The Battle of Austerlitz by 50Minutes.com

The Battle of Austerlitz by 50Minutes.com

Author:50Minutes.com
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: 50Minutes.com
Published: 2016-04-15T00:00:00+00:00


Francis II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire

Portrait of Francis II.

The son of Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and then Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, he was born in Florence on 12 February 1768. With his uncle, Emperor Joseph II (1741-1790), having no heir, Leopold ascended to the throne of the house of Austria, and after his death in 1792, the crown was passed to Francis.

The nephew of Marie Antoinette, the young king was involved very early on in the war against revolutionary France. Despite his qualities as a leader, and those of his brother in the military domain, all his confrontations between the Republic and the French Empire ended in failure. Forced to sign the peace agreement of Campo Formio in 1797 and the Treaty of Luneville in 1801, and finally that of Pressburg in 1806, which made him lose many of his territories, he was obliged after the last treaty to put an end to the Holy Roman Empire. Indeed, many of the German princes joined the new Confederation of the Rhine created by Napoleon I after his victory against the Third Coalition in Austerlitz. Having also lost part of northern Italy, and the Netherlands before that, the largely dismantled Holy Empire was now meaningless. The remaining territory became the Austrian Empire and Francis II became Francis I.

Defeated once again in the wars of the Fourth Coalition, he eventually entered into a matrimonial alliance with Napoleon by granting him the hand of his daughter, Marie-Louise, in 1810. However, from 1813, on the advice of Clemens Wenceslas von Metternich (Austrian prince and diplomat, 1773-1859), Francis II joined the Sixth Coalition against the French Emperor, which finally ended in a victory for the coalition. He participated in the Congress of Vienna and recovered much of the lost territory, but gave up on restoring the Holy Roman Empire.

Having been married four times, it was only his second wife, his cousin Maria Theresa of Bourbon-Naples (1772-1807), who granted him any offspring. When he died on 2 March 1835, it was his son Ferdinand I (1793-1875) who succeeded him.



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