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Indeed one is sometimes tempted to wonder that there never was an Austria in our own island; the name might have been just as well applied to East-Anglia and Essex as it was to the lands which actually bore it. But it was only to the Austria on the Danube, the Oesterreich of the German realm, whose princes had the duty of keeping the German realm against the Magyar, that the name permanently clave. The mark became a duchy; it was raised to the unique rank of archduchy. And an archduchy the true Austria, Upper and Lower, still remains; among all his endless titles, the king, duke, count, and lord of so many lands and cities, the self-styled Emperor, has never dropped his style as Archduke of Austria. The duchy of Austria was united in the twelfth century with that of Steiermark or Styria. The two passed for a moment to the Bohemian King Ottocar; under him a power was formed which stretched from the Giant Mountains to the Hadriatic; but its head was at Prag, not at Vienna. But the history of Austria in the modern sense began with the grant of Austria and Styria to Albert of Habsburg in 1282. Since then the names 'House of Austria' and 'House of Habsburg,' have had the same meaning. Austria was now united with the Swabian dominions of the Counts of Habsburg, and thus the dukes of Austria came to play a part in the affairs of the famous Confederation which arose on their borders in the West. From that time to our own, the Austrian house has been ever extending its dominions by every kind of means, and sometimes losing them by every kind of means. A crowd of German territories, greater and smaller, were added one by one, the county of Tyrol being the most worthy of notice. And to these German territories the Austrian name was in some sort extended. The Swabian and Alsatian possessions were known as Fore-Austria; the Austrian circle took in the whole German dominion of the Austrian House. The kingdom of Bohemia, a vassal state of the Empire, the kingdom of Hungary, lying altogether beyond the bounds of the Empire, so often chose Austrian princes for their kings that their crowns at last became hereditary in the Austrian house. Add to this the occasional possession of Italian kingdoms and duchies from the beginning of the last century to our own time-add the possession of the southern Netherlands from the beginning of the last century to the French Revolution-add the share of Poland won at the first partition, and the shorter possession of the share won at the third-add Dalmatia, won and lost and won again-add Ragusa and Cracow basely seized in modern times, and Trieste held for ages by the free commendation of its own citizens; allow for endless dismemberments and annexations during the French revolutionary wars and the negotiations which followed them-all this gives us the picture of a power whose outward frontier has shifted as much as a frontier can shift, but which has always kept a solid mass of dominion in and near its original seat. We behold a power holding a very marked position, partly German, partly non-German, and able to use at pleasure its German and its non-German elements to influence each other. We behold a power,

the furthest removed of all powers from a really national character, a power made up of scraps of endless peoples, nations, and languages, each of which may be played off against the others, but which have no common tie of origin or of interest, which have nothing to bind them together except that a series of historical accidents have placed them all under the rule of the same prince. The old phrase of the House of Austria,' now almost forgotten, but which used to be used where we now say 'Austria' or Austria-Hungary,' exactly expressed the truth of the case. It marked the distinction between the land inhabited by a nation and the territory possessed by a dynasty. The territory under Austrian rule was, and is, neither the land inhabited by an Austrian nation nor the land conquered by an Austrian nation; it is neither a free confederation nor yet an assemblage of provinces dependent on a common centre; it is the dominion of the House of Austria and nothing else. It is made up of all those lands and cities which, having nothing else to bind them together, are bound together by the artificial and accidental tie that they all have at sundry times and in divers manners passed under the rule of the Austrian house.

