I am SO glad that you’re aware of the Serbian state’s involvement in the assassination. Because we eventually joined the Allies (and because they had better war propagandists), we’ve tended to swallow the “Austrian aggression versus plucky Serbs” bit hook line and sinker. I’ve always said that Austria was wholly justified in its ultimatum to the Serbs and a punitive war. Just look at what we did to Afghanistan after 9/11! However, when it became clear things were going to spiral out of control, they should have put the brakes on. No party is blameless in what’s to come, but some (like Serbia) deserve more blame than others.
All that is true, but the actual war was only triggered by this spark, not explained by it. IMO the French, Russians and Germans were all eager for war regardless of casus belli – as pointed out earlier, the war could have started years before. Indeed, it might have started a generation earlier, but at that time Victoria was alive and her daughters were on everyone’s thrones and so there was no convenient way for the husbands to manage to get it started…
The French after all didn’t give a damn about Serbia, and if they didn’t want to chastise the Germans for their embarrassing losses in the last war they could easily have ignored (or better yet not signed in the first place) the treaty with Russia. Meanwhile the Germans had the idea they had been boxed in and closed out of trade and colonial opportunities around the world and wanted to punish their rivals for treating them so unfairly. Then later on, when they should have known better, the Italians joined in with the idea of just grabbing some territory from Austria while everyone was busy on other fronts and managed to sacrifice an entire generation of young men to Austrian artillery.
I agree that the French and Russians were eager for war. Germany, not so much. But I’ll save my comments about all of that until the relevant sections of this great series.
The other thing to realize is that letting the inmates be in charge of a pan-Slavic country that’s religious intolerant tends to not be a good idea in that part of the world. When all those factors finally came together, we had the 1990s Balkans. While Serbia in 1914 really wanted Bosnia as part of a nation-state with themselves, only 2/3rds of Bosnia’s population were Serbs–Eastern Orthodox slavs. The rest were Roman Catholics, Protestants, or Muslim…and it’s maybe too simple to judge, but it seems possible that things would’ve gone pear-shaped for those minorities in Bosnia pretty quickly. (And yes, one of the shooters in Sarajevo was a muslim, but you sort of get the feeling that he was kind of in a real world version of Dave Chappelle’s black KKK member. “Thanks for the help with the assassination attempt, Muhamed. Now we’re going to ethnically cleanse you and your family.”)
Again, read The Sleepwalkers for a very in-depth discussion of this. It is fascinating, and fairly compellingly dispels the whole “accidental war” theory. Russian in particular (through its fragmented government) was becoming extremely aggressive in its support/policy toward Serbia, and it is pretty clear to me that the notion of a war that would start because of the Balkans was clearly in the leaders’ respective minds well ahead of actual events. Russian and France in particular did a lot of negotiating and treaty shuffling to actually make it clear that France would still come to Russia’s aid over a fight started in the Balkans (including one arguably started by Russian aggression/policy).
They did, yes. And only the Russian and French diplomatic books (compilations of official diplomatic correspondence, agreements, and so on) released after the war contain outright forgeries brought to light by later historians. Why replace the real documents with forgeries? To hide the damning truth, obviously. But more on this later, I’m sure.
Dan Carlin goes into amazing detail about this period in one of my favorite podcasts of all time. That’s part 1
Yes I’ve already listened to it (and it is amazing just like all of Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcasts) but I didn’t want to hijack triggercut’s thread. :)
Anyways, now that it’s out there, I will second the recommendation.
It hadn’t been much of a vacation, so far for Franz and Sophie. It had been unseasonably cool most of the week, overcast and bringing the first rains in Sarajevo in weeks. The happy couple had done some antiquing on Saturday the 27th perhaps looking for a souvenir to bring home to their chateau.
On the 27th, a fellow named Danilo Ilic–a key lieutenant in the Black Hand–had delivered guns and handmade bombs with timing fuses to his assasins. To those with the bombs, he demonstrated how they were to be set. The assassin would simply need to strike the percussive cap on the top of the bomb on something and the fuse inside would activate. Throw it, take your cyanide, guten tag Franz Ferdinand.
To the men he delivered pistols to, he tried to take the opportunity to give them a little hands-on target practice. One of the shooters in the group was a sickly and tubercular Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip. More than any of the other teens pressed into action here, Princip was the one who was absolutely a true believer in The Cause. If the nerve of others might fail, Ilic thought, not this one.
