aeiou austria as a great power final

Eckardt 1

Alles Erdreich ist Österreich untertan: Austria as a Great Power, 1683-1730

Christopher Eckardt

Supervised by Dr. Roger Mason

Total Words: 7,639

Eckardt 2

Habsburg Austria is an often overlooked player in early modern power

politics. In English language history, the role of Austria is often reduced to

that of a sideshow to the main historical drama of France, England, and

later Prussia. However, this lack of attention on Austria and her rulers—the

Habsburg Emperors—is a great weakness to an understanding of the era, as

the role of both the Austrian state, and her Emperors is a vital piece of the

patterns of diplomacy and power politics in conflict ridden period from the

Peace of Westphalia in 1648 to the end of the wars of Louis XIV. However,

while her importance can not be denied, what is in question is Austrian

status as a ‘great power’ of Europe. Many historians point to this era as the

start of Austria as a great power, a claim that this essay will examine, with a

primary focus on how trends in Austrian foreign policy and relations, along

with the driving forces behind those trends can be seen when we consider

Austria as a great power, and the question of whether or not the Austrian

Habsburg Monarch can truly be seen as a great power in the era between

the Siege of Vienna in 1683, and the end of the War of the Spanish

Succession and its aftermath in the beginning of the 18th century.

In 1648, the end of the Thirty Years War saw the international

situation change drastically for both the House of Habsburg, Austria, and

European politics in general. The great fear of 16th century Europe, that the

combined Habsburg dominion of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire would

overrun all of Europe, had been put to rest by the long war, which despite

constant changes in the balance of the war, had ended in a resounding

Eckardt 3

defeat for the Habsburg dynasty. The Spanish Habsburgs had been defeated

by a newly revitalised France, and their empire was beginning to enter its

decline, while the dynastic alliance between the Spanish and Austrian

Habsburgs had been decisively broken by enforced treaties.1 Within the

Holy Roman Empire, the Peace of Westphalia had guaranteed the right of

sovereignty to the German, preventing the Emperor from forcing them into

truly subservient states by guaranteeing the Prince's rights to both raise

their own armies and make treaties with foreign powers thus harshly

reducing the Emperor’s power outside of the Hereditary Crownlands of

Austria, Bohemia, and Royal Hungary.2 However, while these events seemed

to be representative of severe damage to the Habsburg dynasty—and they

may have indeed been the death knell of the Spanish branch of the House of

Austria—the post-Westphalian world actually opened the door to many new

and diverse opportunities for the Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg.

The loss of the Spanish connection and dependence on Spain provided the

Austrian Habsburgs with much greater freedom of diplomatic action, both

within and without the German Empire that they were the de jure head of.

The German princes in particular had always been frightened by the

Emperor’s connection to his Spanish cousins fearing that they would lose

their liberties to a foreign ruler, and the loss of the dynastic connection

served a role in the steady rise in the Emperor’s influence in the Empire

1 Jean Berenger, A History of the Habsburg Empire: 1273-1700, trans. C.A. Simpson, (Essex; Longman Group, 1994), pg. 281-2822 Charles W. Ingrao, The Habsburg Monarchy: 1648-1815, (Cambridge; University of Cambridge Press, 2000), pg. 48-50

Eckardt 4

over the late 17th and early 18th centuries.3 Furthermore, the official

reduction of direct Imperial authority forced the Austrian Habsburgs to

focus more on their own Hereditary Crownlands as a power base, rather

than attempting to bring the Empire as a whole to heel, which in the end led

to Austria itself holding a much stronger position in the post Westphalian

world than it had prior to the 1618 Bohemian Revolt that had sparked the

Thirty Years War.

Figure 1 (Habsburg Austria in the Late 17th Century)4

Prior to the Thirty Years War, the direct Hereditary Lands of the

Austrian Habsburgs had consisted of the Archduchy of Austria, the Lands of

3 Ingrao, The Habsburg Monarchy, pg. 53-57

4 Michael Hochedlinger, Austria’s Wars of Emergence: 1683-1797, (London; Pearson Education Limited, 2003), pg. 11

Eckardt 5

the Bohemian Crown, and the parts of the Hungarian Kingdom which were

not ruled directly or indirectly by the Ottoman Empire. Much in the

stereotype of Habsburg policy, much of this territory had been acquired by

inheritance rather than more classical state formation, and in many cases,

the idea of these many disparate states representing a united 'Austria'

