March 2, 1835: Death of Emperor Franz I of Austria, Last Holy Roman Emperor

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Austrian Hereditary Lands, Bohemia, Croatia, Emperor of Austria, Holy Roman Emperor Franz II, Holy Roman Empire, House of Austria, House of Habsburg, Hungary, Napoléon of France, Treaty of Pressburg, War of the Third Coalition

Franz II or I (February 12, 1768 – March 2, 1835) was the last Holy Roman Emperor as Franz II (from 1792 to 1806), and the founder and Emperor of the Austrian Empire as Franz I (from 1804 to 1835).

Franz was a son of Emperor Leopold II (1747–1792) and his wife Infanta Maria Luisa of Spain (1745–1792), daughter of King Carlos III of Spain and Maria Amalia of Saxony.

Franz was born in Florence, the capital of Tuscany, where his father reigned as Grand Duke from 1765 to 1790. Though he had a happy childhood surrounded by his many siblings, his family knew Franz was likely to be a future Emperor (his uncle Joseph had no surviving issue from either of his two marriages), and so in 1784 the young Archduke was sent to the Imperial Court in Vienna to educate and prepare him for his future role.

After the death of Emperor Joseph II in 1790, Franz’s father became Emperor. He had an early taste of power while acting as Leopold’s deputy in Vienna while the incoming Emperor traversed the Empire attempting to win back those alienated by his brother’s policies.

The strain took a toll on Leopold and by the winter of 1791, he became ill. He gradually worsened throughout early 1792; on the afternoon of March 1, Emperor Leopold II died, at the relatively young age of 44. Francis, just past his 24th birthday, was now Emperor, much sooner than he had expected.

As the head of the Holy Roman Empire and the ruler of the vast multi-ethnic Habsburg hereditary lands, Franz II felt threatened by the French revolutionaries and later Napoleon’s expansionism as well as their social and political reforms which were being exported throughout Europe in the wake of the conquering French armies.

Emperor Franz II had a fraught relationship with France. His aunt Marie Antoinette, the wife of King Louis XVI and Queen consort of France, was guillotined by the revolutionaries in 1793, at the beginning of his reign, although, on the whole, he was indifferent to her fate.

Later, he led the Holy Roman Empire into the French Revolutionary Wars. He briefly commanded the Allied forces during the Flanders Campaign of 1794 before handing over command to his brother Archduke Charles. He was later defeated by Napoleon. By the Treaty of Campo Formio, he ceded the left bank of the Rhine to France in exchange for Venice and Dalmatia. He again fought against France during the War of the Second Coalition.

In the face of aggressions by Napoleon I, who had been proclaimed “Emperor of the French” by the French constitution on May 18, 1804, Franz II feared for the future of the Holy Roman Empire and wished to maintain his and his family’s Imperial status in case the Holy Roman Empire should be dissolved.

Therefore, on August 11, 1804 he created the new hereditary title of “Emperor of Austria” for himself and his successors as heads of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. For two years, Franz carried two imperial titles: being Holy Roman Emperor Franz II and “by the Grace of God” (Von Gottes Gnaden) Emperor Franz I of Austria.

The move of taking the title Emperor of Austria technically was illegal in terms of imperial law. Yet Napoleon had agreed beforehand and therefore it happened.

The reason Franz’s assuming the Imperial title for Austria was against imperial law was due to the fact the title of Holy Roman Emperor provided the highest prestige among European monarchs. Because at it’s onset the empire was considered by the Roman Catholic Church to be the only successor of the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Thus, in theory and diplomacy, the Emperors were considered primus inter pares, regarded as first among equals among other Roman Catholics, and after the Reformation, the monarchs across Europe.

Therefore, the taking of another imperial title when the title of Holy Roman Emperor was considered primus inter pares was deemed taking a lesser title.

For the two years between 1804 and 1806, Francis used the title and style by the Grace of God elected Roman Emperor, ever Augustus, hereditary Emperor of Austria and he was called the Emperor of both the Holy Roman Empire and Austria.

Members of the House of Austria, the Habsburg Dynasty, had been the elected Holy Roman Emperors since 1438 (except for a five-year break from 1740 to 1745) and mostly resided in Vienna. Thus the term “Austrian emperor” may occur in texts dealing with the time before 1804, when no Austrian Empire existed.

