Franz Joseph was born in Vienna, the oldest son of Archduke Franz Karl and Princess Sophie of Bavaria. Because his uncle, Emperor Ferdinand, was weak-minded, and his father unambitious and retiring, the young Archduke "Franzl" was brought up by his mother as a future Emperor with emphasis on devoutness, responsibility and diligence. At the age of 13 young Archduke Franz started a career in the Austrian army. From that point onward, he normally wore the uniform of a junior officer.

Following the resignation of the Chancellor Prince Metternich during the Revolutions of 1848, the young Archduke, whom it was expected would succeed his uncle on the throne, was appointed Governor of Bohemia on 6 April, but never took up the post. Instead, Franz was sent to the front in Italy, joining Field Marshal Radetzky on campaign on 29 April, receiving his baptism of fire on 5 May at Santa Lucia. By all accounts he handled his first military experience calmly and with dignity. Around the same time, the Imperial Family was fleeing revolutionary Vienna for Innsbruck. Soon, the Archduke was called back from Italy, joining the rest of his family at Innsbruck by mid-June.

Following victory over the Italians in late July, the court felt safe to return to Vienna. But within a few months Vienna again appeared unsafe, and in September the court left again, this time for Olmütz in Moravia. By now, Prince Windischgrätz, the influential military commander in Bohemia, was determined to see the young Archduke soon put onto the throne. It was thought that a new ruler would not be bound by the oaths to respect constitutional government to which Ferdinand had been forced to agree, and that it was necessary to find a young, energetic emperor to replace the kindly, but mentally unfit Emperor. It was thus at Olmütz on 2 December that, by the abdication of his uncle Ferdinand and the renunciation of his father, Franz Joseph succeeded as Emperor of Austria. The name "Franz Joseph" was chosen deliberately to bring back memories of the new Emperor's great-grand-uncle, Emperor Joseph II, remembered as a modernizing reformer.

The new emperor at first pursued a cautious course, granting a constitution in early 1849. At the same time, military campaigns were necessary against the Hungarians, who had rebelled against Habsburg central authority. Franz Joseph was also almost immediately faced with a renewal of the fighting in Italy. Soon, though, the military tide began to turn in favor of Franz Joseph and the Austrian whitecoats. In Hungary,however, the situation was grave. Franz Joseph, sensing a need to secure his right to rule sought help from a reactionary Russia. With this Russian aid the Hungarian revolution was crushed by late summer of 1849. With order now restored throughout the Empire, Franz Joseph felt free to go back on the constitutional concessions he had made, especially as the Austrian parliament, meeting at Kremsier, had behaved, in the young Emperor's view, abominably. The 1849 constitution was suspended, and a policy of absolutist centralism was established.

The next few years saw the seeming recovery of Austria's position on the international scene following the near disasters of 1848–1849. After Schwarzenberg's premature death in 1852, he could not be replaced by statesmen of equal stature, and the Emperor effectively took over himself as prime minister. On February 18, 1853, the Emperor survived an assassination attempt by Hungarian nationalist János Libényi. The 1850s witnessed several failures of Austrian external policy - the Crimean War and break-up with Russia, Austro-Sardinian War of 1859 against armies of the House of Savoy, and Napoleon III. The setbacks continued in the 1860s with Austro-Prussian War of 1866. It resulted in Austrian-Hungarian Dualism in 1867. In 1914 the heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo, leading to World War I. Emperor Franz Joseph died in 1916, aged 86, in the middle of the war.