Excerpt from Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary The collapse of the austro-hungarian Empire is perhaps the most fateful and irrevocable result of the Great War. Not quite a decade has passed since the tragicomedy of Versailles, and Germany is a great power once more; so is Russia; the epochal rivalries have shifted ground, but not abated in intensity, while their potential dangers have probably increased. But the Empire of the Habsburgs seems to have vanished for ever. The dismemberment of austria-hungary in the sacred name of national self-determination has been hailed as a boon. In the sense that it was inevitable, it is a boon; for in politics the obstruction of the inevitable is one of the greatest of evils: its wages are war and revolution. This book is, in one of its aspects, an attempt to re interpret, in the terms of the life and character of a single individual, strategically placed in a position of unique power, the inevitability of what was perhaps the greatest political catastrophe of modern times: the downfall of the ancient Empire of Habsburg, last heir of _charlemagne. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.