might well be alien to their inhabitants, as the whole realm seemed much

more like a patchwork of various entities who shared a single ruler than a

unified state.5 No central diet or administration existed for the whole of the

Crownlands, and the task of ruling was divided out into chancelleries and

other local authorities within the many respective pieces of the Habsburg’s

hereditary lands.6 Vienna served as the Imperial seat only standing due to

proximity and convenience to the other key administrative centers like

Prague, Pressburg, Graz, and Innsbruck.7 Indeed, the Emperor Rudolf II

had relocated the Imperial capital to Prague, symbolizing the immense

importance the lands of the Bohemian Crown held for the Austrian

Habsburgs, and the limits on the Emperor’s authority, even within his own

realm. Furthermore, the Croatian Military Border, the first standing army

that the Austrian Habsburgs raised, was paid for and administered not by

the Emperor in Vienna, but by the administration for Inner Austria at Graz,


6 Ingrao, The Habsburg Monarchy, pg. 16

7 Hochedlinger, Austria’s Wars of Emergence, pg. 10-25

Eckardt 6

driving home the decentralised nature of Imperial authority even in the

Habsburg Hereditary Corwnlands even further.8

The Bohemian Revolt that served to kick start the Thirty Years War

had perhaps been among the most significant piece of Austrian state

formation. Although the Habsburg realm remained largely patchwork and

decentralized—especially when compared to the governments of France and

later Prussia—the Bohemian Revolt and subsequent crackdown on the long

politically independent and powerful Bohemian nobility had led to a

substantial increase in the power Vienna held over the Estates of the

Austrian Habsburg Crownlands.9 However, this increase in power was

mostly limited to the destruction of the Estates independent political power,

and the Emperor in Vienna still lacked much in the way of a centralized

bureaucracy, and so the Estates remained as an important arm of

administration. Thus, while the Emperors had won the ability to control

their not insubstantial realm, the power of collecting the all-important taxes

remained in the hands of the Estates, rather than their own.10 That the

power of taxation remained in the hands of the Estates, who would often be

unwilling to raise them upon request, would remain as a massive bottleneck

in any attempt to marshal the vast amounts of money required by the needs

of warfare in the early modern era.11


9 Ingrao, The Habsburg Monarchy, pg. 50-52, 58-6010 Hochedlinger, Austria’s Wars of Emergence, pg. 26-34

11 Charles W. Ingrao, In Quest and Crisis: Emperor Joseph I and the Habsburg Monarchy, (Purdue University Press, Lafayette, 1979) pg. 7-25

Eckardt 7

This weak, non-centralized domestic political structure would not be

overturned until the time of Maria Theresa, and her reforms in the wake of

the disastrous War of the Austrian Succession. Thus, they would serve as a

great weakness for the Austrian state throughout the early modern era, and

perhaps one of the defining features of Austrian interactions with foreign

powers. The lack of direct Imperial authority over the various provinces of

his own realm, and the powerful position of provincial estates resulted in an

Austria that was less an absolutist monarchy than it was balancing act

between the power of the Emperor and the power of the Estates. In many

respects, this diarchy of political power placed Austria in its long running

position as one of the weaker powers, as—more often than not, the

provincial Estates would fail to raise the amount of money asked of them, or

simply deny Imperial requests for money altogether.12 This reliance on the

Estates, and the inability of the Habsburg central government to ever fully

bring the Estates under their absolute control would serve a major role in

the future of Austrian foreign policy during the late 17th and early 18th

centuries, and—when compared to the power of other European States—

serves as a reminder of how weak the Austrian domestic position was. In

addition to domestic sources of taxation, the great source of profit for the

Maritime Powers and the Spanish Habsburgs—trade—was shut off to the

Austrian Habsburgs. Despite Austrian possession of ports on the Adriatic

such as Trieste, the domination of the Adriatic by the Venetians would


Eckardt 8

prevent such trade from ever truly maturing, and in fact caused potential

Austrian ports to enter a severe decline, which was not ended until Milan

was acquired in 1714, and Venice was forced to grant trade concessions.13

Despite the continuing weakness in the domestic administration of

Habsburg Austria, within the Holy Roman Empire, the second half of the

17th century saw a marked improvement in the position and nominal

leadership authority of the Habsburg Emperor. As mentioned previously, the

German princes had been frightened by the Emperor’s connections to Spain

and the threat it implied to their liberties and privileges.14 The period after

the Thirty Years War, and the rule of Emperor Leopold I saw a massive

resurgence in Imperial authority and prestige within the Empire.15 While

many of the German princes had supported the French and Swedes during

the Thirty Years War in order to challenge the authority of the Habsburgs,

the Treaty of Westphalia and French pressure on the Reich led them to

redirect support to the Emperor in service of their own interests—primarily

—protection against foreign powers.16 However, despite the fact that the

princes of the Empire came willing to provide substantial support to the

13 Hochedlinger, Austria's Wars of Emergence, pg. 196-197


15 Roger Wines, “The Imperial Circles: Princely Diplomacy and Imperial Reforms, 1681-1714,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 39, No. 1, March 1967, pg. 1-29

16 Heinz Duchhardt, “International Relations, the Law of Nations, and the Germanies: Structures and Changes in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century,” in State and Society in Early Modern Austria, ed. Charles Ingrao, (Purdue; Purdue University Press, 1994), pg. 286-297

Eckardt 9

money and troop hungry Habsburg crown, in order to achieve this end, the

princes were not willing to allow the Emperor to rule completely

unopposed.17 Throughout the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the Emperor

would continually have to negotiate, placate, and even bribe his nominal

subordinates in order to achieve his goals, and many of the German Princes

continued to act independently when it suited them, even waging war

against the Emperor in the case of Bavara during the War of the Spanish

Succession.18 However, while substantial limitations remained on the

Emperor’s power and the victory was far from the complete, it had been

won and the electors of the Empire had been more or less united behind the

Habsburg banner by their fear of foreign powers. This increase in power

within the Holy Roman Empire would be welcomed throughout the rest of

the 17th century, allowing the Emperor the chance to challenge rivals that

might yet overpower his personal Crownlands.

