The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905–1922

525 Pages·2015·5.63 MB·English

by  Edmond Taylor

First published in 1963
First Skyhorse Publishing edition 2015
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Brian Peterson Cover illustration is of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and was
published in Le Petit Journal in 1914.
Print ISBN: 978-1-63450-601-4
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0051-2
Printed in the United States of America
Acknowledgments
My greatest debt—an immense one—for help on this book is to my wife,
Anne V. Taylor, who in addition to offering sound criticism and encouragement
at every stage of its preparation carried a large part of the burden of research and
collaborated in writing several of the key chapters, notably Chapters 1, 5, 8, 11,
17, and 18. I naturally owe a particular debt for encouragement, criticism, and
advice to John Gunther. I am also indebted for research and advice on several
sections to Dr. Elsa Bernaut, Beata Levy, and Waverley Root, and to Eleanor
Ohman, who also gave devoted secretarial assistance. I am deeply grateful to
Manes Sperber for detailed and invaluable comments on the entire manuscript,
and to Dr. Max Ascoli who offered several excellent suggestions for its
improvement.
Contents
1 Sarajevo: The Shots That Still Ring Round the World
2 Flashbacks to a Sunset World
3 Dynasts and Diplomats
4 The Year of the Red Cock
5 The Fossile Monarchy
6 Sick Man’s Legacy
7 Rehearsal for Doom
8 The Unlucky Brinkmanship of Wilhelm II
9 The Gravediggers of Autocracy
10 Murder, Muddle, and Machiavelli
11 The Failure of Diplomacy
12 The Failure of Arms
13 The Suicide of the Russian Monarchy
14 The Lost Revolution
15 The Age of the Witch Doctor
16 To the Bitter End
17 Exit the Hohenzollerns
18 The Fall of the House of Habsburg
19 The Time of Troubles
20 The Doomed Peace
Bibliography
Maps and Genealogical Charts by Rafael Palacios B :
OSNIA
Also Showing Racial Distribution in Surrounding Territory
EUROPE 1914: The Political Camps
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 1914
THE HOUSE OF ROMANOV
THE HOUSE OF HABSBURG-LORRAINE
THE HOUSE OF HOHENZOLLERN
CHAPTER 1
Sarajevo: The Shots That Still Ring Round the World
ONE of the last known photographs of the Archduke Francis
Ferdinand of Habsburg, heir to the throne of his uncle, the
octogenarian Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary, shows him coming
down the steps of the city hall in Sarajevo a few minutes after eleven on the
morning of Sunday, June 28, 1914. Under the refulgent uniform topped with a
plumed hat his stout body is rigid; his heavy features seem congested and his
neck swollen above the tight-fitting collar; his thick, curling mustaches bristle
like a wild boar’s. Beside him walks his morganatic wife Sophie, the Duchess of
Hohenberg, her plump face looking pinched and taut. They are just about to step
into a waiting car. Both are clearly uneasy, but not yet really frightened. The
local Bosnian dignitaries who line the steps, framing the doomed couple, are not
frightened either; many of them are Moslems—paradoxically the only friends
the Catholic Habsburgs have in this seething, semi-Oriental province, only
recently freed from the Turkish yoke, but already clamoring for a Yugoslavia
which has not yet been born—and they know that man does not evade his fate.
The knowledge is written on their faces; the photograph catches them with their
gloved hands raised to their flower-pot hats in a gesture of awe and resignation,
as one salutes a funeral.
The whole scene, captured for posterity by some anonymous cameraman,
stands out so vividly across the years that in looking at it one almost has the
impression of reliving a personal nightmare. As in certain nightmares,
incredulity wrestles with the sense of doom. Surely someone will cry out a
warning before it is too late, surely someone will try to do something. In fact,
someone does, but it is the wrong thing, and already it is too late. In five minutes
Francis Ferdinand and Sophie will be lying unconscious in their speeding car
bleeding to death from an assassin’s bullets: an ancient dynasty—and with it a
whole way of life—will start to topple; then another and another and another.
Close to nine million men fell in World War I as a direct result of those two
shots fired in a dusty Balkan town roughly half a century ago; then 15,000,000
more in a second, greater conflict implicit in the ending of the first one. The visit
that the Habsburg heir and his wife paid to Sarajevo lasted only a little more than
an hour—not quite the length of a normal feature film—but the drama of those
60 or 70 minutes has literally revolutionized the whole course of modern history;
reconstructing it helps to understand many of the tragic dramas that humanity
has witnessed since.
The view of Sarajevo as one approaches from the southwest is a lovely one.
High but gently sloping mountains almost encircle it. The valley of the Miljacka,
a shallow torrent that cuts the town in two, narrows at its eastern outskirts to a
rugged gorge commanded by the ruined Turkish fort (serai) from which it takes
its name. The old Moslem quarters crown the upper slopes of the natural
amphitheater that rises nearly six hundred feet on both banks of the stream; the
slender minarets of their hundred mosques soar like rhythmed prayer above
whitewashed villas in walled, tangled gardens. The raw modern town below
merely serves as a foil to their enchantment. This is Sarajevo today, and this—
save for the faint scars left by Allied bombing in World War II—is how it
appeared to Francis Ferdinand in the clear morning sunlight, as his open-topped
car, with the gold and black fanion of the Habsburgs fluttering in the fresh
mountain air, drove into town from the railroad station.
Though not a man normally sensitive to beauty, the archduke no doubt was
gladdened by the scene. He demonstrated no more enthusiasm than he habitually
displayed at the opera or at Court balls—a constant complaint of the artistic and
pleasure-loving Viennese—but as he leaned stiffly against the leather-
upholstered seat condescending to the view, his arrogant, morose face, with the
sagging middle-aged jowls—he was fifty-one—seemed unusually cheerful.