A power thus formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms needed above all others some kind of traditional majesty, some kind of imposing title, to make up for the lack of national being, and to give dignity to a dominion which might otherwise seem a grotesque collection of odds and ends. And that genius of happy accident which seems, from the thirteenth century onwards, to have ever watched over all things Austrian, did not fail to supply exactly what was wanted in the way of title and tradition. The thing lacking was found in the long connexion of the ducal and archducal House of Austria with the Roman Empire and the kingdom of Germany. The majesty of a long line of Cæsars was gradually spread over the Austrian dukes and their motley territories. The first Duke of Austria of the line of Habsburg was also the first ruler of Austria who added, not indeed the imperial crown of Rome, but the royal crown of Aachen, to the ducal coronet. In the person of the first Albert, a duke of Austria rose in 1298 to the rank, not indeed of Emperor, but of King of the Romans. No other Austrian duke was chosen to that rank till the second Albert (fifth of Austria) in 1438; but from the second Albert onwards every King and Emperor was either a member of the Austrian house, a claimant of its dominions, or a husband or son of their female sovereign. Thus the ideas of Emperor and of Austria easily got confounded in many minds; it seemed impossible to conceive an Emperor who should not be duke of Austria, or a duke of Austria who should not be Emperor. It has been said in very respectable books that Duke Leopold at Morgarten commanded an Imperial army. It was assumed that an Austrian army must have been an Imperial army, and that men at war with Austria must have been at war with the Empire. Yet the records of the time show that Lewis, King of the Romans and afterwards Emperor, rejoiced

with his loyal men of the Three Lands on their victory over his Austrian enemy. In later times a cloud of impenetrable darkness seems to hang over the position of Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary and Archduchess of Austria in her own right, Empress through the election of her husband to the Imperial Crown. We may well believe that Duke Francis of Lorraine would never have been chosen Emperor if he had not been the husband of the Queen and Archduchess; still it is in his Imperial election that we have the key to what seems to many people her mysterious title of Empress-Queen. It has been said in book after book that the succession to the Empire was settled by that Pragmatic Sanction by which Charles the Sixth secured his hereditary states to his daughter. Not a few writers seem puzzled when they find the daughter of one Emperor, the wife of another, the mother of two more, spoken of, as she necessarily was from the death of her father to the election of her husband, simply as Queen of Hungary. Confusion of course reached its height when, in 1804, the Emperor Francis the Second, to the titles of Roman Emperor-elect and King of Germany, added that of 'Hereditary Emperor of Austria -when in 1805 he was styled in the Treaty of Pressburg Emperor of Germany and Austria'-when in 1806 he laid aside his Roman and German titles, and went on reigning by the style of Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, and all the rest.

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We have now reached the days of the Austrian Empire,' the days of that title of Emperor of Austria,' which a moment's thought shows to be so strange and anomalous, but which the usage of seventysix years has made so familiar that in modern writings we not uncommonly find it carried back to ages in which it was never heard. Not only the Emperors of the last century, but Emperors of far earlier times-Emperors who had nothing to do with the Austrian duchy except to receive its homage-are not uncommonly made to suffer under this title of yesterday. I believe I have seen Frederick Barbarossa himself spoken of as an Emperor of Austria.' This amazing confusion is the best comment on the way in which the special meaning which even in the last century attached to the title of Emperor has been wholly forgotten in our own day. Till 1804 the Imperial title still carried with it a claim to represent, in some way or other, by descent or by analogy, the power of Rome, Eastern or Western. We may even say that it was in that sense that the title was taken by the elder Buonaparte. By calling himself Emperor, he meant to challenge a position beyond that of the local Kings of France, the position, in short, of Charles the Great. What Francis the Second, already Roman Emperor-elect, meant by calling himself Hereditary Emperor of Austria, is less easy to explain. One is tempted to think that he had forgotten who he was. But the new form was plainly designed to announce that the House of Austria, as the House of Austria, apart from any elective Roman or German crowns, was at least the equal of the House of Ajaccio.

