Francis II / Francis I of Austria
Francis II was the last Holy Roman Emperor and abolished the office to stop Napoleon taking it. Born in Florence in 1768, the son of the future Leopold II, he was raised in Tuscany and brought to Vienna at sixteen by his uncle Joseph II, who found him timid and had him toughened by military service. He succeeded in 1792, weeks before France declared war on him, and spent the next twenty-three years fighting Napoleon. He was defeated at Marengo and Hohenlinden in 1800, at Ulm and Austerlitz in 1805, at Wagram in 1809, and each time signed away territory and population. In 1804 he pre-emptively created the title Emperor of Austria for himself, so that his family would keep imperial rank whatever happened to the old empire. Two years later, after Austerlitz and the formation of Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine, he formally dissolved the Holy Roman Empire — a structure that had existed since 962 — rather than let Napoleon claim its crown. He married his daughter Marie Louise to Napoleon in 1810 and supplied a contingent for the Russian campaign, then joined the coalition in 1813 that won at Leipzig. Metternich, his foreign minister from 1809, then made Vienna the centre of the postwar settlement. His domestic rule was reactionary and personally involved: he read police reports himself, ran an extensive censorship and informer network, and reversed most of Joseph II's reforms. He was informal in manner, played the violin, and was known as Franz. He died in 1835.
- Lived: 1768 CE – 1835 CE
- Nationality: Austrian
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state