In these cases the word Austria means the composite monarchy ruled by the dynasty, not the country. A special case was Maria Theresa; she bore the imperial title Empress as the consort of Emperor Franz I (r. 1745–1765), but she herself was the monarch of the Austrian Hereditary Lands including the Kingdoms of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia.

During the War of the Third Coalition, the Austrian forces met a crushing defeat at Austerlitz, and Emperor Franz II had to agree to the Treaty of Pressburg, which greatly weakened Austria and brought about the final collapse of the Holy Roman Empire.

In July 1806, under massive pressure from France, Bavaria and fifteen other German states ratified the statutes founding the Confederation of the Rhine, with Napoleon designated Protector, and they announced to the Imperial Diet their intention to leave the Empire with immediate effect.

Then, on July 22, Napoleon issued an ultimatum to Francis demanding that he abdicate as Holy Roman Emperor by August 10. Five days later, Emperor Franz II bowed to the inevitable and, without mentioning the ultimatum, affirmed that since the Peace of Pressburg he had tried his best to fulfil his duties as emperor but that circumstances had convinced him that he could no longer rule according to his oath of office, the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine making that impossible.

He added that “we hereby decree that we regard the bond which until now tied us to the states of the Empire as dissolved” in effect dissolving the empire. At the same time he declared the complete and formal withdrawal of his hereditary lands from imperial jurisdiction. After that date, he reigned as Franz I, Emperor of Austria.

On March 2, 1835, 43 years and a day after his father’s death, Franz died in Vienna of a sudden fever aged 67, in the presence of many of his family and with all the religious comforts.

His funeral was magnificent, with his Viennese subjects respectfully filing past his coffin in the chapel of Hofburg Palace for three days. Franz was interred in the traditional resting place of Habsburg monarchs, the Kapuziner Imperial Crypt in Vienna’s Neue Markt Square. He is buried in tomb number 57, surrounded by his four wives.

His eldest son succeeded him as Emperor Ferdinand of Austria and as King Ferdinand V of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia.

The Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire Part XI: Aftermath

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Bohemia and Croatia, Christian VII of Denmark, Congress of Vienna, Emperor Alexander I of Russia, Emperor of Austria, German Confederation, Gustaf IV Adolph of Sweden, Holy Roman Emperor Franz II, Holy Roman Empire, King of Hungary

Aftermath

The Holy Roman Empire, an institution which had lasted for just over a thousand years, did not pass unnoticed or unlamented. The dissolution of the empire sent shockwaves through Germany, with most of the reactions within the former imperial boundaries being rage, grief or shame.

Even the signatories of the Confederation of the Rhine were outraged; the Bavarian emissary to the imperial diet, Rechberg, stated that he was “furious” due to having “put his signature to the destruction of the German name”, referring to his state’s involvement in the confederation, which had effectively doomed the empire.

From a legal standpoint, Franz II’s abdication was controversial. Contemporary legal commentators agreed that the abdication itself was perfectly legal but that the emperor did not have the authority to dissolve the empire. As such, several of the empire’s vassals refused to recognize that the empire had ended. As late as October 1806, farmers in Thuringia refused to accept the end of the empire, believing its dissolution to be a plot by the local authorities.

For many of the people within the former empire, its collapse made them uncertain and fearful of their future, and the future of Germany itself. Contemporary reports from Vienna describe the dissolution of the empire as “incomprehensible” and the general public’s reaction as one of horror.

The German Confederation

In contrast to the fears of the general public, many contemporary intellectuals and artists saw Napoleon as a herald of a new age, rather than a destroyer of an old order. The popular idea forwarded by German nationalists was that the final collapse of the Holy Roman Empire freed Germany from the somewhat anachronistic ideas rooted in a fading ideal of universal Christianity and paved the way for the country’s unification as the German Empire, a nation state, 65 years later.

German historian Helmut Rössler has argued that Franz II and the Austrians fought to save the largely ungrateful Germany from the forces of Napoleon, only withdrawing and abandoning the empire when most of Germany betrayed them and joined Napoleon. Indeed, the assumption of a separate Austrian imperial title in 1804 did not mean that Franz II had any intentions to abdicate his prestigious position as the Roman emperor, the idea only began to be considered as circumstances beyond Habsburg control forced decisive actions to be taken.

