Kharara

  The Rise and Fall of the Habsburg Dynasty- Marriage, Faith, and Empire in Europe, c. 1273–1918- Article by Dr. Rahul S. Kharat Introduction Few European institutions have lasted as long, or shaped as much of the continent, as the House of Habsburg. From the election of Rudolf I as King of the Romans in 1273 to the withdrawal of Charles I from affairs of state in November 1918, members of the family held crowns in Central Europe for roughly six and a half centuries. At their height in the sixteenth century they ruled Spain and its American possessions, the Netherlands, much of Italy, Bohemia, Hungary and the Austrian lands, and they wore the imperial crown of the Holy Roman Empire almost without interruption from 1440 to 1806 (the sole exception being the Wittelsbach Charles VII, 1742–45). Yet the Habsburgs were never a nation-state's dynasty. They had no national territory, no single language, no common legal order and, for most of their history, no capital that could claim...