Dimitri’s Reviews > For God and Kaiser: The Imperial Austrian Army, 1619-1918 > Status Update

By not mentioning the Black Hand, the note lost an opportunity to line up all the monarchs of Europe in a display of monarchical solidarity against an avowedly terrorist organisation.

The Emperor had experienced many crises in his life & his reign had taught him the incalculable dangers of war. He realised that the assassination was a provocation; he was gently testing the brakes.

Nothing demonstrated better the 84 year old monarch's grip on affairs & commitment to peace than his first meeting with Berchtold, whom he counselled to speak with the outspokenly pro-Serbian Hungarian PM Tisza.

The publication of private memoirs of K.ü.K. Navy officers in the siege of Pekin offer a belated but valuable counterview to the conventional narrative much influenced by the Times correspondent. G.E. Morrison has dominated most Western descriptions, yet his correspondence was prejudiced with regards to the Austrians. The contingent was small, 36 out of 420 defenders, but it contributed a Maxim gun.

The uncoordinated attacks upon the heights of Hohenlinden crippled the Austrian army badly enough to put it out of the War of the Second Coalition. It was rebuilt, but the Emperor, focused on Italy, repeated the error of not giving command of the principal theatre (Rhine/Danube area) to archduke Charles. Napoleon himself went for the jugular at Ulm.

Lulled by the wildly over optimistic reports of the incompetent & boorish British envoy, Frederick was encouraged to think bribing a Russian minister would secure neutrality. He even denuned his units in East Prussia. On Christmas day an unwelcome present arrived: the payment notwithstanding Russia was preparing to put 100.000 men into the field against Prussia the following spring.

One of the greatest warlords of the 17th century had fallen victim to that one trait no Habsburg could ever forget or forgive: disloyalty.

The Habsburgs had come a long way since 1218 when a modest count by the name of Rudolf had, through a series of battles & dazzling dynastic marriages, propelled a family of inbred Alpine nonentities into the cockpit of Europe.

Austria has not been lucky with its biographers. The two schools of Victorian liberals & German nationalists in the next century seemed to link hands over a sea of Austrian military ineptitude, with Talleyrand's quip "l'Autriche a la fâcheuse habitude d'être toujours battue" as bridge.