The role of Austria

• The Hapsburg family were the ruling family of Austria
• after the Thirty Years (1618-1648), it was decided that whoever was the archduke of Austria would also be the Holy Roman Empire (the ruler of all the small german states)
• In the 1805-1807 French War, Napoleon Bonaparte defeated Austria, Prussia and Russia - he abolished the Holy Roman Empire and redrew the map of central Europe.
• His new ‘Confederation of the Rhine’ contained independent states, excluding Austria and Prussia
• When Napoleon was defeated, the congress of Vienna (1814-1815) redrew the map to make the ‘German Confederation’
• the german Confederaton included Prussia and the Germanic parts of austria (e.g. Hungary was not included as its people didn’t speak German.)
• Austria had a historic role in that part of europe and a large population - so it naturally dominated the politics of the german confederation