Charles VI (Charles the Silly) was a king of France. He was born in 1368 at Paris and died in 1422. He was a son of Charles The Wise and succeeded to the throne at the age of twelve. His reign was plagued by fits on insanity and the country plagued by civil war between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, making the country easy prey for the English under Henry V who crossed over to Normandy, took Harfleur by storm, won the famous victory of Agincourt, and compelled the crazy king to acknowledge him as his successor.
Charles VI was Emperor of Germany. He was born in 1685 and died in 1740. The second son of the Emperor Leopold I, he was destined by the rules of inheritance to succeed his relative Charles II on the throne of Spain, but Charles II by his will made the French Prince, the Duke of Anjour, his heir. This led to the War of the Spanish Succession in which England and Holland took the part of the Austrian claimant. He held Madrid for a while before conceding Spain to the French claim and content himself with the Spanish subject-lands, Milan, Mantua, Sardinia, and the Netherlands (sanctioned by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 and the Treaty of Rastadt in 1714). He became Emperor of Germany in 1711.
In a war against the Turks his armies, led by Eugene of Savoy, gained the decisive victories of Peterwardein and Belgrade. After the death of his only son, Charles directed all his policy and energies to secure the guarantee of the various powers to the Pragmatic Sanction, settling the succession to the Austrian dominions on his daughter Maria Theresa. In 1733 a war with France and Spain regarding the succession in Poland terminated unfavourably for him, he having to surrender Sicily, Naples, and part of Milan to Spain, and Lorraine to France. In 1737 he renewed the war with the Turks, this time unsuccessfully. Research Charles VI
Esterhazy is a family of Hungarian magnates, whose authentic genealogy goes back to the first half of the 13th century. They were zealous partisans of the house of Hapsburg, to whom, during the reigns of Frederick II and Leopold I, they lent a powerful support. Research Esterhazy
Joseph I was emperor of Germany. He was born in 1678 at Vienna and died in 1711. He was a son of Leopold I. He was proclaimed king of Hungary in 1687, king of the Romans in 1690 and succeeded his father as German emperor in 1705. He carried out a successful war, with the assistance of England, Holland, and Savoy, against Louis XIV, the allied armies being under the command of the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene. Research Joseph I
Leopold I was king of the Belgians. He was born in 1790 and died in 1865. At any early age Prince Leopold took service with Russia and in 1813 fought against Napoleon at Lutzen, Bautzen and Leipzig and entered Paris with the allied sovereigns. Prince Leopold visited England in 1815, and the following year married the PrincessCharlotte, daughter of George IV, was naturalized and created Duke of Kendal and made a General in the British army. In 1830 Belgium revolted from the Netherlands, and in 1831 Prince Leopold was elected first king of the Belgians. Research Leopold I
Austria (in German Oesterreich that is, Eastern Empire) is a republic (formed in 1918 following the overthrow of the last Hapsburg emperor) in central Europe - prior to 1918 Austria or Austria-Hungary as it was also known, was an extensive duplex monarchy covering most of central Europe, inhabited by several distinct nationalities, and consisting of two semi-independent countries, each with its own parliament and government, but with one common sovereign, army, and system of diplomacy, and also with a common parliament.
Austria has a total area of 83,850 km2. The climate is temperate; continental, cloudy with cold winters with frequent rain in the lowlands and snow in the mountains; cool summers with occasional showers. The terrain is mostly mountains with the Alps in the west and south; mostly flat, with gentle slopes along the eastern and northern margins. Natural resources are iron ore, crude oil, timber, magnesite, aluminium, lead, coal, lignite, copper and hydropower. The religion is 85% Roman Catholic, 6% Protestant and 9% other. The language - historically a cause of great controversy - is, since the break-up of the Austria-Hungarian empire German.
In 791 Charlemagne drove the Avars from the territory between the Ens and the Raab, and united it to his empire under the name of the Eastern Mark (that is March or boundary land); and from the establishment by him of a margraviate in this new province the presentempire took its rise. On the invasion of Germany by the Hungarians it became subject to them from 900 until 955, when Otho I, by the victory of Augsburg, reunited a great part of this province to the German Empire, which by 1043 had extended its limits to the Leitha. The margraviate of Austria was hereditary in the family of the counts of Babenberg (Bamberg) from 982 until 1156, in which year the boundaries of Austria were extended so as to include the territory above the Ens, and the whole was created a duchy.
