Page - 632 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

632 The Death of the Old Emperor the outcome was the same. However, it was one of the last important decisions that the Emperor made. From then on, as the Deputy Chief of the Military Chancellery of the Emperor wrote on 16 June 1915 in his diary : ‘It is a sad sight ; no energy, no drive, everything brittle. The Emperor frequently nods off during reports, we are lacking the strong central force, uniform action everywhere.’ On 20 June, Franz Joseph again suf- fered a severe fainting fit. The war also made its relentless demands on the Emperor. He was tense,1450 some- times suffered from ill health, and was occasionally unable to follow the presentations, so that reports had to be repeated and questions asked once again. His way of organis- ing his day certainly contributed to the fact that he showed signs of fatigue during the afternoon, since by then, he had already been awake and working for twelve hours. The so-called ‘déjeuner’, which was usually a fork lunch, hardly offered a real interruption, and neither did the three or four smoking breaks in which the Emperor smoked his ‘Regalia Media’ with a long cigarette holder. However, he did not wish it differently, regarded himself as being in a position of responsibility  – which he indeed was  – and wanted no-one to doubt that he was Austria-Hungary’s Supreme Commander and sovereign, and that he was the one to make all the decisions. His daily routine knew almost no variation. During the summer of 1915, he had sufficient strength to again go for walks frequently, and for longer. Often, however, it was not the Schönbrunn Palace park in which he arranged to be accompanied, but only the great gallery. On Sundays and on particular commemoration days such as the anniversary of the murder of Empress Elisabeth, masses were required to be held in the palace chapel. It was noticeable that in the autumn of 1915, audiences with prime ministers Stürgkh and Tisza became rare. Certainly, however, Archduke Friedrich and Conrad von Hötzendorf frequently visited the Emperor and remained long over an hour. When it came to audiences with the high-ranking military, the monarch con- spicuously restricted himself to the land army. Throughout his life, he had never been able to understand the navy. This attitude remained unchanged by the war, and by the navy’s occasional successes or failures. The Chief of the Marine Section, Rear Admiral Kailer, occasionally took part in the meetings of the Joint Council of Ministers, and was also called to the Emperor several times. Admiral of the Fleet Haus, however, never appeared for an audience during the war, nor was he invited to court dinners that were arranged on particular occasions. The visits by Field Marshal Mackensen at the end of September and the beginning of December 1915 also gave cause for hosting court dinners, as did the visit by Kaiser Wilhelm on 29 November, or the two visits by Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria in mid-February and the beginning of March 1916. 21 August 1916 stood out from the uniformity in that Franz Joseph inserted a ‘Hungary day’ and received in succession Archduke Albrecht and Counts Andrassy and Apponyi, as well as the member of the Reichstag (Imperial Diet) Stephan von Rakovszky. However, re-