The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922

by Edmond Taylor

A few minutes before seven on that same Saturday evening, the War Ministry in Vienna telephoned the news to Bad Ischl, where the Emperor was staying. Baron Margutti, one of the Imperial aides-de-camp, took it down. Francis Joseph listened with a wooden face while he read it off, then muttered, “Also doch” (literally, “So, after all”), one of those prosaically indefinite bits of familiar German that because they mean so little can signify so much. Reaching for his pince-nez with trembling hands, the old man sat down at his desk to study the text of the message. As he was making unconscious gestures with his hand, as if to push back a nightmare, the Emperor struck a glass bowl. “The jarring sound, as if something had finally broken, I will never forget,” relates Margutti. But Francis Joseph had not yet given up all hope. “Well,” he sighed, collecting himself, “the breaking off of diplomatic relations still does not mean war.” Later in the evening, Berchtold persuaded him to sign an order of limited mobilization. (Serbia had already started to mobilize.) Publication of the Austrian ultimatum, followed by the news of the rupture with Serbia and that of the two mobilizations, launched a shock wave of alarm throughout Europe, but did not lead to immediate panic. Some Europeans, grasping at straws like the aged Francis Joseph, tried to convince themselves that rupture — or even mobilization — did not necessarily mean war. Others felt that war was now inevitable, but expected it t...