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3   Metternich's Austria: Pyrrhic Victory Abroad, Social Question at Home
The period from the 1790s to 1848 is the least discussed in modern; Austrian history. This is a pity because if ever irreversible patterns [ were set in the Monarchy's long slide to dissolution it was most prob- { ably in these paradoxical years, when an ossifying elite repudiated1:!! Joseph's radicalism while steady progress was made towards many!!! of his goals. In much of the empire (Francis called himself Emperor!!! of Austria from 1804) the lineaments of a centralised bureaucratic state using a German lingua franca became clearer. The JosepbinistiP state church and the commitment to primary education were conso^f lidated, while a limited economic modernisation got under way. Vet in the absence of the nexus between centralism and social reform which had characterised theJosephinist experiment, the Monarchy's lumbering advance gave it no real place in its polyglot subjects' hearts. The sense of a lack of inner vitality, of deviation from the Eur«j! opean norm, which was to haunt the Monarchy's last decades, was already the subject of recrimination well before 1848.
The Anti-revolutionary wars
The protracted wars with revolutionary and Napoleonic fr'rance| brought out both the strengths and weaknesses of Austrian Eur-i opeanism. On the one hand she alone of continental p<avers joined Britain in all five anti-French coalitions between 1792 and 1815,;: during which her peoples united behind the dynasty despite French; revolutionary blandishments. Yet the impact of the reformer Jolianllssj Philip]] Stadion (1806-09} cannot be compared with that of his Prus* j sian contemporaries, Stein and Hardcnberg, under whom serfdaisilj was abolished and real administrative reform achieved. The paluoH tic movement of the doomed campaign of 1809 had less lasting effetij than stirrings in other German lands. Austria's crab-like progr^SS-i from enforced pro-French neutrality after this to Prussia and Russia's side at the battle of Leipzig (18131, for all Mettcrnich's diplomatic
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! skill, bespoke, the caution of a wounded and still vulnerable protago-!;! nist in these great events.
These wounds had grown more grievous as the conflict lasted. Leopold, who had initially greeted the French Revolution, felt obliged ' for the sake of his sister Marie Antoinette to adopt a threatening pos-tnre; an Austro-Prussian alliance, in February 1792 encouraged French revolutionaries to declare war on encircling 'reaction1 in li&pril. French belligerence, the conservatism of Leopold's son and liisuccessor Francis (1792 T 835) and numerous points of contact of Habshurg and Imperial lands with an expansionist France in Bel-llgium, Italy and Alsace made co-existence impossible. To the dogged Thugut, Austrian foreign minister from 1793 to 1801. fell siiiiiijhe difficult task of relating the balance of power politics of the eight-mult cenuiry to a new, revolutionary challenge, for the second and IMiiird partitions of Poland were taking place (1 793, 1795) at the same (time as France advanced in the Austrian Netherlands and old ideas of ipliiiBclgium/Bavaria swap revived. Austria participated only in the |lilird Partition whereby Poland disappeared from the map. But Napoleon's advance through north Italy to the Austrian Alps i>|;iT796-97), then his victories at Marengo in north Italy and Hohen-liiitiden in southern Germany (1800), ended Austrian participation in the first and second anti-French coalitions respectively, through the treaties of Oampo Formio (1797) and Luneville (1801). How, lamen-lipdiFhugut after the former treaty, could one challenge the energies lllla Bonaparte with the typical Viennese, who cared nothing for 'the ;!|hpnour of the Monarchy' or its longer-term future, provided he could :j: Stroll the old city bastions (now a recreational area) and eat his fried giWcken'in peace.' Actually, the treaties retained some traditional |jih#lancing features. Austria lost Belgium and Lombardy but was ggiifjrapensatcd by the acquisition of Venice and its provinces in Istria iflid|Ij>almalia, four million subjects gone for one and a half million |;|ained, as Thugut sourly calculated.
IIJiiHowever, the Third Coalition, formed with Britain and Russia in |j||Q3,!:and ending for Austria at the field of Austerlitz (December glliSffi);, was a different story. By the Treaty of Pressburg Austria was |§§|liged to cede Daimatia to France, the Tyrol to Bavaria and lost the iSfltsmauung Vorlande, gaining only Salzburg in paltry exchange. This jitoeVienna itself was occupied by the French. Though the equable lisiMfeiuics'e do not seem to have resented their uninvited guests, the !§|s§ffe(reaches of Austrian society were goaded into a self-assertion llflliinlike the Prussian response to defeat at Jena (1807). Austria's