At a Bosnian railway station in 1910 a would-be assassin armed with a revolver was close enough to touch the emperor; but in a tragedy for humanity, he lost his nerve in the royal presence.  Francis Joseph seemed to court death by walking alone through the streets of Bad Ischl, the resort town outside his summer villa – but death would not come.  "All are dying, only I cannot die," he complained in his early eighties.  While he lived to die, millions died because he lived.

So writes Jack Beatty regarding the emperor of Austria and king of Hungary, "…the man who started World War I…"

All know of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as the precipitating event for the Great War.  As an aside, and less known certainly to me: this assassination brought relief to his uncle Francis Joseph, as the Archduke married beneath his station, and Francis Joseph was concerned about the bloodline that would follow.