(Gavrilo Princip’s mugshot.)
The problem with Princip however, wasn’t the youth’s nerve. Instead it was his aim. Ilic and Princip had found themselves a spot in a nearby copse of trees for target practice, but even from ten feet away, Princip was missing the foot-wide tree trunk. Ilic likely realized that Princip had no chance of actually assassinating anyone, so he’d stationed Princip in the middle of the five other assassins. Princip and his terrible aim would hopefully not be of much matter in this.
(Princip’s Fabrique Nationale .380. I misspoke in an earlier post–it’s a semi-automatic. It has a clip that feeds the ammo into the chamber, but one bullet per pull.)
Sunday the 28th was the first brilliantly sunny day since the Archduke and Duchess had arrived. The motorcade formed up around a train station near Bad Ilidze, and then headed out to a military barracks. The Archduke–as Secretary General of the the Army–inspected the troops and their quarters. “Good show. Let’s go.”
The motorcade headed off down a street called the Appel Quay towards the town hall of Sarajevo, where the mayor would do some sort of happy proclamation, the Archduke would speak, and then the motorcade would wend it’s way back up the Quay towards the barracks and train station and that would be that.
The motorcade passed a Bosnian youth named Muhamed Mehmedbasic, the only Muslim in the group of would-be assassins. He had a bomb. He was stationed next to another member of the group he’d just met the night before. The motorcade approached. The two boys looked at one another. They looked at the motorcade.
They looked at the two burly cops who’d inexplicably moved just a few feet away from them moments before. Neither would-be assassin did anything. The motorcade rolled by.
Sophie and Ferdinand sat in the back of the car, a German open top touring car. They looked, frankly, ridiculous. The Archduke was decked out all his best military regalia, including a ridiculous plumed hat and stiff tunic coat. Sophie held a parasol aloft to block the sun, even though it was buffeted by the flow of air from sitting in the open-air car. They looked like a couple of rubes from the sticks headed out to a flea market. He sat there looking stoic because that was pretty much how he looked. She waved cheerily at everyone like a game show contestant who’d won a ride in a car as a prize.
(The Archduke and Duchess enter their car in Sarajevo. Told you his hat was ridiculous.)
The motorcade approached an overpass that spanned the Miljacka River. Stationed there was Nedeljko Cabrinovic, another assassin. He was armed with a bomb. As the motorcade approached he struck the percussion cap on the top of the bomb against a lamp post. There was a loud CRACK as the cap ignited the fuse.
He stepped forward and threw his bomb.
Historical accounts tell us that Lt. Col Count Franz Von Harrach–riding in the car with the Archduke and Duchess–saw the bomb and deflected it with his arm. Other accounts say that the military governor of Bosnia, Oskar Potiorek, deflected it. Still others say the driver of the car saw what was happening, and sped up. In any event, the bomb bounced off the retracted roof of the car above the trunk, deflected off, and rolled under the next car in the procession where it blew up. Amazingly, no one died when this happened, but it did seriously injure everyone in the trailing car, as well as some bystanders. Even Sophie was mildly grazed on the neck by a piece of shrapnel in the car ahead.
Cabrinovic, happy to have thrown his bomb, drank his vial of cyanide and jumped into the Miljacka River. These grand flourishes always sound better in stories than they actually happen. That cyanide was expired and only made him puke. The “river” Miljacka was showing the effects of the Sarajevo drought that spring. It was all of 6 inches deep. The first conspirator was arrested and taken into custody.
(Everyone gets this caption wrong. This is actually Cabrinovic being arrested after being fished out of the 6-inch deep river he’d jumped into.)
Princip heard about the commotion from where he stood, the next in line. The motorcade had jumped to an alternate route and sped past. There was no point to even try to shoot.
It was over. His chance to be a hero, dashed. Not quite willing to give up, the man with an appointment at history headed up the street to Schiller’s Delicatessen. It was near a corner, and perhaps if things calmed down a bit, they’d roll the motorcade past again. It was unlikely…but maybe.
At the Town Hall, the mayor made a ridiculous speech about how all Sarajevo was happy to see the Archduke (you know, so happy they threw a bomb at him). Franz Ferdinand gave a brief, uncharismatic speech. He also announced a change in plans. He wanted to go to the hospital to check on and pay respects to the men in the car who’d been hurt by the bomb.
