Further Austria - Geography

Geography

Further Austria comprised the Sundgau with Belfort in southern Alsace and the adjacent Breisgau region east of the Rhine (including Freiburg im Breisgau after 1368) as well as numerous scattered territories throughout Swabia, the largest being the margravate of Burgau between the cities of Augsburg and Ulm. Some territories in Vorarlberg that belonged to the Habsburgs were also considered part of Further Austria. The original homelands of the Habsburgs, the Aargau with Habsburg Castle and much of the other original Habsburg possessions south of the High Rhine and Lake Constance were lost in the 14th century to the expanding Old Swiss Confederacy after the battles of Morgarten (1315) and Sempach (1386) and were never considered part of Further Austria - except for the Fricktal region around Rheinfelden and Laufenburg, which remained a Habsburg property until 1797.

At the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the Sundgau became part of France. After the Ottoman wars many inhabitants of Further Austria were encouraged to emigrate and settle in the newly acquired Transylvania region, people that later were referred as Danube Swabians. In the 18th century, the Habsburgs acquired a few minor new Swabian territories, such as Tettnang in 1780. As of 1790 Further Austria was subdivided into ten districts (Oberämter):

• Breisgau (with Fricktal) at Freiburg
• Offenburg: several localities in the present Ortenaukreis, the free imperial city of Offenburg not included
• Hohenberg, present Ostalbkreis, former county, at Rottenburg am Neckar
• Nellenburg, former landgraviate, at Stockach
• Altdorf (former Vogtei Swabia), today Weingarten
• Tettnang, former County of Montfort
• Günzburg, former Margraviate of Burgau
• Winnweiler in the Palatinate, former County of Falkenstein
• the former Imperial city of Konstanz
• Bregenz, present-day Vorarlberg, then administrated from Tyrol.

In the reorganization of the Holy Roman Empire in the course of the French Revolutionary Wars, much of Further Austria, including the Breisgau, was by the 1801 Treaty of Lunéville granted as compensation to Ercole III d'Este, former duke of Modena and Reggio, who however died two years later. His heir as his son-in-law was Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Este, the uncle of Emperor Francis II. After the Austrian defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz and the Peace of Pressburg in 1805, Further Austria was entirely dissolved and the formerly Habsburg territories were assigned to the Grand Duchy of Baden, the Kingdom of Württemberg and the Kingdom of Bavaria, as rewards for their alliance with Napoleonic France. The Fricktal had already become part of the Swiss Confederation in 1802.

After the defeat of Napoleon, there was some discussion at the Congress of Vienna of returning part of all of the Vorlande to Austria, but in the end only Vorarlberg returned to Austrian control, as the Austrian foreign minister Metternich did not want to offend the rulers of the South German states and hoped that removing Austria from its advanced position on the Rhine would reduce tensions with France.