Joseph I

Joseph I ruled the Holy Roman Empire for only six years, from 1705 to 1711, with nearly the whole of his reign consumed by the War of the Spanish Succession. Born in Vienna on 26 July 1678, he was the eldest son of Emperor Leopold I and his third wife, Eleonore Magdalene of Palatinate-Neuburg. His father had him crowned King of Hungary in 1687, at the age of nine, and King of the Romans in 1690, securing the succession well in advance.

The war that defined his reign arose from the extinction of the Spanish Habsburgs in 1700, when Charles II of Spain died without children. Leopold I advanced the claim of his younger son, Archduke Charles, against the Bourbon candidate Philip of Anjou, and the resulting conflict ranged Austria, Britain, the Dutch Republic, and their allies against France and Spain. When Joseph succeeded his father in May 1705, he continued the war with energy, supporting his brother's cause in Spain while pressing Habsburg interests in Italy and Germany.

Joseph proved a more decisive administrator than his father. He gave consistent backing to Prince Eugene of Savoy, whose victory at Turin in 1706 effectively drove the French from northern Italy, and he cooperated with the Duke of Marlborough's campaigns in the west. In Italy he pursued imperial claims vigorously, coming into conflict with Pope Clement XI, who was compelled to terms in 1709. Within his own lands he faced the prolonged Hungarian uprising led by Francis II Rákóczi, which began under Leopold in 1703; negotiations and military pressure brought it near its end by the time of Joseph's death, and it concluded with the Peace of Szatmár in 1711.

His marriage in 1699 to Wilhelmine Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg produced two daughters but no surviving son. When Joseph died of smallpox in Vienna on 17 April 1711, aged thirty-two, the Habsburg inheritance passed to his brother Charles, the claimant to Spain. The prospect of a single ruler holding both the Austrian lands and the Spanish monarchy revived fears of Habsburg preponderance among Austria's maritime allies, and contributed to Britain's withdrawal from the war and the settlement at Utrecht. Joseph's early death thus altered the outcome of the conflict his reign had been devoted to fighting.