His speech concluded, he asked Sophie if she might take a quick armed escort back to Bad Ilidze. She would have none of it, she wanted to be with her husband. Potiorek, the governor of Bosnia, overheard and joked that it was likely safe as houses anyway. “Serbian radicals are usually only good for one assassination attempt per day.”
It’s unlikely anyone laughed.
(cont)
(moar)
They all piled back into the roadster for the trip to the hospital. The driver was advised to step on it and do double time. No point in giving anyone else a shot at the royal couple. Better safe than sorry.
The Appel Quay was still clear of traffic, still lined with a few onlookers here and there. The driver got confused and led the entire procession down the original motorcade route, instead of detouring off for the hospital.
Gavrilo Princip was loitering about outside Schiller’s Delicatessen, thinking he’d just go back to his room, wondering if he’d ever get a chance to sacrifice himself for the cause. Perhaps he’d just drink the cyanide. That would show them. He’d die on the street and that would be paperwork and complications.
Just then, he noticed commotion on the Quay. Improbably, the motorcade was speeding towards him. His heart leapt. Here was his chance!
Sadly, though, he noticed the motorcade was trucking along at a decent clip. He was already a terrible shot. There was no way he’d hit anyone but an innocent bystander if he shot. All to rubbish. Nothing was working out right.
In the car, Potiorek and the Lieutenant Colonel realized they were headed the wrong way, away from the hospital. They shouted at the driver that he was going the wrong way. The driver realized and nodded. Did either of the distinguished gentlemen know the best way back to the hospital?
Potiorek shouted that the best way seemed to him just to turn around and head back the way they’d come and detour off the route back by the town hall.
“Up here, at the corner by Schiller’s. Pull in and back up and we’ll head back.”
Princip was disconsolate as he stood watching the motorcade head towards him…but was it slowing? Really? Suddenly the car pulled into the street at the corner.
It…stopped. Cold.
Gavrilo realized his chance had come. He nearly dropped his Belgian-made, Browning .380 semi-automatic pistol as he withdrew it from inside his coat. The car was just at a stop, ready to reverse.
Princip simply walked up, five feet away. He pulled the trigger, and again. The Archduke and Duchess, along with Governor Potiorek simply stared at him, open mouthed from the car.
He’d missed. Again. Damn his aim. He tried to put the gun to his own head but it was wrestled away by bystanders. He managed to get a hand free to take his cyanide. It made him vomit, but nothing else. He was grabbed and arrested almost immediately.
Potiorek immediately slapped at the driver to MOVE! The roadster was slammed into reverse. Lt. Colonel von Harrach–stationed on the running boards as a bodyguard–heard the Archduke cough and felt something splash his cheek. It wasn’t spittle; it was blood. Franz Ferdinand, sitting upright, looked surprised.
Sophie, alarmed by this, rounded on him. “For heaven’s sake,” she cried, “What’s happened to you?” Then she suddenly slumped over, her head in her husband’s lap.
Potiorek had seen enough. He ordered the driver to speed them to his own nearby residence, where a surgeon was on duty. Von Harrach heard the Archduke cry out in alarm at his wife. “Oh Sophie dear, don’t die. You must stay alive for our children!” Von Harrach asked the Archduke if he knew where he’d been hit. The Archduke, his eyes welling uncharacteristically, simply said “It’s nothing. It’s nothing.” Von Harrach tried to reassure him. Sophie had seen the blood in his mouth. She’d fainted. She was fine. “It’s nothing. It’s nothing” came the reply, and again. Each time a bit fainter.
They arrived at the Governor’s residence within 5-10 minutes. The Archduke was carried inside and laid out on a table in the parlor. Sophie was carried to a bedroom. She’d fainted, and didn’t need to wake up to see her stricken husband.
The surgeon and the other men cut through the thick military tunic that Franz Ferdinand was wearing. His shirt underneath was soaked with blood, and the undershirt underneath it was completely sodden. The wound could be seen just above his collarbone, at the side of his neck. There was no pulse–he was already dead. (An autopsy would reveal that the bullet nicked his jugular vein, and he’d simply bled out.)
