The Austrian Declaration of War: Imperial Manifesto To My People

“The Austrian Declaration of Imperial Manifesto To My People” is Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph’s declaration of war on Piedmont-Sardinia in 1859. This led to the Second Italian War of Independence, also known as the Italian War of 1859, the Franco-Austrian War, or the Austro-Sardinian War. Piedmont-Sardinia was a northern Italian kingdom that was seeking to unite Italy by expelling the Austrians from their Italian province of Lombardy-Venetia. Francis Joseph I, or Franz Joseph (1830-1916), was the emperor of the Austrian Habsburg empire, from 1848 until his death in 1916. The Austrian Habsburgs ruled over a large multi-ethnic empire in central Europe that was threatened by the growth of nationalism in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Franz Joseph fought a number of wars with neighboring nations during his reign. In many cases these wars were fought by Austria in order to save its empire. Franz Joseph came to power, unexpectedly, as a result of the 1848 revolutions that swept across Europe. Uprisings in Austria forced Emperor Ferdinand I and the powerful conservative minister Metternich to resign. Ferdinand’s nephew, Franz Joseph, was put on the throne in his place. Soon after coming to the throne, Joseph faced nationalist separatism in his empire. The Italian kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia was at war with Austria, trying to take control of the Austrian province of Lombardy-Venetia in northern Italy. In Hungary there was a revolt against Austrian rule at the same time. But both the Sardinians and Hungarians had been defeated by 1849- Austria’s Russian ally helped to suppress the Hungarian revolt. In 1859 Piedmont-Sardinia tried to take control of Lombardy-Venetia again. This time Piedmont was backed by France, and Austria was defeated. As a result, Austria handed Lombardy over to Piedmont-Sardinia, but held on to Venetia. More wars followed for Franz Joseph and the Austrian Empire. In 1866 Austria fought two parallel wars- one with the rival German state of Prussia, and the other with the recently-formed Kingdom of Italy. Austria was defeated, and, as a result, lost Venetia, its last Italian territory, to the Kingdom of Italy. It didn’t lose any territory to Prussia, but Prussia and Austria had been competing for dominance of the smaller German states for a long time. Prussia’s victory in 1866 brought the small German states under Prussian dominance, eventually leading to the formation of the modern country of Germany. In order to save the empire, Franz Joseph was forced to grant autonomy to Hungary, so that the Austrian Empire became the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But even though the Hungarians were happy with this compromise, smaller minorities in the empire were still pushing for independence from the empire. Finally, in 1914, Joseph’s nephew and heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated by Serbian nationalists in Sarajevo. The Austrian’s determination to crush Serbia and southern Slav nationalism in their empire led to the outbreak of World War I. Joseph, who was in his 80s by this time, died in the middle of the war. He didn’t live to see his empire’s defeat and dismemberment in 1918. Austria-Hungary was formally split into several smaller nations in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles (Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, with some territory also going to Italy).