Czech Republic
The Czech Republic known by its short-form name, Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west, Austria to the south, Slovakia to the east and Poland to the northeast. The Czech Republic covers an area of 78,866 square kilometres with a temperate continental climate and oceanic climate, it is a unitary parliamentary republic, with 10.6 million inhabitants. Other major cities are Brno, Ostrava and Pilsen; the Czech Republic is a member of the European Union, NATO, the OECD, the United Nations, the OSCE, the Council of Europe. It is a developed country with an advanced, high income export-oriented social market economy based in services and innovation; the UNDP ranks the country 14th in inequality-adjusted human development. The Czech Republic is a welfare state with a "continental" European social model, a universal health care system, tuition-free university education and is ranked 14th in the Human Capital Index, it ranks as the 6th safest or most peaceful country and is one of the most non-religious countries in the world, while achieving strong performance in democratic governance.
The Czech Republic includes the historical territories of Bohemia and Czech Silesia. The Czech state was formed in the late 9th century as the Duchy of Bohemia under the Great Moravian Empire. After the fall of the Empire in 907, the centre of power transferred from Moravia to Bohemia under the Přemyslid dynasty. In 1002, the duchy was formally recognized as an Imperial State of the Holy Roman Empire along with the Kingdom of Germany, the Kingdom of Burgundy, the Kingdom of Italy, numerous other territories, becoming the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1198 and reaching its greatest territorial extent in the 14th century. Beside Bohemia itself, the King of Bohemia ruled the lands of the Bohemian Crown, holding a vote in the election of the Holy Roman Emperor. In the Hussite Wars of the 15th century driven by the Protestant Bohemian Reformation, the kingdom faced economic embargoes and defeated five consecutive crusades proclaimed by the leaders of the Catholic Church. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the whole Crown of Bohemia was integrated into the Habsburg Monarchy alongside the Archduchy of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary.
The Protestant Bohemian Revolt against the Catholic Habsburgs led to the Thirty Years' War. After the Battle of the White Mountain, the Habsburgs consolidated their rule, eradicated Protestantism and reimposed Catholicism, adopted a policy of gradual Germanization; this contributed to the anti-Habsburg sentiment. A long history of resentment of the Catholic Church followed and still continues. With the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the Bohemian Kingdom became part of the German Confederation 1815-1866 as part of Austrian Empire and the Czech language experienced a revival as a consequence of widespread romantic nationalism. In the 19th century, the Czech lands became the industrial powerhouse of the monarchy and were subsequently the core of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, formed in 1918 following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I. Czechoslovakia remained the only democracy in this part of Europe in the interwar period. However, the Czech part of Czechoslovakia was occupied by Germany in World War II, while the Slovak region became the Slovak Republic.
Most of the three millions of the German-speaking minority were expelled following the war. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia won the 1946 elections and after the 1948 coup d'état, Czechoslovakia became a one-party communist state under Soviet influence. In 1968, increasing dissatisfaction with the regime culminated in a reform movement known as the Prague Spring, which ended in a Soviet-led invasion. Czechoslovakia remained occupied until the 1989 Velvet Revolution, when the communist regime collapsed and market economy was reintroduced. On 1 January 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully dissolved, with its constituent states becoming the independent states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia; the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2004. The traditional English name "Bohemia" derives from Latin "Boiohaemum", which means "home of the Boii"; the current English name comes from the Polish ethnonym associated with the area, which comes from the Czech word Čech. The name comes from the Slavic tribe and, according to legend, their leader Čech, who brought them to Bohemia, to settle on Říp Mountain.
