ASARHADDON (Aššur-ahu-iddin, "the god Assur has given a brother"). — King of Assyria from 681 to 669 B.C. He was the son, perhaps the third, of King Sennacherib (q.v.), whom he was chosen to succeed (2 Kings 19:37 = Isa. 37:38). The elder brothers, resenting this preference, murdered their father and waged war against A., whom they defeated in a month and a half. During his twelve years on the throne, A. was constantly engaged in defensive and offensive wars. He rebuilt Babylon, which his father had destroyed, including the Esagila and the tower of Etemenanki over time.
He held back the Cimmerians at the northern borders, subdued the Arameans, and allied himself with the Elamites. In 677 he conquered and destroyed Sidon, whose king, 'Abd-Mel-qart (Abdimelkutti), fled to Sanduari, king of Cilicia, was captured, and the following year was beheaded along with Sanduari. The southern part of Sidon’s territory was given to Ba'al, king of Tyre. By 673 A. had conquered most of Phoenicia, Palestine, and Cyprus. In addition to Ba'al of Tyre, the rulers who accepted A.’s supremacy included Manasseh (q.v.), king of Judah, the princes of Ascalon, Ekron, Arvad, Azotus, Byblos, Ammon, and Moab. Even the ten princes of the Greek cities of Cyprus (Idalion, Paphos, Salamis, Kition, etc.) sent embassies to A., declaring themselves his vassals. In July 671 he routed the Egyptian army, and the capture of Memphis avenged the defeat A. had suffered two years earlier at the hands of Pharaoh Taharqa. While en route for a third expedition against rebellious Egypt, he died on the 10th of Marcheshvan (November 669). He settled colonists from the eastern provinces in Samaria (Ezra 4:2).
ASBURGO (HABSURG). — A Swiss castle on the Aar. The dynasty that took its name from it originated in Alsace, and the first certain figure is a Werner, bishop of Strasbourg, at the beginning of the 11th century; his nephew Werner was count in Aargau after 1082. The family, however, rose to power slowly in the lands of present-day Switzerland and surrounding areas, so that by the time of Emperor FREDERICK II it could still be considered mediocre. Its greatest fortunes began, however, with the election of RUDOLPH (b. May 13, 1218) as king of Germany, which took place in Frankfurt in September 1273, ending the long interregnum that had in fact lasted since 1254. The new sovereign concerned himself only in words with asserting his rights in Italy or receiving the imperial crown (cf. Dante, *Purg.*, VI, 103; VII, 94 ff.); instead, he turned his policy toward expanding his dominion in southeastern Germany, crushing the power of Ottokar II of Bohemia, his chief rival (d. Aug. 26, 1278), and conquering the duchies of Austria, Styria, Carniola, and the Windic March. A little later (1335), Carinthia also became part of the Habsburg possessions. After Rudolph’s death in 1291, his son ALBERT was crowned king only in 1298 and held the title until May 10, 1308, when he was assassinated and succeeded by Louis of Bavaria; his son FREDERICK (1214) tried to regain the crown but was opposed by Louis of Bavaria and perished in the ensuing war (d. Jan. 13, 1330). Facing the House of Luxembourg, which later regained the kingdom and empire and also took Bohemia, the House of Habsburg fell into second place; it nevertheless retained its original lands and the territories acquired at the end of the 13th century, adding Tyrol. Another FREDERICK appeared at Constance during the Council but failed to prevail against Sigismund’s actions. Only after Sigismund’s death (1437) did ALBERT II of Habsburg, of the Albertine line, become king of Germany. Upon his death shortly afterward (Oct. 24, 1439), FREDERICK III (of the Leopoldine line of Styria) held the German empire until 1493. In addition to the rights to Hungary and Bohemia, which he never ceased to claim, he secured for his house Burgundy (then including the Netherlands) through the marriage of his son MAXIMILIAN, later king of the Romans. In turn, PHILIP, son of Maximilian, married Joanna the Mad, daughter of Ferdinand, king of Aragon, and Isabella, queen of Castile; thus, upon the death of these two sovereigns, Philip and then his son CHARLES found themselves heirs to the Spanish kingdoms. Since Philip had already died, at the death of his grandfather Maximilian (1519) CHARLES (king of Spain and V of Germany) united with the Spanish kingdoms the German