B. Novotný

“ Possibly Marie Valerie was swayed by medieval prejudice against persons raised above their rank. Who can sound the depths of a woman’s soul, especially if she be a Hapsburg princess?
No doubt exists on the point that Francis Ferdinand was constantly pursued by the enmity of the archduchess and hated by all her court. It was well known in Vienna that the heir’s mental condition was to say the least abnormal. Both in his castle of Konopiste and in Vienna stories were told of fits resembling insanity to which His Imperial Highness was subject. ”

“ The immediate occasion of the European war was the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife, Princess Hohenberg, in the capital of Bosnia, June 28th, 1914. The Austrian government saw in the double murder a complete justification for making war on Serbia, regardless of the strong probability that invasion of Serbia would bring on general war. The ruling persons of Vienna have defiantly proclaimed to the world that it was fitting to have millions of the common people die rather than leave the murder of the two august personages unpunished. ”

“ But the fact is that the rulers of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the few people around Francis Joseph who decided to use the Sarajevo murders as an excuse for crushing Serbia, were in reality accomplices in the death of the heir whom they cordially hated.
Francis Joseph whose long region of sixty eight years came recently to a close has always been subject to female influences. In his declining years the strongest person around him was archduchess Marie Valerie, his daughter ”