When Diplomacy Fails presents the July Crisis Anniversary Project, a day-by-day account of the events that occurred 100 years ago.

Profiles. The powers, plans and politics involved in the July crisis are very intricate

and require a certain level of background information.

These profile episodes will seek to investigate the background details of the key powers involved,

giving you a unique profile

of each one. In this case, the profile in question focuses on Austria-Hungary.

The Habsburg family had been a staple part of European politics for what seemed like an eternity.

For much of that eternity, the Habs were in the ascendancy.

At one point Charles V ruled over Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, boasting a realm that would

never again be replicated without the use of force.

This Europe-wide rule ended in 1555, and the Habsburgs ceased to rule Spain after 1700.

Yet the Habsbergs remained an integral part of the European Order for the rest of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Their prestige dipped somewhat with Napoleon Bonaparte's first ending of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806,

a conglomerate of German states that had always seemed to boast to Habsburg as its head. Even with this dimming,

though, the weight of the Hasberg name seemed to suggest a sense of longevity, especially with

the defeat of Napoleon and the creation of the new European order, balanced by a three emperor's

alliance between Prussia, Russia, and now, referred to simply as Austria, the Habsburgs.

The Three-Way Alliance was dedicated to the preservation of the Old Order, and to stand as a bulwark against any threats of the kind of revolution previously seen in France,

such an alliance proved invaluable with the onset of the 18 of revolution previously seen in France, such an alliance proved invaluable

with the onset of the 1848 revolutions, an event which saw popular uprisings occur across

Europe, including Russia, parts of Germany, and in Austria's Italian possessions.

Critical for Vienna was the issue of Hungary, a portion of Austrian imperial lands whose citizens made up just one of the numerous nationalities that inhabited Austria's wider empire.

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