Archduke Franz Karl of Austria

Archduke Franz Karl Joseph of Austria (17 December 1802 – 8 March 1878) was a member of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. He was the father of two emperors: Franz Joseph I of Austria and Maximilian I of Mexico. Through his third son Karl Ludwig, he was the paternal grandfather of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, whose assassination sparked the hostilities that led to the outbreak of World War I, and great-grandfather of Emperor Blessed Charles I of Austria, the final Habsburg Emperor.

Life Early life and marriage Franz Karl was born in Vienna, the third son of Emperor Francis II of the Holy Roman Empire by his second marriage with Princess Maria Theresa from the House of Bourbon, daughter of King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies and Maria Carolina of Austria. On 4 November 1824 in Vienna, he married Princess Sophie of Bavaria from the House of Wittelsbach, a daughter of King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria by his second wife Caroline of Baden. Sophie's paternal half-sister, Caroline Augusta of Bavaria was by this time Franz Karl's stepmother, having married his thrice-widowed father in 1816. The Wittelsbachs condoned the unappealing manners of Sophie's husband in consideration of the incapability of his elder brother Ferdinand and Sophie's chance to become Austrian empress.

Franz Karl was an unambitious and generally ineffectual man, although he was, together with his uncle Archduke Louis, a member of the Geheime Staatskonferenz council, which after the death of Emperor Francis II ruled the Austrian Empire in the stead of his mentally ill brother Ferdinand from 1835 to 1848. The decisions, however, were actually made by the Chancellor Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich and his rival Count Franz Anton von Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky. His wife Sophie had already transferred her ambitions, when she urged Franz Karl to renounce his claims to the throne at the time of his brother's abdication on 2 December 1848, allowing their eldest son Franz Joseph I to take the throne.

Death and burial Archduke Franz Karl died in Vienna in 1878, six years after the death of his wife. He is buried at the Imperial Crypt at the Capuchin Church. Franz Karl was the last Habsburg whose viscera were entombed at the Ducal Crypt of St. Stephen's Cathedral and whose heart was placed at the Herzgruft of the Augustinian Church according to a centuries-long family rite.

Honors and awards He received the following awards:

Children NameBirthDeathNotesBy Sophie, Princess of Bavaria (27 January 1805 – 28 May 1872; married on 4 November 1824 in St. Augustine's Church, Vienna) Franz Joseph 18 August 1830 21 November 1916 Succeeded as Emperor of Austria;married his first cousin Elisabeth, Duchess in Bavaria, and had issue Maximilian 6 July 1832 19 June 1867 Proclaimed Emperor of Mexicoexecuted by a firing squadmarried Charlotte, Princess of Belgium, no issue Karl Ludwig 30 July 1833 19 May 1896 Married 1) his first cousin Margaretha, Princess of and Duchess in Saxony, (1840–1858) from 1856 to 1858, no issue, married 2) to Maria Annunziata, Princess of the Two-Sicilies (1843–1871) from 1862 to 1871, had issue (three sons and one daughter) and married 3) to Maria Theresa, Infanta of Portugal, (1855–1944), from 1873 to 1896, had issue (two daughters) Maria Anna 27 October 1835 5 February 1840 Died in childhood, no issue Stillborn son 24 October 1840 24 October 1840 Ludwig Viktor 15 May 1842 18 January 1919 Died unmarried, no issue