According to LIUXERS.COM, Austria is a Federal state of Central Europe with Vienna as its capital. The regions that today make up the Austria in the historical age they were part of the Rezia (to the W), but above all of the Noricum (to the E), which the Romans conquered at the time of Augustus. With the end of the Roman Empire the Noricus was invaded by Germanic bloodlines, occupied by the Goths (end of the 5th century AD), then by Franks (approx. 535), Lombards (568) and, towards the end of the 6th century., from Avars and Slavs. Della Rezia, on the other hand, was taken over by the Alamanni together with other Germanic tribes (late 4th-5th century). The history of the Austria properly called it begins in the 8th century, with the struggle between the Germanic lineages and the Slavic and Ural-Altaic ones in the Danube region; later Charlemagne founded the eastern March (Ostmark), to protect the Frankish Empire from the assault of peoples from the East. Overwhelmed by the invasion of the Hungarians, the brand was reconstituted by Otto I and assigned by his son Otto II to Leopoldo di Babenberg, the first of a series of 12 margraves. The eighth, Henry II, who transferred the capital from Pöchlarn to Vienna, obtained the ducal title in 1156; Leopoldo II inherited Styria in 1192 (duchy from 1180) and Frederick II added Pusteria and the county of Istria to his possessions; on his death (1246), the Babenberg domains were disputed between Bela IV of Hungary and Ottokar II of Bohemia, who obtained them (1251) and also took possession of Carinthia.
The Habsburgs. Ottocaro’s attempt to found a Slavic empire between the Alps and the Sudetenland failed (1278), the Austria it became the possession of the German king Rudolph I of Habsburg, who invested his sons Alberto and Rodolfo with Styria and Carniola in 1282. The Habsburgs they took advantage of the imperial crown to consolidate these possessions and, even when the crown passed to the rival houses of the Wittelsbachs and Luxembourgs, they continued their expansion: between the end of the 14th and the middle of the 15th century. they became masters of all the countries of the eastern Alps, reaching the Adriatic. This development was interrupted by the division of the house into the Albertina and Leopoldina lines. In 1485 Mattia Corvinus, king of Hungary, occupied Vienna and only on his death (1490) Frederick V (III as emperor) was able to regain the lost territories. The fortune of the Habsburgs was revived by a series of skilful marriages. The son of Frederick III, Maximilian (1493-1519), by marrying Maria of Burgundy, obtained the territories of Flanders and the Netherlands; moreover, by marrying his son Philip the Beautiful with Joan of Aragon and Castile, placed the candidacy for the Iberian thrones and, with the marriages of his nephews Ferdinand and Maria with the children of Vladislao king of Bohemia and Hungary, Anna and Luigi, he guaranteed the realization of the old Habsburg aspirations for those kingdoms. While extending his domains with the county of Gorizia and other lands in the Tyrol, Maximilian initiated the centralistic organization of his states. Inserted by his nephew Charles V into an immense empire «on which the sun never set», the hereditary domains of the Habsburgs were, at the time of his abdication (1556), entrusted to his brother Ferdinand I, king of Bohemia from 1526. THERE. he could thus resume the primitive function of bulwark of Christianity, made current by the Turkish threat. A grave internal danger was represented by religious discords: in Austria Reformation had spread and the ideas of J. Hus were awakened in Bohemia; the conciliatory policy of Ferdinand I and his son Maximilian II (1564-76) was followed by the counter-reformist attempt of Rodolfo II (1576-1612), but not even his brother Mattia (1612-19) was able to quell the now open struggle between religious confessions. With the act of revolt of the Bohemian Protestants of 1618, known as the “defenestration of Prague”, the Thirty Years’ War began. With the Peace of Westphalia (1648), Emperor Ferdinand III (1637-57) had to give up his dream of domination in Germany and Europe. But the monarchy had succeeded, internally, in making the Catholic principle triumph and, at the same time, its absolute authority and could resume its push towards the Balkan East, containing the Turkish offensive and – after the parenthesis of 1683 in which Vienna was saved from the Ottoman threat by the intervention of the Polish king Giovanni Sobieski – annexing Hungary (1687). The happy outcome of these campaigns allowed the empire to reassert its active role in Europe and Charles VI (1711-40), forced by the War of the Spanish Succession to renounce the claims to the Spanish crown, nevertheless secured Milan, Naples, Sardinia (in 1720 exchanged with Sicily) and the Spanish Netherlands; in 1713, having no male heirs, he promulgated the Pragmatic sanction in which, establishing the indivisibility of the State, guaranteed the succession to his daughter Maria Teresa. After the storm of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48), during which Maria Theresa secured the imperial crown to her husband Francesco (I) of Lorraine but had to cede Silesia to Frederick II of Prussia and the duchies of Parma and Piacenza to the Bourbons of Spain, and despite the wartime interlude of the Seven Years’ War, the The empress gave the state a new structure with a series of reforms that were continued by his successor Joseph II, one of the most typical representatives of enlightened despotism. Meanwhile the Austria it achieved new territorial enlargements: in the first partition of Poland (1772) it obtained Galicia and Lodomiria, in 1775 from Turkey the Bucovina. However, the reforming activity of Joseph II caused serious discontent and his brother Leopoldo II (1790-92) had to revoke these measures without however being able to keep the Netherlands, which declared itself independent in 1789. one of the most typical representatives of enlightened despotism. Meanwhile the Austria it achieved new territorial enlargements: in the first partition of Poland (1772) it obtained Galicia and Lodomiria, in 1775 from Turkey the Bucovina. The reforming activity of Joseph II however caused serious discontent and his brother Leopoldo II (1790-92) had to revoke these measures without however being able to keep the Netherlands, which declared itself independent in 1789.