In the bedroom, two maids attended to Sophie. They’d noticed, however, that she felt cold. Too cold. They began to remove her dress, and then noticed some blood in her petticoats and undergarments. They continued to strip her, and discovered the bloody bullet hole just inside her hip. A bullet (which Princip would maintain at trial was meant for Potiorek) had come through the thin door of the car and struck her. It nicked her femoral artery. She bled out internally and had died within a moment or two.
At the trial, the only remorse Princip would show was for Sophie. He maintained until he died in prison of tuberculosis that he’d never meant to hit her.
Telegraphs went out to Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Moscow, London.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife had been assassinated in Sarajevo.
That cyanide was expired and only made him puke.
Man, you weren’t kidding about checking the expiration date on the suicide pills…
What a story.
One of the most popular professors at University of Washington was a history professor, and the way he told the assassination story had the entire lecture hall cracking up; it’s so absurd, and yet you think of all the human misery that unfolded from WW1 and that lead to WW2 and then the Cold War to even today, and it’s just tragic comedy of the highest order.
It really is Appointment in Samarra, “If only” kind of stuff, and yes, removed from the tragedy that would follow there’s almost slapstick involved here at times.
Great writing, Triggercut.
The night after the assassinations, Sarajevo was anything but quiet. While Bosnia’s population was a 2/3rds Serb majority, in Sarajevo it was more like 50%, and the Serbs in the city battened down. For the next 24 hours, Bosnian Catholics and Muslims demonstrated in the streets, with black-draped pictures of the Archduke and Duchess and Austrian flag. Windows of Serb-owned businesses and homes were broken. Serbs who grouped together for safety and to fight back found themselves temporarily detained by Austrian military police.
Much of the this outcry was what we’d term today as being of the “astroturf” nature. They were almost certainly orchestrated by Oskar Potiorek, the military governor appointed by Vienna for the province. The Archduke got shot on his turf, he felt like he’d better make a good show of it.
The reaction was quite different just across the border in Belgrade, the Serbian capital. There was outright rejoicing. People hugged and sang in the streets. Bands played Serbian anthems. Newspapers breathlessly reported to the Serbs that the Austro-Hungarians were imprisoning Serbs, torturing, and raping them throughout Austria. (They weren’t but it sure sold special editions.)
In fact, at the highest levels of the Austrian government–the Old Emperor himself–reaction was far more muted and dare it be said–relieved. Franz Joseph had never much liked his heir. He’d rubbed him wrong with everything from marrying a barely-royal to having actual ideas for maybe bringing the wheezing empire into the 20th century. It was all too radical for the staid, sad Emperor. He wrote in his diary that night “It seems God has set right what I could not do myself.”
The news did cause a bit of a sensation, of course. Royals aren’t just assassinated without newspapers throughout Europe taking note and selling papers of their own. It wasn’t huge news, though. Assassination had become something de rigeur in turn of the century politics. In America, we know about William McKinley’s assassination in 1901, but European countries had plenty of their own. In fact, Emperor Franz Joseph had lost his wife, Empress Elisabeth–to an Italian anarchist’s narrow blade in 1898.
The conventional history passed down, then, is that the murders of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Sophie went largely unmourned throughout Europe. That’s sort of true. No one saw it as any sort of precipitating event. France had their sensational murder trial getting ready to start. Italy, England, Belgium, Holland, and even Germany and Russia had other stories of more import. In the States, the assassination was buried in the middle of only the largest papers of record. The dowdy, rather stiff-looking couple weren’t particularly popular anywhere. Sophie’s more common birth kept most other European royalty and heads of state holding the couple at arm’s length, pariahs of a sort.
But…that isn’t to say that the deaths went unmourned. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was on a sailing vacation in Scandinavia when he got the news, and was crushed. While most heads of state shunned the couple, the exciteable Kaiser wasn’t one of them. He’d been hosted by the Archduke and his wife at their home castle, Konopiste. He was expecting the worst, and was actually sort of surprised that he enjoyed his visit. For as stiff and vacant-looking as Franz Ferdinand was, in person he rather impressed the Kaiser by being the most forward-looking Hapsburg he’d ever met. “I can work with this man,” he thought. He was also, it should be said, charmed by Sophie and the three children. Upon hearing the news, he immediately cut short his vacation and returned home. He expressed genuine sadness in his communication with the Emperor and wrote a letter to the children at Konopiste.
