Reichstadt Agreement

On the occasion of the Balkan crisis, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary and Russian Tsar Alexander II met on 8 July 1876 for secret talks, the results of which were later termed the Reichstadt Agreement (also: Reichstadt Convention) by historians for the sake of brevity. Both emperors were in an alliance with each other and the German Empire in the League of the Three Emperors, or Dreikaiserbund. Present were also the Russian and Austro-Hungarian foreign ministers, Prince Alexander Gorchakov of Russia and Count Gyula Andrássy of Austria-Hungary. The closed meeting took place on July 8 in the Bohemian city of Reichstadt (now Zákupy).

One week after Montenegro's declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire, the monarchs verbally agreed on non-intervention in the Serbian-Ottoman war and in advance on the neutrality of Austria-Hungary in a possible war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. There are only partially contradictory records of the secret verbal agreement on both sides.

In the event of a victory of the Ottoman Empire over Serbia and Montenegro, it was agreed to restore the pre-war borders. The Christians were to be protected and Montenegro was to become independent within its existing borders. Serbia was not to become independent, but Ottoman fortresses were not to be rebuilt. Administrative reforms were to be carried out in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the event of a Serbian and Montenegrin victory, the Balkans were divided into zones of interest, the annexation of Bosnian-Herzegovinian territories by Austria-Hungary and the borders of Balkan states were discussed, although the extent remained unclear

The later Budapest Convention of 1877 confirmed the main points, but when the war concluded with the Treaty of San Stefano in 1878, the terms of the treaty were quite different, which led to Austro-Hungarian insistence on convening a revision at the Congress of Berlin later that year. Those events laid the background for the subsequent Crisis of 1885-1888 and ultimately World War I.