AUSTRIAN EMPEROR DYING

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2238, 26 August 1914, Page 7

AUSTRIAN EMPEROR DYING

HIS TRAGIC LIFE STORY

GREAT EVENTS

CHANGES IN THE MAP OF EUROPE'

A cablegram which appears in another part of this issue announces that the Emperor of Austria is dying.' In the sixty-four years since tho Emperor Francis Joseph ascended the throno of Austria, Europe has undergone many transformations, and. it was the Emperor who, a month ago, by giving the fiat for war on Sorvia, plunged it-into a 'greater cataclysm of war than any f-ver before recorded in its history. .Many years ago the inap was transformed by the achievement of German, and Italian -unity at the expense of tho. realm of the Hapsburgs, and the chief of the houso lost his former undisputed primacy among the sovereigns of Cen- • tral- Europe. • Biographical Sketch. Francis Joseph.l was born on August 18, 1830. Ho was'the son of the late Archduke Francis Charles, and succeeded his uncle,. Ferdinand 1, as Emperor ' of Austria on December 2, 1848.. He was crowned King qf Hungary on June 8, 1867. Tho.beginning, of his reign was marked by important events. Hungary was in a state' of rebellion, which was ■ quelled by the help ;of Russia. His ■■ Italian. dominions wero saved by Hie genius of General Radotsky. Tho Emperor made strenuous efforts to prevent the Crimean war, and 1 refused to join France and England. After the AustroFronch war of 1859 he was compelled to sign the treaty. of peace of Villafranca, by which Lombardy was ceded / to Italy. In 1808 he lost the Duchy of Holstein, obtained by tho convention of Gastein, and' in the same year, as |he result of the war with Prussia, Venetia' also. That year was-fatal to the supremacy of Austria in Germany, the contest being decided in favour q{ Prussia by the treaties of Nikolsl/urg 'and Prague respectively.. 1 The Turkish pro-' vincas of, Bosnia and Herzegovina were.' by tho Berlin Congress, of. 1878, placed under ithe administration, of AustriaHungary, and annexed in .1908. In 1554 the Emperor Francis Joseph married the Princess "Elizabeth Ahialie Eugenie (daughter of the Duke" Maximilian, Joseph of Bavaria), who was murdered by; an' Italian anarchist' 'at Geneva in' 1898... A Wonderful Span of History. Referring to tho celebration of the 'Emperor's eightieth' birthday in 1910, tlie .London' "Telegraph" wrote: — How wonderful a span of human history may, be. stretched by an existence like'.this, which has been vitally inwoven with the whole European record. . Many stood about his' baptismal font and his cradle w'ho remembered' Maria • Theresa and Frederick .the Great, and the whole revolutionary struggle, that swayed across, all Europe 'up to Leip-' gig and Waterloo and the Congress— who had seen the French in Vienna, who had followed fihe' rise, fall, ' and death of Napoleon. By tho third _Frenoh Revolution, in 1848, .Francis "Joseph' w'as; abruptly (raised, .to the Thronet'"Scarcely'liad tli'e'ne'ws reached Vienna that the regime of Louis Philippe in its. turn was down at last when the Kais'ers'tadt- itself' broke out into vd'lcanio eruption in sympathy with the movement,, shaking.all capitals, nearly overturning even 'tho solid sovereignty of the Hobonzollerns in Berlin, and transforming for ever the whole of German political'feeling. Stiliunder Habsburg rule, Milan and Venice leaped into revolt, chased out the white coats, and tore down, the eagles. Hardly was thisi , news- received wnon Hungary was up, nnder Kossuth. Outside Radehzky's lump there was no Austria. Then followed the months of firce and widespread fighting which Francis Josep'h can well remember. I At the age of eighteen Francis Joseph ascended tho throne of a Dominion wrapped inithe flame of civil war..There was no longer, a masterly, statesman in Vienna, and,the opportunity, for a timely and.deliberate,reconstruction was missed. ' . ' ■■. Cavour, Bismarck, .and Louis Napoleon. Meanwhile, two supremely great men, end one weak remarkable personage, had appeared in Europe, and ijheir efforts convorged,'for quite different'reasons, towards the destruction of the Habsburg system. Cayour had ap'pearoJ as the creator of modfc/n Italy. When Francis Joseph came to ' the Northern Germany,' first 'became prominent in' public ' life. His name was Otto von Bismarck., Further,' at the same time, Louis ,Na- v poleon, soon atferwards' Emperor, had become the dictator of modern Franco. Then the groat game—a game such as the world had not known since Jhe first Napoleon's time —began. Many celebrated people of that epoch, 'so amazingly fertile in all sorts of human genius' end vigour, took ,a hand in the big business. There were Mazzihi and ' Garibaldi, much spoken of; Palmerston and Gladstone, equally familiar;- and, much less known as 'yet, Moltke and Roon. But the, threo chief players, ' who opened move after move against ] Austria, were Cavour and Bismarck and Napoleon the' Third.' ' , Cavour and Napoleon the Third combined. Then the Habsburg frontiers' < began, to bo driven in by terrible blows; i nnd in half a docade the political map '. of Europe was altered almost out of i recognition. -'■.'.'.. ■ i Sadowa and Sedan. < Austria was cleared out of Lambardy, | then but of Venetia., provinces .thouglit i to be'the hrightest jewels in the Haps- i burg Crown. But net yet was the end. t Bismarck had first drawn tho Austrians i into tho Schleswig-Holstein complication, and then swept them out of tho 1 Duchies, out. of Germany proper, out c of tho old position of leadership in C'en- ' tral Europe, held by tlie Hapsburgs for "' eo many centuries, under tho Holy Ro- ' man Empire of incongruous memory. ! Sadowa scorned, indeed, as though it. .nust he tho final stroke, fatal as de- j itructive But Bismarck, by main will, checked J the mighty forces no had impelled, and 1 thwarted th 6 wish of the Prussian t soldiers to dismember- a prostrate Empire., The.lron Chancellor's moderation i thon-was one.of the greatest of all ' achievements of far-sighted statesman- ' ihip. So Sadowa was, in a sense, made .' to ensure Sedan.- Russia was neutral \ in 1866 because Austria'had.been neutral, and not, benevolently, in the Crimean War; Austria would not help France in 1870 because Franco had .been ( neutral a few years before. With these | events, one epoch closed; the longer and ( —apart from private calamity—the moro fortunate period of Franois Joseph's j reign began. . When Francis Joseph ( lcoks hack over the sixty-two years j of his reign, from the Revolution of < 1.8'40. almost to the-second .lecadc of the. twentieth century, ho must feel I that progress has been immense, that ' a great work has been dono, and that the work has been mainly his own." '