The Kaiser wasn’t the only one. While Tsar Nicholas in Moscow sent condolences and declared official mourning, it was of the perfunctory nature. He had far graver concerns at hand, both with his family and ill son, as well as with the continued resurgence of anti-royal rebels in his country. However, King George V and Queen Mary in England were sincere in their condolences. They’d been the only other royals in all of Europe to host both the Archduke and his wife as a couple, and like the Kaiser, they expected the worst. They found Ferdinand to be, if not enlightened at least having open eyes…and they too were charmed by Sophie.
Finally, though, there were three others who almost certainly mourned the assassination. Sophia (who was 13), Maximilian (12) and Ernst (10) were the three children of the murdered couple, who learned of their parents’ death just as Max returned from school to Konopiste. They’d end up going to live with another Duke and the Archduke’s best friend and hunting buddy. When the War ended in 1918, Konopiste was seized because it was in the new nation of Czechoslovakia, but the Austrian government granted their family claim on a small castle in Vienna. The children were educated, married, lived their lives. Sadly, being orphaned by an assassin wasn’t the worst thing that would happen to them.
In 1938, Maximilian especially, but also Ernst, were outspoken critics of the proposed anschluss of Austria by Hitler’s Germany. Not only for wanting to preserve Austrian autonomy, but also because they found Hitler to be odious and dangerous, they loudly urged the country to resist. For their troubles, both were taken into custody after the annexation happened, and both were sent to Dachau where they were tortured, set to hard labor, and barely survived. The experience cut short both men’s lives. Ernst died in 1954, just 49. Maximilian, also plagued by illness after the concentration camps, died in 1962. Sophia, who’d married an Austrian Duke who’d stayed quite silent on the subject of Hitler in 1938 was spared the camps. She lived until 1990. All three have children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren living today.
Tomorrow–Austria formulates a response with the diplomatic finesse one might expect from angry, probably drunk Germanic royalty…
Not many unexpected things happened on the day of June 30, 1914.
Ferdinand and Sophie’s bodies were prepared to lie in state in Vienna. In a purely, cynical and disingenuous fashion, Oskar Potiorek–the military governor for Austria in Bosnia–tamped down the riots and demonstrations. Those would be the riots and demonstrations he’d arranged to take place. History doesn’t record whether everyone involved wore kabuki makeup for this charade.
While folks at low pay-grades were preparing the bodies, the folks at the top were engaging in a seeming round-robin of meetings involving members of the general staff, diplomats, espionage experts, the Prime Minister of Hungary, and the Emperor himself. A meeting in this room, then across the hall for a meeting there, then an hour later new information and a meeting on another floor.
It’s here that two of the more odious characters in the march to war enter the story.
Anyone who watched the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is familiar with “Heck of a job, Brownie.” Poor Michael Brown. He wasn’t suited for the job he got, it just sort of dropped into his lap as political payback. A favor returned. Every political group in the world does this, of course. It’s just bad luck when an ill-suited patronage job is suddenly thrust into the spotlight.
And so it was in Vienna in 1914. The two guys who’d have the biggest say in how things would play out over the next month had both made careers of falling up. The critical and delicate handling of Austrian outrage in the wake of the assassination would fall to a pair of perfectly inept proto-Michael Browns.
The first was the chief of the Austrian General Staff–the dude in charge of the military–one Field Marshal Conrad. Conrad was actually kind of good at some things. He was a tireless worker, and peripatetic planner and re-planner. He realized full well the Austro-Hungarian army, numbers not withstanding, was a victim of poor training, poor morale, and possessing horribly outdated equipment. He’d done his best to whip them into a better army for over a decade, to mostly mixed results. It wasn’t for lack of trying, though.
Unfortunately for Conrad, he had one hugely stupid, fatal blind spot: he was obsessed with Austria-Hungary proving the value of his new military and the country’s standing as a great power by engaging in–and winning–a war in the Balkans. It was Conrad’s solution to everything. Ottomans retreating? Austria should invade. Trade initiative with Denmark? Austria should declare war on Serbia. His obsession with the Balkans became so absurd that he was finally relieved as head of the General Staff in 1910…but just then there were two wars in the Balkans and someone decided that Conrad’s “experience” in endlessly plotting invasions there made him valuable. Thus he was promoted again, and thus he’d spend most of July arguing fiercely that a military solution with Serbia was the best option.
