Posted on 06/28/2019 7:12:51 AM PDT by Antoninus
It is not too far-fetched to say that Christian Europe officially died on June 28, 1914. On that day, the heir to the imperial throne of Austria-Hungary and his wife were gunned down on the streets of Sarajevo. In modern parlance, we would call the assassin, 19 year-old Serbian radical Gavrilo Princip, a terrorist. His act would lead directly to the outbreak of the Great War a little over a month later.
Following is an article that appeared in The Outlook, an important New York-based political and social journal, from a week after the assassinations. It is notable that the terrible ramifications of the slaying had yet to be recognized—stories regarding the political maneuvering of Theodore Roosevelt and the situation in Mexico were given priority in this issue.
The Assassinations at SarajevoThe assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Duchess Sophie destroyed their young family—their three children, Sophie, Maximilian and Ernst were sometimes described as the first orphans of the Great War. The assassination also led directly to the destruction of the last vestiges of Christian Europe. Considering the events that have followed up to the present, and the dark and uncertain future that Europe faces today, it is perhaps not out of place to remember these victims as signs of contradiction to the mess that liberal democracy and socialism have made of the once cultured and prosperous nations of the continent.All friends of Austria-Hungary were shocked by the murder on June 28 of the heir to the throne, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg. Those in exalted stations are never free from some sudden attack by some crazed man, as the cases of Lincoln and Garfield and McKinley, of King Humbert of Italy and King George of Greece, remind us.
In the present instance, murder has removed those who were about to succeed to great power. Franz Ferdinand was not a popular prince. He was reserved, taciturn, moody, opinionated, supposed to be under Jesuit control, a jingo, a militarist—not all together a happy combination. Accident made him, as the nephew of the venerable Austrian Emperor, heir to the throne. The world looked on with misgiving. For of all monarchs the Emperor of Austria-Hungary has best known how to manage the conglomeration of the many different nationalities which make up the Dual Empire. It might well be triple, as Franz Ferdinand himself suggested not long ago, the third part to be Slav.
With bitter irony, the Prince met his death at the hands of a Slav—a Serb. The Archduke and his wife were entering Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, when a bomb was burst immediately behind their motor, shattering the motor which followed it and injuring its occupants. Moved by this circumstance, the Archduke, before replying later to the Mayor’s message of welcome, said: “An amazing indignity has been perpetrated. You have received us with bombs.” With his wife, he then drove towards the hospital to inquire after the condition of the sufferers from the bomb, when a young man sprang out of the crowd and aimed a pistol at the Duchess. Her husband immediately threw himself in front of her to shield her. The weapon used was an automatic pistol. Both occupants of the motor received mortal wounds from which they soon expired…
The tragedy gains deeper pathos because it leaves the venerable head of the house of Hapsburg (Emperor Franz Joseph) so utterly alone. His has been a life overborne by grief. A quarter of a century ago, he lost in a most tragic way, his only son. Sixteen years ago, his wife was murdered. His brother, Maximilian, became Emperor of Mexico, only to be shot there, and Carlotta, Maximilian’s wife, became an inmate of an insane asylum. The Emperor’s sister-in-law, the Duchess of Alencon, was burned to death in Paris. The Archduke John, who suddenly renounced his rank and became plain Johann Orth, disappeared. And now comes the loss of another nephew, the heir presumptive.
As the children of Franz Ferdinand’s morganatic marriage are debarred from the throne, the new heir presumptive is Charles Francis Joseph (later Blessed Karl of Austria), the son of the late Archduke Otto, who married Josefa, daughter of the late King of Saxony.
The assassination of the Archduke and his wife was followed by bloody riots at Mostar, the capital of Herzegovina, between Mohammedan Croats and the Serbs. In the attempts of the Croats (aided by Austrians) to drive the Serbs back into their own quarters many serious incendiary fires were started, which at one time threatened the destruction of the city. It was reported that in the street fighting in Mostar, over two hundred Serbs were killed. Rioting also broke out in other towns in Herzegovina.