Compounded with fears of what now guaranteed the safety of many of the smaller German states, the poet Christoph Martin Wieland lamented that Germany had now fallen into an “apocalyptic time” and stating “Who can bear this disgrace, which weighs down upon a nation which was once so glorious?—may God improve things, if it is still possible to improve them!”.

To some, the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire was seen as the final end of the ancient Roman Empire. In the words of Christian Gottlob von Voigt, a minister in Weimar, “if poetry can go hand in hand with politics, then the abdication of the imperial dignity offers a wealth of material.

The Roman Empire now takes its place in the sequence of vanquished empires”. In the words of the English historian James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce in his 1864 work on the Holy Roman Empire, the empire was the “oldest political institution in the world” and the same institution as the one founded by Augustus in 27 BC.

Writing of the empire, Bryce stated that “nothing else so directly linked the old world to the new—nothing else displayed so many strange contrasts of the present and the past, and summed up in those contrasts so much of European history”.

When confronted by the fall and collapse of their empire, many contemporaries employed the catastrophic fall of ancient Troy as a metaphor, due to its association with the notion of total destruction and the end of a culture.

The image of the apocalypse was also frequently used, associating the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire with an impending end of the world (echoing medieval legends of a Last Roman Emperor, a figure prophesized to be active during the end times).

Criticism and protests against the empire’s dissolution were typically censored, especially in the French-administered Confederation of the Rhine. Among the aspects most criticized by the general populace was the removal or replacement of the traditional intercessions for the empire and emperor in the daily church prayers throughout former imperial territory. Suppression from France, combined with examples of excessive retribution against pro-empire advocates, ensured that these protests soon died down.

Official and international reactions

King Gustav IV Adolph of Sweden, who in 1806 issued a proclamation to his German subjects that the dissolution of the empire “would not destroy the German nation.”

In an official capacity, Prussia’s response was only formulaic expressions of regret owing to the “termination of an honourable bond hallowed by time”. Prussia’s representative to the Reichstag, Baron Görtz, reacted with sadness, mixed with gratitude and affection for the House of Habsburg and their former role as emperors.

Görtz had taken part as an electoral emissary of the Electorate of Brandenburg (Prussia’s territory within the formal imperial borders) in 1792, at the election of Franz II as Holy Roman Emperor, and exclaimed that “So the emperor whom I helped elect was the last emperor!—This step was no doubt to be expected, but that does not make its reality any less moving and crushing. It cuts off the last thread of hope to which one tried to cling”.

Baron von Wiessenberg, the Austrian envoy to the Electorate of Hesse-Cassel, reported that the local elector, Wilhelm I, had teared up and expressed lament at the loss of “a constitution to which Germany had for so long owed its happiness and freedom”.

Internationally, the empire’s demise was met with mixed or indifferent reactions. Emperor Alexander I of Russia offered no response and King Christian VII of Denmark formally incorporated his German lands into his kingdoms a few months after the empire’s dissolution.

Franz I, Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia

King Gustav IV Adolph of Sweden (who notably hadn’t recognized the separate imperial title of Austria yet) issued a somewhat provocative proclamation to the denizens of his German lands (Swedish Pomerania and Bremen-Verden) on August 22, 1806, stating that the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire “would not destroy the German nation” and expressed hopes that the empire might be revived.

Possibility of restoration

The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire was constituted by Franz II’s own personal abdication of the title and the release of all vassals and imperial states from their obligations and duties to the emperor. The title of Holy Roman Emperor (theoretically the same title as Roman Emperor) and the Holy Roman Empire itself as an idea and institution (the theoretically universally sovereign imperium) were never technically abolished. Dissolved yes, abolished no.

The continued existence of a universal empire, though without defined territory and lacking an emperor, was sometimes referenced in the titles of other later monarchs. For instance, the Savoyard Kings of Italy continued to claim the title “Prince and Perpetual Vicar of the Holy Roman Empire (in Italy)” (a title originating from a 14th-century imperial grant from Emperor Charles IV to their ancestor Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy) until the abolition of the Italian monarchy in 1946.

In the aftermath of Napoleon’s defeats in 1814 and 1815, there was a widespread sentiment in Germany and elsewhere which called for the revival of the Holy Roman Empire under the leadership of Emperor Franz I of Austria. At the time, there were several factors which prevented the restoration of the empire as it had been in the 18th century, notably the rise of larger, more consolidated kingdoms in Germany, such as Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg, as well as Prussia’s interest in becoming a great power in Europe (rather than continue being a vassal to the Habsburgs).