The etymology of the word Čech can be traced back to the Proto-Slavic root *čel-, meaning "member of the people. The country has been traditionally divided into three lands, namely Bohemia in the west, Moravia in the east, Czech Silesia in the northeast. Known as the lands of the Bohemian Crown since the 14th century, a number of other names for the country have been used, including Czech/Bohemian lands, Bohemian Crown and the lands of the Crown of Saint Wenceslas; when the country regained its independence after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918, the new name of Czechoslovakia was coined to reflect the union of the Czech and Slovak nations within the one country. After Czechoslovakia dissolved in 1992, the Czech part lac
Lieutenant field marshal
Lieutenant field marshal frequently field marshal lieutenant, was a senior army rank in certain European armies of the 17th to 20th centuries. It emerged as the rank of field marshal came to be used for the highest army commander in the 17th century. In German-speaking countries the commander-in-chief appointed an "under marshal" or "lieutenant field marshal" to support and represent the field marshal. Amongst his functions as the personal deputy to the field marshal, were the supervision of supply depots and routes, inspection of the guards; the rank was used by the Imperial Army of the Holy Roman Empire from the 17th century until 1806. It was introduced to the Army of the Austrian Empire in the period 1804 to 1866, the Austro-Hungarian Army from 1867 to 1918, where it was the second highest general rank after the various heads of arm - the general of infantry, general of cavalry and general of artillery - until the introduction of the rank of colonel general in 1915. On the re-introduction of the rank of field marshal, it fell back to third place in terms of seniority.
Prince Montecuccoli, a field marshal himself in the Habsburg army gives the order of precedence in the Imperial Army as follows: Feldhauptmann General-Lieutenant or Feldhauptmann Lieutenant *Feldmarschall General der Kavallerie and General der Artillerie Felmarschall-Lieutenant General-Feldwachtmeister In 1789, for example, the Emperor conferred the rank of "Lieutenant Field Marshal on the Major Generals Count de Harrach, Baron d'Alvinzi, Prince Christian de Waldeck, Baron de Levenehr and Baron de Wallisch..."Subsequently, the order of precedence of general ranks in the Austro-Hungarian Army was as follows: Feldmarschall - Tárbornagy Generaloberst - Vezérezredes, introduced in 1915 General der Infanterie - Gyalogsági Tábornok, General der Kavallerie - Lovassági Tábornok and Feldzeugmeister - Táborszernagy Feldmarschall-Leutnant - Altábornagy Generalmajor - Vezérőrnagy At that time, a field marshal lieutenant of the k.u.k. Army was equivalent to the Generalleutnant of the Prussian Army; the normal assignment of a lieutenant field marshal was command of a division-sized formation.
He was addressed by the honorific title of "excellency". In Austria the rank continued to be used after 1918 by the commander-in-chief of the so-called Volkswehr until 1919. However, the Bundesheer of the First Republic adopted the designation and sequence of the German ranks in 1920. In 1933, following national tradition, Austrian ranks and uniforms were reintroduced, including lieutenant field marshal; these ranks remained in use until the Anschluss in 1938. The equivalent of lieutenant field marshal in the Hungarian Army was the rank of altábornagy. Today it is still in use as NATO OF-8, three-star rank corresponding to lieutenant general in English-speaking armed forces. Georg von Alten: Handbuch für Heer und Flotte. Vol. III, Berlin, 1911 Constantin von Wurzbach: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Österreich, 60 vols. Vienna, 1856-1891 Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 56 vols. Munich-Leipzig, 1875-1912 Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815-1950, hitherto 12 volumes, Vienna,1957 ff.
Neue Österreichische Biographie, hitherto 21 volumes, Vienna, 1935-1982 Felix Czeike: Historisches Lexikon Wien, 5 vols. Vienna, 1992-1997 Antonio Schmidt-Brentano: Kaiserliche und k.k. Generale 1618-1815, Austrian State Archives Antonio Schmidt-Brentano: Die k.k. bzw. k.u.k. Generalität 1816-1918, Austrian State Archives Adjustierungsvorschrift für die k.u.k. Gemeinsame Armee, die k.k. Landwehr, die k.u. Landwehr, die verbundenen Einrichtungen und das Corps der Militär-Beamten. Complete works Vienna/Bozen, 1912 Ranks in the Austro-Hungarian Navy Rank insignias of the Austro-Hungarian armed forces
Balkans
The Balkans known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographic area in southeastern Europe with various definitions and meanings, including geopolitical and historical. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the whole of Bulgaria from the Serbian-Bulgarian border to the Black Sea coast; the Balkan Peninsula is bordered by the Adriatic Sea on the northwest, the Ionian Sea on the southwest, the Aegean Sea in the south and southeast, the Black Sea on the east and northeast. The northern border of the peninsula is variously defined; the highest point of the Balkans is 2,925 metres, in the Rila mountain range. The concept of the Balkan peninsula was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered the Balkan Mountains the dominant mountain system of Southeast Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea; the term of Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for European Turkey in the 19th century, the former provinces of the Ottoman Empire in Southeast Europe.
