New history books reviewed
MARK CORNWALL recommends a masterful account of a dynasty that dominated Europe for more than four centuries and spread its influence across the globe
The Habsburgs: The Rise and Fall of a World Power
by Martyn Rady Allen Lane, 416 pages, £30
Anyone visiting the Austrian city of Innsbruck should make sure to see the Court Church, built in the 16th century as a memorial to the Habsburg emperor Maximilian I. There we find his huge black marble tomb, decorated with illustrious scenes from his reign – not just military triumphs but dynastic marriages that extended Habsburg power across Europe. The cenotaph is surrounded by 28 bronze figures, larger than life and lined up to depict Habsburg ancestry. Some are understandable, such as Maximilian’s father, Frederick III, whose bombastic motto was ‘Austria is ruler of the world’. Others seem delusional, such as Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, or Arthur, legendary king of Britain.
The whole ensemble is a forceful reminder that, across five centuries, the Habsburgs were obsessed with crafting an image of their past and future greatness. They aspired to lead a range of ‘world missions’ in order to justify their existence and power. Yet there was always something deceptive about all this pomp and propaganda. If the bronze figures allude to it, so does the fact that Maximilian’s tomb in Innsbruck is empty – his body is buried elsewhere, in a chapel near Vienna under a plain block of marble.
It is this steady clash between illusion and reality that Martyn Rady captures so well in his colourful new history of the Habsburgs. It is a formidable task to detail in one volume the story of a dynasty that dominated Europe for more than 400 years, which at its height could justifiably claim to have a global empire stretching from Brazil to the Philippines. But Rady has all the skills necessary to keep our attention. Not only is this a pacey romp
with a keen eye for the gruesome, titillating and absurd, it’s also grounded in immense scholarship. The author is proficient in multiple languages, meaning that we are treated to vivid anecdotes from Spanish, German and Hungarian sources as we speed through the decades.
Originating in the Swiss region of Aargau in the 10th century, the Habsburg family – possibly named after ‘Hawk’s Castle’ – began to flourish as much through luck as through fecundity, owning about 30 castles by the 14th century. Key to this expansion was Rudolf of Habsburg, seven foot tall “with a nose long enough to obstruct traffic”. By the end of his life in 1291 he was not only head of the Holy Roman Empire but, as a “rapacious man of war”, had conquered Austria, effectively transferring the Habsburg heartland to central Europe.
Rady details how Rudolf’s successors consciously built up this twin power base, as leaders of the empire and as archdukes of Austria. By forging historical charters and fabricating a Roman ancestry for themselves (for example, the notion that Julius Caesar had founded Vienna), the Habsburg myth was woven together: that theirs was a special family with a world mission. As Rady notes, “when the Habsburgs spoke of Austria, they were signalling as much an idea as a space”. This was encapsulated in the long reign of Frederick III (he of the bombastic motto) in the 15th century. In Vienna, he built the tallest cathedral spire on the continent, and set a precedent as Holy Roman Emperor: a Habsburg would inhabit that key position for the next three centuries.
Yet all this was not just an elaborate mirage. In the 16th century, the Habsburgs really did become a “universal monarchy”. Through the Spanish branch of the family, under Charles V and Philip II, they exploited the New World, soon dominating both the Atlantic and the Pacific. In central Europe they expanded their Austrian base into Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia. The imperial mission was now overlaid with a Catholic crusade, as their ships defeated the Turkish infidel in the Mediterranean and their Inquisition hunted down Jews in New Spain.
If the Austrian Habsburgs were less zealous than their Spanish cousins in the 16th century, by the next century the reverse was true. Ferdinand II became a manic persecutor of Protestantism, ensuring that the dynasty was fully identified with the Counter-Reformation. It culminated in 1683 in Leopold I’s celebrated repulsion of the Turks from Vienna. Rady nicely reassesses Leopold’s significance, but misses an opportunity to study in any depth the rich culture and sorry decline of the Spanish Habsburgs.
A good third of the book is devoted to the ‘modern era’ when, after the Spanish line dried up, the Habsburg world shrank back to its central European roots. Under Maria Theresa and Joseph II in the 18th century, a fresh mission was invented: to reform and order the state to the benefit of its imperial subjects (and rulers). In the 19th century, Prince Metternich added the more rigid conservative purpose of defending Europe from revolutionary forces. Throughout these fast-moving decades, the Habsburg rulers struggled to adapt to new ideas and tended to favour stale bureaucratic control over any
By forging charters and fabricating a Roman ancestry, the Habsburg myth was woven together: that theirs was a special family with a world mission
democratic experimentation. Yet they never lost sight of their grand imperial mission. For 40 years from 1815, their influence stretched far into Italy and Germany. In the 1860s, Archduke Maximilian was briefly emperor of Mexico, spurred on by his nostalgia for the lost era of the Spanish Habsburgs. Such instances of Habsburg overstretch failed. But elsewhere the commercial, cultural and geographical penetration continued under Franz Josef – witness the existence today of a Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand.
We now know, of course, that it was all to end abruptly with the empire’s collapse in 1918. According to Rady, the “dynastic glue” was simply too weak and the Habsburgs’ alliance with the kaiser’s Germany proved fatal. Yet most significant, perhaps, was the failure of that modern Habsburg mission propagated since the days of Maria Theresa: that the dynasty would be even-handed in bringing all its citizens both prosperity and security.
Rady’s final chapter, on the First World War, never quite explains this failure, and we lose sight of the Habsburg story amid details of the wartime turmoil. But that is merely a quibble. This is a real page-turner, capturing not just the Habsburgs’ imaginative vision but hinting at the rich cultural legacy that they have left all around us.