(Field Marshal Conrad, who’d decided that what ailed his terrible army was that they hadn’t gotten their asses kicked often enough.)
If Conrad was a dangerously incompetent warmonger, the chief diplomat in the Viennese Government might have been exponentially worse. Count Leopold Berchtold, the foreign secretary, was a caricature. If he didn’t exist, someone would’ve invented him. The scion of an old and extremely wealthy family, he’d parlayed that family interest to get himself posted as an ambassador to such cushy gigs as Paris and London, where he spent most of his time drinking, eating, and screwing just about anything that moved. When he was finally promoted to Foreign Secretary, it was mostly because it was his turn to have the job. He knew–and cared–about diplomacy not a whit. That image macro of a dog sitting at a desk with a computer in front of him that says “I have no idea what I’m doing” could’ve been Count Berchtold.
(Berchtold, monocle not included. Yes, he wore one. Lots.)
Just after Berchtold had been appointed as Foreign Secretary (think of him as Secretary of State), there were two Balkan wars among the new countries there. Many in Vienna thought that Austria could’ve expanded its territory–or at least checked the growing Serbian nuisance–by getting involved. Berchtold–likely unable to find Serbia or the Balkans on a map–had acted slowly, and taken heavy criticism when both “wars” ended before the Austro-Hungarian army could mobilize. He also was determined to show decisive action now.
What was needed in the official response was a deft touch, an angry, but light hand. A reaching out to other embassies across Europe. Any sort of independent investigation in Serbia (by the British, for instance) would’ve easily uncovered official state involvement in the plotting of the assassination, and those involved could be brought to justice and Russia and France would have to abandon their meddling in Belgrade.
None of that happened of course. Berchtold and Conrad eagerly plotted ways to to go to war, almost from the very start.
Tomorrow: Austria-Hungary, or how to roll snake-eyes on every civilization advance available…
Great work, triggercut. Please bring us more dispatches from the Golden Age of the Monocle!
Not very much going on right now in Europe in 1914. England still preoccupied with troubles in Ireland, for instance. In France, the trial of Henriette Caillaux is ready to start and President Poincare is making final preparations for a trip later in the month (more to come on that.) In Moscow, the Tsar is relieved that his hemophiliac son Alexei is feeling a bit better after a small fever.
In America on July 3rd and 4th, they’re preparing for Independence Day celebrations, as well as having aged Civil War veterans parade about to commemorate the 51st anniversary of Gettysburg.
In Vienna on July 3rd and 4th, the Archduke and his wife will lie in state in glass caskets, before being laid to rest in the family vault.
The seemingly endless meetings amongst Berchtold, Conrad, other military and foreign service staff and Prime Minister Istvan Tisza representing the Hungarian half of Austria-Hungary in that peculiar “dual monarchy” system are starting to coalesce around a plan. Given Austrian luck in the past 100 years, it’s likely to be a disaster.
It’s hard for me to read about countries in history and not sort of think of them as sides in a game of Civilization. In Civ, you can pull up a graph that shows you the rises and falls of empires over time. If we had such a graph of Austria-Hungary in 1914, it would show a country falling off a cliff when it came to power and general health.
Wasn’t always that way though. In fact, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Austrians–or if you like, the Hapsburg dynasty–was in full ascension. They were shrewd diplomats and outstanding marry-ers. Hapsburgs were constantly marrying off girl and boy Hapsburgs and then blitzing in with claims to the throne in a generation, with the full backing of the Vatican. In fact, they controlled so much territory in Europe that Charles V decided it was too damned big. He split the empire into a Spanish branch and an Eastern branch. The Spanish Hapsburgs died out in a few generations, but the Eastern Hapsburgs in Vienna continued to keep on keepin’ on. Austria was THE big central European country.
The Austrians believed two things to their core that made sense in 1570, but not so much sense in 1870. They believed:
- They were the rightful inheritors of the term Holy Roman Empire. Focus on the “Holy” and “Roman” part here. They were completely bound up with The Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church.
- They were the empire that would one day be a pan-Germanic one in central Europe.
