Despite Charles's efforts to preserve the empire by returning it to federalism and by championing Austro-Slavism, Austria-Hungary hurtled into disintegration: Czechoslovakia and the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs were proclaimed, and Hungary broke monarchic ties to Austria by the end of October 1918.

He made two attempts to reclaim the Hungarian throne in 1921; but failed due to the opposition of Hungary's Calvinist regent Admiral Miklós Horthy.

Upon the death of Crown Prince Rudolph in 1889, the Emperor's brother, Archduke Karl Ludwig, Charles' grandfather, was next in line to the Austro-Hungarian throne.

He was privately educated, but, contrary to the custom ruling in the imperial family, he attended a public gymnasium (the Schottengymnasium) for the sake of demonstrations in scientific subjects.

For these reasons, Charles, up to the time of the assassination of his uncle in 1914, obtained no insight into affairs of state, but led the life of a prince not destined for a high political position.

He seemed to have made his mind up much more quickly, however, and became even more keen when, in the autumn of 1910, rumours spread about that I had got engaged to a distant Spanish relative, Jaime, Duke of Madrid.

On hearing this, the Archduke came down post haste from his regiment at Brandeis and sought out his [step]grandmother, Archduchess Maria Theresa, who was also my aunt and the natural confidante in such matters.

"[4]: 8 Archduke Charles traveled to Villa Pianore, the Italian winter residence of Zita's parents, and asked for her hand; on 13 June 1911, their engagement was announced at the Austrian court.

Charles, whose father had died in 1906, became heir presumptive after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, his uncle, in Sarajevo in 1914, the event which precipitated World War I.

When news of what became known as the Sixtus Affair leaked in April 1918, Charles denied involvement until French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau published letters signed by him.

[citation needed] The new foreign minister Baron Istvan Burián asked for an armistice on 14 October based on the Fourteen Points, and two days later Charles issued a proclamation that radically changed the nature of the Austrian state.

However, U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing replied four days later that the Allies were committed to the political independence of the Czechs, Slovaks and South Slavs, and that autonomy inside the Empire was no longer enough.

[citation needed] From the beginning of his reign, Charles I favored the creation of a third, Croatian, political entity in the Empire, in addition to Austria and Hungary.

Nothing remained of Charles's realm except the predominantly German-speaking Danubian and Alpine provinces, and he was challenged even there by the German Austrian State Council.

His last Austrian prime minister, Heinrich Lammasch, advised him that he was in an impossible situation, and his best course was to temporarily give up his right to exercise sovereign power.

He wrote to Friedrich Gustav Cardinal Piffl, the Archbishop of Vienna: I did not abdicate, and never will [...] I see my manifesto of 11 November as the equivalent to a cheque which a street thug has forced me to issue at gunpoint [...] I do not feel bound by it in any way whatsoever.

An uneasy truce-like situation ensued and persisted until 23 to 24 March 1919, when Charles left for Switzerland, escorted by the commander of the small British guard detachment at Eckartsau, Lieutenant Colonel Edward Lisle Strutt.

[23]The newly established republican government of Austria was not aware of this "Manifesto of Feldkirch" at this time—it had been dispatched only to King Alfonso XIII of Spain and to Pope Benedict XV through diplomatic channels—and politicians in power were irritated by the Emperor's departure without explicit abdication.

After the second failed attempt at restoration in Hungary, Charles and his pregnant wife Zita were arrested by the Hungarian authorities and imprisoned in Tihany Abbey.

[30] The couple and their children, who joined them on 2 February 1922, lived first at Funchal at the Villa Vittoria, next to Reid's Hotel, and later moved to a modest residence in Quinta do Monte.

Having suffered two heart attacks, he died of respiratory failure on 1 April, in the presence of his wife (who was pregnant with their eighth child) and nine-year-old former Crown Prince Otto, remaining conscious almost until his last moments.

His remains except for his heart are still on the island, resting in state in a chapel devoted to the Emperor in the Portuguese Church of Our Lady of the Mount, in spite of several attempts to move them to the Habsburg Crypt in Vienna.

[33] Helmut Rumpler, the head of the Habsburg commission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, described Charles as "a dilettante, far too weak for the challenges facing him, out of his depth, and not really a politician.

[35]Paul von Hindenburg, the German commander in chief, commented in his memoirs:He tried to compensate for the evaporation of the ethical power which emperor Franz Joseph had represented by offering völkisch reconciliation.

[36]Catholic Church leaders have praised Charles for putting his Christian faith first in making political decisions, and for his role as a peacemaker during the war, especially after 1917.

The miracle attributed to Charles was the scientifically inexplicable healing of the Polish-born Brazilian Sister Maria Zita Gradowska of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul.

[41]The main points of Pope Benedict XV's peace plan were: (1) the moral force of right ... be substituted for the material force of arms, (2) there must be simultaneous and reciprocal diminution of armaments, (3) a mechanism for international arbitration must be established, (4) true liberty and common rights over the sea should exist, (5) there should be a renunciation of war indemnities, (6) occupied territories should be evacuated, and (7) there should be an examination of rival claims.

Although the plan seemed unattainable due to the severity of the war thus far, it appealed to Charles, perhaps as a way to fulfill and preserve his role as Catholic Emperor of Austria and Apostolic King of Hungary.

[citation needed] The beatification nevertheless raised controversy over the mistaken claim that Charles authorised the use of poison gas by the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I.

A "devout Baptist" from Orlando, Florida was allegedly cured after several recent converts to Roman Catholicism in Louisiana prayed for Charles's intercession.