<b>Austria (976 on)<b>

After the battle of the Lechfeld (955), in which the Emperor Otto the Great defeated the Magyars, the newly conquered lands were divided up into Marches, borderlands. One of these, known as the marchia orientalis, was to form the core of Austria, and was given to Leopold of Babenberg in 976. Forests were cut down, settlers arrived, and so did monks; villages and monasteries sprang up. In 1156 Austria was elevated to a duchy. The Babenberg family also acquired Styria in 1192, making them one of the most powerful dynasties in the region.

When the line went extinct, in 1246, the lands were disputed between Rudolf of Habsburg, an unknown Alsatian count who had already made it to king of the Romans, and Premysl Otakar II of Bohemia. The war culminated in the battle of the Marchfeld (1278), in which Otakar perished, and Rudolf of Habsburg claimed Austria as well as the imperial title. Carinthia and Carniola came under Habsburg rule in 1335, Tyrol in 1363. These provinces, together, became known as the Habsburg Hereditary Lands, although they were sometimes simply referred to as Austria.

The history of the following two centuries had many ups and downs, and included unfortunate attempts to conquer the Swiss lands, the most famous ending in the Battle of Morgarten (1315), where an Austrian army under Leopold I suffered a serious defeat at the hands of the Oath-takers. A number of Austrian territories rebelled or were conquered by the Swiss over time, including Habsburg Castle, which is located in modern day Switzerland. Leopold III was killed in battle near Sempach (1386), a city the Swiss had taken from the Habsburgs. Only from 1412 on did the Austrians try to avoid the Oath-takers.

Following the notable, but short rule of Rudolf IV, his brothers Albrecht III and Leopold III split the realms in the Treaty of Neuberg in 1379. Albrecht retained Austria proper, while Leopold took the remaining territories. In 1402, there was another split in the Leopoldinian line, when Ernest the Iron took Inner Austria (Styria, Carinthia and Carniola) and Frederick IV became ruler of Tyrol and Further Austria. The territories were only reunified by Ernest's son Frederick V (Frederick III as Holy Roman emperor), when the Albrechtinian line (1457) and the Elder Tyrolean line (1490) had become extinct.

In 1438, Duke Albrecht V of Austria was chosen as the successor to his father-in-law, Emperor Sigismund. Although Albrecht himself only reigned for a year, from then on, every emperor was a Habsburg, with only one exception. The Habsburgs also began to accumulate lands far from the Hereditary Lands. In 1477, the Archduke Maximilian, only son of Emperor Frederick III, married the heiress of Burgundy, thus acquiring most of the Low Countries for the family. His son Philip the Fair married the heiress of Castile and Aragon, acquiring Spain and its Italian, African, and New World appendages for the Habsburgs. In 1520 the Habsburg Emperor Karl V divided his extensive territories between his brother, Ferdinand, who became emperor and retained the Hereditary Lands, and his son, Philip, who became king of Spain.
