Page - 620 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

620 The Death of the Old Emperor was summoned. These were the first signs that an Army High Command was in the process of being formed. Now one of the key issues is of course the extent to which it was Franz Joseph himself who determined the events that followed and, in particular, took the decision to threaten Serbia with war, or whether he simply sanctioned a position that emerged during the Joint Council of Ministers of the government leaders of both halves of the Empire, his joint ministers and the top ranks of the military. On Monday, 6 July, the Foreign Minister and the War Minister, Berchtold and Kro- batin, each had a separate audience of 20 minutes in order to inform the Emperor and ask for his opinion  – without doubt too little in order to adequately acknowledge all aspects of the critical situation. The appointments were at any rate no longer in dura- tion than those that followed, in which the aide-de-camp of Archduke Franz Ferdi- nand, Colonel Bardolff, reported to the Emperor about the last days and hours of his great nephew. All else became submerged in the usual daily business. The heads of the Austrian and Hungarian Cabinet Offices, Chief of Staff Baron Schiessl and Head of Department Daruváry, came with files and documents to be issued. Count Monten- uovo and the Adjutant General of the Emperor, Count Paar, were also given a few minutes. As was usual, nothing was recorded ; instead, the orders were given verbally. And equally  – as was usual  – everything took place one on one. Yet was there in fact much that needed to be discussed ? The journalist mentioned earlier, Heinrich Kanner, apparently discovered from his conversations with the  – by then already former  – Joint Finance Minister Leon Biliński that Franz Joseph had already decided to go to war on 3 July, and that he was by no means assuming that the war would be waged against Serbia alone, but that there would also be a major war with Russia.1422 Why Biliński had apparently obtained this information on 3 July of all days is however unclear, since on this date he had not been with the Emperor. Even so, Biliński held an important po- sition in that during the following weeks, he occasionally travelled to Bad Ischl and of all the joint ministers was the only one who was requested to remain near the Monarch for days on end. In Vienna, however, he was summoned to present information only on 29 June. On 7 July, Franz Joseph again boarded the royal train and returned to Ischl, as though Sarajevo and its consequences had been nothing more than an annoying inter- ruption of his traditional summer sojourn. This was all the more astonishing in that on the same day, 7 July, a Joint Council of Ministers had been arranged at the same time, in which the subject of discussion was the fundamental decision whether war should be waged against Serbia, which conse- quences such a decision might have, and what goals the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy should pursue in the war that might be unleashed. However, Franz Joseph had probably already decided days, if not hours, after the assassination that Serbia must be called to account. And despite all the possible objections that the Hungarian Prime Minister