It had a geopolitical rather than a geographical definition, further promoted during the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the early 20th century. The definition of the Balkan peninsula's natural borders do not coincide with the technical definition of a peninsula and hence modern geographers reject the idea of a Balkan peninsula, while scholars discuss the Balkans as a region; the term has acquired a stigmatized and pejorative meaning related to the process of Balkanization, hence the rather used alternative term for the region is Southeast Europe. The word Balkan comes from Ottoman Turkish balkan'chain of wooded mountains'; the origin of the Turkic word is obscure. From classical antiquity through the Middle Ages, the Balkan Mountains were called by the local Thracian name Haemus. According to Greek mythology, the Thracian king Haemus was turned into a mountain by Zeus as a punishment and the mountain has remained with his name. A reverse name scheme has been suggested. D. Dechev considers that Haemus is derived from a Thracian word *saimon,'mountain ridge'.
A third possibility is that "Haemus" derives from the Greek word "haema" meaning'blood'. The myth relates to a fight between the monster/titan Typhon. Zeus injured Typhon with a thunder bolt and Typhon's blood fell on the mountains, from which they got their name; the earliest mention of the name appears in an early 14th-century Arab map, in which the Haemus mountains are referred to as Balkan. The first attested time the name "Balkan" was used in the West for the mountain range in Bulgaria was in a letter sent in 1490 to Pope Innocent VIII by Buonaccorsi Callimaco, an Italian humanist and diplomat; the Ottomans first mention it in a document dated from 1565. There has been no other documented usage of the word to refer to the region before that, although other Turkic tribes had settled in or were passing through the Peninsula. There is a claim about an earlier Bulgar Turkic origin of the word popular in Bulgaria, however it is only an unscholarly assertion; the word was used by the Ottomans in Rumelia in its general meaning of mountain, as in Kod̲j̲a-Balkan, Čatal-Balkan, Ungurus-Balkani̊, but it was applied to the Haemus mountain.
The name is still preserved in Central Asia with the Balkan Daglary and the Balkan Province of Turkmenistan. English traveler John Morritt introduced this term into the English literature at the end of the 18th-century, other authors started applying the name to the wider area between the Adriatic and the Black Sea; the concept of the "Balkans" was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered it as the dominant central mountain system of Southeast Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. During the 1820s, "Balkan became the preferred although not yet exclusive term alongside Haemus among British travelers... Among Russian travelers not so burdened by classical toponymy, Balkan was the preferred term"; the term was not used in geographical literature until the mid-19th century because then scientists like Carl Ritter warned that only the part South of the Balkan Mountains can be considered as a peninsula and considered it to be renamed as "Greek peninsula".
Other prominent geographers who didn't agree with Zeune were Hermann Wagner, Theobald Fischer, Marion Newbigin, Albrecht Penck, while Austrian diplomat Johann Georg von Hahn in 1869 for the same territory used the term Südostereuropäische Halbinsel. Another reason it was not accepted as the definition of European Turkey had a similar land extent. However, after the Congress of Berlin there was a political need for a new term and the Balkans was revitalized, but in the maps the northern border was in Serbia and Montenegro without Greece, while Yugoslavian maps included Croatia and Bosnia; the term Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for European Turkey, the political borders of former Ottoman Empire provinces. The usage of the term changed in the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century when was embraced by Serbian geographers, most prominently by Jovan Cvijić, it was done with political reasoning as affirmation for Serbian nationalism on the whole territory of the South Slavs, included anthropological and ethnological studies of the South Slavs through which were claimed various nationalistic and racistic theories.
