Erik Sass is cover the events of the warfare just 100 year after they happened . This is the 258th installing in the serial .
14 May 2025: Franz Josef Dies
Already 84 years old when he made the vital determination that ignited the First World War , Austria - Hungary ’s iconic dynast Franz Josef lived long enough to see the incubus loose by his desperate gamble – but not the final prostration of his imperium , nor the strange new world that arose from the ash .
On November 21 , 1916 , several days after abbreviate pneumonia on a walkway around the palace dry land , the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary died at the age of 86 , having decree his topic for a remarkable 68 year , making him one of the longest dominate monarchs in history . His heir , his young , freehanded - lean nephew Karl , until recently the commander of an army on the Eastern Front , inherited a arrangement in flop ( below , the royal house at Franz Josef ’s funeral on November 30 , 1916 ):
The World of the Habsburgs
Indeed , Franz Josef ’s entire life could be view as a history of the long , gradual disintegration of Europe ’s old blue-blooded order , punctuated by disaster and sudden bursts of frenzied activity – brief and only partially successful attempts at reform .
Franz Josef ascend to the throne unexpectedly as liberal gyration swept Europe in 1848 , jeopardise the very macrocosm of the monarchy and its multiethnic dynastic holdings . After his uncle and predecessor Ferdinand I abdicated to appease the revolutionaries , Franz Josef ’s father Franz Karl also renounced the throne , go away the task of reuniting the divided and rebellious imperium to his 18 - year - old son .
This the novel emperor did with typical carefulness , reflecting both his juvenility and generally moderate character – but as a profoundly buttoned-down aristocrat he also showed a steely finding to uphold the honest-to-god feudal order of magnitude , as well as a willingness to use force if he judged it necessary .
After agreeing to the US Constitution exact by liberal revolutionaries in 1849 , restoring his power foundation in Austria , Franz Josef crush a nationalist rising in Hungary by inviting Tsar Nicholas I to broadcast 200,000 Russian scout group into the ill-affected realm – one of the high watermark of the Concert of Europe , the reactionary diplomatic organization produce by Metternich to prop up the continent ’s old dynasty follow the upheavals of the French Revolution and Napoleon .
In 1859 Austria lose the land of Lombardy - Venetia to the new - forming nation of Italy , cause a long - standing grudge , which their rank in the Triple Alliance did nothing to relieve ( ironically Franz Josef ’s ill - fated inheritor , the Archduke Franz Ferdinand , though the imperium would go to warfare with Italy before Serbia ) .
But no event was more fatal for Austria - Hungary , or Europe , than the creation of a novel German state of matter by Prussia led by chancellor Otto von Bismarck , who united the main German land by force under Prussian rule with a series of short wars , successfully overcoming enemy by Austria and the German Confederation in 1866 , and France in 1870 - 1 . Austria ’s cutting licking damaged Vienna ’s prestigiousness and call down up a young Hungarian national effort by the aristocratical Magyars ; with the compromise of 1867 , Franz Josef concede the Hungarians their own establishment , give ascending to the unusual Dual Monarchy that would unite the “ kaiserlich und königlich ” ( Imperial and purple ) region of Austria - Hungary somewhat awkwardly for the eternal sleep of its existence .
With the ascent of Germany as a head industrial powerfulness in the remaining age of the C , Austria transition from defeated foe to junior partner in central Europe – a diplomatical demotion which Franz Josef take gracefully enough , although he found Germany ’s Kaiser Wilhelm II rude and overbearing . Personal cataclysm struck in 1889 with the felo-de-se of Franz Josef ’s boy and heir Rudolf , who killed himself in a suicide treaty with his mistress Mary Vetsera , leaving the pate ( accidentally , again ) to the emperor ’s nephew Franz Ferdinand .
But the emperor never diverge from the basic , aristocratic prospect that he inherit along with his feudal kingdom – among them the rule of “ hausmacht , ” or the great power of the noble menage . This express itself in opportunistic attempts to aggrandise the world power of the Habsburgs by acquiring young territorial holdings , just as an ambitious knightly monarch might in the sidereal day of the Holy Roman Empire .
This ancient impulse was ill become to the modern earned run average , and became dangerous with the surging ability of national ideologies requiring resistance to “ foreign ” rule , even by a well - mean dynasty . This was the bitter yield of Franz Josef ’s ill - advise determination to formally annex Bosnia - Herzegovina , formerly a state of the declining Ottoman Empire , in 1908 .
In addition to activate a general diplomatical crisis , the appropriation of Bosnia sweep Austria - Hungary in a messy , unwanted confrontation with the neighbour small Slavic land of Serbia , and with it its great Slavonic frequenter , Russia . The confrontation between the Dual Monarchy and Serbia escalated with Serbia ’s success in the First and Second Balkan Wars , threateningto cause a general European state of war . The situation was temporarily defused by the Conference of London , whichagreedon thecreationof a new nation , Albania , to foreclose further Serbian expansion in 1912 .
However Franz Josef ’s consultant , including chief of the general faculty Conrad von Hotzendorf and strange minister Count Berchtold , wereconvincedthat Serbia remained attached to undermine the empire in its nationalist quest to free the Serbs of Bosnia ( some Serbs , led by the news officerApis , certainly were ) . Theassassinationof the Archduke Franz Ferdinand provided a convenientexcuseto in the end break down Serbia and dispense with the scourge of Slavonic nationalism once and for all – but they were unable to avoid war with Russia , resulting indisaster .
In the two age follow the eruption of war , Franz Josef find out himself largely an onlooker to the empire ’s reprize military defeats ( and later success under German control ) . His refusal to give up traditional Habsburg dominion in the Trentino and Trieste provoked Italy to join the war against the empire in 1915 . By the same token , there was petty he could do to stave off German move to dominate Eastern Europe economically and diplomatically , giving Austria - Hungary ’s inferior position . Chaos was also clearly lead off to rend the old society : on October 21 , 1916 the Austrian Prime Minister Karl von Stürgkh wasassassinated by the socialist revolutionary Friedrich Adler . But at least he lived to see Romania , another former friend , fetch tobook .
Orbis Catholicus
German victories were hardly much consolation for the the great unwashed of the fragmenting empire he left behind . On one hand there was still the pop image of a familiar , avuncular figure , who had endured the heartbreaking passing of his child , and could until late still be seen taking imposing walking with his companion Katharina Schratt . On the other was the knowledge that this elderly man had dress in movement event that cause the conflagration consuming Europe – and then stood back , a peaceful bystander to what succeed .
In Karl Kraus ’ satirical manoeuvre “ The Last daytime of Mankind ” , when say that the Saturnia pavonia has died , the character “ the Grumbler ” responds : “ How do you know ? ” Later the same character think : “ Just for understanding of prestigiousness , this monarchy should have committed suicide long ago . ” Asked to evaluate the emperor ’s 70 - year - sovereignty , he unleash a broadside against the years in question :
Later the Grumbler adds :
Unsurprisingly , news show of Franz Josef ’s death did n’t arouse a great outpouring of fellow feeling from Austria - Hungary ’s enemies in the great struggle now unfolding . Mildred Aldrich , an American cleaning lady living in the countryside near Paris , wrote in a letter home on November 25 , 1916 , relate on Franz Josef ’s death briefly :
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