In the realm of foreign affairs outside the Holy Roman Empire,

Austria was torn between two duties based on the two crowns it held. As the

last Christian power remaining in the Balkans after the destruction of

Hungary, she was to stand against the Turkish threat from the south, while

as the Emperor, she bore responsibility for the defense of the Reich against

encroaching foreign powers from north and west. Unlike the stronger

position the Austrian Habsburgs enjoyed domestically after Westphalia, the

17 Ingrao, The Habsburg Monarchy, pg. 53-5718 Wines, “The Imperial Circles”

Eckardt 10

foreign policy situation seemed much grimmer. The freedom of action and

loyalty of the German princes that came out of the loss of the Spanish

connection would not become apparent until later in the century, and in

many cases it seemed like the Austrian Habsburgs were surrounded by

enemies on all sides. To their south, the Ottoman Turks had recovered from

their stagnation that had led to the unofficial truce that had lasted the

course of the Thirty Years War, while to the west, the Kingdom of France

was winning its war against Spain, and sought to further increase its power

in the Empire itself to secure French borders, and to the north, the Swedes

had gained several footholds on the Empire’s Baltic Coast, and remained

firmly allied with France and received significant amounts of French money

that the relatively poor Swedish Empire needed to keep her scattered lands

intact.19 Faced with this challenge, and with the limitations imposed by the

limited ability to mobilise domestic resources to meet the rising challenge,

it is small wonder that the Austrian Habsburg’s foreign policy was forced to

be extensively defensive in nature. It was often necessary to make sacrifices

on one front in order to transfer resources to secure another one.20 Perhaps

the best single example of this thinking in action amongst the Habsburg

monarchy would be the Peace of Vasvar, which ended the Austro-Turkish

War of 1663-1664. While the Habsburgs and the Empire at large had

secured a decisive victory against the Turks at Saint Gothard in 1664

19 Derek McKay and H.M. Scott, The Rise of the Great Powers: 1648-1815, (Essex; Longman Group,1983), pg. 77-78

20 Hochedlinger, Austria’s Wars of Emergence, pg. 70

Eckardt 11

utterly destroying a Turkish army that had threatened Vienna, the need to

transfer Austrian resources from the war against the Turks to face the

threat of France in the west resulted in a Peace that was largely favourable

for the Turks in spite of a military victory that rivaled the Turkish defeat at

Vienna two decades later.21

Bearing these factors in mind, the changes in Austrian attitude

during the late 17th century, and the decision to simultaneously wage both

the Great Turkish War in the Balkans, and the Nine Years War against

France in the west is an especially interesting one, that many historians see

as the moment in which Austria rose to the status of a European great

power. However, at the samel time, the issues and limitations that would

continue to plague Austria throughout the rest of her existence would come

into play, thus revealing a pattern that would continue well into the future,

and raises question as to whether or not we can truly call the realm of the

Austrian Habsburg's a 'great power'. The initial motions of the war are well

known from any general history of the era. In 1683, a large Turkish army

laid siege to Vienna itself, which miraculously held out for months until a

large Christian relief army could arrive on 12 September 1683. In the

ensuing battle, the Turks were completely routed and force to retreat from,

not only the Austrian lands, but all of Hungary. However, the aspect of the

Great Turkish War that would prove the most lasting would be the decision

for the Habsburgs to continue their offensive into Hungary, even as France


Eckardt 12

began another series of wars designed to secure its landward borders.22

This decision and the ensuing conflicts served to highlight several trends

that would continue to dominate Austrian politics for the remainder of the

era.

