Tea at Trianon: In Defense of Franz Ferdinand

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, July 21, 2014

In Defense of Franz Ferdinand

From the Prague Post:

Karl von Habsburg is a grandson of the last Habsburg emperor, Charles I (1916–18), and is the current head of the House of Habsburg. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Charles I’s uncle, by a Serb nationalist in Sarajevo 100 years ago triggered World War I. Franz Ferdinand is often depicted inaccurately, Karl von Habsburg told LN.This is also true of his relationship with Emperor Francis Joseph I (1848–1916). It was much better than generally believed, he added.

Franz Ferdinand, successor to the throne, was absolutely loyal to the emperor, Karl von Habsburg said. Nevertheless, he had his own political ideas he wanted to implement at the moment he would have become the emperor, he added. Asked whether Franz Ferdinand would have been able to reform the monarchy, von Habsburg said he was a personality with a very exact idea of the internal state of the monarchy. As he knew both its weak and strong points, he prepared some reform plans, von Habsburg said.

His relations to the Lands of the Bohemian Crown (which roughly correspond to the present-day Czech Republic) was very positive, he added. He was able to recognize the weakness of the dualism (the division of power between Germans and Hungarians in the empire), from which he could derive some conclusions, von Habsburg said.

It is a well-known fact that he wanted to give a better position to the Slavic nations of the monarchy, he said, adding that this was to be a sort of trialism (a federation or union of three states within the empire), Karl von Habsburg told the paper. Franz Ferdinand knew about the problem (of Czechs' position inside the monarchy), and he advocated some change, he added. Eventually, this caused his assassination by a Serb nationalist terrorist because a strengthening of Slavic nations within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy would have weakened Serbia's effort to gain dominance of all Slavic nations, von Habsburg said. (Read more.)