Quote:
Originally Posted by MGR1
A constitutional monarchy in Russia would have required another Tsar.
Nicholas II appears to have been psychologically incapable of accepting any limit on his power. His belief in his divine right to rule was as strong as any medieval monarch.
His inability to compromise doomed him and his dynasty.
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If the entire aristocratic class in Russia would slowly star to feel the heat, the the Tzar would have been forced from the inside of the elite to do some changes. Even medieval monarchs were forced by their own direct vasals to relegate some power.
The war just made the revolution more explosive and more lower class oriented (for lack of a better phrase)
Quote:
Originally Posted by MGR1
In the same way, proper modernisation of the Dual Monarchy would have to have waited until Franz Joseph popped his clogs. Once that happened, history being different, Franz Ferdinand's proposals may have had a chance of working, assuming Karl became monarch and had time to implement it. But that would have required a short, victorious war against Serbia. Since the KuK Wehrmacht made heavy weather of their attack in the real world, I have my doubts if that would have occurred. Getting rid of von Hötzendorf and his monumental ego may have helped, but I think the basic War Plan used was faulty.  |
Yes.
Franz Ferdinand was a polar opposite of Franz Joseph.
He was a pacifist and would have tried to work out a diplomatic way to punish Serbia, since Serbia already wanted to pay some sort of reparations to prevent an all out war.
Unfortunately Franz Joseph was probably already half demented and lived in the glorious old times when war was a gentlemens game and not a slaughterhouse of a generation.
Plus Franz Ferdinand had a plan to relieve internal tension to give slavs, Czheks and Slovaks the same status inside the dual monarchy as the Hungarians, turning it into a federation of states ruled by the Habsburgs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...reater_Austria
It's a shame this mess happened. There's should be an age limit for emperors.