Entangling Alliances 865

Irreconcilable Hatreds

The German Empire, proclaimed at Versailles in the wake of the French
defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, had absorbed Alsace
and most of Lorraine. The French never reconciled themselves to the loss
of two of their wealthiest provinces. Although most Alsatians spoke a Ger­
man dialect, Alsace had been an integral and strategically important part
of France since the seventeenth century. Most people living in the parts of
Lorraine annexed by Germany spoke and considered themselves French.
The growing rivalry between France and Germany over colonial interests
added to mutual mistrust.
Francis Joseph (1830—1916), the elderly emperor of Austria-Hungary,
was a plodding man of integrity who had assumed the throne in 1848 and
who had once told Theodore Roosevelt, the president of the United States,
“You see in me the last monarch of the old school.” Respected by his peo­
ple, he remained a largely ceremonial figure identified with the survival of
the polyglot Habsburg state in an age of nationalism. Francis Joseph bore a
series of family tragedies with dignity: the execution in 1867 of his brother
Maximilian in Mexico, where he was briefly emperor, his son’s suicide in
1889, and his wife’s madness, separation, and assassination. Throughout
his reign, fifteen years longer than even that of Queen Victoria of England,
the Habsburg emperor had been determined that the imperial army be
strong and that his dynasty maintain international prestige.

(Left) An Alsatian woman learning to goose-step in a caricature from the German

satirical review Simplicimus. (Right) The aging Emperor Francis Joseph of the

Habsburg monarchy.