Austria in the 19th Century

I don't think that the rest of Europe would appreciate the son of Napoleon coming back to the throne when they spent so much getting him off of it. Maybe when Joseph brings the rest of Europe round? But how?
I suppose France could have a revolution or something .Its economy could crash or some radicals seize power by killing the king (Louis XVIII) and then the brave Austrians come in led by Nappy II and take over .Since the new Napoleon has been brought up as a proper young gentleman and is not the ogre his father was he might be viewed as acceptable .The people would probably greatly appreciate the return of a Napoleon to the throne .Not sure but who knows ?
Great update by the way .Please make more !
 
Is there anybody out there in the great big world ?

YES

Pressburg, 1827

“It’s a great pleasure to have the heir to the Austrian throne here with us in the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom,” Ladislaus Simon half-snivelled, almost in step with Joseph Ferdinand as the man shuffled through the cold corridors of the school. The school year would begin in the next month, and lots of the waste left under tables had been cleaned out. Pressburg- later to be called Bratislava- twisted and turned sleepily under a blanket of white.

Joseph Ferdinand turned to Simon slowly, ignoring the old twinge in his foot. Thoughtfully, in Hungarian, he said, “Principal, do you agree with the idea that Hungary must endure?”

“Of course!”

A thin smile. “Of course you’d say that. You see, dear Principal,” -and here Ladislaus straightened his back unconsciously and puffed out his chest- “I have a personal interest in this prestigious school. I have a mind to conduct, shall we say, an experiment. You remember Joseph. My namesake? Son of Maria Therese…”

Lots of words came to Ladislaus’ mind of Joseph II. None of them were complimentary. Nevertheless, he hesitated only briefly. “A great reformer,” he managed, lamely. Joseph II had been notoriously pro-German. Haltingly, he began to compose a great rant against the Habsburgs for that night’s dinner party in his head.

The young Duke of Reichstadt beside Joseph Ferdinand shifted slightly. Ladislaus started. “A great reformer,” he repeated, somewhat stupidly. Joseph took him by the shoulder and guided him quietly out of the doors of the school. “I’ll be quick, Principal,” he said. “I hope you see this as great an honour as I do. I intend to have Germans attend this school.”

Silence.

Then: “But this school teaches Hungarian children,” Ladislaus said. The soldiers arranged by Joseph Ferdinand’s carriage did not move, faces frozen, their rifles at ease. Joseph Ferdinand’s face froze as he looked at Ladislaus, and for a moment Franz Bonaparte saw a flicker of that searing fury that drove his uncle before it was tamped back down. Then Joseph began to speak.

“Dear Principal Simon,” he said, and braced himself on the stout stone wall, brushing snow off his cap irritably, “if the situation in this Empire continues as it has, it will tear itself apart. Every nationality going its own way. Hungary- do you think any Power has an interest in sustaining it? It is either Vienna or Moscow, and Constantinople, I expect, is as loathsome a choice as the ninth circle of Hell itself. So: we must resolve this bothersome issue with nationality.”

“Nationality is, as they say, defined by what language you speak, what culture you adopt. If Hungarians want to be Hungarian and Germans want to be German, that’s their ficken business. But they must never forget that above these differences, they are the same. They are Austrians. I intend to sever Austria from Österreich. Austria is not the Eastern March. It is not a German state. It is a nationality all its own.”

“And a nationality needs its language,” Franz chimed in, opening the door to the carriage. Ladislaus looked slightly shell-shocked; the former King of Rome hid a laugh. People tended to have that kind of reaction when his uncle got to work on them.

“So, Principal Simon, are we in agreement? Let the German children learn Hungarian and the Hungarian children learn German. An even split of lessons otherwise. If the parents complain, inform me; if you do not, I shall know. The resources shall be paid for by the government. I’ll drop by in a few months’ time; we shall see if we can merge German and Hungarian- and if so, then that will be one of the first building blocks of a truly Austrian language.”