Perhaps the most obvious of these trends was the relatively weak

state of the core Austrian lands when compared to their enemies and rivals,

and the subsequent reliance of the Habsburg Emperor on foreign support

for his campaigns and foreign policy initiatives. At the siege of Vienna itself,

only a third of the assembled army consisted of soldiers raised and paid for

by the Emperor.23 The remainder of the force consisted of a large Polish

army and several contingents from the German princes.24 The importance of

the German princes and their own armies was even more apparent on the

western front, where Franc had occupied much of the Rhineland. There, a

steadily increasing portion of available forces were drawn from the princes,

as opposed to being part of the Habsburg Emperor’s forces, which were

mostly committed to Hungary.25 However, in many cases, these forces were

being hired out to the Emperor as mercenaries, rather than supported by

monetary contributions from their nominal state of origin.26 While money





26 Wines, “The Imperial Circles”

Eckardt 13

could be acquired from the Empire by both voluntary contribution and via

decrees from the Imperial Diet, the Habsburgs remained chronically

underfunded, and the need to hire these soldiers as mercenaries only

served to make the need for money even greater if they were to continue

their campaigns. In the case of the campaign against the Turks, much of the

money was acquired in the form of Papal subsidies from the Pope, which

helped to keep the Habsburg war machine functioning as long as it did in

the relatively poor Hungarian plain.27 However, in spite of these limitations,

the Austrian Habsburgs won a great victory against the Turks, capturing

much of what had been Ottoman Hungary, and incorporating it into their

own realm, while in the west, they managed to hold the French out of the

Holy Roman Empire, and even force them to retreat into France itself.

What had changed in the twenty years between the battles at St

Gotthard in 1664 and Vienna in 1683? In both cases, key military victories

had been won against the Turks, but in 1664, French pressure had drawn

off Austrian forces, and the pressing need for a truce with the Sultan had

made for a poor peace, while in 1683 the Habsburg state not only

conquered Hungary but engaged in a two front war against both of their

traditional enemies at the same time; a massive change in behavior for a

state who had not even seen a change in monarch between the two events,

nor a massive internal reform. The answer to this question lies in the

27 Wines, “The Imperial Circles” ; Hochedlinger, Austria’s Wars of Emergence, pg. 38-39, 139-144

Eckardt 14

attitude of foreign powers. While the campaign against the Turks in

Hungary had been fought with troops from the Reich and money from the

Pope, the war with France fit into a much larger picture of European power

politics. Following the conclusion of the Thirty Years War, France had made

many attempts to secure its eastern frontier under King Louis XIV via a

series of ‘reunions’ and ‘devolutions’ of territory to the French crown that

made France one of—if not the strongest—of the European powers.28 The

net result of this increase in power, and a series of religious persecutions

within France, was to unite not only France’s old enemies in both branches

of the House of Habsburg, but also the majority of the German princes, the

Dutch Republic, and England into the Grand Alliance opposing French

expansion, and seeking to reconquer what France had already gained.29

Within the Holy Roman Empire, French influence had collapsed in the build

up to the Nine Years War, and Imperial victories in the Balkans had won the

Emperor much in the way of prestige. When the French invaded the

Rhineland in 1688 the result was, in the words of an English minister to the

Imperial Diet in Regensburg, “so enraged the Germans…that the several

states were never so united and animated to revenge them.”30

With these items in place, it is small wonder that the Austrian

Habsburgs would choose to fight against the French and Turks at the same

28 McKay & Scott, The Rise of the Great Powers, pg. 14-16



Eckardt 15

time in 1688, when before such an action would have been considered

unacceptable. Foreign alliances and the promise of subsidies from the

wealthy merchants of Britain and the Dutch Republic, combined with the

manpower of the German princes provided the Austrian Habsburgs what

their own hereditary lands could not: the power—and most importantly the

money—needed to stand against both their enemies at the same time. In

spite of the poor administration and weak power base in the Habsburg

crownlands, foreign aid provided what the territory could not, and while

serious victories were not won against the French, that the Habsburg

Emperor could challenge the France of the Sun King was a victory in and of

itself. However, despite this gain, the weaknesses of the Habsburg

Monarchy were still made apparent by the Nine Years War and Great

Turkish War. Not only was Austrian success on both fronts paid for by

foreign money, but in the war against France, much of the soldiery was

drawn from the semi-independent German princes.31 When the alliance

against France began to weaken, first with the withdrawal of Savoy, and

soon after the withdrawal of Britain and the Dutch Republic, the Emperor

had to make peace rather than continue the conflict alone.32 The actions of

William of Orange during the negotiations to end the conflict, also served as

the marker of a trend wherein the Habsburg Emperor was used as a

convenient ally to face the French on the continent, and would often see his

31 Hochedlinger, Austria’s Wars of Emergence, pg. 38-39, 139-144, 171-173


Eckardt 16

own interests and goals limited by extent to which they would coincide with

the interests of those foreign powers who provided the subsidies necessary

to support his wars.

The trends that would dominate Austrian policy throughout this

era would only continue to manifest during the next crisis that would

dominate Austrian attention for the rest of 17th and the beginning of the 18th

century: the issue of the Spanish succession. That the Spanish Habsburgs

would soon be extinguished was clear throughout the reign of Charles II,

who was in classic words, “Short, lame, epileptic, senile, and completely

bald before thirty-five, he was always on the verge of death, but repeatedly

baffled Christendom by continuing to live.”33 That both Louis XIV, the King

of France and the Emperor Leopold I had children with claims on the

Spanish throne, and a potentially fine candidate in Joseph Ferdinand of

Bavaria had died of a sudden bout of smallpox, only served to make it all the

more clear that when Charles II died, a war would erupt over who would

inherit the throne. As Spain—despite having declined greatly from its glory

days—still controlled large amounts of territory in the Americas, the

Netherlands, and Italy, much of late 18th century politics was dedicated to

securing support for the various claims to the throne, or ward off the

coming war entirely. Leopold I especially was determined to secure

promises of support from the various members of the Grand Alliance that

33 Will Durant and Ariel Durant, The Age of Louis XIV: The Story of Civilization, (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1980), Chapter XV