A good book to read on WWI is the “Myths of World War I”
Has an interesting section on the effectiveness of the major protagonists armies. As I remember:
French: Initially poorly equipped, very poor tactics, courageously led at the company-regiment level. Took appalling causalities from beginning to end. However did learn somewhat from their mistakes, but never approached German efficiency.
British: Very well equipped, very well trained (particularly the BEF!), marksmanship was so good Germans thought they had extra machine guns. Inept tactics, ineptly led & never learned to do better. The Commonwealth Oz, NZ & Canadian) troops were much better led!
Russians: Bad equipment, bad leadership, initially incredible courage. Basically bad!
Austro-Hungarians: Marginally superior to the Russians.
Germans: Excellent, equipment, excellent leadership at all levels, Casualties ratios were always lopsided in favor of the Germans. So much so if that was your only knowledge regarding the war you would swear the Germans won the war. The author claims that at the tactical level the Germans almost always won but lost at the strategic level.
Americans: Good equipment, excellent from top to the bottom leadership, learned with each engagement and army got better. Oddly enough the French did much of the initial AEF training. War ended too soon or the AEF might have gotten to the German tactical skill level.
What surprised me was the author’s (He’s a Brit!) bad view of the British and somewhat positive view of the French.
Worth a read!
“the idea of a benign Christian monarchy tempered with a parliament doesn’t seem so awful anymore. “
I humbly accept this honor. And God himself has placed his hand on me and wants me to represent him in this temporal kingdom. You must submit to my will.
(see the problem yet?)
Also as Thomas Paine deftly pointed out, if a monarch rules by divine right, why would a Parliament be needed to restrain him? If the monarch is God’s man here on earth, then why should he need a committee to oversee and check his power? That would be checking God’s own representative. Heresy!
The “divine right of kings” idea was largely invented in 16th century England. Catholic Europe never held to it. Their idea was closer to the idea that the king had been entrusted with power by God, and God (or the Pope, God’s representative) could remove it if the king didn’t use it wisely.
And they immediately turned to nihilist philosophy and socialist economics.
In those 50 years, Europe began to end. ........................ Today you hear the call, “Kill Whitey”, WTF are they thinking? Leave whitey alone, he has proven during the last century he can kill himself off, and he’s still at it today looking for round 3.
Europe died in WWI.
There were at least seven different Christian sects, not including the Orthodox churches.
Of course, the Catholic church ordered all non-Catholics killed at various times, so to continue to survive, a sect needed to be outside of the Catholic Death Curtain.
The Catholic church is a perversion of what Scripture says God wants, and the Pope is a supporter of abortion and gay sex.
Uh, I would say the entire majority of Latin countries in Central and South America support my take, while you cherry pick the very few that could even hope to show something positive from their resources. I love how you use a country in which prostitution has always been legal (Costa Rica) as a great example of positive Catholic influence. You must love your pope!
Read up on the Northern Crusades.
“By the 1930’s, the Holy Roman Empire had morphed into Nazi Germany. God was officially declared dead.”
Earlier than that was the Russian revolution in 1917, and the death of Christianity replaced by atheistic Red Commies.
You really don’t know your Catholic church history.
It’s perverse and heretical to today.
It's interesting that the two main branches of western philosophy, analytic and continental, both sprang from Kant.
A number of people place the blame of the beginning of the end of Christian Europe with Descartes and his radical skepticism. Kant seemed like someone who was trying to put back the pieces that Descartes had blown apart.
Others point to Occam with his nominalism that tended to erode away the foundations of scholastic philosophy.
My own belief is that it was the printing press that was the death knell of Christianity. On the one hand it allowed the Word of God to be spread much more widely and efficiently. On the other hand it helped spawn numerous contradictory interpretations of the Word of God which sowed the first seeds of doubt in the populace at large.
1) Stating that if there were a God that created everything and He was a good God he wouldn't put us in a Matrix-like fantasy world, and
2) Providing three proofs for the existence of God.
However no one thought much of his three proofs and so we were left with just the skepticism.
They killed people for not being Catholic.
If you like that, you own it.
Because salvation is directly tied to the Catholic church there is no way to clean up corruption and deep rooted apostasy. In the protestant church you stop giving, leave and go to a new congregation. That is the huge advantage of Protestantism.
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