Edward Crankshaw’s The Fall of the House of Habsburg is a breezy, garrulous history of Franz J
Edward Crankshaw’s The Fall of the House of Habsburg is a breezy, garrulous history of Franz Joseph’s long reign over Austria. Crankshaw is full of funny, gossipy stories that are probably bullshit, but are really fun to read. For example he says Franz Joseph’s wife used to fire guns off next to their infant son’s ear in order to toughen him up. The most amusing part of the book is Crankshaw’s Stuart Smalley-like sympathy for Franz Joseph’s mediocrity. Crankshaw’s thesis is that Austria and the Habsburgs faced enormous challenges adjusting to the modern world and Franz Joseph just wasn’t up to the task. But that’s OK. Franz Joseph had been faced with four main tasks: to engender and maintain a system of alliances; to preserve and formalize his leading position in Germany; to break the will or to conquer the hearts of the Hungarians; to maintain his Italian possessions and increase his influence throughout Italy. In all these tasks, one after another, he had failed. No disgrace attached to his failure, unless it is a disgrace as a statesman not to be a visionary. He was an administrator above all, an administrator of great parts, put at the head of a mighty concern which was running down and being attacked on all sides by new forces and new men, all of whom had much to gain by aggression, some of whom had nothing to lose. And, again, on Franz Joseph losing to Bismarck’s Prussia:Here were two able men (Franz Joseph and diplomat Mensdorff) neither of them a major statesman, opposed to a statesman of genius. It seems pointless to argue about who was responsible for what. Austria lacked a Bismarck to oppose a Bismarck it was as simple as that, and the consequences were inevitable. This can only, in honesty, be regretted by those who would like to see a Bismarck at all times conducting the affairs of every country.Crankshaw’s giving him the equivalent of a “Participation” trophy. A for effort, there, Franzi. -- source link
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