The territory was still further increased in 1192 by the gift of the duchy of Styria as a fief from the Emperor Henry VI, Vienna being by this time the capital. The male line of the house of Bamberg became extinct in 1246, and the Emperor Frederick II declared Austria and Styria a vacant fief, the hereditary property of the German emperors. In 1282 the Emperor Rudolph granted Austria, Styria, and Garinthia, to his two sons, Albert and Rudolph. The former became sole ruler (duke), and from then until the end of the Great War Austria was under the reigning house of Hapsburg. Albert, who was an energetic ruler, was elected emperor in 1298, but was assassinated in 1308. The first of his successors worthy of mention was Albert V, son-in-law of the Emperor Sigismund. He assisted Sigismund in the Hussite wars, and was elected after his death King of Hungary and of Bohemia, and German emperor in 1438. Ladislaus, his posthumous son, was the last of the Austrian line proper, and its possessions devolved upon the collateral Styrian line in 1457; since which time the house of Austria furnished an unbroken succession of German emperors.
In 1458 the Emperor Frederick III, a member of this house, had conferred upon the country the rank of an archduchy before he himself became ruler of all Austria. His son Maximilian I, by his marriage with Mary, the surviving daughter of Charles the Bold, united the Netherlands to the Austrian dominions. After the death of his father in 1493 Maximilian was made Emperor of Germany, and transferred to his son Philip the government of the Netherlands. He also added to his paternal inheritance Tyrol, with several other territories, particularly some belonging to Bavaria, and acquired for his family new claims to Hungary and Bohemia. The marriage of his son Philip to Joanna of Spain raised the house of Hapsburg to the throne of Spain. Philip, however, died in 1506, and the death of Maximilian in 1519 was followed by the union of Spain and Austria; his grandson (the eldest son of Philip), Charles I, king of Spain, being elected Emperor of Germany as Charles V. Charles thus became the greatest monarch in Europe, but in 1521 he ceded to his brother Ferdinand all his dominions in Germany.
Ferdinand I, by his marriage with Anna, the sister of Louis II, king of Hungary, acquired the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, with Moravia, Silesia, and Lusatia, the appendages of Bohemia. To oppose him the way-wode of Transylvania, John Zapolya, sought the help of the sultan, Soliman II, who appeared in 1529 at the gates of Vienna, but was compelled to retreat. In 1535 a treaty was made by which John von Zapolya was allowed to retain the royal title and half of Hungary, but after his death new disputes arose, and Ferdinand maintained the possession of Lower Hungary only by paying Soliman the sum of 30,000 ducats annually from 1562. In 1556 Ferdinand obtained the imperial crown, when his brother Charles laid by the sceptre for a cowl. He died in 1564, leaving his territories to be divided amongst his three sons.
Maximilian II, the eldest, succeeded his father as emperor, obtaining Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia; Ferdinand, the second son, received Tyrol and Hither Austria; and Charles, the youngest, obtained Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, and Gorz. Maximilian died in 1576, and was succeeded in the imperial throne by his eldest son Rudolph II, who had already been crowned King of Hungary in 1572, and King of Bohemia, in 1575. Rudolph's reign was distinguished by the war against Turkey and Transylvania; the persecutions of the Protestants, who were driven from his dominions; the cession of Hungary in 1608; and in 1611 of Bohemia and his hereditary estates in Austria to his brother Matthias. Matthias, who succeeded Maximilian on the imperial throne, concluded a peace with the Turks, but was disturbed by the Protestant Bohemians, who took up arms in defence of their religious rights, thus commencing the Thirty Years' War. After his death in 1619 the Bohemians refused to acknowledge his successor, Ferdinand II, until after the battle of Prague in 1620, when Bohemia had to submit, and was deprived of the right of choosing her king. Lutheranism was strictly forbidden in all the Austrian dominions.
Hungary, which revolted under Bethlem Gabor, prince of Transylvania, was, after a long struggle, subdued. During the reign of Ferdinand III (1637-1657), successor of Ferdinand IL Austria was continually the theatre of war;
Lusatia was ceded to Saxony in 1635; and Alsace to France in 1648, when peace was restored in Germany by the Treaty of Westphalia.