Eckardt 17

had fought alongside the Austrians in the Nine Years War to support the

Austrian Habsburg claim to the throne of Spain, and sought to prolong the

war long enough for Charles II to die, so that the alliance could be used to

place the Austrian candidate on the Spanish throne.34 The war itself was

perhaps the final reversal of French hegemony that had been so prevalent

throughout Louis XIV’s reign, and although French arms had some

successes—particularly in Spain itself—the Grand Alliance’s armies had

driven French forces out of northern Italy, the Netherlands, and the Empire

itself, with Austrian troops under Prince Eugene of Savoy playing a major

role. However, while the war ended with Austria at its greatest territorial

extent, gaining the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Milan, and Sardinia—later

to be traded with Savoy for Sicily—the same issues that had dogged the

Austrians in the Nine Years War still held strong.

Perhaps the most obvious similarity to the previous war is the fact

the Austria's destiny remained out of her own hands, as she remained

reliant on the support—both militarily and financial—of foreign powers, and

when denied that support, she was singularly unable to exert her will

against other powers. While the Austrian military was capable, playing key

roles at the great battles of the war, much like in the previous war, Austria's

war machine was maintained by a steady flow of subsidies and soldiers from

the Maritime Powers of Great Britain and the Dutch Republic, along with

34 John P. Spielman, Leopold I of Austria, (London, Cox and Wyman, 1977), pg. 169-172

Eckardt 18

those princes within the Empire that supported the Emperor.35 Perhaps

most specifically, is that the driving force for the continued alliance between

Austria and the Maritime Powers was the fact that the ascension of Phillip,

the Duke of Anjou to the throne would raise the possibility of a dynastic

union between France and Spain that would seriously upset the balance of

power in Europe.36 Indeed, throughout the buildup to the War of the

Spanish Succession, the British and French tried to independently—without

consultation with either Spain or Austria—divide the Spanish inheritance in

a manner that would prove acceptable to the wider European balance of

power, rather than allowing a union between Spain and either France or

Austria.37 Even during the course of the war, as it became clear that while

the Austrians and the Imperial forces they brought with them sought to

place the Archduke Charles (later Emperor Charles VI) on the Spanish

throne, which might well lead to a reunification of the Habsburg Empire of

Charles V, the other allies sought peace, as they feared an increase in

Austrian power as much as rising French power.38 As such, once Louis XIV

had agreed to the general terms of peace with the British, the Dutch,

Portugese, and Prussians quickly followed, signing the Treaty of Utrecht in


36 Spielman, Leopold I of Austria, pg. 188; McKay & Scott, The Rise of the Great Powers, pg. 59


38 McKay & Scott, The Rise of the Great Powers, pg. 63-64; Ingrao, In Quest and Crisis, pg. 218-219

Eckardt 19

1713, without the Austrians.39 It is telling that, without the support of this

large alliance—especially the financial support of Britain and the Dutch—

Austria was forced into peace less than a year later, unable to fund the war

on its own resources, and accepted peace with France based on the

divisions made at Utrecht a year earlier.40

The War of the Spanish Succession serves to highlight two important

trends in Austrian history in this time period. While Austria ended the war

in possession of the major Spanish holdings in Europe, primarily the Italian

territories and the Spanish Netherlands, she was unable to continue the war

without the support of foreign powers. While Leopold I had done much in

his long reign to secure the power of the Habsburg dynasty in her

Crownlands and within the German Reich, the daunting issues of domestic

weakness had been untouched. Austria's domestic structure remained

weak, especially in comparison to her rivals, and remained dependent on

outside aid for the ability to fight her wars. When that aid was denied, such

as after the Peace of Utrecht, the Austrian Habsburgs, even with the aid of

their Imperial allies and the power of Viennese financiers like Samuel

Oppenheimer, the Austrian Habsburgs were unable to marshal the money to

pay for the soldiers needed to match the forces of her enemies, and she was

forced to bow to the wishes of outside powers, and accept a peace that was


40 Ingrao, In Quest and Crisis, pg. 219-220

Eckardt 20

viewed by many in her government as a disappointment.41 Much like in the

previous Nine Years War, Austria's weakness in organising her own

administrative structure thus forced her to rely on diplomacy in order to

secure her allies who could provide the much needed hard money that

would be required to fuel a war.