kingdom and Burgundy, as well as the kingdom of Naples, conquered by the Aragonese in 1501, and the rights to the duchy of Milan, contested by the king of France. To all this must be added the possession of the East Indies, which were being discovered after 1492. Against this immense power, which threatened to absorb all of Europe, Francis, king of France, rose up, seeking the help of England and anyone who might be an enemy of Charles, not excluding the Turk, and in particular the rebellious German princes who favored (above all for political reasons) the new Protestant doctrines. Charles decided to divide this conglomeration of kingdoms with his brother FERDINAND, to whom he entrusted Germany along with Hungary, which in 1526 had been left without a king, and Bohemia, while he retained the rest for himself. Upon his abdication (1556), his son PHILIP II remained king of Spain, the Netherlands, Naples, and the rest, perpetuating the dynasty until CHARLES II, who died in 1700, when the French Bourbons took over, though losing the Netherlands. Ferdinand I received the imperial crown, which he passed to his son MAXIMILIAN II and then to his grandsons RUDOLPH II and MATTHIAS.
At the death of Matthias in 1619, the crown passed to FERDINAND II, son of Charles of Styria, second son of Ferdinand I, one of the most convinced supporters of Catholicism and its rights in Germany; and this direct line became extinct in 1740 with the death of CHARLES VI. It was then that CHARLES ALBERT of Bavaria, son of a sister of Charles VI, claimed the throne of Germany; but Charles VI, by a "pragmatic sanction" he had issued, had established that his heir should be his daughter Maria Theresa, married since 1736 to Francis I, duke of Lorraine.
The German empire thus passed to the Habsburg-Lorraine line, which acquired the grand duchy of Tuscany upon the death of Gian Gastone, the last of the Medici (d. 1737), and later the duchy of Modena upon the death of the last Este: Tuscany went to PIER LEOPOLD and then to his son FERDINAND II and his descendants; Modena to the son of Pier Leopold’s brother and to his son.
The Napoleonic Wars led in 1804 to the suppression of the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Germany; other kingdoms had meanwhile been formed: Prussia, Bavaria, Hanover, and Württemberg. FRANCIS II instead assumed the title of Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary and Bohemia; he established to his advantage the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia by uniting the ancient Duchy of Milan with the Italian territories of the suppressed Republic of Venice; and since Tuscany and Modena were in the hands of his relatives, he was able to exercise decisive preponderance over the Italian princes. The reconquest of Hungary during the 18th century led the House of Hapsburg to extend its European and Christian influence along the entire course of the Danube and over all the surrounding countries; but against the dynastic absolutism of its policy, which nonetheless ensured order and good administration, new tendencies were arising. While the German nation shifted its center of action from Vienna to Berlin, the other nations—Italy, Bohemia, Hungary, and later the South Slavs—aspired to total independence. The House of Hapsburg understood too late that with the progress of time it became desperate to maintain its ancient positions, even though these had generally been anything but harmful; and in the world war of 1914–18 it was overwhelmed together with that of the Hohenzollerns of Prussia, which had exerted every effort to supplant it in the direction of European politics.
The last of the Hapsburgs to reign were: FERDINAND I, son of Emperor FRANCIS, who, because of the insurrections of 1848, had abdicated in favor of FRANCIS JOSEPH, son of his brother. After the latter’s long reign, which ended during the war in 1916, he was succeeded by CHARLES FRANCIS JOSEPH, his great-grandson, who ceased to reign two years later and died in exile at Madeira, a prisoner of the Allies, having largely lost the patrimonial fortune of the house.
ASBURY, FRANCIS. — Founder of American Methodism, b. in 1745 at Handsworth, near Birmingham, England, d. in 1816 at Spottsylvania, near Richmond. From his youth he was a follower of John Wesley, who in 1767 admitted him among the “itinerant ministers,” that is, those who, according to Wesley’s