The Emperor Leopold I, son and successor of Ferdinand III, was victorious through the talents of Eugene in two wars with Turkey; and Vienna was delivered by Sobieski and the Germans from the attacks of Kara Mustapha in 1683. In 1687 he united Hungary to Transylvania, and in 1699 restored to Hungary the country lying between the Danube and the Theiss. It was the chief aim of Leopold to secure to Charles, his second son, the inheritance of the Spanish monarchy, and in 1701, upon the victory of French diplomacy in the appointment of the grandson of Louis XIV, the war of the Spanish succession commenced. Leopold died in 1705, but Joseph I, his eldest son, continued the war. As he died without children in 1711, his brother Charles was elected emperor, but was obliged to accede in 1714 to the Peace of Utrecht, by which Austria received the Netherlands, Milan, Mantua, Naples, and Sardinia. In 1720 Sicily was given to Austria in exchange for Sardinia. This monarchy now embraced over 190,000 square miles; but its power was weakened by new wars with Spain and France. In the peace concluded at Vienna (1735 and 1738) Charles VI was forced to cedeNaples and Sicily to Spain and part of Milan to the King of Sardinia; and in 1739, by the Peace of Belgrade, he was obliged to transfer to the Porte Belgrade, Serbia, etc, partly in order to secure the succession to his daughter Maria Theresa by the Pragmatic Sanction. He died in 1740.
On the marriage of Maria Theresa with Stephen, duke of Lorraine (the dynasty henceforth being that of Hapsburg-Lorraine), and her accession to the Austrian throne, the empire was threatened with dismemberment. Frederick II of Prussia subdued Silesia; the Elector of Bavaria was crowned in Lintz and Prague, and in 1742 chosen emperor under the name of Charles VII; Hungary alone supported the heroic and beautiful queen. Charles, however, died in 1745, and the husband of Theresa was crowned Emperor of Germany as Francis I; but a treaty concluded in 1745 confirmed to Frederick the possession of Silesia, and by the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748, Austria was obliged to cede the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla to Philip, Infant of Spain, and several districts of Milan to Sardinia. To recover SilesiaMaria Theresa formed an alliance with France, Russia, Saxony, and Sweden, and entered upon the Seven Years' War; but by the Peace of Hubertsberg, 1763, Silesia was recognized as Prussian territory.
On the death of Francis I in 1765 Joseph II, his eldest son, was appointed to assist his mother in the government and elected Emperor of Germany. The partition of Poland in 1772 gave Galicia and Lodomeria to Austria, which also obtained Bukowina from the Porte in 1777. At the death of the empress in 1780 Austria contained 235,000 square miles, with a pop. estimated at 24,000,000.
The liberal home administration of the empress was continued and extended by her successor, Joseph II, who did much to further the spread of religious tolerance, education, and the industrial arts. The Low Countries, however, revolted, and he was unsuccessful in the war of 1788 against the Porte. His death took place in 1790. He was succeeded by his eldest brother, Leopold II, under whom peace was restored in the Netherlands, and in Hungary, and also with the Porte. On the death of his sister and her husband Louis XVI of France he formed an alliance with Prussia, but died in 1792, before the French revolutionary war broke out.
His son, Francis II, succeeded, and was elected German emperor, by which time France had declared war against him as King of Hungary and Bohemia. In 1795, in the third division of Poland, West Galicia fell to Austria, and by the Peace of Campo-Formio in 1797 she received the largest part of the Venetian territory as compensation for her loss of Lombardy and the Netherlands. In 1799 Francis, in alliance with Russia, renewed the war with France until 1801, when the Peace of Luneville was concluded. In 1804 Francis declared himself hereditary Emperor of Austria as Francis I, and united all his states under the name of the Empire of Austria, immediately taking up arms once more with his alliesRussia and Great Britain against France. The war of 1805 was terminated by the Peace of Pressburg on December the 26th, by which Francis had to cede to France the remaining provinces of Italy, as well as to give up portions of territory to Bavaria, Wtirtemberg, and Baden, receiving in return Salzburg and Berchtesgaden. After the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine on July the 12th 1806 Francis was forced to resign his dignity as Emperor of Germany, which had been in his family more than 500 years. A new war with France in 1809 cost the monarchy 42,380 square miles of territory and 3,500,000 subjects. Napoleon married Maria Louisa, daughter of the emperor, and in 1812 concluded an alliance with him against Russia. But in 1813 Francis again declared war against France, and formed an alliance with Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Sweden against his son-in-law. By the Congress of Vienna (1815) Austria gained Lombardy and Venetia, and recovered, together with Dalmatia, the hereditary territories which it had been obliged to cede.
