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About a century and a half after the death of Rudolf the electors began regularly to choose as emperor the ruler of the Austrian possessions, so that the imperial title became, to all intents and purposes, hereditary in the Hapsburg line. The Hapsburgs were, however, far more interested in adding to their family domains than in advancing the interests of the now almost defunct Holy Roman Empire.
Austria had known terrible fears during the campaign of Wagram; it had asked anxiously, whether the Hapsburgs might not disappear from the list of crowned heads, like the Spanish Bourbons, or might not, like the Neapolitan Bourbons, be left to enjoy only part of their States.
But the most unfavorable impression was made upon me in Italy. It was the palmy period of reactionary despotism. Hapsburgs in the north, Neapolitan Bourbons in the south, petty tyrants scattered through the country, all practically doing their worst; and, in their midst, Pius IX, maintained in the temporal power by French bayonets.
Another interesting performance of the Emperor Sigismund was that, being deep in debt, he sold his "electorate" of Brandenburg to a friend, a Hohenzollern, and thus established as one of the four chief families of the empire those Hohenzollerns who rose to be kings of Prussia and have in our own day supplanted the Hapsburgs as emperors of Germany.
TERMAGANT OF SPAIN. Perhaps the most distracted of the Anti-Pragmatic subterfuges was that used by Spain, when the She-dragon or Termagant saw good to eat her Covenant; which was at a very early stage. The Termagant's poor Husband is a Bourbon, not a Hapsburg at all: "But has not he fallen heir to the Spanish Hapsburgs; become all one as they, an ALTER-EGO of the Spanish Hapsburgs?" asks she.
I put this question of the future of Austria to a Monarchist. He did not favour the idea of a union with Germany, but of a renewed union with Hungary. He still believed the Hapsburgs could return. I put it to a working man, but he favoured the State as it was. If only the cost of living could be brought down it would be a very fine State, as wages were so high.
The Austrian Government similarly, perceiving now for the first time the elements of danger which the resuscitation of the Serbian nationality would contain for the rule of the Hapsburgs, embarked on a systematic persecution of the Orthodox Serbs in southern Hungary and Slavonia.
She cannot forget that the Austrian and Hungarian fractions of the new Jugoslav people in other words, the Slovenes and Croats were the most faithful subjects of the Dual Monarchy, fighting for the Hapsburgs with a ferocity and determination hardly surpassed in the war.
The Austrians by no means thought that the game was up for them. It would be interesting to know by what arguments Napoleon persuaded the young Emperor to renounce the hope of retrieving his disasters, whilst he slowly pulled to pieces some flowers which were on the table before which he and Francis Joseph sat. When they left the house, the heir to all the Hapsburgs looked pale and sad.
As late as July 7th, the Court of Vienna had informed the allies that its army would not be ready for four months; yet the nervous anxiety of the Hapsburgs to be beforehand with Napoleon led them to hurry on war: and on August 9th they secretly gave their adhesion to the Russo-British alliance.
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