Mike’s Reviews > The Habsburgs: To Rule the World > Status Update

“As a huntsman, he [Franz Ferdinand] was indiscriminate in his targets, bagging two elephants and a tiger in India and Sri Lanka, flamingos in Egypt, kangaroos and a duck-billed platypus in Australia, and even his own cat.”

To quote Bugs Bunny: What a Nimrod.

“She [Maria Christina, daughter of Empress Maria Theresa] may not have understood it [her and her sister-in-law’s relationship] to be sexual, but her letters to Isabella are unequivocal in respect to their physical relations- ‘I love you furiously and yearn to kiss you… to kiss and be kissed by you… I kiss your arch-angelic little bum.’ And so forth.”

“Joseph II governed in the same way he had sex - energetically and with such unrestrained that he looked forward to periods of abstemiousness in the countryside, ‘because there the choice was between ugly peasants and falconers’ wives.’”

“…the civil servant and dramatist Franz Grillparzer summed up one of his days [in the Habsburg civil service]: ‘Into the office at noon. Found nothing to do. Read Thucydides.’”

Plus ça change…

“To the querulous diet of Carniola, she [Maria Theresa] wrote about taxation, ‘the Crown expressly commands you to grant these sums voluntarily.’”

“A pitiful imbecile, Charles [II] long surprised contemporaries by continuing to live.”

He made it to the ripe old age of 39ish.

(Regarding the widespread art of the Battle of Lepanto):

“…while in the Church of St Mary of Pazzalino… a local artist painted a fresco showing the Virgin instructing the infant Christ to throw cannon balls at Turkish warships.”

“The madness of Don Carlo’s was almost certainly due to inbreeding, since on account of intermarriage he had only half the requisite number of great-grandparents.”

“In [Philip II of Spain’s] dealings with successive popes, he entertained no doubt that his apprehension of God’s will was superior to theirs, even to the extent of accusing one pope of disseminating Protestant ideas.”

The cajones on this guy to tell a pope they are poping all wrong.

“Frederick looked like a ruler, having inherited his physique from his mother… who was renowned both for her beauty and for her ability to drive nails into oak planks with her bare fists.”