The reliance on diplomacy in order to find allies who could provide

the necessary funding for an Austrian war effort reveals the second major

trend that the Nine Years War, and the War of the Spanish Succession

demonstrate. Namely, that throughout this era, the primary benefit of

Austria to those who provided the money necessary for her wars was

convenience as an ally against whichever threat they wished to fight

against. As has been discussed previously, the Austrian Habsburgs had

inherited two distinct fronts on which to wage war. As the successor to

medeival Hungary, they were expected to be the bastion against the Turks

in the Balkans, while as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, they were

expected to defend the Reich against intrusion from foreign powers,

especially—in this era—France in the Rhineland. Beyond merely implied

duty based on the various titles they held, the Austrian Habsburg

Crownlands were well sited geographically for both these roles, being able

to face the Turks in the Danube valley, and the French in both Italy and

Germany. However, while this geographic location is of significance, in that

it placed the Austrian Habsburgs in position to combat both the French and

41 Spielman, Leopold I of Austria, pg. 189

Eckardt 21

Turks, what truly drew attention and aid to the Austrian Habsburgs was the

political environment that surrounded their geographic situation.

When we examine the nature of those who gave money to the

Austrian Habsburgs throughout the late 17th and early 18th centuries, we see

that the money was given by powers who were not only geographically

distant from Austria, but powers who had an interest in fighting the same

enemies as Austria. In a sense, Austria was used as a geopolitically

convenient ally against a larger foe, and thus her growth would have to be

held in check in order to prevent the useful ally from growing into a threat.

The examples of this in practice are evident in the various wars that were

waged over the course of this period. The advance of the Muslim Turks was

of great concern to the Pope, and the use of Papal wealth to fund the Great

Turkish War is a fine example of how the success of the Austrian Habsburgs

was tied to their geopolitical location. Not only were they geographically

placed to be the replacement for medieval Hungary, their claims to the

Hungarian throne also made them politically responsible for the defense of

Europe from the Turk. Without this convenient position, it is likely that the

pope's subsidies would have been directed elsewhere, and the Austrian

Habsburgs would have been unable to marshal the forces necessary to

acquire the territory that they did over the course of the Great Turkish War.

More important than the Turks, the threat of French hegemony that

dominated much of the era earned the Austrian Habsburgs its greatest

Eckardt 22

source of outside support in the Maritime Powers of Great Britain and the

Dutch Republic. However, it is also clear that both of these powers merely

viewed the Austrian state as a useful ally at the time, and actively sought to

contain her power to prevent her from expanding or strengthening to a

point that could either challenge them, and sought to oppose her when

Austrian interests ran against their own. The attitude of the Maritime

Powers towards Austria throughout the Nine Years War, the issue of the

Spanish succession, and finally the war for the same implies that their view

of her was as a useful, ally, but only on the common interest of containing

French power, and in little else.42 In this, perhaps Austria's constant

domestic weakness made her more attractive to them as an ally, as her

relative paucity of domestic income, made it so that she could only act

aggressively when her actions were given the monetary support of the

Maritime Powers. While Austria did act aggressively in her dynastic policies

towards the Spanish possessions and within the Empire, her domestic

weakness made it so that even an enlarged Habsburg Austria would not

represent the same threat as an enlarged France did.43 Indeed, it was only

when it seemed that a full union might occur between Austria and Spain

that the Maritime Powers baulked, being previously willing to allow Austria

control of even the wealthy Spanish colonial empire.44 More broadly, it is

42 McKay & Scott, The Rise of the Great Powers, pg. 123

43 Hochedlinger, Austria's Wars of Emergence, pg. 70-71; McKay & Scott, The Rise of the Great Powers, pg. 61-63


Eckardt 23

clear that when the Maritime Powers felt that their interests had been

secured in a war, be it in the Nine Years War or the War of the Spanish

Succession, they would withdraw, leaving Austria singularly unable to

continue the prosecution of a campaign, thus placing hard limits on how

much Austrian power could expand.45

Perhaps the single best example of how the Maritime Powers

viewed Austria is the fate of the Ostend Company. As the War of the Spanish

Succession had granted Austria the Spanish Netherlands, the Austrian

Habsburgs now had access to the valuable trade routes in northern Europe,

including the ports of Antwerp and Ostend, whose merchants had

established potentially valuable positions in India.46 The Dutch control of the

River Schledt had closed the port of Antwerp, and the port of Ostend had

increased in importance ever since the Dutch Revolt in the 16th century.

However, the Ostend factories in India offered the Austrian Habsburgs the

potential to break into the exceptionally valuable trade in the East Indies,

and in 1722, the Emperor Charles VI chartered the Ostend Company, which

would compete with the existing trading companies of the Maritime

Powers.47 In fact, the Ostend Company was actually quite successful in its

short run, turning a large profit for the Austrian Habsburgs, providing a

large stream of income for the now Austrian Netherlands and the Habsburg




Eckardt 24

monarchy as a whole.48 The allure of the trade combined with Emperor

Charles VI desire for international recognition for his Pragmatic Sanction,

that granted the Austrian succession to his daughter Maria Theresa, led to

Austria to ally with Spain in 1725.49 The seeming threat of this new Spanish-

Austrian Alliance led to the creation of the Hanover League of France,

England, and the Dutch; seeing this new alliance rise, Charles VI turned to

the rising powers of both Prussia and Russia for alliance.50 However, just as

war seemed likely to break out in Europe, a mere ten years after the War of

the Spanish Succession had concluded, the Austrians were forced to

negotiate, as they would be unable to wage war effectively, without

subsidies, and the promised ones from Spain were proving insufficient.51 In

the ensuing negotiations that resulted in the Treaty of Vienna, the Austrians

were forced to break up the Ostend Company, ending the Austrian

Habsburg's chance of expanding into the valuable trade in the East Indies.