Through such policies and Yugoslavian maps the term was elevated to the modern status of
Battalion
A battalion is a military unit. The use of the term "battalion" varies by branch of service. A battalion consists of 300 to 800 soldiers and is divided into a number of companies. A battalion is commanded by a lieutenant colonel. In some countries, the word "battalion" is associated with the infantry; the term was first used in Italian as battaglione no than the 16th century. It derived from the Italian word for battaglia; the first use of battalion in English was in the 1580s, the first use to mean "part of a regiment" is from 1708. A battalion is the smallest military unit capable of "limited independent operations", meaning it includes an executive, staff with a support and services unit; the battalion must have a source of re-supply to enable it to sustain operations for more than a few days. This is because a battalion's complement of ammunition, expendable weapons, rations, lubricants, replacement parts and medical supplies consists of only what the battalion's soldiers and the battalion's vehicles can carry.
In addition to sufficient personnel and equipment to conduct operations, as well as a limited administrative and logistics capability, the commander's staff coordinates and plans operations. A battalion's subordinate companies and their platoons are dependent upon the battalion headquarters for command, control and intelligence, the battalion's service and support structure; the battalion is part of a brigade, or group, depending on the branch of service. A battalion's companies are of one type, although there are exceptions such as combined arms battalions in the U. S. Army. A battalion includes a headquarters company and some sort of combat service support, combined in a combat support company; the term battalion is used in the British Army Infantry and some corps including the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, intelligence corps. It was used in the Royal Engineers, was used in the now defunct Royal Army Ordnance Corps and Royal Pioneer Corps. Other corps use the term "regiment" instead.
An infantry battalion is numbered ordinarily within its regiment. It has a headquarters company, support company, three rifle companies; each company is commanded by a major, the officer commanding, with a captain or senior lieutenant as second-in-command. The HQ company contains signals, catering, administration, training and medical elements; the support company contains anti-tank, machine gun, mortar and reconnaissance platoons. Mechanised units have an attached light aid detachment of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers to perform field repairs on vehicles and equipment. A British battalion in theatre during World War II had around 845 men, whereas, as of 2012, a British battalion had around 650 soldiers. With successive rounds of cutbacks after the war, many infantry regiments were reduced to a single battalion. Important figures in a battalion headquarters include: Commanding officer Second-in-command Adjutant Quartermaster Quartermaster Medical officer Administrative officer Padre Operations officer Regimental sergeant major Regimental quartermaster sergeant Regimental quartermaster sergeant Battalions of other corps are given separate cardinal numbers within their corps.
A battle group consists of an infantry battalion or armoured regiment with sub-units detached from other military units acting under the command of the battalion commander. In the Canadian Forces, most battalions are reserve units of between 100–200 soldiers that include an operationally ready, field-deployable component of a half-company apiece; the nine regular force infantry battalions each contain three or four rifle companies and one or two support companies. Canadian battalions are commanded by lieutenant-colonels, though smaller reserve battalions may be commanded by majors; those regiments consisting of more than one battalion are: The Royal Canadian Regiment Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry Royal 22e Régiment The Royal Newfoundland Regiment Tactically, the Canadian battalion forms the core of the infantry battle group, which includes various supporting elements such as armour, combat engineers and combat service support. An infantry battle group will be commanded by the commander of the core infantry battalion around which it is formed and can range in size from 300 to 1,500 or more soldiers, depending on the nature of the mission assigned.
