People of the Revolution and the USSR

Monarchy and royalism 1747–1792 ○ Died of illness in Vienna while reigning

Holy Roman Emperor who co-signed the Declaration of Pillnitz

On 27 August 1791 he and the King of Prussia signed the Declaration of Pillnitz, saying they would act together for the French king if the other powers joined them.

A son of Maria Theresa and brother of Marie Antoinette, he ruled Tuscany as a reforming grand duke from 1765 and abolished the death penalty and torture there in 1786. He succeeded his brother Joseph II as emperor in 1790. In August 1791 at Pillnitz he and Frederick William II declared that they would intervene in France only if the other powers joined them. Historians have called it a formality, since Leopold knew Russia and Britain would not act, but it contributed to the radicalisation of the revolutionary movement in France. He died of pneumonia in Vienna on 1 March 1792, shortly before France declared war.

Austria state institutions Monarchy and royalism 1863–1914 ✕ Assassinated in Sarajevo

Heir presumptive of Austria-Hungary whose assassination in Sarajevo in 1914 was the immediate cause of the First World War

Born in Graz, the eldest son of Archduke Karl Ludwig, the younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph, he became heir presumptive after Crown Prince Rudolf’s suicide in 1889 and his father’s death in 1896. His morganatic marriage to Sophie Chotek was allowed only after he renounced his descendants’ rights to the throne. He exerted great influence over the armed forces and in 1913 became their inspector general. Clericalism, anti-democratic views and anti-Hungarianism were the cornerstones of his politics; he advocated more autonomy for the empire’s Slav peoples, but urged caution towards Serbia for fear of conflict with Russia. On 28 June 1914 he and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, setting off the July Crisis and the war.

Austria state institutions Monarchy and royalism 1887–1922 → Died in exile

Last Habsburg monarch, Emperor Charles I of Austria and King Charles IV of Hungary, who twice tried to regain the Hungarian throne in 1921

In November 1916 he succeeded his grand-uncle Franz Joseph as Emperor of Austria (as Charles I) and King of Hungary (as Charles IV). His secret peace negotiations with the Allies failed, and in the autumn of 1918 the empire fell apart. On 11 November in Austria and on 13 November in Hungary he renounced participation in affairs of state, carefully avoiding the word abdication. After going into exile in Switzerland in 1919, he twice tried to regain the Hungarian throne, in March and October 1921, but failed in the face of opposition from Regent Horthy. Arrested after the second attempt, he was exiled to the Portuguese island of Madeira, where he died of respiratory failure in 1922. The Catholic Church beatified him in 2004.