One thing is certain, that, with whatever motive it was that the

last heir of the Cæsars called himself Erbkaiser von Oesterreich, the thing has paid. It enabled him to keep on his Imperial style and Imperial pretensions after he had cast aside his character as heir of the Cæsars. He was Emperor before; he went on being Emperor still; he seemed simply to resign a position external to his own states, but to lose nothing of power or dignity within them. Whether names and titles ought to influence men's thoughts and actions or not, as a matter of fact they do influence them, pedantic as it may be to acknowledge the fact that they do. It is quite certain that the 'Emperor of Austria' has held a position in Europe which could not have been held by a simple King of Hungary and Archduke of Austria. The Imperial title has dazzled men's minds; it has led them to see a connexion, which has neither historical nor practical existence, between the odd collection of territories in or out of Germany which have come together in Austrian hands, and the ancient majesty of Germany and of Rome. It has thrown a false air of antiquity and legitimacy over a very modern creation, made up largely of very modern pilferings. Many people, whenever they see a twoheaded eagle, cry out Austria,' forgetful that the bird of Cæsar is the lawful bearing of Cæsar and of none other, and that when Francis of Austria laid aside his Roman empire and German kingdom, he should, according to all the laws of heraldry, have been content with the lion of his archduchy. For an archduke of Austria to use the Imperial arms because he is the descendant of an elective Emperor, is really as absurd as it would be for a private Englishman to use the arms of an English see because he is the descendant of one of its former bishops. But all these seeming trifles pay; they produce an effect of continuity, of antiquity, where there is no continuity, no antiquity. The Emperor with his eagle can hold himself much higher than the archduke could hold himself with his lion. A power, essentially modern, upstart, revolutionary, which exists only by treading down every historic right and every national memory, has, by shifting from one character to another, by playing off one character against another, come to be looked on as the venerable embodiment of legitimacy and conservatism. The legitimacy is a little doubtful: about the conservatism there is no question. The one Austrian rule -a rule, to be sure, not peculiar to Austria-has ever been to get all that can be got, and when it is got, to keep it.

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Still the phrase Empire of Austria' suggests a geographical question. Where is it? What are its boundaries? The Hereditary Emperor of Austria' did not lay aside his style of archduke. What were the relations between the Empire' and the archduchy? Did the 'Empire' take in all the possessions of the Austrian house, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, or any other? Since 1867 the question has been a little easier to answer. Since the establishment of the dual system, the Empire of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary have been two states with a common sovereign. This seems to give us a means of making at least a negative definition of

the Empire of Austria. It is that part of the dominions of the common ruler of Austria, Hungary, and several other states, which is not the kingdom of Hungary. Shall we say that the land which was once the Austria, the eastern mark, of Germany has become the Neustria, the western mark, of Hungary? Shall we go a step further? According to ancient precedent, what was not Austria was Neustria. One is tempted to turn the analogy about. The sovereign of Hungary is also sovereign of some other lands which can be defined only as not being Hungary. Their most descriptive name would seem to be Nungaria or Nungarn.

There is really no tie but this negative one to unite the archduchy of Austria and the duchies immediately connected with it, with Bohemia, Moravia, Austrian Silesia, Tyrol, Trent, Trieste, Aquileia, Istria, Dalmatia, Cattaro, Spizza, Galicia and Lodomeria, Bukovina, and any other land where Francis Joseph may reign in any character other than that of King of Hungary. These lands make up Nungaria; nothing more can be said of them. The odd thing is that several of these lands can be claimed by their present master in no other character than that of King of Hungary. The feeble claim to Galicia put forth at the first partition of Poland was that it had, at two remote periods, been held by Hungarian kings. It had never been held by any Austrian duke. The equally feeble claim to Dalmatia was that several kings of Hungary had also been kings of Dalmatia; no Austrian duke ever had been so. Yet Galicia and Dalmatia count, not to Hungary but to Nungary. It is practically better that they should so count; but the historical confusion is remarkable. Yet again, the King of Hungary could put forth at least as good a title to the old kingdom of Bosnia or Rama as he could put forth to Galicia and Dalmatia. Yet he is content to administer' one of the kingdoms of his predecessors, not as duke, not as king, not as Emperor, but as the vassal of the Turk. Yet again, how many people remember that part of the territory which Austria wrung from Poland had been in earlier times wrung by Poland from Russia? As a matter of fact, Alexander is not Emperor of all the Russias,' while Francis Joseph holds the old Red Russia, the so-called Galicia and Lodomeria.

The Austrian power is a fact; while it exists as a power, it is entitled to be treated in formal matters like any other power. But it is not wise to forget its real nature. While each of the other powers answers to a nation, or at least has a nation as its kernel, the Austrian power has no national basis whatever. A Hungarian power would have a national basis in the Magyar nation; an Austro-Hungarian power has none. It is a mere accidental gathering of odds and ends, which must fall to pieces the moment the several nations concerned feel at once the wish and the power to part asunder. When the German is drawn to his fellow-Germans, the Italian to his fellowItalians, the Slave to his fellow-Slaves, the Rouman to his fellow

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