Those two things started to become difficult to achieve together when this German monk named Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of a Catholic church. The Reformation is on, and whether because the appeals of Lutheranism and Calvinism felt good to the Germans in northern Europe or whether it was just because Luther was their German homeboy, The seemingly dozens of small Germanic independent states north of Austria became Protestants.
Still, Austria figured that was a complication they could work around.
Then Napoleon happened, and then things really went to hell for Austria.
It wasn’t so much the number of Austrians who fought with and against Nappy and died that was the problem. It was the peace. Political scholars always say it’s important to “win the peace”. Austria managed to spectacularly lose the peace after the end of Napoleon.
Shouldn’t have been that way. The Austrians were the ones that called the big peace conference to divvy up Europe in 1815. They had home field, too, because it all happened in Vienna, and was known as the Congress Of Vienna. In a series of negotiations and meetings, the Austrians managed to lay the seeds that would result in the rotten flower they’d grow into by the start of WWI.
At the Congress Of Vienna, the small but powerful Germanic state of Prussia had one goal: keep Austria from setting things in motion to absorb all the other smaller German countries. It’s easy to see why: Prussia would’ve been isolated, surrounded by an Austrian amoeba of German-speaking territories. It’d be only a matter of time before Prussia got eaten themselves. The Prussians weren’t big enough and didn’t care to rule those little German principalities themselves (what a difference 50 years makes), but they sure didn’t want Austria to get them either. They needed them to stay independent.
And so, working with Russia and the Tsar and with Talleyrand from the new French Republic and with the English ministers, they hatched a pretty brilliant set of tradeoffs. Prussia would get a little slice of territory in the west–the Rheinland and Westphalia. Russia would get everyone to recognize their claims on Finland, and be ceded a big chunk of Poland. The German states would stay independent. To keep Austria happy, they asked “Whaddya think of these lovely territories to the east and south? Lots bigger than all those little German countries…”
To everyone’s surprise, Austria thought that sounded swell. BIG MISTAKE!!!
It didn’t look that way at the time. Austria probably thought they’d fleeced everyone, because they came away with more territory than anyone else except the Russkies. The thing is, the Hapsburgs couldn’t imagine a time when the various states under the control of the Austrian Empire wouldn’t want to be vassals to them. “Who doesn’t like being Austrian?”, they thought.
Well, the revolutions of 1848 established that pretty much no one really wanted to be Austrian, if they could help it. Nationalism was being born and only through help were the Austrians able to put down the Hungarian rebellion and other smaller revolts.
See, what the Austrians had blundered into with the Congress of Vienna was giving Prussia an only slightly larger country…but one where everyone spoke German, shared a common religion, and dreamt of autobahns and Volkswagens. Austria, on the other hand, was a large and unwieldy country where 3/5ths of the people were Slavic in ethnic heritage. 15 different ethnicities. 13 different languages. Good luck with that.
In 1866 Prussia and Bismarck decided it was time to get their German on. They fought Austria in Central Europe’s version of the Civil War. It wasn’t much of a war. The Austrians got their asses kicked and forever finally ceded the idea of being THE Germanic country in Europe. Suddenly those upstart Prussians put it all together and in the blink of an eye, Germany was born. For their part, the Austrians discovered that a big chunk of their empire, in the form of the state of Hungary, wanted out.
Franz Joseph–who’d become Emperor during the problems in 1848–put together the “Dual Monarchy” idea. Austria would be known as Austria-Hungary, and the Hungarians would have an equal say in the governing of the country. If that sounds like a smart way to make an inclusive government…well, guess again. No law was a law until it had been approved by both houses of the Austrian Imperial Council. (That was their version of Parliament; “Imperial Council” sounded cooler to them. Hard to argue that it doesn’t have a sort of Sith/Death Star charm to it.) Then both houses of the Hungarian parliament would vote. Imagine passing laws and having to get them through four chambers of a legislative branch.
Yeah. No.
What the Hungarian side of things ended up doing was essentially obstructing a whole lot of whatever the folks in Vienna wanted to to do. It was a bureaucracy run amok (not for nothing did this country breed a guy like Franz Kafka).
And so as we head into the dog days of the summer of 1914, it’s important to think of the Austro Hungarian government as being a bloated, tottering edifice on the edge of collapse.
NEXT UP: The French and their damned vacations.
Oh good, it’s not just me. “Well, obviously they fell apart, they hadn’t built enough happiness-boosting buildings!”