“The parents expect their children to be raised as Hungarians, not Germans,” the Principal muttered under his breath. What did you say to an order by your God-given sovereign? One couldn’t just refuse; that was treason.

“Let them talk to me, then,” Joseph Ferdinand said. “I need you to be my man, Principal.” And anyway, he added, almost to himself, you don’t have a choice.
 
Münchengrätz, September 1833

“I have been hearing disturbing reports from Congress Poland from my Third Chancellery,” ventured Nicholas I, Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia, over a cup of tea with Klemens von Metternich. The old statesman had collapsed a bit in the few months since their last meeting; his letters had bemoaned the alarming tendency of the Austrian heir to go on wild tangents, attempting to accommodate the strange myth of nationalism. Metternich remained confident that Joseph Ferdinand would give up on that “wild goose chase”; Nicholas, being rather more cautious and finicky, intended to keep a longer vigil.

“Oh?” asked Metternich. His hair was truly greying now; his teeth were giving up the ghost. His hands shook a bit as he raised the cup to his thin lips.

“The Free City of Kraków is, as usual,” –Nicholas sighed heavily- “filled with Polish propaganda. But of late there are tales of support from the Austrian side of the border.”

Metternich stiffened. What light illuminated his face betrayed nothing of his thoughts.

“Lemberg, to be exact. Your Joseph Ferdinand is a formidable man! Like Prussia, he too has freed the serfs. Is he not leading them on grand tours around the Empire, cowing the landholders and lighting the torch of freedom?” Nicholas’ gaze was mournful; his grand moustache quivering ever so slightly.

“They say he styles himself Steward of Galicia. To me it sounds an awful lot like he is holding Galicia in trust before its final release from the grasp of such reactionaries like us.”

A swarm of German invective coursed from the door. Metternich and Nicholas turned to see Francis I, Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Lombardy-Venetia and others, staring at the spreading pool of sweet-smelling liquid on the floor and the remains of the exquisite Chinese cup.

Breslau, June 1833

“I don’t understand it,” Frederick Wilhelm III of Prussia said, looking confused.

“…hm?” Francis said, looking up from where he had been staring at the pile of paperwork on his desk. Frederick puffed merrily on his pipe and got up to pace.

“Did you authorize Ludwig of Bavaria- that excitable little spaniel- to act as your right-hand man, Franz? Your son sent a letter to the Princes in the Confederation conferring certain privileges on Ludwig. I can’t say he’ll find a good and proper use for them. Too frivolous in my opinion.” Frederick shook his head.

Francis wondered. But at the time he had said, “I’m sure Joseph knows what he’s doing. God knows the boy is faster than I was at his age. He might see something in Ludwig, perhaps?”

Metternich had remarked on the startling economic capability of Prussia. Francis liked to think that it was because of Silesia; it didn’t make him feel any better, but such was life. Austria alone was not being drawn into the Prussia orbit, on account of Joseph’s reforms; it was, in fact, already near-able to compete. Francis did not, contrary to how much of his family and the aristocracy thought of him, spend most of his days in the garden tending to his flowers; yes, a few hours every day here and there, but not with that sort of all-consuming passion.

Ludwig was an incompetent, repressive little piece of scheisse. On the one hand, Joseph had done well to prevent Prussia from becoming too powerful; now, instead of a long fight with eventual victory, Austria might be able to end Prussia with a few hard strokes. On the other… if Joseph’s actions were symbolic of his future actions as Emperor, Francis could not admit that he liked the direction his policies were going, which was further and further away from conservatism and the German Confederation.

Vienna, December 1833

“…your industrialization, and that will be all!”

“Father-”

“Do you want me to remove what few privileges you haven’t squandered? Get out! Get out!

Joseph Ferdinand emerged from his father’s study red in the face. Down the stairs he trundled, deliberately putting his weight on the bad stair and forming cracks in the expensive oak. As he emerged into the garden, he removed his pocket watch, opening and closing it obsessively. Up into his own mansion, his own carriage, his own men; and finally, his wife in the foyer.