Even then, the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire, with a modernized internal political structure, had not been out of reach at the 1814–1815 Congress of Vienna (which decided Europe’s borders in the aftermath of Napoleon’s defeat). However, Emperor Franz had come to the conclusion before the Congress of Vienna convened, that the Holy Roman Empire’s political structure would not have been superior to the new order in Europe and that restoring it was not in the interest of the Habsburg monarchy.

In an official capacity, the papacy considered the fact that the Holy Roman Empire was not restored at the Congress of Vienna (alongside other decisions made during the negotiations) to be “detrimental to the interests of the Catholic religion and the rights of the church”.

In the Holy Roman Empire’s place, the German Confederation was created by the 9th Act of the Congress of Vienna on June 8, 1815 after being alluded to in Article 6 of the 1814 Treaty of Paris, ending the War of the Sixth Coalition. The German Confederation, which was led by the Austrian emperors as “heads of the presiding power” would prove to be ineffective.

The Confederation was weakened by the German revolutions of 1848–1849, where after the Frankfurt Parliament, elected by the people of the Confederation, attempted to proclaim a German Empire and designate Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia as their Emperor.

King Friedrich Wilhelm IV himself did not approve of the idea, instead favoring a restoration of the Holy Roman Empire under the Habsburgs of Austria, though neither the Habsburgs themselves nor the German revolutionaries, still active at the time, would have approved of that idea.

Prussia went to war in 1866 with Austria in an attempt to remove Austria from German politics. With Austria successfully removed from any participation in the affairs of the German states, by 1871 Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck used the war against France (The Franco-Prussian War 1870-71) to unite the German states into a new German Empire under the authority of the Prussian king as the new German Emperor.

May 1, 1850: Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria becomes President of the German Confederation.

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Emperor of Austria, Franco-Prussian War, Franz Joseph of Austria, Holy Roman Empire, President of the German Confederation, Prussia

Franz Joseph I (August 18, 1830 – 21 November 21, 1916) was Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia, and monarch of other states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, from 2 December 1848 until his death.

From May 1,1850 to August 1866 he was also President of the German Confederation. He was the longest-reigning ruler of Austria and Hungary, as well as the sixth-longest-reigning monarch of any country in history.

The German Confederation was an association of 39 predominantly German-speaking sovereign states in Central Europe, created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 as a replacement of the former Holy Roman Empire, which had been dissolved in 1806.

It was a loose political association, formed for mutual defense, with no central executive or judiciary. Delegates met in a federal assembly dominated by Austria.

The Confederation was weakened by rivalry between the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire and the inability of its multiple members to compromise.

The German revolutions of 1848–49, motivated by liberal, democratic, socialist and nationalist sentiments, attempted to transform the Confederation into a unified German federal state with a liberal constitution (usually called the Frankfurt Constitution in English).

The ruling body of the Confederation, the Confederate Diet, was dissolved on 12 July 1848, but was re-established in 1850 after the revolution was crushed by Austria, Prussia and other states.

The Confederation was finally dissolved after the victory of the Kingdom of Prussia in the Seven Weeks’ War over the Austrian Empire in 1866. The dispute over which had the inherent right to rule German lands ended in favour of Prussia, leading to the creation of the North German Confederation under Prussian leadership in 1867, to which the eastern portions of the Kingdom of Prussia were added.

A number of South German states remained independent until they joined the North German Confederation, which was renamed and proclaimed as the “German Empire” in 1871, as the unified Germany (aside from Austria) with the Prussian king as emperor (Kaiser) after the victory over French Emperor Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

November 11, 1918: Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary and the end of the Habsburg Monarchy.

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Abdication, Charles I of Austria, Emperor, Emperor of Austria, Emperor of Austria-Hungary, Habsburg Monarchy, House of Habsburg, Schönbrunn Palace, World War I, Zita of Bourbon-Parma

Karl I (Karl Franz Joseph Ludwig Hubert Georg Otto Maria; August 17, 1887 – April 1, 1922) was the last Emperor of Austria, the last King of Hungary (as Karl IV), last King of Bohemia (as Karl III), and the last monarch belonging to the House of Habsburg-Lorraine before the dissolution of Austria-Hungary.