The failure of the Ostend Company, and the crisis which surrounds it

serves to drive home what is perhaps the central feature of Austrian foreign

policy in this period: that Austria was not the master of her own destiny.

Austria was used as a useful ally against emerging threats, but was always

kept at a distance, and when her own power seemed likely to threaten that

of those who supported her financially, they would be quick to staunch that 48 Hochedlinger, Austria's Wars of Emergence, pg. 199-201

49 Ingrao, The Habsburg Monarchy, pg. 140, 144-145



Eckardt 25

growth, so that Austria could not challenge them more directly. This leads to

a highly important question that must be considered when considering

Austria as a great power: how can Austria claim the title of ‘great power’

when so much of its success was predicated on the support of foreign

powers, rather than its own strength? In international relations, power is

the ability to compel another to do your will, and the status of ‘great power’

can be seen as a state that has sufficient power to compel others to do its

will in any area of the international sphere in which it exists. If we accept

this definition of ‘great power’, then the Austrian reliance on foreign

support due to its own domestic weakness that constantly undermined its

attempts to exert power outside of its own region of influence in Germany

and the Balkans seems to be a significant blow against its claim to great

power status. The domestic weaknesses in Habsburg administration and

finance that so hamstrung its attempts to act independently throughout this

era would not be resolved until the crushing defeat by Prussia in the War of

the Austrian Succession, and the reforms that followed in the mid to late

18th century. However, many historians call the Great Turkish War and the

Nine Years War the emergence of Austria as a great power.52 Michael

Hochedlinger in his Austria's Wars of Emergence states that Austria was

unable to fully act independently until the reforms of Maria Theresa and

Joseph II, but still asserts that the ground work for such a power was laid in

52 McKay & Scott, The Rise of the Great Powers, pg. 76-77; Ingrao, The Habsburg Monarchy, pg. 83-104; Hochedlinger, Austria’s Wars of Emergence, pg. 1-3

Eckardt 26

the conquest of Hungary.53 Charles Ingrao in his work The Habsburg

Monarchy, along with McKay and Scott in their wide reaching work, The

Rise of the Great Powers, assert that Austria’s status as a great power was

established by the victories in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, with

their primary argument being that the Austrian Habsburgs had moved on

from being a mere branch of the great power that was the united Habsburg

Monarchy and a power within the Holy Roman Empire, to a great power in

their own right, which negotiated and allied with the other great powers of

the time, and was viewed as an important member of a coalition against

either the Turks or the French. This is combined with a geopolitical

argument that the sheer expanse and location of the Austrian Habsburg

realm, stretching as it did from Bohemia and Tyrol, along the Danube to the

Wallachian border, justifies Austria's position as one of the great powers of

Europe.54 Ingrao goes further, arguing that in addition to this diplomatic

importance and gains in territory, the integration and eventual economic

recovery of the Hungarian lands assured Austrian great power status.55 In

the realm of diplomacy, these arguments would support the idea of Austria

as a great power. Indeed, she played a major role in European diplomacy,

and the participation of Austria was widely considered to be of importance

to any alliance or coalition against rival powers, like France. This diplomatic

53 Hochedlinger, Austria’s Wars of Emergence, pg. 1-354 McKay & Scott, The Rise of the Great Powers, pg. 76-77; Ingrao, The Habsburg Monarchy, pg. 83-84


Eckardt 27

precedence, and the prestige of the Imperial crown would imply that the

Austrian Habsburgs possessed the power to act in all areas of the

international sphere, however these arguments fail to acknowledge the

limitations that the Austrian Habsburgs were forced to operate under,

which raise severe doubts as to whether or not Austria could be considered

a great power.