In the Royal Netherlands Army, a mechanised infantry battalion consists of one command- and medical company, three mechanised infantry companies, one support company
Moravia
Moravia is a historical region in the Czech Republic and one of the historical Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Czech Silesia. The medieval and early modern Margraviate of Moravia was a crown land of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, an imperial state of the Holy Roman Empire a crown land of the Austrian Empire and also one of 17 former crown lands of the Cisleithanian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1867 to 1918. During the early 20th century, Moravia was one of the five lands of Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 1928. Moravia has an area of over 22,000 km2 and about 3 million inhabitants, 2/7 or 30% of the whole Czech Republic; the statistics from 1921 states, that the whole area of Moravia including the enclaves in Silesia covers 22,623.41 km2. The people are named Moravians, a subgroup of Czechs; the land takes its name from the Morava river, which rises in the northern tip of the region and flows southward to the opposite end, being its major stream. Moravia's largest city and historical capital is Brno.
Before being sacked by the Swedish army during the Thirty Years' War, Olomouc was another capital. Though abolished by an administrative reform in 1949, Moravia is still acknowledged as a specific land in the Czech Republic. Moravian people are aware of their Moravian identity and there is some rivalry between them and the Czechs from Bohemia; the region and former margraviate of Moravia, Morava in Czech, is named after its principal river Morava. It is theorized that the river's name is derived from Proto-Indo-European *mori: "waters", or indeed any word denoting water or a marsh; the German name for Moravia is Mähren, again from the river's German name March. Interestingly, this might hint at a different etymology, as march is a term used in the Medieval times for an outlying territory, a border or a frontier. Moravia occupies most of the eastern part of the Czech Republic. Moravian territory is strongly determined, in fact, as the Morava river basin, with strong effect of mountains in the west and in the east, where all the rivers rise.
Moravia occupies an exceptional position in Central Europe. All the highlands in the west and east of this part of Europe run west-east, therefore form a kind of filter, making north-south or south north movement more difficult. Only Moravia with the depression of the westernmost Outer Subcarpathia, 14–40 kilometers wide, between the Bohemian Massif and the Outer Western Carpathians, provides a comfortable connection between the Danubian and Polish regions, this area is thus of great importance in terms of the possible migration routes of large mammals – both as regards periodically recurring seasonal migrations triggered by climatic oscillations in the prehistory, when permanent settlement started. Moravia borders Bohemia in the west, Lower Austria in the south, Slovakia in the southeast, Poland shortly in the north, Czech Silesia in the northeast, its natural boundary is formed by the Sudetes mountains in the north, the Carpathians in the east and the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands in the west.
The Thaya river meanders along the border with Austria and the tripoint of Moravia and Slovakia is at the confluence of the Thaya and Morava rivers. The northeast border with Silesia runs along the Moravice and Ostravice rivers. Between 1782–1850, Moravia included a small portion of the former province of Silesia – the Austrian Silesia. Today Moravia including the South Moravian Region, the Zlín Region, vast majority of the Olomouc Region, southeastern half of the Vysočina Region and parts of the Moravian-Silesian and South Bohemian regions. Geologically, Moravia covers a transitive area between the Bohemian Massif and the Carpathians, between the Danube basin and the North European Plain, its core geomorphological features are three wide valleys, namely the Dyje-Svratka Valley, the Upper Morava Valley and the Lower Morava Valley. The first two form the westernmost part of the Outer Subcarpathia, the last is the northernmost part of the Vienna Basin; the valleys surround the low range of Central Moravian Carpathians.
The highest mountains of Moravia are situated on its northern border in Hrubý Jeseník, the highest peak is Praděd. Second highest is the massive of Králický Sněžník the third are the Moravian-Silesian Beskids at the east, with Smrk, south from here Javorníky; the White Carpathians along the southeastern border rise up to 970 m at Velká Javořina. The spacious, but moderate Bohemian-Moravian Highlands on the west reach 837 m at Javořice; the fluvial system of Moravia is cohesive, as the region border is similar to the watershed of the Morava river, thus the entire area is drained by a single stream. Morava's far biggest tributaries are Thaya from Bečva. Morav
Archduke
Archduke was the title borne from 1358 by the Habsburg rulers of the Archduchy of Austria, by all senior members of that dynasty. It denotes a rank within the former Holy Roman Empire, below that of Emperor and King and above that of a Grand Duke and Prince; the territory ruled by an Archduke or Archduchess was called an Archduchy. All remaining Archduchies ceased to exist in 1918; the English word is first recorded in 1530, derived from Middle, via Old, French archeduc, from Merovingian Latin archidux, from Greek arch-, ἀρχι- meaning "authority" or "primary" and dux "duke" "Archduke" is a title distinct from "Grand Duke", a monarchic title borne by the rulers of other European countries. The first known claim to the title of Archduke was by the rulers of Austrasia, one of the Merovingian realms resulting from the complex successions in the house of Clovis comprising Germany and the Low Countries. In the Carolingian Empire, the title Archduke was awarded not as rank of nobility, but as a unique honorary title to the Duke of Lotharingia.
