Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 10, 2025
This was followed in December 1909 by the even more famous Friedjung trial. In March 1909 Count Achrenthal had begun in Vienna a violent press campaign against Serbia, accusing the Serbian Government and dynasty of complicity in the concoction of nefarious designs and conspiracies against the integrity of Austria-Hungary.
In October 1906 Baron Achrenthal succeeded Count Goluchowski as Minister for Foreign Affairs at Vienna, and very soon initiated a more vigorous and incidentally anti-Slav foreign policy than his predecessor. What was now looked on as the Serbian danger had in the eyes of Vienna assumed such proportions that the time for decisive action was considered to have arrived.
It is certain that when he realized how things were going to develop Count Achrenthal tried to hush up the whole incident, but it was too late, and Dr. Friedjung insisted on doing what he could to save his reputation as a historian.
At the same time Baron Achrenthal little foresaw what a hornet's nest he would bring about his ears by the tactless method in which the annexation was carried out.
The first effect was to provoke a complete boycott of Austro-Hungarian goods and trading vessels throughout the Ottoman Empire, which was so harmful to the Austrian export trade that in January 1909 Count Achrenthal had to indemnify Turkey with the sum of £2,500,000 for his technically stolen property.
Count Achrenthal had overreached himself, and moreover the wind had already been taken out of his sails by the public recantation on Serbia's part of its pretensions to Bosnia, which, as already mentioned, took place at the end of March 1909, and by the simultaneous termination of the international crisis marked by Russia's acquiescence in the fait accompli of the annexation.
In January 1908 Baron Achrenthal announced his scheme for a continuation of the Bosnian railway system through the sandjak of Novi-Pazar to link up with the Turkish railways in Macedonia.
But it also resulted in the latter discrediting of Count Achrenthal as a diplomat and of the methods by which he conducted the business of the Austrian Foreign Office, and involved his country in the expenditure of countless millions which it could ill afford.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking