Francis II's reign (1792–1835) brought Austria through a period of monumental change and challenge, marked by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. When Francis ascended to the throne in 1792, the Habsburg monarchy faced political upheaval from the revolutionary ideals spreading from France, where his aunt Marie Antoinette was executed in 1793. The chaos led Austria to backtrack on its former progressive reforms and focus instead on maintaining stability and order, intensifying censorship, and suppressing revolutionary ideas.
Austria became entangled in the wars initiated by revolutionary France, starting with the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797). Though initially successful, Austria soon lost key territories like the Austrian Netherlands, and with Napoleon rising to power, the situation became increasingly dire. France’s occupation of Italian territories and Austria’s exclusion from the Second Partition of Poland drove Austria into several more coalitions against France, including the Second Coalition (1798–1801), ending in more territorial losses. By 1804, with Napoleon declaring himself Emperor, Francis II transformed the Habsburg monarchy into the Austrian Empire, acknowledging the decline of the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburgs' shrinking influence over German-speaking lands. In 1806, following Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine, Francis officially dissolved the Holy Roman Empire.
Europe in 1812 after several French victories. © Alexander Altenhof
Further conflicts ensued in the Napoleonic Wars, with Austria suffering severe defeats at battles such as Austerlitz (1805) and Wagram (1809). To secure peace, Austria even resorted to a strategic marriage between Francis's daughter, Marie Louise, and Napoleon in 1810. When Napoleon’s forces were devastated in the Russian campaign of 1812, Austria seized the chance to shift allegiances. Under Foreign Minister Klemens von Metternich, Austria joined the Sixth Coalition in 1813, leading to Napoleon's eventual defeat at Leipzig and his first abdication in 1814.
The Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) convened to restructure Europe after Napoleon's final defeat. Chaired by Metternich, the Congress aimed to restore order and establish a balance of power, creating the German Confederation under Austrian influence. While Austria regained territories and took control of Northern Italy, it was unable to reclaim the Austrian Netherlands, underscoring the limits of Austria’s influence in the new European landscape. The Congress established the "Concert of Europe," an alliance system for maintaining peace and countering revolutionary movements, with Metternich leading Austria’s conservative stance.
In the arts, this period saw a flourishing of Viennese culture, epitomized by Beethoven, who captured the era's political turbulence in symphonies like the Eroica. However, Austria's conservative outlook under Metternich increasingly clashed with Europe’s shift toward modernization, laying the groundwork for future tensions in the rapidly changing 19th-century political order.