Balance of Power

Europe and the Balance of Power
The Austrian Civil War

Over the years since the end of the Euxine War, Austria’s Imperial Reichsrat had become increasingly polarised between pro-German and non-German political parties thanks to the centralisationist policies of Interior Minister Alexander von Bach and Minister-President Karl-Ferdinand von Buol. The Hungarian Diet often contended that policies enacted by those two senior members of Emperor Franz Joseph’s government were contrary to the April Laws from 1848. When push came to shove the Hungarian Diet supported Vienna for their own problems were a microcosm of the Empire in general but with Magyars on top instead of Germans. Other regions and nationalities within the Empire also wanted the same type of agreement that was given to the Magyars, and both protests and newspaper closings were becoming more and more common. Maygar regiments as often as German ones help prevent anything from getting out of control. More and more Magyar agents were being recruited by the k.uk. Evidenzbureau, the imperial secret police.

In 1869, a small uprising occuring in the village of Krivošije in the Kingdom of Dalmatia over newly implemented conscription was to be the harbinger of things to come, even though it went unnoticed across the rest of the continent. The rebels soundly defeated the small platoon sent after them as the military modernisations started by Radetzky had stagnated since his death and were incomplete or even regressed across the Imperial forces. The rebels are given amnesty in an attempt prevent the news from spreading and embarrassing the Empire, but it is already too late for that.

In early 1871, Karl Sigmund von Hohenwart is appointed Minister-President with the intention of federalising the Empire as the various nationalities were calling for. That fall, Emperor Franz Joseph issues a rescript to the Bohemian Diet to prepare a new constitutional charter based on the Fundamental Articles and Nationality Laws Hohenwart had negotiated with them. While protests continue across the Empire, they are more subdued and some newspaper columns even wonder if the protests hurt the cause of federalisation rather than help it. On October 7th, a revolt breaks out in Rakovica, Croatia, lead by Eugen Kvaternik, one of the founders of the Party of Rights, an ethnic party in the Imperial Reichsrat focused on Croatian autonomy. It spreads to the surrounding villages the next day and an Austrian Imperial army regiment arrives in town on the 10th and quashes the revolt with prejudice, hanging Kvaternik and three other leaders in the public square on the 11th. The following day, Ante Starcevic, the other founder of the Party of Rights is also arrested along with everybody with the same last name in Rakovica and surrounding townships. Starcevic’s jailing along with his family members provokes violent protests across the Empire when a new paper prints that the Evidenzbureau knew he had no knowledge of Kvaternik’s plans. Eight days later, Emperor Franz Joseph, under severe pressure from the pro-German parties in the Reichsrat and his own government plus pro Habsburg parties in the Hungarian Diet rescinds the agreement Hohenwart had worked out with the Bohemian Diet and cancels the entire process towards federalisation started by the Fundamental Articles and Nationality Laws, sayin in a speech to the Reichsrat ”Diese vielen verschiedenen Völker sind offensichtlich nicht bereit, ihre eigene Regulierung zu übernehmen, und brauchen dringend eine feste Hand, um sie in die Reife zu führen.”

As the news of the cancellation travels throughout the Empire, carrying with it story of Rakovica and the Emperor’s comments, more revolts break out across Croatia as well as Dalmatia, Bohemia and even Galicia and Transylvania. Hohenwart’s government is pushed out by pressure from the Reichsrat for failing to contain the spreading rebellions and Adolf von Auersperg is appointed Minister-President. He immediately makes nationalist parades illegal and starts cracking down on papers expressing sympathies with the movement, no matter how slight. The protests die down as central Europe heads into the harshest winter in several decades, but the Habsburgs and their Magyar pawns see it as vindication of the necessarily firm hand.

In the spring of 1872, it becomes obvious that it was merely the firm hand of winter that had kept the protesters quiet, not the machinations of the Evidenzbureau or the new laws prohibiting assembly and free speech. The protests start the day after Easter Sunday, and the military response snowballs as traditional May Day parades in Agram, Laibach and Kadar are fired upon by German and Hungarian regiments attempting to shut them down. The conflict flashes across the Empire, even to Lombardy and Venetia, considered to be Habsburg supporters since General Radetzky had been made governor in 1850. This catches the Imperial army off guard as they had been using Italian troops to shore up the Imperial regiments when Magyar ones were tied up elsewhere, and the entry of Servian troops into Austrian Servia and the Banat of Temeschewar takes resources that could be used elsewhere. As civil war breaks out across the empire, the non-German and non-Magyar soldiers desert their regiments, some returning home to fight and others joining the militias where they had been stationed.

