Mein Kampf
considerations slowly gain an important influence. Two party structures emerged from the general political turmoil, one national in tendency, the other more social, and both extremely interesting and instructive for the future.
After the crushing conclusion of the War of 1866, the House of Hapsburg pondered the idea of reprisal on the battlefield. Only the death of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, whose ill-fated expedition was blamed chiefly upon Napoleon III, and whose abandonment by the Frenchman aroused universal indignation, prevented a closer alliance with France. But even then the Hapsburgs were lying in wait. If the War of 1870–71 had not turned out to be such a triumphal march, the Viennese Court would probably still have ventured on the bloody game of revenge for Sadowa. But when the first hero tales came from the battlefield, tales wondrous and hardly to be believed, but nevertheless true, the “Wisest” of all Monarchs saw the moment was inopportune, and tried to make the best of a bad business.
The heroic struggle of those years produced a yet greater miracle; for with the Hapsburgs new attitudes never meant a change of heart, but only pressure of circumstances. The German people in the old Ostmark were carried away by Germany’s joyful intoxication in victory, and were stirred to the depths by the resurrection of their fathers’ dream as a magnificent reality.
For make no mistake: the truly German-spirited Austrian from that time on saw even in Königgrätz the tragic but inevitable prerequisite for the resurrection of an Empire which should not be contaminated with the foul aura of the old German Confederation—and which no longer was so. Above all he learned by bitter personal experience that the House of Hapsburg had at last completed its historical mission, and that the new Empire must choose as Kaiser only a man whose heroic spirit made him worthy of the “Crown of the Rhine.” And no praise was too high for a Fate which bestowed this honor upon the descendant of a House which in the dim past had already given the nation, indeed, a shining symbol of national exaltation
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