Habsburg Monarchy - Territories

Territories

The territories ruled by the branch changed over the centuries, but the core always consisted of four blocs:

• The Hereditary Lands, which covered most of the modern states of Austria and Slovenia, as well as territories in northeastern Italy and (before 1797) southwestern Germany. To these were added in 1779 the Inn Quarter of Bavaria; and in 1803 the Bishoprics of Trent and Brixen. The Napoleonic Wars caused disruptions where many parts of the Hereditary lands were lost, but all these, along with the former Archbishopric of Salzburg, which had previously been temporarily annexed between 1805 and 1809, were recovered at the peace in 1815, with the exception of the Vorlande. The Hereditary provinces included:
  • Archduchy of Austria (Upper Austria);
  • Archduchy of Austria (Lower Austria);
  • Duchy of Styria;
  • Duchy of Carinthia;
  • Duchy of Carniola;
  • The Adriatic port of Trieste;
  • Istria (although much of Istria was Venetian territory until 1797);
  • Gorizia and Gradisca;
    • These lands (3–8) were often grouped together as Inner Austria.
  • The County of Tyrol (although the Bishoprics of Trent and Brixen dominated what would become the South Tyrol before 1803);
  • The Vorarlberg (actually a collection of provinces, only united in the 19th century);
  • The Vorlande, a group of territories in Breisgau and elsewhere in southwestern Germany lost in 1801 (although the Alsatian territories (Sundgau) which had formed a part of it had been lost as early as 1648);
    • Vorarlberg and the Vorlande were often grouped together as Further Austria and mostly ruled jointly with Tyrol.
  • Grand Duchy of Salzburg (only after 1805);
• The Lands of the Bohemian Crown – initially consisting of the five lands: Kingdom of Bohemia, March of Moravia, Silesia, and Upper and Lower Lusatia. Bohemian Diet (Czech: zemský sněm) elected Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor as king in 1526.
  • Lusatia was ceded to Saxony in 1635.
  • Most of Silesia was conquered by Prussia in 1740–1742 and the remnants which stayed under Habsburg sovereignty were ruled as Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia (Austrian Silesia).
• The Kingdom of Hungary – two thirds of the former territory that was administered by the medieval Kingdom of Hungary was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and the Princes of vassal Ottoman Transylvania, while the Habsburg administration was restricted to the western and northern territories of the former kingdom, which remained to be officially referred as the Kingdom of Hungary. In 1699, at the end of the Ottoman-Habsburg wars, one part of the territories that were administered by the former medieval Kingdom of Hungary came under Habsburg administration, with some other areas being picked up in 1718 (some of the territories that were part of medieval kingdom, notably those in the south of the Sava and Danube rivers, remained under Ottoman administration).

Over the course of its history, other lands were, at times, under Austrian Habsburg rule (some of these territories were secundogenitures, i.e. ruled by other lines of Habsburg dynasty):

• The Kingdom of Croatia (1527–1868);
• The Kingdom of Slavonia (1699-1868);
• The Grand Principality of Transylvania, between 1699 (Treaty of Karlowitz) and 1867 (Ausgleich)
• The Austrian Netherlands, consisting of most of modern Belgium and Luxembourg (1713–1792);
• The Duchy of Milan (1713–1797);
• The Kingdom of Naples (1713–1735);
• The Kingdom of Sardinia (1713–1720);
• The Kingdom of Serbia (1718–1739);
• The Banat of Temeswar (1718–1778);
• Oltenia (1718–1739, de facto, 1737), as Grand-Voivodate (sometimes designated as Valachia Caesarea);
• The Kingdom of Sicily (1720–1735);
• The Duchy of Parma (1735–1748);
• The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, in modern Poland and Ukraine (1772–1918)
• Duchy of Bukovina (1774–1918);
• New Galicia, the Polish lands, including Kraków, taken in the Third Partition (1795–1809);
• Venetia (1797–1805);
• Kingdom of Dalmatia (1797–1805, 1814–1918);
• Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia (1814–1859);
• Kraków, which was incorporated into Galicia (1846–1918);
• The Serbian Vojvodina (1848-1849); de facto entity, officially unrecognized
• The Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar (1849-1860);
• The Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia (1868–1918);
• Sanjak of Novi Pazar occupation (1878–1913);
• Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878–1918).

The boundaries of some of these territories varied over the period indicated, and others were ruled by a subordinate (secundogeniture) Habsburg line. The Habsburgs also held the title of Holy Roman Emperor between 1438 and 1740, and again from 1745 to 1806.