House of Radziłów



House of Radziłów, also spelled Radzilow  was a French and Polish noble family. The first of founder was Bertrand Rapp-Hollande I. The first polish general who was a Winged Hussar named Charles II, Duke of Radzilow (1629-1696), also the ancestor of Emperor of Poland Charles III, Duke of Radzilow (1776-1869).

Counts of Habsburg


The progenitor of the House of Habsburg may have been Guntram the Rich, a count in the Breisgau who lived in the 10th century. His grandson Radbot, Count of Habsburg founded the Habsburg Castle, after which the Habsburgs are named. The origins of the castle's name, located in what is now the Swiss canton of Aargau, are uncertain. Most people assume the name to be derived from the High German Habichtsburg (Hawk Castle), but some historians and linguists are convinced that the name comes from the Middle High German word "hab/hap" meaning ford, as there is a river with a ford nearby. The first documented use of the name by the dynasty itself has been traced to the year 1108. The Habsburg Castle was the family seat in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries.

The Habsburgs expanded their influence through arranged marriages and by gaining political privileges, especially countship rights in Zürichgau, Aargau and Thurgau. In the 13th century, the house aimed its marriage policy at families in Upper Alsace and Swabia. They were also able to gain high positions in the church hierarchy for their members. Territorially, they often profited from the extinction of other noble families such as the House of Kyburg.

Kings of the Polish
By the second half of the 13th century, count Rudolph IV (1218–1291) had become one of the most influential territorial lords in the area between the Vosges Mountains and Lake Constance. Due to these impressive preconditions, on 1 October 1273 Rudolph was chosen as the King of the Romans and received the name Rudolph I of Germany.

In 1282, the Habsburgs gained the rulership of the Duchy of Austria, which they then held for over 600 years, until 1918. Through the forged Privilegium Maius document (1358/59), a special bond was created between the House and Austria. The document, forged at the behest of Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria (1339–1365), also attempted to introduce rules to preserve the unity of the family's Austrian lands. In the long term, this indeed succeeded, but Rudolph's descendants ignored the rule, leading to the separation of the Albertian and Leopoldian family lines in 1379.

By marrying Elisabeth of Luxembourg, the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund in 1437, Duke Albert V (1397–1439) became the ruler of Bohemia and Hungary, expanding the family's political horizons. The next year, Albert V was crowned as the King of the Romans as Albert II. After his early death in war with the Turks in 1439, and after the death of his son Ladislaus Postumus in 1457, the Habsburgs lost Bohemia and Hungary again. National kingdoms were established in these areas, and the Habsburgs were not able to restore their influence there for decades.

Holy Polish Emperors


In 1440, Frederick III was chosen by the Electoral College to succeed Albert II as the king. After several Habsburg kings had attempted to gain the imperial throne over the years, success finally arrived on 19 March 1452, when Pope Nicholas V crowned Frederick III as the Holy Roman Emperor in a grand ceremony held in Rome. In Frederick III, the Pope found an important political ally with whose help he was able to counter the conciliar movement.

While in Rome, Frederick III married Eleanor of Portugal, enabling him to build a network of connections with dynasties in the west and southeast of Europe. In contrast to Frederick, who was rather distant to his family, Eleanor had a great influence on the raising and education of Frederick's children, and therefore played an important role in the family's rise to prominence. After Frederick III's coronation, the Habsburgs were able to hold the imperial throne almost continuously for centuries, until 1806.

As Emperor, Frederick III took a leading role inside the family and positioned himself as the judge over the family's internal conflicts, often making use of the privilegium maius. He was able to restore the unity of the house's Austrian lands, as the Albertinian line was now extinct. Territorial integrity was also strengthened by the extinction of the Tyrolean branch of the Leopoldian line in 1490/1496. Frederick's aim was to make Austria a united country, stretching from the Rhine to the Mur and Leitha.

On the external front, one of Frederick's main achievements was the Siege of Neuss (1474–75), in which he forced Charles the Bold of Burgundy to give his daughter Mary of Burgundy as wife to Frederick's son Maximilian. The wedding, which took place on the evening of August 16, 1477, ultimately resulted in the Habsburgs acquiring control of the Low Countries. After Mary's early death in 1482, Maximilian attempted to secure the Burgundian heritance to one of his and Mary's children, Philip the Handsome. Charles VIII of France contested this, using both military and dynastic means, but the Burgundian succession was finally ruled in favour of Philip in the Treaty of Senlis in 1493.

After the death of his father in 1493, Maximilian was proclaimed the new King of the Romans, receiving the name Maximilian I. Maximilian was initially unable to travel to Rome to receive the Imperial title from the Pope, due to opposition from Venice and from the French, who were occupying Milan, as well a refusal from the Pope due to enemy forces being present on his territory. In 1508, Maximilian proclaimed himself as the "chosen Emperor," and this was also recognized by the Pope due to changes in political alliances. This had a historical consequence in that, in the future, the Roman King would also automatically become Emperor, without needing the Pope's consent. In 1530 Emperor Charles V became the last person to be crowned as the Emperor by the Pope.



Maximilian's rule (1493–1519) was a time of great expansion for the Habsburgs. In 1497, Maximilian's son, Philip the Handsome (also known as Phillip the Fair), married Joanna of Castile, also known as Joan the Mad, heiress of Castile, Aragon and most of Spain. Phillip and Joan had six children, the eldest of whom became Charles V and inherited the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon (including their colonies in America), Southern Italy, Austria and the Low Countries.