Ignoring his wife’s sympathetic face, her outstretched hands, Joseph removed his greatcoat first, hurling it across the room, and then flung his pocket watch at one of the cabinets, watching with some bloodthirsty satisfaction as it shattered the glass. He ran a hand through his sweat-matted hair, thinking furiously.

“Joseph, what’s the matter? Please, let me help,” pleaded Maria Anna of Savoy, laying a cool hand on her husband’s clenched fist. Savoy. Savoy! That’s it.

“Maria,” Joseph began, calmly, a vein throbbing in his head, “We’ll be leaving for Turin in a bit. Inform your cousin Charles Albert about that visit, please.”

“I don’t understand,” Maria Anna began.

“Remember when I introduced him to Viglione? That Italian businessman? He’s a member of the Carbonari. Metternich- it has to be Metternich, him and the barbarian Tsar. Metternich and his repressions against Lombardy-Venetia. We can’t have Italians on both sides of the border. Neat lines.”

“Joseph, you’re scaring me.”

“Metternich wants war. He’ll get a war. Oh, by God, he’ll get a war. I’ll need to visit the relatives.”
 
So great work and glad to see this TL back. One thing I am not clear on though. Is Joseph planning a cue de ta of some sort against his father and Metternich?
 
I don't understand, what is the issue with italy? if there is repression against terrorism, the emperor and metterich are right in their actions, that is Austrian Soil and 'Italy' Nation is still decades to be formed and that is part of austrian nations, both lombardo-venentia and Parma-Modena, the other would be if there abuse without evidende, there Joseph is right, that is more grey, i hope not other magical hasburg give italy land because they can because that is absolute ASB.
 
I don't understand, what is the issue with italy? if there is repression against terrorism, the emperor and metterich are right in their actions, that is Austrian Soil and 'Italy' Nation is still decades to be formed and that is part of austrian nations, both lombardo-venentia and Parma-Modena, the other would be if there abuse without evidende, there Joseph is right, that is more grey, i hope not other magical hasburg give italy land because they can because that is absolute ASB.

Your English is very confusing, but from what I can decipher, all I can say is that all will soon be revealed.

An excerpt from The Definition of Austria: Austrian Nation-Building in the 19th Century by Edvard Stefan, 1985 (Ostrov Books)

Many people often forget that Austrian was formerly merely a dialect of South German and not the English-like potpourri that it is today. Its construction was one of the intellectual contributions made by the cabal of peculiarly both nationalist and conservative figures whom Joseph Ferdinand surrounded himself with during his short reign.

Austrian took decades to coalesce into a codified language, with a definitive language being corralled at last in fin-de-siècle Sopron, to be shunted under the Ministry of National Identity. It must be noted by the reader, of course, that in comparison to the other great Austrian institutions that our parents, and their parents before them, revered and feared, the Ministry of National Identity was the most nebulous and ever-changing bureau.

The Ministry of National Identity managed eponymously the various ideological nationalisms that threatened to split the Empire apart at its seams. It codified Joseph Ferdinand’s views of (as stated previously) conservative nationalism, whereby major ethnicities with clear boundaries, like the Latin states of France, Italy and Spain, ought to coalesce under one representative government, under bureaucrats of the same ethnicity and creed, (supposedly the reasoning behind the twenty-year handover of Lombardy-Venetia) and whereby coalitions of minor ethnicities- ethnicities which were weak demographically, susceptible to influence by another great ethnic power- ought to exist in harmony under similarly representative government.

Joseph Ferdinand, and, later, the government of Austria, saw himself as the protector of the minor ethnicities. He saw himself not as the steward but as the protector of the ravaged Balkans- this was a theme that would be returned to repeatedly in the form of propaganda launched by the Ministry of Media, exhorting the ethnicities in the southern portions of the Empire- the Hungarians, the Croats, the Serbs and the Rumanians- of the ever-changing nature of their towns, reminding Hungarians that Budapest was once a German-speaking town, that in their horrid raids the Ottomans could depopulate entire towns to be settled by those of different ethnicity, that assimilation was a frequent phenomenon in the earlier centuries, and that forever there would remain sizeable minorities in the towns and cities scattered throughout the region, resulting in a lack of total ethnic solidarity in the Balkans forevermore.

