Background
CHarles I was born Charles Francis Joseph to Archduke Otto on August 17, 1887, in Persenbeug, Lower Austria.
CHarles I was born Charles Francis Joseph to Archduke Otto on August 17, 1887, in Persenbeug, Lower Austria.
Educated at the Scottish High School in Vienna, Charles also attended lectures at Prague University. On October 21, 1911, he married Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma.
Charles served as cavalry officer until 1914, when the assassination of his uncle Francis Ferdinand cast him into the role of successor to the throne. In August 1914, Charles, in the rank of colonel, was assigned to the Austro-Hungarian army in Galicia where he carried out the emperor's personal business. In the summer of 1915 he was promoted to major general and recalled to Schonbrunn to perform routine court functions. When General Conrad von Hotzendorf opted for an offensive against the Italians in South Tyrol in May 1916, Charles was given command of the XX (Edelweiss) Corps. These were among the happiest days of Charles' life, but after the Austrian defeat at Luck he was hastily dispatched to East Galicia. As commander of a new army corps, Charles was given the Prussian General Hans von Seeckt as chief of staff.
On November 21, 1916, Charles succeeded Francis Joseph as emperor of Austria, and on December 30 as king of Hungary. Charles' refusal to swear to the Austrian constitution brought about the resignation of Minister-President Ernst von Korber and his replacement with Heinrich von Clam-Martinic; after Foreign Minister Burian von Rajecz's appeal for peace on December 12, 1916, went unanswered, Charles replaced him with Count Ottokar Czernin.
Next Charles forced Conrad von Hotzendorf to relinquish his post as chief of staff, appointing in his place the more pliable General Arz von Straussenburg. Finally, Charles moved army headquarters from Teschen to Baden, near Vienna. Francis Joseph's grand-nephew generally was a young man of humanitarian inclinations, but according to Rothenberg, "volatile, lacking in balance and experience, and strangely unable to make and stick with decisions." Most of the advisers that he sought had once belonged to the Belvedere Circle of Francis Ferdinand. And while civilian leaders were favorably inclined towards him, Austria-Hungary's military paladins were apprehensive about Charles' yearning to command the armed forces personally, to seek peace at almost any price, and to permit his wife such a powerful voice in the affairs of state.
A series of misplaced humanitarian gestures in 1917 undermined the army's morale and discipline. Charles abolished dueling in the army, ended all physical punishments for civilian and soldier alike, halted air bombings, ended the use of gas without imperial sanction, and even granted an amnesty for political crimes, thereby setting free men who had as their avowed goal the destruction of the Habsburg empire. In the realm of foreign affairs, Charles realized his almost total dependence on the Germans, but greatly resented them for it. He immediately revoked the unified command structure agreed to in September 1916, protested against the German decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare early in 1917, and even attempted to negotiate an end to the war behind the ally's back.
On March 24, 1917, Charles met with Empress Zita's brothers, Sixtus and Xavier, both officers in the Belgian army, at Laxenburg in order to plot his strategy. Little did he know that the French were cynically using the two young men simply to drive a wedge between Vienna and Berlin, and when Georges Clemenceau, in April 1918, published parts of the correspondence between Charles and Sixtus, the Habsburg ruler was accused of duplicity and treachery; the result of his clumsy scheming was a greater reliance on Berlin. This became apparent in the minor role accorded the Austrians in negotiations leading to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 4, 1918, and in the forced Austro-Hungarian participation in the occupation and policing of the Ukraine.
On October 16, 1918, after two appeals for peace went unanswered, Charles issued a manifesto reorganizing Austria into a federal state with selfgovernment for its nationalities, while at the same time assuaging the Magyars with a promise not to "disturb the integrity of the lands of the Crown of St. Stephen."
This ambiguous document, which personified the emperor's pronounced inconsistencies, amounted to a death warrant of the empire, signed by its highest official. On October 31 Charles issued an order permitting his officers to accept service in the national armies then being formed, and on November 4, an armistice was formally signed. Command of the remaining forces passed to Baron Kovess von Kovesshaza and on November 11, Charles stepped down as Austria's political head of government. Not even in defeat was Charles able to make a clear break with either the army or the government, and his numerous contradictory decrees in October and November 1918 brought only more confusion and rancor for the Habsburg civil service and military. In the end, Charles refused to abdicate formally and managed only with British protection to flee to Switzerland on March 24, 1919; in his Feldkirch declaration, Charles renounced his decision of November 11,1918, as invalid.
Unlike Emperor Wilhelm II, who lived in exile with the dignity he had sorely lacked as emperor-king, Charles refused to accept the historical verdict of November 1918. On Easter 1921, he attempted to return to Hungary, but passive resistance by Admiral Miklos Horthy foiled this plot. Undaunted, Charles and Zita returned by airplane on October 20, 1921, to claim the Crown of St. Stephen; this time Horthy opposed the planned coup with force.
After a brief incarceration at Cloister Tihany on Lake Balaton, the imperial couple was transported aboard a British warship to Madeira. Charles died at Quinta do Monte on Portuguese Madeira on April 1, 1922, from a lung infection.