AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 



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AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 



In Italy there was trouble from the start. 

 Before Napoleon the Italians had been con- 

 tent under the rather benevolent Austrian 

 dominion, but the new generation included 

 such patriots as Mazzini, whom the Bonaparte 

 revival of Roman rule had set dreaming of 

 a new and united Italy. Metternieh's reply 

 to their aspirations was the attempt to Ger- 

 manize Italy. Many Italian leaders were ar- 

 rested and confined in fortresses like the Spiel- 

 berg, whose unspeakable horrors are told in 

 My Prisons, the personal reminiscences of a 

 famous Italian author, Silvio Pellico. In 1820 

 the people of Naples forced their Bourbon 

 king to grant them a constitution, whereupon 

 ternich sent an army and^ occupied the 

 country. Another army helped crush the rev- 

 olutionists in the kingdom of Piedmont. 



While the flame of national sentiment in 

 Italy was thus being fanned, the same spirit 

 was growing in Austria itself, in a much more 

 complex way. In 1828 Hungary revived its 

 old constitution and reintroduced the Magyar 

 language; Bohemia followed with attempts to 

 reinstate the Czech tongue; the Slavs, in the 

 South, began a similar effort. In 1846 the 

 Galicians, who are Poles, rebelled. Two years 

 later came revolutions in Hungary, in Bohe- 

 mia, in Vienna itself. Metternich resigned and 

 fled. When the news was brought to Italy the 

 people of Milan and Venice drove out the 

 Austrian garrisons, and the king of Piedmont, 

 in the name of all Italy, declared war, thus 

 beginning the movement which made modern 

 Italy and later involved Italy in the War of 

 the Nations. In Hungary the revolt was 

 crushed by the soldiers of the Russian czar, 

 in Bohemia by the Austrians themselves; in 

 Vienna it resulted in the abolition of feudal 

 service for Austrian peasants and the abdica- 



tion of the Emperor Ferdinand in favor of 

 his nephew, Francis Joseph, who ruled to 

 November 21, 1916. The Italians were de- 

 feated, but in 1859 they won Lombardy. 



From the time of Napoleon's fall, Austria 

 had struggled with Prussia for domination in 

 the German confederation. Though the latter 

 power had gained influence by its presence 

 in the Customs Union, from which Austria 

 was excluded because the other members did 

 not want Hungary and Italy in their ranks, 

 Austria maintained its traditional leadership 

 until, through the Schleswig-Holstein question 

 and the intrigues of Bismarck, it was drawn 

 into the Seven Weeks' War of 1866. Italy at- 

 tacked at the same time as Prussia, and tin- 

 result of the conflict to Austria was the loss 

 of Venice and exclusion from the political 

 affairs of Germany. The question of Austro- 

 German relations has, however, been revived 

 by the War of the Nations, as told in the 

 story of Austria-Hungary. 



Austrian defeat left Hungary in a position 

 to dictate regarding the internal affairs of the 

 country. In 1861 the Hungarian Parliament 

 had been abolished, but now came the Aus- 

 gleich, or Compromise, of 1867, which gave 

 Hungary legal equality. The affairs of Austria 

 since that date are told in the article AUSTRIA- 

 HUNGARY. Since 1848 Austria had encouraged 

 the rivalry of the Magyar (Hungarian) and 

 Slav races within the monarchy, in order to 

 maintain supremacy of the German element. 

 In the Ausgleich, however, the Slavs, actually 

 a majority in the whole country, were divided 

 between the kingdoms of Austria and Hun- 

 gary, to form a minority in each, and thus were 

 held in check. E.D.F. 



For index of related topics, see AUSTRIA- 

 HUNGARY. 



L A- 



^ AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, or the AUSTRO- 

 HUNGARIAN MONARCHY, also called the DUAL 

 MONARCHY, was an important country of Cen- 

 tral Europe until November, 1918. While 

 known under one name it was really a group 



of states, inhabited by people of many nation- 

 alities and conflicting racial sympathies, the 

 whole bound together only by the fact that 

 one sovereign was supreme ruler of them all. 

 It was not really a nation, in the sense that 



