House of Habsburg

The Archbishop of Lemberg, Major Count Szepeski, is the Metropolitan.

He belongs to a family older than that of the Habsburgs, and wealthy at least as charitable and open-handed as rich.

He is not unknown in this country and has been in Canada and the States to study the conditions of his folk who have emigrated there.

Knowing the misery and the sufferings of the Ukrainians of Galicia, he did his best to group them together and took full advantage of the nationalist revival to effect that purpose.

His face was clean-shaven and extraordinarily fine, with every feature delicately chiselled.

He had a sort of Habsburg mouth and chin.' very long and pointed, but mottled with a grace which made the full lower lip seem entirely right.

His hair was silver, brushed so low on the forehead as to give him a slightly foreign air, and he wore tinted glasses as if for reading.

Altogether it was a very dignified and agreeable figure who greeted me in a voice so full and soft that it belied his obvious age.

The land was too poor and rocky to attract men who were fighting for possession of the rich plains and valleys of Europe, and so it happened that for century after century the mountaineers of these cantons lived on in their old simple way, undisturbed by the rest of the world.

In a canton in the valley of the Rhine lived the Habsburg family, whose leaders in time grew to be very rich and powerful.

They became dukes of Austria, and some of them were elected emperors.

One of the Habsburgs, Albert I., claimed that the land of the forest cantons belonged to him.

He sent a governor and a band of soldiers to these cantons, and made the people submit to his authority.

In one of the forest cantons at this time lived a famous mountaineer named William Tell.

A German, Count Berthold, is said to have originated in the 11th century the House of Savoy that governs Italy.

In Spain we find the ubiquitous Habsburgs and the Bourbons sharing rule.

A Hohenzollern is in Romania and on the distaff side in Greece.

A princess of the Hohenzollern's house was the mother of King Albert of Belgium.

A system of intermarriage has retained power in the hands of a few houses, but nature is ill-disposed toward inbreeding and has scourged the cunning of kings with insanity and disease.

While democracy has grown in stature and in vision, while it has been claiming its own place in the sun, the small privileged class has diminished physically, mentally, morally, but still clings desperately to place.

There are a few brilliant exceptions, Albert of Belgium, for example, but Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns, Coburgs, and Bourbons are, generally speaking, no longer qualified from any standpoint to rule the destinies of free peoples.

They are a little better than well-connected anachronisms, avid of the power that is passing from them, and ready to offer any sacrifice that their subjects are capable of making in order that their time-tarnished prestige may shine again.

About this time, Cardinal Comendone returned to Poland under the pretext of urging on the war against the Turks, but really to participate in the forthcoming royal election.

He became the rallying centre of the Catholics and directed their choice to a member of the Orthodox House of Habsburg, Ernest, son of Maximilian II.

The Reformed, on their part, wished to place on the throne a native nobleman of their own faith, John Firley, Grand Marshal of the Crown.

Thereby, they not only excited the jealousy of the other great families, but also that of the Lutherans, who were not willing to concede pre-eminence to the Calvinists.

A member of the Mostyn family in North Wales wrote of his fear of what would happen if In Europe, James's actions were drawing a wide attention not just from William and Louis.

In the Habsburg court in Vienna, the Catholic Emperor Leopold, even he worried that James drives on too fast and his design to promote the Catholic religion lies too open.

Interesting that.

And so matters carried on and everyone struggled with their consciences and then on the 23rd of December 1687 all these worries were turned up to 11 when a royal proclamation hit the street appointing January the 15th and January the 29th as days of thanksgiving with the ringing of bells and church services.

In Vienna, the Emperor Leopold was also free from the threat of the Ottomans after their defeat in 1683 outside the city walls.

Now, he shared Louis' religion, of course, so might possibly have been a potential ally for France.

But the old Habsburg-French rivalry was alive as ever, and more specifically, Louis' aggression was now focused on Germany and the Rhineland, using the law to try and claim rights and gain possession of small princedoms and city-states.

So, there was great potential for William to build an alliance to contain France.

And then she's led out into the courtyard and she sees that she is to be taken to the scaffold, not in a carriage as her husband had been, but in a tumbril, like the common criminal that she is in the opinion of the revolutionary tribunal.

So she's going to be, you know, this Habsburg, this former queen of France is going to be taken to her execution in a rubbish cart.

And she's so shocked.

that she feels a violent need to relieve herself.

This story, that of the Anjou and what happened after they faded, will be the bulk of my next season, starting in November.

Moving on to the early modern period, France regularly came into conflict with the rulers of Hungary, the Habsburgs, though there was a remarkable moment when France attempted to ally with the Hungarian people against their Austrian overlords.

The Sun King Louis XIV supported, and I know I'm going to butcher this, Francis II Rakoczy, or do you want to help me out there? Rakoczy.

Rakoczy, thank you.

And for 150 of these years, a third of the Kingdom of Hungary was occupied by the Turks, while another third, known as the Principality of Transylvania, went independent.

Well, semi-independent, it's again very complicated.

By 1699, the Turks were pushed out and the Habsburgs, rulers of the Third of Hungary, that was the centerpiece of the resistance, were setting up a new administration.

except it very quickly became obvious to the powers of Hungary, namely the estates, that this was not going to include them much.