United States or Mauritania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The modern Teutonic State, the Holy German Empire of the Habsburg, has equally perished through clericalism. Catholicism is an international power, and the State must be national. Catholicism is encroaching and threatening the national State, and the State must remain independent and supreme; therefore Catholicism, ultramontanism, clericalism, are absolutely incompatible with the modern State.
But such a result would not be achieved by a revival of the empire of Charles V in the person of the man who had now become the head of the House of Austria. Even had the Whigs remained in office, they could hardly have continued to give active support to the cause of the Habsburg claimant in Spain.
Albrecht of Habsburg then came to the throne, and taking up the family policy of profitable matrimonial alliances, married his son Rudolph to the widow of the Přemysl Wenceslaus II, Elizabeth, whom we have already met. I am rather sorry for this Elizabeth.
You may also approach Prague via Vienna; in former days you were encouraged by Austrian propaganda to do so, and this in order to emphasize the fact that you were expected to regard Prague as a quaint little provincial town lying on the road to nowhere in particular. The hand of the Habsburg lay heavy on Prague, and all the glory of great possessions had to be concentrated on Vienna.
This eventuality arose in September when the Russians defeated the Austrians, occupied Lemberg, threatened Cracow, took up strong positions on the Carpathians, and bade fair to overrun Hungary. Fate, it seemed, had at last overtaken the Habsburg Monarchy, which, contrary to general expectation, had not succumbed to internal strife on the outbreak of the war.
The three most important men at Vienna were the Emperor Alexander of Russia, Metternich, who represented the interests of the Austrian house of Habsburg, and Talleyrand, the erstwhile bishop of Autun, who had managed to live through the different changes in the French government by the sheer force of his cunning and his intelligence and who now travelled to the Austrian capital to save for his country whatever could be saved from the Napoleonic ruin.
As to this point the King had probably not yet thoroughly understood that the Bavarian League was intended to keep clear of the House of Habsburg, Maximilian not being willing to identify the success of German Catholicism with the fortunes of that family.
The feeling among the Austrian people, and especially at Vienna, was very general that the outrage at Sarajevo was a matter of more importance than the murder of an Imperial prince and his wife, and that it was the alarm signal for the ruin of the Habsburg Empire.
Both states, from their geographical locations, would normally be inimical to Philip II: England would desire, from her island position, to destroy the monopoly which Spain claimed of the carrying trade of the seas; France, still encircled by Habsburg possessions in Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands, would adhere to her traditional policy of allying herself with every foe of the Spanish king.
The rivalry of the houses of Habsburg and Valois, this was the absorbing theme, during the greater part of the reign which had just been so dramatically terminated.
Word Of The Day