Charles I of Austria

1887 – 1922 · Generation XXII · Emperor of Austria (r. 1916–1918) · Habsburg-Lorraine

Charles I (1887–1922) was the last Emperor of Austria and, as Charles IV, the last King of Hungary. He reigned for barely two years, all of them in wartime, and spent the rest of his short life trying to recover what he had lost. He was born at Persenbeug Castle in Lower Austria on 17 August 1887, the son of Archduke Otto and Maria Josepha of Saxony, and a great-nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph. His mother, a devout and retiring woman, shaped his upbringing. He attended the Schottengymnasium in Vienna, which was unusual for an archduke, studied for a time in Prague, and made the customary career as an army officer in Bohemian and Galician garrisons.

At his birth the throne was remote. The suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf in 1889, the death of his grandfather Karl Ludwig in 1896, the morganatic marriage of his uncle Franz Ferdinand in 1900, which barred that archduke’s children from the succession, and his own father’s death in 1906 brought it steadily closer. On 21 October 1911, at Schwarzau in Lower Austria, he married Zita of Bourbon-Parma, with the old emperor among the guests. The marriage was a close one and produced eight children, the eldest of them Otto, born in 1912.

Franz Ferdinand’s murder at Sarajevo in June 1914 made Charles heir. The old emperor began to introduce him to affairs of state, but the war cut that short, and he spent its first phase at headquarters and then held commands on the Italian and eastern fronts. He became emperor on 21 November 1916, aged twenty-nine, and was crowned in Budapest on 30 December. He took personal command of the army, dismissed the chief of staff Conrad von Hötzendorf, and recalled the Austrian parliament, which had not sat since the war began. Convinced that the monarchy could not survive a long war, he opened secret peace talks with France through Zita’s brother Prince Sixtus. They came to nothing. When the French published his letter in April 1918, after he had denied writing it, his credit was destroyed and Austria-Hungary was bound more tightly than ever to Germany.

In October 1918 he offered to remake the Austrian half of the empire as a federation of nations. It was too late. Czechoslovak and South Slav states were proclaimed, and at the end of the month Hungary ended its union with Austria. On 11 November, at Schönbrunn, Charles signed a declaration renouncing any part in the affairs of state, and two days later a similar one for Hungary. He never used the word abdication and never considered that he had abdicated. In March 1919 the family left for Switzerland under British escort, and that April the Austrian parliament deposed the Habsburgs and banished him for life.

Twice in 1921 he tried to regain the Hungarian throne. In March he travelled in secret to Budapest, where the regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy, refused to give way. In October he flew in from Switzerland with Zita, gathered loyal troops and set off for the capital by train. A skirmish on the outskirts of Budapest left nineteen dead, and he gave up rather than shed more blood. The couple were held at Tihany Abbey on Lake Balaton, taken down the Danube in a British gunboat, and exiled to Madeira.

There, in March 1922, a cold caught in Funchal turned to bronchitis and then to severe pneumonia, though the World of the Habsburgs, the online history published by Schönbrunn, names the Spanish influenza instead. He died on 1 April, aged thirty-four, and was buried in the church of Nossa Senhora do Monte near Funchal. His youngest child was born two months later. Historians remain divided between those who see a well-meaning man out of his depth and those who honour a ruler who sincerely tried to end the war. Pope John Paul II beatified him on 3 October 2004, a decision that was itself disputed, and his feast is kept on 21 October, his wedding day.

Place in the family

Charles I of Austria was a great-nephew of Franz Joseph I of Austria.
The archive records 3 of his descendants, across 3 generations.

Images

Charles as a small child, photographed about 1889. (Unknown photographer, public domain)
The wedding of Archduke Charles and Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma at Schwarzau, 21 October 1911. (Unknown photographer, public domain)
The tomb of Charles I in the church at Monte, Madeira. (Derschueler, CC BY-SA 3.0)

One of 24 people of Habsburg-Lorraine (from 1736) in this archive. Maria Theresa’s marriage carried the inheritance into a new name, which its heirs still bear.

Parents

Archduke Otto of Austria (1865 – 1906)
Maria Josepha of Saxony (1867 – 1944)

Partners

Married Zita of Bourbon-Parma (1892 – 1989) in 1911 — one child together

Children

Otto von Habsburg (1912 – 2011)

Life

1887 — Born
1911 — Married Zita
1922 — Died

Sources

Charles I of Austria · Wikipedia
Karl I (biography and chapters on his reign, exile and beatification) · The World of the Habsburgs (Schloß Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H.)
Putsch attempts in Hungary · The World of the Habsburgs (Schloß Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H.)
Beatification of five Servants of God: homily of John Paul II, 3 October 2004 · The Holy See