Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia

An Austrian herald's tabard (Wappenrock) with the coat of arms of Lombardy-Venetia (1834) – Weltliche Schatzkammer in Vienna

In the Treaty of Paris in 1814 the Austrians had confirmed their claims to the territories of the former Lombard Duchy of Milan, which had been ruled by the Habsburg Monarchy since 1714 and together with the adjacent Duchy of Mantua by the Austrian branch of the dynasty from 1708 to 1796, and of the former Republic of Venice, which had been under Austrian rule intermittently upon the 1797 Treaty of Campo Formio.

The Congress of Vienna combined these lands into a single kingdom, ruled in personal union by the Habsburg Emperor of Austria; as distinct of the neighbouring Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Modena and Reggio as well as the Duchy of Parma, which remained independent entities under Habsburg rule. The Austrian emperor was represented day-to-day by viceroys appointed by the Imperial Court in Vienna and resident in Milan and Venice.[2][4][5][6]

The Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia was first ruled by Emperor Francis I from 1815 to his death in 1835. His son Ferdinand I ruled from 1835 to 1848. In Milan on 6 September 1838, he became the last king to be crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy. The crown was subsequently brought to Vienna after the loss of Lombardy in 1859 but was restored to Italy after the loss of Venetia in 1866.

Though the local administration was Italian in language and staff, the Austrian authorities had to cope with the Italian unification (Risorgimento) movement. After a popular revolution on 22 March 1848, known as the "Five Days of Milan", the Austrians fled from Milan, which became the capital city of a Governo Provvisorio della Lombardia (Lombardy Provisional Government). The next day, Venice also rose against the Austrian rule, forming the Governo Provvisorio di Venezia (Venice Provisional Government). The Austrian forces under Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky, after defeating the Sardinian troops at the Battle of Custoza (24–25 July 1848), entered Milan (6 August) and Venice (24 August 1849), and once again restored Austrian rule.

Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria ruled over the Kingdom for the rest of its existence. The office of Viceroy was abolished and replaced by a Governor-General. The office was initially assumed by Field Marshal Radetzky, upon his retirement in 1857 it passed it to Franz Joseph's younger brother Maximilian (who later became Emperor of Mexico), who served as Governor-General in Milan from 1857 to 1859.

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  Lombardy–Venetia (1853) and its major cities
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  Political map of the Italian peninsula in the year 1843

Administratively the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia comprised two independent governments (Gubernien) in its two parts, which officially were declared separate crown lands in 1851. Each part was further subdivided in several provinces, roughly corresponding with the départements of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy.

Lombardy included the provinces of Milan, Como, Bergamo, Brescia, Pavia, Cremona, Mantua, Lodi-Crema, and Sondrio. Venetia included the provinces of Venice, Verona, Padua, Vicenza, Treviso, Rovigo, Belluno, and Udine.[7]

According to the Ethnographic map of Karl von Czoernig-Czernhausen, issued by the Imperial and Royal Administration of Statistics in 1855, the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia then had a population of 5,024,117 people, consisting of the following ethnic groups: 4,625,746 Italians; 351,805 Friulians; 12,084 Germans (Cimbrians in Venetia); 26,676 Slovenians and 7,806 Jews.

For the first time since 1428, Lombardy reappeared as an entity, the first time in history that term "Lombardy" was officially used to call specifically this entity and not for the whole Northern Italy

The administration used Italian as its language in its internal and external communications and documents, and the language's dominant position in politics, finance or jurisdiction was not questioned by the Austrian officials. The Italian-language Gazzetta di Milano was the official newspaper of the Kingdom. Civil servants employed in the administration were predominately Italian, with only about 10 per cent of them being recruited from other regions of the Austrian Empire. Some bilingual Italian-German-speaking civil servants came from the neighboring County of Tyrol. The German language, however, was the command language of the military, and top police officials were native German-speakers from other parts of the Empire. [9] The highest governorships were also reserved for Austrian aristocrats.

Austrian general Karl von Schönhals wrote in his memoirs [10] that the Austrian administration enjoyed the support of the rural population and the middle class educated at the universities of Pavia and Padua, who were able to pursue careers in the administration.

Von Schönhals further noted that the Austrians mistrusted and refused the local aristocrats from high government offices, as they traditionally had rejected university education and were in the past able to gain leadership positions because of their family background. Consequently, the aristocrats saw themselves deprived of the possibility of establishing themselves in the management of society and supported the wars of independence against the Austrians.

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  Provinces of Lombardy–Venetia
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  Ethnographic map of the Austrian Empire (1855) by de:Karl von Czoernig-Czernhausen

Kings

King		Reign	Marriage(s) Issue	Succession right(s)	Viceroy(s)
Francis I (Francesco I) 1768–1835 (aged 67)		9 June 1815 – 2 March 1835	List (1) Elisabeth of Württemberg (m. 1788; d. 1790) 1 children (Not survived to adulthood) (2) Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicily (m. 1790; d. 1807) 11 children (7 survived to adulthood) (3) Maria Ludovika of Austria-Este (m. 1808; d. 1816) Childless (4) Caroline Augusta of Bavaria (m. 1816; w. 1835) Childless	Son of Emperor Leopold II (primogeniture) Title granted by Congress of Vienna (1815)	1815–1816: Heinrich von Bellegarde
					1816–1818: Anton Victor of Austria
					1818–1848: Rainer Joseph of Austria
Ferdinand I (Ferdinando I) 1793–1875 (aged 82)		2 March 1835 – 2 December 1848 (Abdicated due to 1848 revolutions)	Maria Anna of Savoy (m. 1831; w. 1878) Childless	Son of king Francis I (primogeniture)
Franz Joseph I (Francesco Giuseppe I) 1830–1916 (aged 86)		2 December 1848 – 12 October 1866 (Forced to cede Lombardy and Venetia)	Elisabeth of Bavaria (m. 1854; d. 1898) 4 children (3 survived to adulthood)	Grandson of king Francis I Eldest son of Ferdinand I's only surviving younger brother (blood proximity)	1848–1857: Joseph Radetzky
					1857–1859: Maximilian of Austria
					1859: Ferenc Gyulay

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