Karl, Emperor of Austria and King of Bohemia

Karl was born August 17, 1887 in the Castle of Persenbeug in Lower Austria. His parents were Archduke Otto Franz of Austria and Princess Maria Josepha of Saxony. At the time, his granduncle Franz Joseph reigned as Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. Upon the death of Crown Prince Rudolph in 1889, the Emperor’s brother, Archduke Karl Ludwig, was next in line to the Austro-Hungarian throne. However, his death in 1896 from typhoid made his eldest son, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the new heir presumptive.

Marriage

In 1911, Archduke Karl of Austria-Este married Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma, the seventeenth child of the dispossessed Robert I, Duke of Parma, and his second wife, Infanta Maria Antonia of Portugal. Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria, Zita’s maternal aunt, was the stepmother of Archduke Otto, who died in 1906, and the step-grandmother of Archduke Charles of Austria-Este, at that time second-in-line to the Austrian throne. The two daughters of Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria were Zita’s first cousins and Karl half-aunts.

Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma

Karl and Zita met as children but did not see one another for almost ten years, as each pursued their education. In 1909, his Dragoon regiment was stationed at Brandeis an der Elbe (Brandýs on the Elbe), from where he visited his aunt. It was during one of these visits that Karl and Zita became reacquainted. Karl was under pressure to marry (Franz Ferdinand, his uncle and first-in-line, had married morganatically, and his children were excluded from the throne) and Zita had a suitably royal genealogy.

At this time in their marriage Archduke Karl was in his twenties and did not expect to become emperor for some time, especially while Archduke Franz Ferdinand remained in good health. This changed on June 28, 1914 when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated in Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb nationalists, Gavrilo Princep. Karl and Zita received the news by telegram that day. She said of her husband, “Though it was a beautiful day, I saw his face go white in the sun.”

Emperor Franz Joseph died in the Schönbrunn Palace on the evening of November 21, 1916, at the age of 86 in the midst of World War I. His death was a result of developing pneumonia of the right lung several days after catching a cold while walking in Schönbrunn Park with the King Ludwig III of Bavaria. He was succeeded by his grandnephew as Emperor Karl I

End of the Habsburg Monarchy

On the day of the Armistice of 11 November 1918, Karl issued a carefully worded proclamation in which he recognized the Austrian people’s right to determine the form of the state and “relinquish[ed] every participation in the administration of the State.” He also released his officials from their oath of loyalty to him. On the same day, the Imperial Family left Schönbrunn Palace and moved to Castle Eckartsau, east of Vienna. On 13 November, following a visit with Hungarian magnates, Karl issued a similar proclamation—the Eckartsau Proclamation—for Hungary.

Although it has widely been cited as an “abdication”, the word itself was never used in either proclamation. Indeed, he deliberately avoided using the word abdication in the hope that the people of either Austria or Hungary would vote to recall him. Privately, Karl left no doubt that he believed himself to be the rightful emperor. He wrote to Friedrich Gustav Piffl, the Archbishop of Vienna: “I did not abdicate, and never will […] I see my manifesto of November 11 as the equivalent to a cheque which a street thug has forced me to issue at gunpoint […] I do not feel bound by it in any way whatsoever.”

Instead, on 12 November, the day after he issued his proclamation, the independent Republic of German-Austria was proclaimed, followed by the proclamation of the First Hungarian Republic on 16 November. An uneasy truce-like situation ensued and persisted until 23 to 24 March 1919, when Karl left for Switzerland, escorted by the commander of the small British guard detachment at Eckartsau, Lieutenant Colonel Edward Lisle Strutt.

As the imperial train left Austria on 24 March, Karl issued another proclamation in which he confirmed his claim of sovereignty, declaring that “whatever the national assembly of German Austria has resolved with respect to these matters since November 11 is null and void for me and my House.” The newly established republican government of Austria was not aware of this “Manifesto of Feldkirch” at this time—it had been dispatched only to King Alfonso XIII of Spain and to Pope Benedict XV through diplomatic channels—and politicians in power were irritated by the Emperor’s departure without explicit abdication.

