Forgotten Realms: Empire of Austria-Hungary

The Empire of Austria-Hungary was established in 1867 as a compromise designed to satisfy the increasingly restive and independence-minded Hungarian population within the Austrian Empire, which was itself the successor to the millennium-old Holy Roman Empire dissolved in 1806.

A mottled collection of dozens of ethnicities, nationalities, languages, and religions, Austria-Hungary and its ruling Hapsburg family were increasingly seen as anachronistic medieval holdovers in the light of the nationalistic fervor that swept the states of Europe in the Nineteenth Century. Nevertheless, the empire was the largest territorial state in Europe after Russia and was considered to be one of the dozen or so great powers that dominated world affairs until the Great War broke out in 1914.

It was the assassination of the Hapsburg heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo that precipitated the First World War. The aging Emperor Franz Josef died in 1916 after a reign of nearly seven decades. As the Central Powers collapsed in the autumn of 1918, the various national groupings of the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared their independence. The various territories were gained by numerous expanded or newly-created states, including Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Italy, Poland, and Ukraine.

Civil Ensign Coat of arms
Anthem Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser
Location of Austria–Hungary in 1913
Capital	Vienna and Budapest[1] (pop: 2,239,000)
Language(s)	various: German Hungarian, Czech, Polish,Ukrainian, Romanian, Croatian,Slovak, Serbian, Slovene,Rusyn, Italian
Religion	Roman Catholic (predominant & official state religion) Tolerated religions of the Empire:Eastern Orthodoxy, Judaism,Sunni Islam and others
Government	Monarchy
Emperor of Austria, and King of Hungary[1]
- 1848–1916	Franz Joseph I
- 1916–1918	Karl I
Historical era	New Imperialism
- 1867 Compromise	29 May 1867
- Czecho-Slovakindep.	28 October 1918
- South Slavs indep.	29 October 1918
- Dissolution	31 October 1918
- Dissolution treaties¹	in 1919 & in 1920
Area
- 1914	676,615 km2 (261,243 sq mi)
Population
- 1914 est.	52,800,000
Density	78 /km2 (202.1 /sq mi)
Currency	Gulden Krone (from 1892)