The area that is now Austria was settled in pre-Roman times by various Celtic tribes, having been the core of the Hallstatt culture by the 6th century BC.[27] The city of Hallstatt, in fact, has the oldest archaeological evidence of the Celts in Europe.[28] The Celtic Kingdom of Noricum that included most of modern Austria and parts of modern Slovenia was conquered by the Roman Empire in 16 BC and made a province called Noricum which lasted until 476.[29] The regions of today's Austria which were not located within the province of Noricum were divided between the Roman provinces of Pannonia, which encompassed parts of eastern Austria, and Raetia, which encompassed the areas of present-day Vorarlberg and Tyrol.[30][31] Present-day Petronell-Carnuntum in eastern Austria was an important army camp turned capital city in what became known as the Pannonia Superior. Carnuntum was home to 50,000 people for nearly 400 years.[32] Middle Ages After the fall of the Roman Empire, the area was first invaded by the Germanic Rugii which made this region part of their "Rugiland".[33] In 487, most of modern Austria was conquered by Odoacer, a barbarian soldier and statesman from the Middle Danube, which incorporated most of today's Austria in his Kingdom of Italy. By 493, it was conquered by the Germanic Ostrogoths which created their own kingdom, the Ostrogothic Kingdom.[34] Following the Kingdom's fall the area was invaded by the Alemanni, Baiuvarii, Slavs, and Avars.[35][36] Charlemagne, King of the Franks, conquered the area in 788, encouraged colonisation, and introduced Christianity.[35] As part of Eastern Francia, the core areas that now encompass Austria were bequeathed to the house of Babenberg. The area was known as the marchia Orientalis and was given to Leopold of Babenberg in 976.[37] The first record showing the name Austria is from 996, where it is written as Ostarrîchi, referring to the territory of the Babenberg March.[37] In 1156, the Privilegium Minus elevated Austria to the status of a duchy. In 1192, the Babenbergs also acquired the Duchy of Styria. With the death of Frederick II in 1246, the line of the Babenbergs was extinguished.[38] As a result, Ottokar II of Bohemia effectively assumed control of the duchies of Austria, Styria, and Carinthia.[38] His reign came to an end with his defeat at Dürnkrut at the hands of Rudolph I of Germany in 1278.[39] Thereafter, until World War I, Austria's history was largely that of its ruling dynasty, the Habsburgs. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Habsburgs began to accumulate other provinces in the vicinity of the Duchy of Austria. In 1438, Duke Albert V of Austria was chosen as the successor to his father-in-law, Emperor Sigismund. Although Albert himself only reigned for a year, henceforth every emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was a Habsburg, with only one exception. The Habsburgs began also to accumulate territory far from the hereditary lands. In 1477, Archduke Maximilian, only son of Emperor Frederick III, married the heiress Maria of Burgundy, thus acquiring most of the Netherlands for the family.[40][41] In 1496, his son Philip the Fair married Joanna the Mad, the heiress of Castile and Aragon, thus acquiring Spain and its Italian, African, Asian, and New World appendages for the Habsburgs.[40][41] In 1526, following the Battle of Mohács, Bohemia and the part of Hungary not occupied by the Ottomans came under Austrian rule.[42] Ottoman expansion into Hungary led to frequent conflicts between the two empires, particularly evident in the Long War of 1593 to 1606. The Turks made incursions into Styria nearly 20 times,[43] of which some are cited as "burning, pillaging, and taking thousands of slaves".[44] In late September 1529, Suleiman the Magnificent launched the first siege of Vienna, which unsuccessfully ended, according to Ottoman historians, with the snowfalls of an early beginning winter. 17th and 18th centuries The Battle of Vienna in 1683 broke the advance of the Ottoman Empire into Europe. During the long reign of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor following the successful defence of Vienna against the Turks in 1683, under the command of the King of Poland John III Sobieski,[45] the Great Turkish War resulted in most of Hungary being controlled by Austria. This arrangement was formalized in the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699. Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor relinquished many of the gains the empire made in the previous years. He enjoyed the imminent extinction of the House of Habsburg. Charles VI was willing to offer concrete advantages in territory and authority in exchange for recognition of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713. Therefore, his daughter Maria Theresa was recognized as his heir. With the rise of Prussia, the Austria–Prussia rivalry began in Germany. Austria participated, together with Prussia and Russia, in the first and the third of the three Partitions of Poland in 1772 and 1795 respectively. From that time, Austria became the birthplace of classical music and played host to different composers including Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Schubert. 19th century See also: Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary The Congress of Vienna met in 1814–15. The objective of the Congress was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. Austria later became engaged in a war with Revolutionary France, which was highly unsuccessful in the beginning, with successive defeats at the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte, meaning the end of the old Holy Roman Empire in 1806. Two years earlier,[46] the Empire of Austria was founded. From 1792 to 1801, the Austrians had suffered 754,700 casualties.[47] In 1814, Austria was part of the Allied forces that invaded France and brought to an end the Napoleonic Wars. It emerged from the Congress of Vienna in 1815 as one of the continent's four dominant powers and a recognised great power. The same year, the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund) was founded under the presidency of Austria. Because of unsolved social, political, and national conflicts, the German lands were shaken by the 1848 revolutions aiming to create a unified Germany.[48] Map of the German Confederation with its 39-member sovereign states The various different possibilities for a united Germany were: a Greater Germany, or a Greater Austria or just the German Confederation without Austria at all. As Austria was not willing to relinquish its German-speaking territories to what would become the German Empire of 1848, the crown of the newly formed empire was offered to the Prussian King Fr