The Austrian Parliament responded on April 3, 1919 with the Habsburg Law, which dethroned and banished the Habsburgs. Karl was barred from ever returning to Austria. Other male Habsburgs could only return if they renounced all intentions of reclaiming the throne and accepted the status of ordinary citizens. Another law passed on the same day abolished all nobility in Austria. In Switzerland, Karl and his family briefly took residence at Castle Wartegg near Rorschach at Lake Constance, and later moved to Château de Prangins at Lake Geneva on May 20.

100th Anniversary of the Assassination of HIH Archduke Franz-Ferdinand of Austria-Este

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Archduke, Archduke of Austria, Assassination, Austria-Hungary, causes of World War I, Emperor of Austria, Franz-Ferdinand, Franz-Joseph, Gavrilo Princip, Sarajevo, Sophie Chotek, World War I

100th Anniversary of the Assassination of HIH Archduke Franz-Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary

On this day, June 28, 1914 Archduke Franz-Ferdiand of Austria-Hungary and his wife, Sofie Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated in Sarajevo. This murder would, within weeks, spark a European war that became known as World War I. In its time it was known as either the Great War or the World War.

It is often said that this assassination caused World War I. I don’t think that is the entire truth. I view the assassination of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand as the initial spark that set off the war, however there were many issues that evolved over years, centuries even, that built up the tension to where War became almost inevitable. I don’t want this blog entry to be about the causes of the war nor a biography on the Archduke. I will write about some aspects of his life and what happened on that fateful day.

I have an affinity with Archduke Franz-Ferdinand. We were born about 100 years apart. I was born in October of 1963 and he was born in 1863, making him 50 years old at the time of his assassination. He held what were radical views at the time and it was his views that were his undoing. More on that in a moment.

He was the eldest son of Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria (a younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph and Maximilian) and of his second wife, Princess Maria Annunciata of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. When he was only eleven years old, his cousin Duke Francis V of Modena died, naming Franz Ferdinand his heir on condition that he add the name Este to his own. Franz Ferdinand thus became one of the wealthiest men in Austria. In 1889 his cousin, Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria committed suicide (after murdering his mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera at his hunting lodge in Mayerling. This tragedy left Franz-Ferdinand’s father as hier to the throne. Emperor Franz Joseph had only one son and the throne had to pass to a male heir for women were barred from the throne. Karl Ludwig renounced the throne in favor of Franz Ferdinand almost immediately, and died of typhoid fever in 1896.

As hier to the throne he garnered controversy. Franz-Ferdinad was more liberal than his uncle the emperor. In 1894 Franz-Ferdinand met Countess Sophie Chotek at a ball in Prague. The down side to this meeting was that Countess Sophie was not of equal rank with Franz-Ferdinand so marriage was out of the question. To be eligible to marry a member of the Imperial House of Habsburg, one had to be a member of one of the reigning or formerly reigning dynasties of Europe. Countess Sophie was rejected by the emperor as a suitable mate for the Archduke despite being a descendant of the princes of Baden, tyhe Catholic branch of the House of Hohenzollern (Hohenzollern-Hechingen), and the Princes of Liechtenstein. One of Sophie’s direct ancestors was Albert IV, Count of Habsburg; she was descended from Elisabeth of Habsburg, a sister of King Rudolph I of Germany.

Franz-Ferdinand would not consider marrying another. Even with Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Czar Nicholas II of Russia tried to assist and spoke to Pope Leo XIII to presuade the Emperor. This took years to accomplish and in 1899 the emperor relented and allowed the couple to marry morganatically. This meant that their descendants would not have succession rights to the throne. Sophie would not share her husband’s rank, title, precedence, or privileges; as such, she would not normally appear in public beside him. The Emperor granted her the title Duchess of Hohenberg and it was by this title their children (and descendants) were known. Because of this morganatic marriage Sofie was treated coldly by many members of the Habsburg Dynasty.

One of the other things I admire about Franz-Ferdinand is that he seemed more progressive and liberal minded than the emperor. Austria was a conglomerate of ethnic groups. Germans, Hungarians and in an era where nationalism was desired many of these ethnic groups desired independence. In 1908 Austria had annexed the Bosnia-Herzegovina region where many ethnic Serbs lived. This action thwarted the desires of many in Serbia that wanted the Serbian regions of Bosnia to join Serbia in alarger kingdom. Franz-Ferdinand’s progressive ideas would have put an end to these desires.