The Lotharingian Duchy could be seen as the successor to the former Carolingian Kingdom of Lotharingia, a realm, of equal stature with West Francia in the dynastic divisions under the early heirs of Charlemagne. Lotharingia was absorbed by East Francia, becoming part of the Holy Roman Empire rather than a independent Kingdom. After the split of the Duchy of Lotharingia in 959 into the Duchies of Upper Lotharingia in the south and Lower Lotharingia in the north, the title Archduke disappeared for 400 years; the extended fragmentation of both territories created two "succeeding" Duchies in the Low Countries and Geldre. Both claimed archducal status but were never recognised as such by the Holy Roman Emperor. Archduke of Austria, the only archducal title to re-emerge, was invented in the Privilegium Maius in the 14th century by Duke Rudolf IV of Austria, it was meant to emphasize the claimed precedence of the Duchy of Austria, in an effort to put the Habsburgs on an level with the Prince-Electors of the Holy Roman Empire, as Austria had been passed over when the Golden Bull of 1356 assigned that dignity to the four highest-ranking secular Imperial princes and three Archbishops.
Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV refused to recognise the title, as did all the other ruling dynasties of the member countries of the Empire. But Duke Ernest the Iron and his descendants unilaterally assumed the title of Archduke; the archducal title was only recognized in 1453 by Emperor Frederick III, when the Habsburgs had solidified their grip on the throne of the de jure elected Holy Roman Emperor, making it de facto hereditary. Despite that imperial authorization of the title, which showed a Holy Roman Emperor from the Habsburg dynasty deciding over a title claim of the Habsburg dynasty, many ruling dynasties of the countries which formed the Empire refused to recognize the title "Archduke". Ladislaus the Posthumous, Duke of Austria, who died in 1457, did never get in his lifetime the imperial authorization to use it, accordingly, neither he nor anyone in his branch of the dynasty used the title. Emperor Frederick III himself used the title "Duke of Austria", never Archduke, until his death in 1493.
The title was first granted to Frederick's younger brother, Albert VI of Austria, who used it at least from 1458. In 1477, Frederick III granted the title of Archduke to his first cousin, Sigismund of Austria, ruler of Further Austria. Frederick's son and heir, the future Emperor Maximilian I, started to use the title, but only after the death of his wife Mary of Burgundy, as Archduke never appears in documents issued jointly by Maximilian and Mary as rulers in the Low Countries; the title appears first in documents issued under the joint rule of Maximilian and his son Philip in the Low Countries. Archduke was borne by those dynasts who ruled a Habsburg territory—i.e. Only by males and their consorts, appanages being distributed to cadets, but these "junior" archdukes did not thereby become sovereign hereditary rulers, since all territories remained vested in the Austrian crown. A territory might be combined with a separate gubernatorial mandate ruled by an archducal cadet. From the 16th century onward, "Archduke" and its female form, "Archduchess", came to be used by all the members of the House of Habsburg.
