Review

General Books

This is the second volume of Bérenger's history of the Habsburg Empire. It begins with the War of the Spanish Succession and carries the story down to the end of the Great War. The first chapter will prove to be the hardest going, especially to those unfamiliar with the dynastic wars and diplomatic maneuverings of Early Modern Europe. In spite of territorial gains, the Treaty of Utrecht ended any Habsburg dream of universal monarchy. Although earlier Bérenger had called the emperor Charles VI a worthy son of Leopold I, Charles receives harsh assessment as an innate mediocrity. He did arrange the Pragmatic Sanction which enabled Maria Theresa to ascend to the throne, though it could not stop Frederick II from stripping Silesia from the Habsburg Domain. The cynical Frederick would later quip that a better pledge than solemn oaths would have been a good army. In desperation the empress turned to the Hungarians to balance the loss of Silesia. The geopolitical consequences of the loss of Silesia, the relationship between the Habsburgs and the Hungarian nobility and the development of an effective army are three themes that Bérenger develops throughout the book.	1
Bérenger is lavish in his praise of Maria Theresa who is variously described as compassionate, vigorous, decisive, statesmanlike and a great educator. The reforms of 1749 which joined Austria and Bohemia while creating a separate arrangement with Hungary are correctly described as revolutionary and marked the birth of the modern Austrian state as it existed until 1918. True, Bérenger later and more conventionally calls Joseph II the creator of modern Austria, but his point is to link the great landesmutter with her son and with Leopold II as a bona fide enlightened ruler and a model for success. Enlightenment came to a sudden stop in the face of the French Revolution and the accession to power of the reactionary Francis II. Military setbacks brought about the Peace of Pressburg in 1805 which dissolved the Holy Roman Empire and ushered in an Austrian Empire. In 1809 the renamed Francis I appointed Metternich as Chancellor of Austria, and from that day till 1916 the Habsburg Empire would revolve around two men of differing ability, Clemens von Metternich and Francis Joseph II.	2
Metternich receives sympathetic treatment as a cosmopolitan aristocrat and an ardent admirer of the Enlightenment, hostile to all things romantic, revolutionary and nationalistic. Metternich's masterpiece was the congress of Vienna; Bérenger compares it favorably with the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and its aftermath. The Chancellor only began losing his footing after 1830 when liberalism and nationalism began to undermine his conservative world order. Bérenger stresses that the events of 1848 were more than a mere series of riots followed by a severe reaction, for the liberal reforms which passed between June and October ultimately allowed moderate bourgeois elements to emerge victorious.	3
By the end of that year, Metternich had been chased out of office and Francis Joseph had begun his long reign. The rule of the emperor was defined by three military defeats, the last of which he did not live to see, and a series of personal tragedies. In 1859 Solferino put an end to neo-absolutism and any dreams the emperor may have had that he was an exception to Habsburg military ineptness. In the process, however, Austria had become a centralized state ruled by officials appointed by Vienna. Sadowa in 1866 forced the emperor to rethink he relations with the Hungarians, who had had their liberties curtailed after 1848, a process that culminated in the Ausgleich of 1867. No such parity was forthcoming to the Czechs or the monarchy's other Slavs, a fateful decision. Equally fateful was Francis Joseph's decision to play second fiddle to the German Empire. Decisions made at the highest level were of fundamental importance to the survival of the monarchy, and Bérenger shows that the emperor was rarely up to making the crucial ones. Characterized as honest and unexceptional, dashing but not brilliant, Francis Joseph possessed the qualities of an infantry captain, not a commander-in-chief. Too easily led by those around him, the emperor made costly mistakes in the Balkans which led to rivalry with Russia and war in 1914. More in sorrow than in anger, Bérenger notes that the old emperor cannot be absolved from a large share of responsibility for launching the war that would destroy everything that he had held dear.	4
In the last chapter, Bérenger labors hard to dispel the notion that the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire was either inevitable or morally justified. In 1914 the empire was economically strong and internally stable. Nor was the military a weak link. During the war Austria had fewer desertions than the Germans, fewer mutinies than the French or the Russians, and victories over Serb, Romanian and Italian Armies. What Austria could not support was a war of attrition. The result was that in the course of a few days the Austrian army collapsed, not for strategic but for political reasons. In spite of the efforts of Charles I, after the summer of 1918, the monarchy could no longer command the allegiance of its national groups, many of whom "flew to the aid of the victor." The break up of the empire was quick and, with allied aid, irreversible. The aftermath was neither edifying nor politically sound. The peoples of the area possessed more freedom before 1914 than in the regimes put in place after 1938. Bérenger's rhetoric is bitter as he asks: "what purpose did the breakup of Austria-Hungary serve." Equally pertinently, Bérenger wonders if the collapse of the Soviet empire will bring back the Germans as the dominant force in Danubian Europe, or whether the peoples there can again work out a confederation that will allow them to survive between East and West.	5
Bérenger is at home in and gives equal billing to all areas of history. The sections on cultural history are often excellent, but merit fuller treatment even at the cost of distorting the author's even-handed perspective. In particular fin-de-siècle Vienna, Budapest and Prague should have been discussed at greater length and put into a European context. The reader turning to this survey for information about Kafka, Musil, the Galileo Circle, Freud and others will come away either empty handed or not much the wiser. On the vexed category of ethnic bias the author is awarded high marks. One suspects that like the Empress Elizabeth, Bérenger "intuitively favors" the Hungarians, but not at the expense of other nationalities. He is not blind to the consequences of the intransigence of the Hungarian nobility in blocking attempts at opening the empire to trilateralism, and the discussion of Magyarization is balanced and enlightening. Insofar as the author has Bêtes noires, they are late turn of the century French opinion makers. According to Bérenger, journalists like André Chéradume and historians Ernest Denis and Louis Eisenman consistently misread the situation in the monarchy, and as "apostles of doom" created problems that did not exist. It is to be regretted that Bérenger did not take up the equally crucial role of the English press and intelligentsia and mostly notably H. Wickam Steed and R. W. Seton Watson in creating a climate of opinion among the victors that the lands of the Danube must be radically transformed. The translator, C. A. Simpson, has, besides writing an introduction, added notes of varying degrees of usefulness. When, however, he comments that Bérenger's use of "historic nations" is an imprecise distinction, the reader is justified in thinking that Simpson might reserve such insights for his book on the Habsburg monarchy. The translation is adequate. On page 95 read Moldavia for Moravia, and on Page 250 Poles for Romanians.	6
Any criticism of A History of the Habsburg Empire must be secondary to what is a major work of historical synthesis. Time and again, the author questions the conventional wisdom concerning the Habsburg Empire. In the process, both conservative and liberal historians are taken to task. What emerges is an up to date, tightly organized, fair and exciting history of the Habsburgs from early modern times on. The Habsburgs, who often seem as distant a dynasty as the Tarquins, take on new life, and their polyglot empire begins to make historical sense. All teachers of European history, history majors and AP European history students will read this eye opener of a history book with great profit.	7
California State University, Northridge   Frank L. Vatal

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.