Above:The Franz Josef statue in Burggarten Park, Vienna (detail). Source:
20. Aftermath: The Emperor
Rudolf's death was not the first close family loss that Franz Josef experienced. In 1863 his younger brother Maximilian unwisely accepted an invitation to become emperor of Mexico. When his regime was overthrown in 1867, he was executed by a Mexican firing squad.
Empress Elisabeth never recovered from Rudolf's death. She became a restless wanderer, travelling widely in Europe. On a visit to Geneva in September, 1898, she was fatally stabbed by an Italian anarchist.
Rudolf was succeeded as heir apparent by his cousin Franz Ferdinand, the nephew of Franz Josef. The succession from uncle to nephew rather than from father to son did not present a major difficulty (after all, Franz Josef had succeeded his own uncle) but Franz Ferdinand's morganatic marriage to Sophie Chotek, a commoner, required him to renounce any claim their descendants might have to the throne.
The assassination of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie in Sarajevo in June, 1914 provided the pretext for a Eurpean war that many observers regarded as inevitable. As early as November, 1911 Britain's First Sea Lord, Sir John Arbuthnot "Jackie" Fisher, predicted that war would break out in October, 1914 (Pepper).
Franz Josef did not live to see the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian empire at the end of World War I, but he lived long enough to see it trapped in an increasingly bloody conflict that by 1916 had cost Austria-Hungary more than a million men.
Franz Josef died on November 21, 1916 and joined Rudolf and Empress Elisabeth in the imperial crypt below Vienna's Capuchin Church.