In the troubled period following the French revolution of 1830 insurrections took place in Modena, Parma, and the Papal States (1831-1832), but were suppressed without much difficulty; and though professedly neutral during the Polish insurrections Austria clearly showed herself on the side of Russia, with whom her relations became more intimate as those between Great Britain and France grew more cordial. The death of Francis I in 1835 and accession of his son Ferdinand I made little change in the Austrian system of government, and much discontent was the consequence. In 1846 the failure of the Polish insurrection led to the incorporation of Cracow with Austria. In Italy the declarations of Pio Nono in favour of reform increased the difficulties of Austria, and in Hungary the opposition under Kossuth and others assumed the form of a great constitutional movement. In 1848, when the expulsion of Louis Philippe shook all Europe, Metternich found it impossible any longer to guide the helm of the state, and the government was compelled to admit a free press and the right of citizens to arms. Apart from the popular attitude in Italy and in Hungary, where the diet declared itself permanent under the presidency of Kossufch, the insurrection made equal progress in Vienna itself, and the royal family, no longer in safety, removed to Innsbruck. After various ministerial changes the emperor abdicated in favour of his nephew, Francis Joseph; more vigorous measures were adopted; and Austria, aided by Russia, reduced Hungary to submission.
The year 1855 is memorable for the Concordat with the pope, which put the educational and ecclesiastical affairs of the empire entirely into the hands of the Papal see. In 1859 the hostile intentions of France and Sardinia against the possessions of Austria in Italy became so evident that she declared war by sending an army across the Ticino; but after disastrous defeats at Magenta and Solferino she was compelled to cedeMilan and the north-west portion of Lombardy to Sardinia. In 1864 she joined with the German states in the war against Denmark, but a dispute about Schleswig-Holstein involved her in a war with her allies (1866), while at the same time Italy renewed her attempts for the recovery of Venice. The Italians were defeated at Custozza and driven back across the Mincio; but the Prussians, victorious at Koniggratz (or Sadowa), threatened Vienna. Peace was concluded with Prussia on August the 23rd and with Italy on October the 8th, the result of the war being the cession of Venetia through France to Italy and the withdrawal of Austria from all interference in the affairs of Germany.
After 1866 Austria was occupied chiefly with the internal affairs of the empire. Hungarian demands for self-government were finally agreed to, and the Empire of Austria divided into the two parts: the Cisleithan and the Transleithan. This settlement was consummated by the coronation of the Emperor FrancisJoseph I, at Budapest, as King of Hungary, on the 8th of June, 1867. In the same year the Concordat of 1855 came up for discussion, and measures were passed for the re-establishment of civil marriage, the emancipation of schools from the domination of the church, and the placing of different creeds on a footing of equality. The fact of the Austro-Hungarian dominions comprising so many different nationalities had always given the central government much trouble, both in regard to internal and to external affairs. In regard to the ' Eastern Question,' for instance, the action of Austria had been hampered by the sympathies shown by the Magyars for their blood relations, the Turks, while the Slavs naturally were more favourable to Russia. During the war between Russia and Turkey in 1877-78 Austria remained neutral; but at its close, in the middle of 1878, it was decided, at the Congress of Berlin, that the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina should in future be administered by Austria-Hungary instead of Turkey.
Conflicts within the empire over the Balkan states led to the Great War, at the end of which many of the states declared their independence, and Austria became a smaller, independent republic itself. However, internal political divisions led to a civil war in 1934 in which the right-wing parties were victorious. Nazi supporters of the German leader, Adolf Hitler, made uprisings which were unsuccessful, and Hitler annexed Austria as part of the German Reich - though not without resistance from armed groups within Austria opposed to the Nazis. In 1945 with the end of the Second World War Austria became once more independent state. Research Austria
The Kingdom of Belgium is a kingdom in west Europe.
The territory now known as Belgium originally formed only a section of that known to Caesar as the territory of the Belgae, extending from the right bank of the Seine to the left bank of the Rhine, and to the ocean. This district continued under Roman sway until the decline of the empire; subsequently formed part of the kingdom of Clevis; and then of that of Charlemagne, whose ancestors belonged to Landen and Herstal on the confines of the Ardennes. After the breaking up of the empire of Charlemagne Belgium formed part of the kingdom of Lotharingia under Charlemagne's grandson, Lothaire; Artois and Flanders, however, belonging to France by the treaty of Verdun.