By early 1873, the Imperial Army has been reduced to half its former size through the desertions and the fighting moves from the subsidiary kingdoms into Hungary and the core Austrian duchies. Since the Treaty of Világos in 1849, Emperor Franz Joseph and his government had played the various factions of the Hungarian Diet against each other and the polarisation that had developed over the last 25 years explodes in his face. Two thirds of the delegates proclaimed the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Hungary free from the Habsburgs as the other third avowed their loyalty to the Habsburg Monarchy. As had happened to the Imperial Army over the last year, the Hungarian Honved splintered, but across political lines in addition to the rebellion of the Transylvanian and Slovakian regiments. Because Magyar troops have been used to quash the protests in the other kingdoms, the rebellion in the minds of many was as much against the Hungarian Diet as it was against the Habsburg Monarchy. To avoid a three-way civil war and to preserve themselves, the Independentist Hungarian Diet promises to recognise the sovereignty of any region that wished to break away from Empire and to coordinate militarily. One by one, the diets of the subsidiary kingdoms proclaim the deposition of Franz Joseph and their own freedom.

The lost of the Honved hurts Habsburgs immensely and Franz Joseph appeals to the other German states for help later that spring. Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, at a conference in Weimar remarks that this is an internal Austrian conflict and should remain so and that outside interference would only serve to make things worse. His further remarks about Prussia protecting its territorial integrity are laughed off by the other attendees as Prussia had not been seen as threat by anyone since their humiliating defeat by the French Empire in 1864. Later that summer, the armies sent by Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg are shown to be ill-equipped and ill-managed¸ still fighting like they did in the days of Napoleon having learned nothing from the Euxine or Franco-Prussian wars. A particularly disastrous retreat by a Saxon and Bavarian army in late May into Prussian Silesia and the sacking of Glatz for supplies catapults Prussia into the war.

A week later, Prussian armies cross into Bohemia and Austrian Silesia to chase the Saxon and Bavarian army in coordination with the independentist Magyars. The Kingdom of Hanover, long allied with the Habsburgs to counter Prussian influence in the German Confederation of old, calls the Prussian attack into Austrian territory and alliance with the rebellious Magyars unjustly grievous and sends an army down the Elbe to join in the Austrian defense. Sending the now famous telegram “Ich hab es Sie doch gesagt” to King George V, Bismarck sends the Prussian armies, rebuilding and modernising since the French defeat, lancing into Hanover and Saxony. By July, Hanover has fallen and George V flees on the 19th from the port of Emden to Great Britain where he pleads with his cousin, Queen Victoria, for assistance. Though uneasy about a new war on the continent, Prime Minister Gladstone and the Earl of Derby advise Victoria to stay her hand. So far the Prussian armies have only retaliated, not initiated, even going so far as to give up tactically superior positions to avoid Austrian forces while chasing only the Saxons and Bavarians.

At the beginning of August, with the bulk of the Saxon armies fighting in Austria, Prussian armies lay siege to the Saxon capital of Dresden. News from Egypt reveals that the Ottoman Empire, also uneasy about the conflagration in Austria has moved more troops into the Balkans than it has had there since the end of of the Euxine War and Galician rebels send word that Russia has been doing the same in the east. When a Prussian detachment monitoring the Hungarian rebel army is captured by the Austrian Imperial army outside of Laibach and executed, Bismarck proclaims that Prussia can no longer stay neutral towards Austria as they have broken the unspoken agreement of German brotherhood.

A renewed Prussian offensive in Saxony causes King Albert of Saxony to capitulate barely more than a month from assuming the throne after his father’s death during the siege of Dresden. This frees up the Prussians to move into Bavaria and head towards Munich as the Bavarian tries to unsuccessfully fight its way out of Styria away from the Croatian and Hungarian pincers closing in on it. Prussian forces, backed by the steel and coal of Silesian industry and itching to undo the French humiliation, start to chew through what remains of the demoralised Austrian and the inadequate Bavarian forces as Franz Joseph calls upon the Great Powers for the first Congress since the end of the Euxine War.

When the remaining Austrian and Bavarian forces collapse in the summer of 1874, Great Britain and France finally agree to a new Congress. Worried that the collapse of Austria will mean war between the Russian and Ottoman empires over the territories now claiming independence, an armistice is signed in Vienna on August the 22nd to start on the 1st of September, the same day the new Congress will start to meet in Brussels.

The Earl of Derby, Foreign Secretary of Great Britain and Victoria’s plenipotentiary to the Congress declares that the purpose of the Congress is the disposition of the territories of the now defunct Austrian Empire, and Franz Joseph is furious. There is little he can do about it, however, when France and Russia agree. The last remaining forces loyal to him are in tatters and barely able to mount a ceremonial guard at Schönbrunn palace.

