire was disbanded, ''IV'' allows for the player to restore Austria-Hungary with Otto von Habsburg as the leader if they play as Hungary, or it can be willed back into existence if either Germany restores the Kaiser or Turkey returns to the Ottoman Empire and then rekindles sentiment for the empire, with Austria in charge in the latter example[[note]]the nation can also be formed by Czechoslovakia or Croatia, but neither can put the Habsburgs in power[[/note]]. In a somewhat more outlandish case, it's also possible for the Habsburgs to return to power in ''Poland'' in ''IV'' if the player establishes a monarchy and chooses Karl Albrecht von Habsburg as the monarch[[note]]in real life, while Karl did serve in the Polish army, he was far more interested in serving as a soldier, and did not seek to establish a monarchy in Poland; in game, this is represented by him being both the country's leader and a field marshal, with the committee that seeks a king using his sense of patriotism to get him to agree to become king if the player goes down that path[[/note]], with said option allowing for Poland to unite with Czechoslovakia and claim the German-held territories bordering both countries (as well as force Miklos Horthy to allow Otto von Habsburg to rule Hungary)[[note]]interestingly, because of how the game mechanics work, if Czechoslovakia was to somehow reform the Austro-Hungarian Empire before being annexed, Poland would gain cores ''on the entire Empire''[[/note]]. Curiously, despite the Habsburgs having ruled Spain in the past and Spain having a monarchist path in this game (and Francisco Franco offered Otto von Habsburg the crown in real life before Juan Carlos I of the House of Bourbon was crowned), there is no option to have Habsburg Spain.
71* ''Webcomic/HetaliaAxisPowers'' also follows the embodiments of [[UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire Austria and Hungary, as well as Prussia]] from the Renaissance through the UsefulNotes/WarOfTheAustrianSuccession and beyond. Of course, knowing history, we all know how it [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI all]] ends [[BittersweetEnding down the line.]]
72** And with Himaruya moving their story towards the UsefulNotes/SevenYearsWar and the 19th Century, this could be made all the more bittersweet.
73* A Disney production as a two-parter for its TV series, ''Miracle of the White Stallions'' was about Patton rescuing the horses of the Vienna Spanish Riding School, a showcase of the old Hapsburgs still around today.
74* Robert Musil's "unfinished" novel ''The Man with No Qualities'' revels in this, depicting the Empire in its final decade. Ironically, the author laments on how Austria-Hungary was ''so'' successful and deceptively progressive for the time that it became a victim of that very success.
75* They appear as bad guys in ''Literature/SixteenThirtyTwo''. Ditto for just about ''any'' work that focuses on UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte (he forced the last Holy Roman Emperor to abdicate, though marrying his daughter).
76* Jaroslav Hašek's ''The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War'', better known just as ''Literature/TheGoodSoldierSvejk'' or just ''Švejk'' ([[SpellMyNameWithAnS with all attendant variations thereof]]), an utterly hilarious (though also gut-wrenching no less often) satirical novel about titular "[[BlatantLies good soldier]]" during the last days of the Empire. Sadly also unfinished -- Hašek [[DiedDuringProduction died of tuberculosis]] after finishing barely a third of its intended size, with Švejk didn't even getting to the front lines -- it's still one of the greatest achievements of the Czech literature in particular and world literature in general.
77* Apart from ''Švejk'', there was a Polish novel and later a film, ''Film/CKDezerterzy''. Its [[IneffectualSympatheticVillain similarity in depiction]] of WWI-era [=KundK=] army brought a number of plagiarism accusations, but was a genuine work. Which is yet another example of [=KundK=] forces' image of a RedShirtArmy.
78* The [[AfterTheEnd post-apocalyptic]] ''Literature/NineteenEightyThreeDoomsday'' fics for ''Webcomic/HetaliaAxisPowers'' take place in and around Austria, with a number of nods to Franz Joseph and the Habsburg Empire in general. Including the embodiment's [[spoiler:brutally cut short]] "marriage" to Hungary.
79* The latest DLC and expansion pack for ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}} V,'' ''Gods and Kings'' features Austria as a playable nation for the first time in the series. Also of note is that it is represented in-game by UsefulNotes/MariaTheresa and that its unique building is a ''Coffee House.''
80* The Hungarian film ''Film/ColonelRedl'' (1985) takes place during the Dual Monarchy's waning days, focusing on spy-turned-traitor Alfred Redl. The movie depicts the ethnic and religious tensions within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, showing Archduke Franz Ferdinand using unsavory means (entrapping military officers as spies, provoking conflict with Serbia and Russia) to keep the Empire together at all costs.
81* Rachelle [=McCalla=]'s ebook trilogy Literature/TheGirlWhoStartedTheWarToEndAllWars is set in an AlternateHistory where Sophie Chotek died during her teenage years and never met Archduke Franz Ferdinand, starting a chain of events that led to nuclear war and the threatened extinction of humanity. The heroine, Torin Sinclair, must go back through time to 1885 Bohemia and take the place of Sophie, of whom she's an exact lookalike.
82* John Biggins' ''Otto Prohaska'' series about an Austrian U-boat commander.
83* Much of ''Literature/TheSevenPercentSolution'' takes place in and around Vienna.
84* The Austrian-Hungarian Empire forces appear as a playable faction in ''VideoGame/Battlefield1'''s multiplayer. While unique looking in appearance, they otherwise speak the same German dialect as the German Empire. They appear as enemies in the War Story, "Avanti Savoia!".
85* ''Theatre/{{Elisabeth}}'' covers the life of Empress Elisabeth, Emperor Franz Joseph I, and their son Crown Prince Rudolf.
86* The manga ''Manga/{{Wolfsmund}}'' has an Austrian noble in charge of the eponymous (and fictional) fortress-cum-checkpoint which is set up at St Gotthard Pass. The cruelty of said noble eventually stirs the Swiss forest cantons into rebellion, leading to the Battle of Morgarten in the finale. The co-dukes of Austria at the time, Leopold I and Frederick the Fair, appear as characters.
87* ''VideoGame/AncestorsLegacy'' has a campaign depicting Rudolph's trials as "Holy Roman Emperor".
88* ''Series/ViennaBlood'', a TV miniseries based on a series of mystery novels by Frank Talis, is set in Vienna in 1906-7. A Vienna detective forms an oddball partnership with a young psychiatrist ([[AllPsychologyIsFreudian an early devotee of Sigmund Freud]]), and together, they fight crime.
89* ''VideoGame/{{Isonzo}}'' is set on the Italian Front of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, along the borders of northern Italy and Austria-Hungary, with the Austro-Hungarian Army themselves serving as the sole Central Powers faction currently in the game.
90* ''Series/TheEmpress'' is about the early marriage of Franz Joseph and Elisabeth.

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