The fuzzy, unclear lines that demarcated ethnic settlement had the potential to burst into bloody race-war, as seen across the Sea of Marmara in the long-running conflict between the Turks and the Greeks. Joseph Ferdinand had the foresight to see this, and so sought to bring the nationalities into, if not co-operation, then coexistence.

A particularly thorny issue to the Hungarian nobility in the Diet at Pressburg, and later to the Bohemian nobility in the great Czech revival, was the issue of schools- an issue, in the fevered ideological struggles of the 1830s and 1840s, as Europe enjoyed a sustained period of peace, that politicians appeared to focus on more than the economy and the military.

This was a solution solved by Joseph Ferdinand in the prelude to the Imperial Purge in 1835, when he declared that every town with a sufficiently substantial population of a certain ethnicity (set at the arbitrary, cautious value of 10%) should have at least one school to cater to that ethnicity, with the language of instruction being Romanian for Romanians, Ruthenian for Ruthenians, and so on. In larger towns, the meddling of the Ministry of Education, working in concert with the Ministry of Nationality (as it was known in that time), resulted in mixed schools with students of two ethnicities, or even three, mixing freely in the corridors, learning their own languages and the languages of others.

It was the rise of a loyal polyglot bureaucracy in the 1860s that allowed Karl Francis to begin to dream of moulding a new concept of the Habsburg patrimony, to turn it away from the German dominance that other races seemed to see. The former definition of Austrian as a dialect of German was struck from the lists by studious revision, and Austrian became to be known as the confusing goulash hodgepodge that Austrians spoke- not Czechs, Hungarians or Croats- but Austrians.

By waiting instead of forcing a completely new language on people, Karl Francis managed to earn the obedience of a wide mass of educated people. It would take nearly half a century more for Austrian to lose the charming complexity that British and French authors applauded in their nostalgic novels. This complexity was entirely earned, of course. To mention but a few, Austrian sought to combine the diverse grammar rules, vocabularies and sensibilities of German, Czech, Slovakian, Hungarian, Croatian and Polish- into one single language.
 
Austria giving up Lombardo-Venetia Broke my SoD , they OTL were forced via two wars with france and prussia respectively, here with an 'austria' pan-cultural indentity(that is a nice idea BTW, pretty good one) make even less sense, L-V would be part of Austria, far richer and capable that the poor Piedmont-Naples area, so make even less sense.

Sorry if sound rude but that is a niptick otherwise a terrific TL.
 
Austria giving up Lombardo-Venetia Broke my SoD , they OTL were forced via two wars with france and prussia respectively, here with an 'austria' pan-cultural indentity(that is a nice idea BTW, pretty good one) make even less sense, L-V would be part of Austria, far richer and capable that the poor Piedmont-Naples area, so make even less sense.

Sorry if sound rude but that is a niptick otherwise a terrific TL.

Thanks. I got the same questions the first time round. At risk of spoiling the timeline, Austria won't be giving up Lombardy-Venetia. While the political ownership and administration of the region will be ceded to Italy over a long period, Austria will negotiate to maintain economic control as well as military access and docking rights in the area. As well as a few more caveats; remember, Lombardy-Venetia is as important to the Italians as it is to the Austrians.
 
I don't know which political school but Political Ownership and administration means defacto contro, the rest is just being weak, with the POD at the time is almost ASB-ish and break SoD, i can belive Austria Allowing something like puerto-rico(lombardo-venetian can goes and become italians but the opposite can not happen that easily, as austria will not want the burden of more italians) but Austria, specially the hasburg ceding an inch of soil without a war is ASB. You can still changed it, just add L-V to the main Austria and not major changes to the TL.
 
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