Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary
The collapse of the austro-hungarian Empire is perhaps the most fateful and irrevocable result of the Great War. Not quite a decade has passed since the tragicomedy of Versailles, and Germany is a great power once more; so is Russia; the epochal rivalries have shifted ground, but not abated in intensity, while their potential dangers have probably increased. But the Empire of the Habsburgs seems to have vanished for ever.
The dismemberment of austria-hungary in the sacred name of national self-determination has been hailed as a boon. In the sense that it was inevitable, it is a boon; for in politics the obstruction of the inevitable is one of the greatest of evils: its wages are war and revolution. This book is, in one of its aspects, an attempt to re interpret, in the terms of the life and character of a single individual, strategically placed in a position of unique power, the inevitability of what was perhaps the greatest political catastrophe of modern times: the downfall of the ancient Empire of Habsburg, last heir of _charlemagne.
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