Despite the impressive gains made by the Austrian Habsburgs in

terms of territory ruled, the prestige of the Imperial crown, and her

importance to the emerging European great power system, Austria

remained extremely weak when compared to other great powers, such as

France. Even with the reconquest of Hungary, the Austrian realm was less

populated than France, less productive than France, Great Britain, or the

United Provinces, and consistently unable to match her rivals in terms of

soldiers available or money raised.56 As shown with the end of the Nine

Years War, the War of the Spanish Succession, along the fate of the Ostend

Company and the war scare of the 1720s, Austria was only rarely the

master of her own fate in international politics, being awarded gains from

foreign powers in order to balance out potential continental rivals, without

being able to gather the strength to directly challenge the other powers, or

dominate the continent as the Emperor Charles V once had. It is rather

difficult to describe a state as a great power when she is so reliant on

foreign support to drive her foreign policy goals. To be a great power is to


Eckardt 28

assert one's own interests, through the use of hard or soft power, and while

Austrian policy sought to be aggressive when it could, in the end, her ability

to assert power was dependent on the support of foreign powers. While

Austrian Habsburg diplomacy and her role within the European state

system might serve to elevate her to great power status, her domestic and

military weaknesses weighed her down, thus leaving the state of Austria in

a strange gray area, in which her diplomatic importance far outweighed her

hard economic or military power, especially in comparison to powers like

Britain, France, and the Dutch.

Perhaps a more appropriate title for the Austrian Habsburgs during

the late 17th and early 18th centuries would be that of an exceptionally large

regional power, or even a major regional power in multiple regions, namely

the Balkans and in Germany. In this role, Austria can be defined in

opposition to other states which were considered great powers, such as

France, Great Britain, and the Dutch Republic. All three of these states not

only exerted significant power in Europe, itself, but also around the world

through their colonies and trading companies. In comparison, Austria never

truly did exert its power outside of Europe, and then only within specific

regions of Europe. When Austria did attempt to expand its power base to a

truly global scale with the Ostend Company, political and military pressure

combined with the inability for domestic Austrian finances to meet the

needs to face these external pressures forced the closure of the Ostend

Eckardt 29

Company extremely rapidly, in spite of its fiscal success.57 In the wider

European realm, Austria was still unable to properly enforce its will, or

exert power, without foreign support to do so, and her expansion was easily

checked by other powers once Austria had served the role she played in

their wider interests. However, within specific regions of Europe, the

Austrian Habsburgs did display the kind of behavior that could be

associated with a major power. As discussed earlier, the Austrian Habsburgs

did aggressively seek to increase their own power in the Holy Roman

Empire, and successfully did so for the majority of the period in question,

with the actions of Bavaria during the War of the Spanish Succession

serving as an exception to the wider general trend of Austrian ascendancy

within the German Reich. Similarly, in the Balkans the Austrian Habsburgs

were able to exert their power successfully against both the Ottomans, and

even retain their vast territorial gains relatively independently. While she

had required extensive aid from both the Empire, troops from foreign

powers, and money from the Pope, the Austrian Habsburgs were able to not

only hold the military frontier against the Ottoman Empire, but also

continue to hold Hungary and their other territories there despite multiple

rebellions against their authority in the region.58 The nature of Austrian

Habsburg actions in both Hungary and the Holy Roman Empire, seem to be

much more in line with the actions we would expect of a great power, as—

while they were opposed and limited—they still represented an expression

57 Hochedlinger, Austria’s Wars of Emergence, pg. 196-19758 Hochedlinger, Austria’s Wars of Emergence, pg. 187-192

Eckardt 30

of power, that we rarely seen done by the Austrian Habsburgs

independently in the wider global sphere that she would have to operate in

to be considered a great power. As long as Austria lacked the domestic

foundations necessary to exert its power outside of its regions of influence

in the Balkans and Germany, it is difficult to call them a 'great power' on the

same tier as Britain or France. However, that she was so important to

European diplomacy, and exerted extensive power in multiple regions

makes it difficult to reduce the Austrian Habsburg monarchy to the status of

a mere regional power. In the end, it is possible that the Austrian

Habsburgs occupy a unique niche in the scale of state power, greater than

that of a regional one, but incapable of projecting the power necessary in

order to be a great power.

Bibliography

Berenger, Jean, A History of the Habsburg Empire: 1273-1700, trans. C.A. Simpson, (Essex; Longman Group, 1994)

Duchhardt, Heinz, “International Relations, the Law of Nations, and the Germanies: Structures and Changes in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century,” in State and Society in Early Modern Austria, ed. Charles Ingrao, (Purdue; Purdue University Press, 1994), pg. 286-297

Durant, Will, and Durant, Ariel, The Age of Louis XIV: The Story of Civilization, (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1980)

Hochedlinger, Michael, Austria’s Wars of Emergence: 1683-1797, (London; Pearson Education Limited, 2003)

Ingrao, Charles W, In Quest and Crisis: Emperor Joseph I and the Habsburg Monarchy, (Purdue University Press, Lafayette, 1979)

Eckardt 31

Ingrao, Charles W, The Habsburg Monarchy: 1648-1815, (Cambridge; University of Cambridge Press, 2000)

McKay, Derek and Scott, H.M, The Rise of the Great Powers: 1648-1815, (Essex; Longman Group,1983)

Spielman, John P, Leopold I of Austria, (London, Cox and Wyman, 1977)

Wines, Roger, “The Imperial Circles: Princely Diplomacy and Imperial Reforms, 1681-1714,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 39, No. 1, March 1967, pg. 1-29

aeiou austria as a great power final

Documents