Habsburg Monarchy

The Habsburg Monarchy was the composite state assembled by the house of Habsburg in central Europe, held together by inheritance rather than by one nation or language. From Rudolf IV's acquisitions in Austria the family gained the imperial title in 1438 and held it almost continuously until 1806. Maximilian I joined the Austrian lands to the Spanish inheritance of his grandson Charles V, so that by the mid-sixteenth century Habsburg power ringed France from Spain, the Netherlands, Milan and the Americas. In 1526 Louis II died fighting the Ottomans at Mohacs, and Ferdinand I inherited Hungary and Bohemia, a kingdom in parts occupied by Turkish armies for 150 years. The monarchy was a patchwork of kingdoms, duchies and lordlands each with its own diets and privileges; the Austrian lands were run from Vienna and, after 1749, by a central chancellery. The compromise of 1867 created the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, with a Hungarian government in Budapest, and gave the empire sixty more years of troubled existence. Industrialisation, mass politics and the demands of subject nationalities pulled it apart, and the strain of the First World War brought dissolution in November 1918. The houses of Spain, Naples and Burgundy passed to the family by marriage rather than by conquest.