What Life Was Like: At Empire's End : Austro-Hungarian Empire Ad 1848-1918 - Hardcover

On the morning of December 2, 1848, in a provincial palace 100 or so miles northeast of Vienna, Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria was preparing to abdicate the throne. A weak man with little control over his own government, the 55-year-old Ferdinand nevertheless had the good sense to realize that his empire needed a younger person at the helm. Without children of his own, he had chosen as his successor his nephew, 18-year-old Franz Josef. For this, his final official appearance, Ferdinand, as was his habit, wore civilian dress; his nephew-a particularly handsome man with a slender figure-donned the tight-fitting white tunic and red trousers of a general officer in the imperial army. Only a small group had been assembled to witness the abdication: ministers of government, several high-ranking army officers, and the members of the Habsburg royal family. Among the latter were Franz Josef's parents: Archduke Franz Karl, the emperor's brother, who, considered as ineffectual as Ferdinand, had stepped aside in favor of his oldest son; and bursting with maternal pride and splendidly turned out in a court dress of white moiré silk with a jeweled rose in her hair, Archduchess Sophie, the guiding force behind her "Franzi's" accession to the throne. In a nervous voice, halting between words and occasionally emphasizing the wrong syllables, Ferdinand read out a prepared statement on behalf of himself and his wife, the empress Maria Anna. "Important reasons," he began, "have led Us to the irrevocable decision to lay down Our Crown in favor of Our beloved nephew, Archduke Franz Josef." After various other official acts were read aloud by Prime Minister Felix zu Schwarzenburg, the new emperor of Austria approached his uncle and knelt before him. Ferdinand stroked the young man's hair and, lifting him to his feet, proclaimed, "God Bless you! Be good and God will protect you. I have done this willingly."

Franz Josef, who was born on August 18, 1830, had seemed destined for great things from a very early age. His education had been entrusted to two powerful tutors: in the art of statecraft, to Klemens Metternich, the chancellor of the empire; in the matters of philosophy and religion, to the Archbishop of Vienna, Joseph von Rauscher. Between the age of six and his ascendancy to the throne, he was indoctrinated with the political philosophy of the monarch's divine right to rule. He was also taught French, Italian, Hungarian, and Czech in addition to his native German-all the languages that might be of use to a future Habsburg emperor, whose many royal titles included king of Hungary and Bohemia, king of Lombardy and Venetia, grand duke of Tuscany and Krakow, grand duke of Transylvania, and margave of Moravia.

Franz Josef would rule for longer than any other European monarch. The 68 years of his reign would be marked by monumental changes in political, economic, social, and cultural life. His prestige would hold together 50 million subjects-including nearly a dozen different peoples with countless conflicting tensions- who made up the polyglot and amorphous realm that was the Austrian Empire.