Leopold I

Biography

Leopold I was never supposed to be emperor — he was the second son, intended for the Church, and became heir only when his elder brother died of smallpox. He inherited a sprawling, creaking empire and spent his entire reign fighting to hold it together against Louis XIV to the west and the Ottoman Empire to the east. He was devoutly Catholic, personally cautious, and politically shrewd, with a genuine talent for music — he composed operas that were performed at the Viennese court. When Kara Mustafa's army appeared before Vienna in 1683, Leopold fled the capital — a decision that was militarily sensible (the emperor could not risk capture) but politically humiliating. He organized the relief effort from Passau, negotiating the alliance with Sobieski that saved the city. After Vienna, Leopold forged the Holy League with Pope Innocent XI's backing and directed the sixteen-year campaign that drove the Ottomans from Hungary — the greatest territorial expansion in Habsburg history. The irony of Leopold's reign is that the man who fled Vienna won more territory than any Habsburg since Charles V. By the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, Austria had absorbed Hungary, Transylvania, and Slavonia, transforming the Habsburg Empire from a primarily German state into a multinational great power. Leopold died in 1705, in the middle of the War of the Spanish Succession, still fighting Louis XIV.

Key Battles