Page - 643 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

O ne must go back further in time to find a comparable case in Austrian history of a monarch passing away during a war. Perhaps the transition from Ferdinand II to Ferdinand III in the Thirty Years’ War could be cited here. Less applicable would be the replacement of Leopold II by Franz II at the start of the French Revolution. Never- theless, every example that could be given would have to be accompanied immediately with the observation that the death of Emperor Franz Joseph took place in an incom- parably critical situation for his Empire. It was without precedent and unrepeatable, as history so often is. Attention turned overnight to the new ruler, the not yet thirty-year-old Emperor Karl I (also King Karl IV of Hungary). As heir to the throne, he had appeared episod- ically during the course of the war, initially as a colonel, who was assigned to the Army High Command and had encountered little consideration and, in the case of Conrad, little sympathy. Then, as Commander of the XX Corps during the South Tyrol Of- fensive, shortly thereafter as Commander of the 12th Army on the Russian front  – an army that in fact never became fully operational  – and finally as commander of an army group in the southern section of the eastern front. He had also been intermittently in Vienna. In his various pursuits, the aspect of meeting and greeting had always been to the fore. However, he had been neither thoroughly introduced to the military matters of the war nor the political problems of the Dual Monarchy and the war. The depic- tions of the heir to the throne during the period until 22 November 1916 convey the image of a not especially intelligent and ambitious, but rather a shallow and immature mind. It was of course nonsense that Conrad subsequently dismissed him and would not even grant him knowledge of the alphabet. For his part, Karl provoked nothing but head-shaking when he not only dismissed the German General Staff wholesale on the occasion of a visit to the troops in spring 1915 but also stated that ‘he does not under- stand why we make so much effort, since everything is in any case pointless ; the war cannot be won and he will be pleased if he is left [so much as] a palace in Vienna’. One of the first impressions that the Austrian Prime Minister gained of the new Emperor was that he was aware of the gravity of the problems of the Empire, the danger of the overall situation and the great difficulties of the Monarchy.1459 The young Emperor’s biggest handicap, however, was that he did not remotely possess the charisma that had distinguished the old Emperor. Emperor Karl was not granted a grace period, since the war, politics and, above all, the hunger of the people did not experience any hiatus, either. From the first moment