Bismarck puts forth a complex plan for the Great Powers to approve. In return for Prussia only gaining Hanover, Saxony and Austrian Silesia, it will withdraw from everywhere else and allow the Zollverein, which had taken the place of the German Confederation as the main way of keeping stability in Central Europe since 1848, to be dissolved. Lombardy and Venetia will be independent. Based on ethnic compositions, the territory of Cracow will go to the Kingdom of Poland, under Russian control, Bukovina will go to the Principality of Rumania, and Servia will get the Voidvodeship and Banat which it has controlled since the start of the civil war.

To ensure stability in Central Europe, two new confederations will be set up. The first, a renewed German Confederation made up of the old members (excluding the Duchy of Holstein, the Duchy of Limburg, and the now-republics of Baden, Hesse, Palatinate and Westphalia) plus the so-called western crownlands of the Habsburgs. The second, composed of the remaining lands of the Austrian Empire and of the same format as the German one which will adjudicate the final boundaries of the newly independent nation-states and conduct their foreign affairs with its capital at Pressburg.

The talks are almost derailed in early September when the Slovak people, oppressed by the Hungarian Diet since the failed 1848 revolution, declare themselves independent from Hungary and troops move in to quash the rebellion. Riots break out in Pressburg and Kosice against the Hungarian regiments in those cities, threatening the armistice. Bismarck says that if the Hungarians cannot keep their agreement to respect the autonomy of the other nations that made up the Austrian Empire, then Prussia cannot, in good faith, honour their treaty with them and will instead support Slovak independence. Depending on Prussia's support to lend it's claim legitimacy, the Hungarian Diet backs down and talks in Brussels resume.

The only addition made to Bismarck's plan is the suggestion by France that the former Austrian lands that will be joining the New German Confederation each be required to chose their own duke and no longer be held in personal union by Franz Joseph. The rationale, says Joseph Bonaparte, Regent of the French Empire, is to make sure the divided Habsburgs are incapable of executing any revanchist fantasies and plunging Central Europe back into war. Privately, though, he hopes to constrain the Prussians as the leaders of the New German Confederation by ensuring more votes against them.

Great Britain supports Bismarck’s proposition as it appears to remove most of the nationalist and ethnic tensions that had caused the Civil War which they were worried could cause a new continental conflict. France supports the proposition as the dissolution of the Zollverein as it should now be able to more fully integrate its German satellites into the French economy. Russia opposes the deal, claiming that Galicia and Lodomeria should also join Poland because of historic ties. Neither Great Britain nor France want Russia to gain any more territory through Poland, feeling that it will only antagonize the Ottomans, but Britain needs to walk a fine line over the thirty year old Central Asian buffer agreement and decides to abstain from the vote. Bismarck suggests letting the minor European powers, including the new ones, cast the deciding vote for the Congress, having cunningly worked behind the scenes. On September 30th, 1874, the Treaty of Brussels Dissolving The Austrian Empire is signed by France, Great Britain, Russia, along with Prussia as a renewed Great Power, with the accessory signatures of the minor powers and Austrian nation-states.

On August 1st, 1875, the Interim Diet of the Former Austrian Territories dissolves itself and meets the next day as the Diet of the Confederation of the Danube, the borders of it's nation-states approved by the 4 Great Powers. A year later on that same date, the German Confederation, having revived the talks of the Frankfurt Parliament from 1848, votes to adopt a new constitution reorganising the Confederation into an empire and offers the crown to King Wilhelm of Prussia who accepted as his elder brother had not, 26 years previously. Otto von Bismarck is appointed Chancellor of the new empire in recognition of his work for the past two years as President of the Diet of the New German Confederation.

A quick dump of the GIS data for after the Austrian Civil War and the start of the new German Empire.

Looks interesting. Have the Hapsburg's been totally deposed or do they remain kings of say Austria itself under the Prussian empire?

What is the situation with the Italian provinces as their not really geographically or culturally that linked to the assorted Hungarian/Balkan provinces in yellow, which would seem to be rather an unstable collection?

They are politically independent, not part of the new Confederation of the Danube. The Cispadanians don't trust the Romans because they give too much power to the Pope, and neither one of them trusts Piedmont-Sardinia after their abortive invasion of Parma and Modena in 1859 plus the revelations from the leaked Plombières Agreement that died along with N3. And the Two Sicilies are relatively poor and resent the growing economic domination of their northern brethren (especially P-S). So while nationalist sentiments remain high, unification has been at an impasse.

However, P-S is the regional power both economically and militarily, as shown in the Euxine War, and the only thing keeping them in check for decades has been Austria's interest in the peninsula and how they played that threat with the other Great Powers to curtail P-S's designs.

But that constraint is now gone.

So will the Duchy of Limburg go the same way as Luxembourg in the future, ore will they stay loyal to the Dutch crown.

Do we have a branch who could take over Limburg if needed.