“the last knight” (der letzte Ritter)… The historian Thomas A. Brady Jr. describes him as “the first Holy Roman Emperor in 250 years who ruled as well as reigned” and also, the “ablest royal warlord of his generation.”, helped establish early supremacy of the House of Habsburg
the first ruler to exploit the use of the printing press for propaganda and image crafting (cultural depictions)
He believed that fighting alongside his foot soldiers legitimized his right to rule more than did any noble trapping or title.
The notable commentators of his time, including Machiavelli, Piero Vettori and Guicciardini rated him as a great general, or in the words of Machivelli, “second to none”, but pointed out that extravagance, terrible management of financial resources and other character defects tended to lead to the failures of grand schemes.
19th Century
1848-1916, Franz Joseph, (Penultimate) Emperor of Austria-Hungary
suffered the tragedies of the execution of his brother Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico in 1867, the suicide of his son Crown Prince Rudolf in 1889, the assassination of his wife Empress Elisabeth (“Sisi”) in 1898, and the assassination of his nephew and heir-presumptive, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in 1914
longest reigning emperor of any country in history
(6m ukranians) famine, starved to death by Stalinist policy by which Ukraine was hit particularly hard by grain quotas which were set at levels which most farms could not produce
According to a CEPR paper published in 2021, regions with higher Ukrainian population shares were struck harder with centrally planned policies corresponding to famine, and Ukrainian populated areas were given lower amounts of tractors which were correlated to a reduction in famine mortality, ultimately concluding that 92% of famine deaths in Ukraine alone along with 77% of famine deaths in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus combined can be explained by systematic bias against Ukrainians.
The four powers agreed to the German annexation of the Czechoslovak borderland areas named the Sudetenland, where more than three million people, mainly ethnic Germans, lived. Adolf Hitler announced that it was his last territorial claim in Northern Europe.
Today, the Munich Agreement is widely regarded as a failed act of appeasement, and the term has become “a byword for the futility of appeasing expansionist totalitarian states.”