The Habshurg Monarchy 263When Charles V abdicated as emperor in 1558, he divided the Habshurg
domains into two parts. His brother Ferdinand I inherited the Austrian Hab
sburg lands (including Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia) and succeeded him
as the elected Holy Roman emperor. Charles’s son Philip II became king of
Spain. His empire included the Netherlands, dependencies in Italy, and
colonies in the Americas. The Spanish and Austrian branches of the Habs
burgs were henceforth two separate dynasties, although the interests of both
as Catholic states and dynastic rivals of France sometimes converged.
The Austrian Habsburg monarchy exercised foreign policy and directed
the army, but had less effective authority within its territories than the
kings of France had within their realm. Nobles oversaw the court system
and policing. When confronted with threats to their traditional preroga
tives, nobles put aside differences, such as those between the great
landowners and the lower nobility, and formed a common front to preserve
their privileges against monarchical erosion.
Austria was the only power able to exercise its influence equally in both
Western and Eastern Europe. The Austrian Habsburgs successfully imple
mented an effective state administration, expanded educational opportunities
for the upper classes, and brought resistant or even rebellious nobles under
dynastic control. But timely marriages were no longer enough. Throughout
the sixteenth century and during the first half of the seventeenth century, the
Habsburgs had been almost constantly preoccupied with politics within the
German states. During the Thirty Years’ War, however, the Habsburgs
were unable to expand their domination throughout Central Europe. The
Habsburgs remained vulnerable to French expansionism and to Turkish
incursions, forcing the monarchy to address threats on two fronts.
That the Habsburg empire contained territories of different nationalities
was a source of weakness. Leopold I, elected Holy Roman emperor in 1658
(ruled 1658-1705; Louis XIV was the opposing candidate), was simultane
ously Holy Roman emperor, duke of Upper and Lower Silesia, count of Tyrol,
archduke of Upper and Lower Austria, king of Bohemia, prince of Transylva
nia, king of Hungary, Slavonia, Dalmatia, and Croatia, and titular ruler of
Lombardy, Styria, and Moravia (see Map 7.1). The monarch necessarily had
to consider local political institutions. The Hungarian and Croatian provin
cial diets, or noble Estates, impeded Habsburg absolutism. Hungarians also
resented German-speaking administrators and tax collectors, as well as the
Habsburg armies stationed in Hungary to protect the empire from the Turks.
In Bohemia, the scars of the religious conflicts between Catholics and
Protestants during the Thirty Years’ War healed very slowly. Bohemia and
Moravia remained centers of Protestant intellectual ferment, despite
Catholic domination. Bohemian nobles resented the fact that a decree in
1627 had abolished the elective monarchy, made the Bohemian crown a
hereditary Habsburg possession, and brought the confiscation of their lands.
Hungary had been part of the Habsburg domains since the sixteenth
century. The Hungarian crown included Hungary, Transylvania, and Croatia.