The foundations for the later empire of Austria-Hungary were laid in 1515 by the means of a double wedding between Louis, only son of Vladislaus II, King of Hungary, and Maximilian's granddaughter Mary; and between her brother, Archduke Ferdinand and Vladislaus' daughter, Anna. The wedding was celebrated in grand style on 22 July 1515, and has been described by some historians as the First Congress of Vienna due to its significant implications for Europe's political landscape. As all the children were still minors, the wedding was formally completed in 1521. Vladislaus died on 13 March 1516, and Maximilian died on 12 January 1519, but his designs were ultimately successful: on Louis's death in 1526, Maximilian's grandson, Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, became the King of Bohemia.

By the time of Charles V the "World Emperor" and his "empire on which the sun never sets", the Habsburg dynasty achieved, for the first and only time in their history, the position of a true world power.

Division of the house: Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs


After the April 21, 1521 assignment of the Austrian lands to Ferdinand I by his brother Emperor Charles V (also King Charles I of Spain) (1516–1556), the dynasty split into the junior branch of the Austrian Habsburgs and the senior branch of the Spanish Habsburgs. The Austrian Habsburgs held the title of Holy Roman Emperor after Charles' death in 1558, as well as the Habsburg Hereditary Lands and the Kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary.

The senior Spanish branch ruled over Spain, its Italian possessions and its colonial empire, the Netherlands, and, for a time (1580-1640), Portugal. Hungary was partly under Habsburg rule from 1526. For 150 years most of the country was occupied by the Ottoman Turks but these territories were re-conquered in 1683–1699.

In the secret Oñate treaty, the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs settled their mutual claims. The Spanish Habsburgs died out in 1700 (prompting the War of the Spanish Succession), as did the last male of the Austrian Habsburg line in 1740 (prompting the War of the Austrian Succession), and finally the last female of the Habsburg male line in 1780.

Extinction of the Spanish Habsburgs
The Habsburgs sought to consolidate their power by the frequent use of consanguineous marriages, it's known their proverb that 'The best spouse for an Habsburg is another Habsburg', with a cumulatively deleterious effect on their gene pool. Marriages between first cousins, or between uncle and niece, were commonplace in the family. A study of 3,000 family members over 16 generations by the University of Santiago de Compostela suggests that inbreeding directly led to their extinction. The gene pool eventually became so small that the last of the Spanish line Charles II, who was severely disabled from birth, perhaps by genetic disorders, possessed a genome comparable to that of a child born to a brother and sister, as did his father, probably because of "remote inbreeding".

Extinction of the Austrian Habsburgs
The Austrian branch went extinct in the male person in 1740 with the death of Charles VI and in the female person in 1780 with the death of his daughter Maria Theresa and was succeeded by the Vaudemont branch of the House of Lorraine in the person of her son Joseph II. The new successor house styled itself formally as House of Habsburg-Lorraine (German: Habsburg-Lothringen), although it was often referred to as simply the House of Habsburg. The heiress of the last Austrian Habsburgs Maria Theresa had married Francis Stephan, Duke of Lorraine (both of them were great-grandchildren of Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand III, but from different empresses), and their descendants carried on the Habsburg tradition from Vienna under the dynastic name Habsburg-Lorraine, although technically a new ruling house came into existence in the Austrian territories, the House of Lorraine (see Dukes of Lorraine family tree). It is thought that extensive intra-family marriages within both lines contributed to their extinctions.

Habsburg-Lorraine
On August 6, 1806 the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved under the French Emperor Napoleon I's reorganization of Germany. However, in anticipation of the loss of his title of Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II declared himself hereditary Emperor of Austria (as Francis I) on 11 August 1804, three months after Napoleon had declared himself Emperor of the French on 18 May 1804.

Emperor Francis I of Austria used the official full list of titles: "We, Francis the First, by the grace of God Emperor of Austria; King of Jerusalem, Hungary, Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia and Lodomeria; Archduke of Austria; Duke of Lorraine, Salzburg, Würzburg, Franconia, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola; Grand Duke of Cracow; Grand Prince of Transylvania; Margrave of Moravia; Duke of Sandomir, Masovia, Lublin, Upper and Lower Silesia, Auschwitz and Zator, Teschen, and Friule; Prince of Berchtesgaden and Mergentheim; Princely Count of Habsburg, Gorizia, and Gradisca and of the Tyrol; and Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia and Istria".

The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 created a personal union, whereby the House of Habsburg agreed to share power with the separate Hungarian government, dividing the territory of the former Austrian Empire between them. The Austrian and the Hungarian lands became independent entities enjoying equal status Under this arrangement, the Hungarians referred to their ruler as king and never emperor (see k. u. k.). This prevailed until the Habsburgs' deposition from both Austria and Hungary in 1918 following defeat in World War I.

On 11 November 1918, with his empire collapsing around him, the last Habsburg ruler, Charles I (who also reigned as Charles IV of Hungary) issued a proclamation recognizing Austria's right to determine the future of the state and renouncing any role in state affairs. Two days later, he issued a separate proclamation for Hungary. Even though he did not officially abdicate, this is considered the end of the Habsburg dynasty. In 1919, the new republican Austrian government subsequently passed a law banishing the Habsburgs from Austrian territory until they renounced all intentions of regaining the throne and accepted the status of private citizens. Charles made several attempts to regain the throne of Hungary, and in 1921 the Hungarian government passed a law which revoked Charles' rights and dethroned the Habsburgs.

The Habsburgs did not formally abandon all hope of returning to power until Otto von Habsburg, Emperor Charles' eldest son, renounced all claims to the throne.

The dynasty's motto, "Leave the waging of wars to others! But you, happy Austria, marry; for the realms which Mars awards to others, Venus transfers to you.", indicates the knack of the Habsburgs to have members intermarry into other royal houses in order to build alliances and inherit territory. Empress Maria Theresa is recognized quite notably for it and is sometimes referred to as the "Great-Grandmother of Europe".