THE HABSBURGS

The family who, more than any other in Europe, came to epitomise the concept of dynasty, took their name from the Castle of the Hawk (the "Habichtsburg"), a white tower above the river Reuss southwest of Brugg in what today is Switzerland. The various counts made money from the tolls extracted on the Alpine trade routes between Italy and Germany, and used their income to curry favour with the Holy Roman Emperors. Their big break came in 1273, when the Electors made Rudolf of Habsburg Emperor after a long interregnum. However, although the imperial title carried prestige, and eventually came to be indelibly associated with the family, the reality was that it carried more obligations than assets. The real break was that Rudolf was able to give the Duchy of Austria to his son and successor Albert, after the death of the last Babenburg duke had left the title vacant. Whatever the ups and downs of the Empire, the Habsburgs held Austria continuously for the next 650 years, until the collapse of Austria-Hungary at the end of the First World War.

Yet if they came from Switzerland and held Austria all of this time, it would be wrong to think of them as intrinsically "German" or "Germanic". At various points in time, the family ruled Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain, Portugal, their American territories, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, plus Northern Italy and parts of Germany, France, Switzerland, Poland, and the Balkans. In 1500, Charles V was born Duke of Burgundy in Ghent, and grew up speaking French and Flemish. By the age of 16, he was King Carlos I of Spain and learning the language which he would habitually use thereafter, even though some three years later he succeeded his grandfather Maximilian as Archduke of Austria and Emperor of an essentially Germanic empire. His brother Ferdinand, who was born and brought up in Spain, became Charles' lieutenant in the Empire, succeeded him in Austria and as Emperor, and inherited the thrones of Bohemia and Hungary. They didn't meet until Charles was 17, and it is unclear how they communicated, since Charles hardly spoke Spanish and Ferdinand nothing but. But it didn't matter; they were related and blood was all-important.

Indeed, at a time when primogeniture was becoming the norm in the European aristocracy and especially ruling houses, the Habsburgs continually divided their inheritance, and then reassembled it through the dynastic device of marriage. Rather like a Mafia family, it didn't seem to matter which Habsburg ruled and what it was they ruled, so long as it was a Habsburg and they were in charge. Even as Charles was inheriting the largest collection of territorial rights since Charlemagne, he was negotiating with his brother to split it up; and when he unexpectedly abdicated in 1555, the Empire and Austria went to Ferdinand, while Spain and the Netherlands went to his son Philip II.

Marriage could be a powerful weapon; but repeated marriages between Austrian and Spanish Habsburg cousins nearly proved disastrous to both. By 1666, there were only two male Habsburgs left; the Emperor Leopold, who was sickly, and Carlos II of Spain, who was so severely handicapped that he was not expected to survive childhood. Leopold married his own niece, a desperate measure that failed to produce a male heir (though he eventually managed it via his third marriage). But when Carlos died in 1700 without an heir after a surprising 35 years on the throne, the result was the War of the Spanish Succession, in which Habsburg Austria and allies (including Britain) were pitted against Bourbon France and allies. In the resulting compromise, the Bourbons got Spain while the Spanish Netherlands were transfered to Austria. Thereafter, there was only one Habsburg branch, in which the most remarkable aspect was its fecundity. Habsburg Empresses regularly gave birth to a dozen or more children.

For the remaining 200 years of their dynastic power, the Archdukes of Austria had to contend with the creeping development of nationalism. In the great struggle with Napoleon, they managed - just - to end up on the winning side; and as part of that process replaced their quasi-hereditary title of Holy Roman Emperor with the fully-hereditary (but more legally dubious) one of Emperor of Austria. However, "Austria" was a territory, not a nation, and adding Hungary to the mix merely made things more complicated. True, neither Italy nor Germany existed as nations; but when they eventually became one in the nineteenth century, the first under the leadership of Piedmont and the second of Prussia, the Habsburgs were left ruling a patchwork of peoples with nothing in common except that their rulers all had the same surname. The construction limped on for some time, but could not withstand the arch-nationalist forces of the First World War; defeated in 1918, it then splintered into its myriad parts.

For years afterwards, and particularly when it was shown what could happen when nationalism ran amok, there was a nostalgic wish in some quarters for a return to the old days of Mitteleuropa, with peoples of different nationalities living in peace under the Habsburg umbrella. Otto von Habsburg, son of the last Austro-Hungarian Emperor and head of the house, who died earlier this year aged 98, was said to be fluent in Croat, English, French, German, Hungarian, Spanish and Latin. A member of the European Parliament, he was an avid promoter of the European Union, a sort of modern version of the Habsburg idea. If we ever get to the point where the E.U. elects its own President, then a Habsburg candidate might not be such a bad idea.    
 
Walter Blotscher