In 1867 the Kingdom of Hungary (ruled by the Habsurgs since the Battle of Mohács in 1526) was granted an equal standing within the Austrian Empire (this changed the name of the Empire to Austria-Hungary). Franz-Ferdinad envisoned granting this same privilage to other ethnic groups creating a United States of Austria, with himself as Emperor. If Bosnian Serbs were granted such status within the Empire the chances of Bosnia becoming part of a larger Serbian Kingdom would be over. National groups such as the Black Hand viewed the assassination of the Archduke as essential to their plans of Serbian unity. One factor giving Serbia and the Black Hand confidence was knowing that Russia was on their side for greater Serbian independence.

June 28, 1914.

Generally, Sofie, Duchess of Hohenberg did not attend her husband on such official duties but she was there with him on this fateful day. In late 1913 Emperor Franz Joseph commanded Archduke Franz Ferdinand to observe the military maneuvers in Bosnia scheduled for June 1914. After the maneuvers Franz Ferdinand and his wife planned to visit Sarajevo to open the state museum in its new premises there. Generally such engagements are announced in the court circular months in advance so the assassins tagged him for murder months in advance.

There were six assassins ready for the Archduke that morning. When Franz-Ferdinand and Sofie arrived they were greeted by Governor Oskar Potiorek with six automobiles were waiting. Security was limited because many soldiers were on the military maneuvers that the Archduke witnessed the day before. The motorcade passed the first two assassins who failed to act. Nedeljko Čabrinović was on the opposite side of the street near the Miljacka River arming him with a bomb.

At 10:10 am Franz Ferdinand’s car approached and Čabrinović threw his bomb. The bomb bounced off the folded back convertible cover into the street and the timed detonator caused it to explode under the next car wounding 16–20 people. Čabrinović swallowed a cyanide pill and jumped into the Miljacka river. Čabrinović’s suicide attempt failed, as the cyanide only induced vomiting. Police dragged Čabrinović out of the river, and he was severely beaten by the crowd before being taken into custody.

A visably shaken Archduke arrived at his first destination which was Sarajevo’s Town Hall. He gave the speech he originally had written for the occasion but at the end added a few words about the bombing and the people of Sarajevo “as I see in them an expression of their joy at the failure of the attempt at assassination.” His entourage wanted to change plans fearing more assassination attempts would be made. Baron Rumerskirch proposed that the couple remain at the Town Hall until troops could be brought into the city to line the streets. Governor-General Oskar Potiorek vetoed this suggestion on the grounds that soldiers coming straight from maneuvers would not have the dress uniforms appropriate for such duties. The Royal couple did decide to postpone the rest of the schedualed activities and desired to visit the hospital to see those wounded in the morning’s bomb attack.

After hearing about the failed bomb attack one assassin, Gavrilo Princip, stood in front of a nearby food shop (Schiller’s delicatessen), on Appel Quay near the Latin Bridge waiting for the Archdukes return from the National Museum In the confusion the drivers of the motorcade were not told of the change in plans. When the motorcade was on Appel Quay, Governor Potiorek told the driver to turn off that road and take another route to the Hospital. The driver stopped the car and put it in reverse. As fate would have it they stopped directly in front of where Gavrilo Princip was standing.

Standing only 5 feet away (1.5 meters) Princip took two shots at the Archduke and Sofie. Franz-Ferdinand was shot in the jugular vein while Sofie was hit in the abdomen. Both The Archduke and Sofie remained sitting upright as they were taken to the Governor’s residence for medical treatment. Count Harrach reports that Franz Ferdinand’s last words were “Sophie, Sophie! Don’t die! Live for our children!” followed by six or seven utterances of “It is nothing.” These utterances were followed by a long death rattle. Sophie was dead on arrival at the Governor’s residence while Franz Ferdinand died 10 minutes later.

The death shocked all the crowned heads of Europe and Emperor Franz Joseph took the news very hard. Although in that moment it was not clear that this event would spark a global war, the assassination of the Archduke raised tentions between allied states within two days. Austria-Hungary and Germany advised Serbia that it should open an investigation, but Secretary General to the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Slavko Gruic, replied “Nothing had been done so far and the matter did not concern the Serbian Government.”

The beginning of the end had just happened.
Join me here this Friday for the aftermath and the start of the war.