Upon extinction of the male line of the Habsburgs and the marriage of their heiress, the Holy Roman Empress-consort Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary and Archduchess of Austria, to Francis Stephen, Duke of Lorraine, elected Holy Roman Emperor, their descendants formed the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire this usage was retained in the Austrian Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the official use of titles of nobility and of all other hereditary ti
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Dual Monarchy, was a constitutional monarchy in Central and Eastern Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed by giving a new constitution to the Austrian Empire, which devolved powers on Austria and Hungary and placed them on an equal footing, it broke apart into several states at the end of World War I. The union was a result of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and came into existence on 30 March 1867. Austria-Hungary consisted of two monarchies, one autonomous region: the The Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia under the Hungarian crown, which negotiated the Croatian–Hungarian Settlement in 1868, it was ruled by the House of Habsburg, constituted the last phase in the constitutional evolution of the Habsburg Monarchy. Following the 1867 reforms, the Austrian and the Hungarian states were co-equal. Foreign affairs and the military came under joint oversight, but all other governmental faculties were divided between respective states.
Austria-Hungary was a multinational one of Europe's major powers at the time. Austria-Hungary was geographically the second-largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire, at 621,538 km2, the third-most populous; the Empire built up the fourth-largest machine building industry of the world, after the United States and the United Kingdom. Austria-Hungary became the world's third largest manufacturer and exporter of electric home appliances, electric industrial appliances and power generation apparatus for power plants, after the United States and the German Empire. After 1878, Bosnia and Herzegovina was under Austro-Hungarian military and civilian rule until it was annexed in 1908, provoking the Bosnian crisis among the other powers; the northern part of the Ottoman Sanjak of Novi Pazar was under de facto joint occupation during that period but the Austro-Hungarian army withdrew as part of their annexation of Bosnia. The annexation of Bosnia led to Islam being recognized as an official state religion due to Bosnia's Muslim population.
Austria-Hungary was one of the Central Powers in World War I which started when it declared war on the Kingdom of Serbia on 28 July 1914. It was effectively dissolved by the time the military authorities signed the armistice of Villa Giusti on 3 November 1918; the Kingdom of Hungary and the First Austrian Republic were treated as its successors de jure, whereas the independence of the West Slavs and South Slavs of the Empire as the First Czechoslovak Republic, the Second Polish Republic and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and most of the territorial demands of the Kingdom of Romania were recognized by the victorious powers in 1920. The realm's official name was in German: Österreichisch-Ungarische Monarchie and in Hungarian: Osztrák–Magyar Monarchia, though in the international relations better Austria-Hungary was used; the Austrians used the names k. u. k. Monarchie and Danubian Monarchy or Dual Monarchy and The Double Eagle, but none of these became widepsread neither in Hungary, nor elsewhere.
The realm's full name used in the internal administration was The Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of St. Stephen. German: Die im Reichsrat vertretenen Königreiche und Länder und die Länder der Heiligen Ungarischen Stephanskrone Hungarian: A Birodalmi Tanácsban képviselt királyságok és országok és a Magyar Szent Korona országai The Habsburg monarch ruled as Emperor of Austria over the western and northern half of the country, the Austrian Empire and as King of Hungary over the Kingdom of Hungary; each enjoyed considerable sovereignty with only a few joint affairs. Certain regions, such as Polish Galicia within Cisleithania and Croatia within Transleithania, enjoyed autonomous status, each with its own unique governmental structures; the division between Austria and Hungary was so marked that there was no common citizenship: one was either an Austrian citizen or a Hungarian citizen, never both. This meant that there were always separate Austrian and Hungarian passports, never a common one.
However, neither Austrian nor Hungarian passports were used in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia. Instead, the Kingdom issued its own passports which were written in Croatian and French and displayed the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia on them, it is not known what kind of passports were used in Bosnia-Herzegovina, under the control of both Austria and Hungary. The Kingdom of Hungary had always maintained a separate parliament, the Diet of Hungary after the Austrian Empire was created in 1804; the administration and government of the Kingdom of Hungary remained untouched by the government structure of the overarching Austrian Empire. Hungary's central government structures remained well separated from the Austrian imperial government; the country was governed by the Council of Lieutenancy of Hungary – located in Pressburg and in Pest – and by the Hungarian Royal Court Chancell
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1922). . Encyclopædia Britannica (12th ed.). London & New York.
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1922). 