For more than a century this kingdom was contended for by the kings of France and the emperors of Germany. In 953 it was conferred by the Emperor Otto upon Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, who assumed the title of archduke, and divided it into two duchies: Upper and Lower Lorraine. In the frequent struggles which took place during the eleventh century Luxemburg, Namur, Hainaut, and Liege usually sided with France, while Brabant, Holland, and Flanders commonly took the side of Germany. The contest between the civic and industrial organizations and feudalism, which went on through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and in which Flanders bore a leading part, was temporarily closed by the defeat of the Ghentese under Van Artevelde in 1382. In 1384 Flanders and Artois fell to the house of Burgundy, which in less than a century acquired the whole of the Netherlands. The death of Charles the Bold at Nancy, in his attempt to raise the duchy into a kingdom in 1477, was followed by the succession and marriage of his daughter, Mary of Burgundy, by which the Netherlands became an Austrian possession. With the accession, however, of the Austrian house of Hapsburg to the Spanish throne, the Netherlands, after a brief period of prosperity attended by the spread of the reformed religion, became the scene of increasingly severe persecution under Charles V and Philip II of Spain. Driven to rebellion, the seven northern states under William of Orange, the Silent, succeeded in establishing their independence, but the southern portion, or Belgium, continued under the Spanish yoke.
From 1598 to 1621 the Spanish Netherlands were transferred as an independent kingdom to the Austrian branch of the family by the marriage of Isabella, daughter of Philip II, with the Archduke Albert of Austria. He died childless, however, and they reverted to Spain. After being twice conquered by Louis XIV, conquered again by Marlborough, coveted by all the powers, deprived of territory on the one side by Holland and on the other by France, the Southern Netherlands were at length in 1714, by the peace of Utrecht, again placed under the dominion of Austria, with the name of the Austrian Netherlands.
During the Austrian war of succession the French under Saxe conquered nearly the whole country, but restored it in 1748 by the peace of Aix-la-Ghapelle. The Seven Years' War of 1756 to 1763 did not affect Belgium, and in that period, and during the peace which followed, she regained much of her prosperity under Maria Theresa and Charles of Lorraine. On the succession of Joseph II, the 'philosophic emperor', a serious insurrection occurred, the Austrian army being defeated at Turnhout, and the provinces forming themselves into an independent state as united Belgium in 1790. They had scarcely been subdued again by Austria before they were conquered by the revolutionary armies of France, and the country divided into French departments, the Austrian rule being practically closed by the battle of Fleurus in 1794, and the French possession confirmed by the treaties of Campo Formio in 1797 and Luneville in 1801.
In 1815 Belgium was united by the Congress of Vienna to Holland, both countries together now forming one state, the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This union lasted until 1830, when a revolt broke out among the Belgians, and soon attained such dimensions that the Dutch troops were unable to repress it. A convention of the great powers assembled in London, favoured the separation of the two countries, and drew up a treaty to regulate it; the National Congress of Belgium offering the crown, on the recommendation of England, to Leopold, prince of Saxe-Coburg, who acceded to it under the title of Leopold I, on July the 21st, 1831. In November of the same year the five powers guaranteed the crown to him by the treaty of London, and the remaining difficulties with Holland were settled in 1839, when the Dutch claims to territory in Limburg and Luxemburg were withdrawn. The reign of Leopold I was for Belgium a prosperous period of thirty-four years. Leopold II succeeded his father in 1865.
Belgium It has a total area of 30,510 km2. The climate is temperate having mild winters and cool summers, rainy, humid, cloudy. The terrain may be regarded roughly as an inclined plain, falling away in height from the southern district of the Ardennes until in the north and west it becomes only a few feet above sea-level. The surface rocks in the south consist of slate, old red sandstone, and mountain limestone; towards the north-west a coal and iron field stretches across the provinces of Hainaut and Liege, skirting those of Namur and Luxemburg. North and west of this coalfield a more recentformation is found, covered inland by deep beds of clay and on the coast by sand-dunes.
The chief rivers are the Scheldt or Schelde and Meuse or Maas, which cross the country in a northeasterly direction; other navigable streams are the Dender, Dyle, Lys, Ourthe, Rupel, and Sambre. There are also a number of canals. Natural resources are coal and natural gas. The religion is 75% Roman Catholic; the remainder mainly Protestant and other religions. There are three official languages spoken in belgium: Flemish or Dutch, French, and German. The language divisions follow cultural divisions, and in the capital, Brussels which resides in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, everyone is expected to be bilingual in Dutch and French. German is spoken in a small part of Belgium adjoining the bnorder with Germany. Throughout Belgium it is essential to be bilingual in French and Dutch, and this has caused much difficulties for the population and political turmoil.
Schonbrunn is an Austrian royal residence, south-west of Vienna. Construction was started by Leopold I and completed by Maria Theresa around 1745. Within its walls the Treaty of Vienna was signed in 1809. Research Schonbrunn
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
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