The war has been going on for two whole years.

If, at the outset of the war, policymakers had foreseen that it would be a protracted and costly war, it might have been avoided. By now, all the warring parties are tired and overwhelmed, but they can't stop.

The course of the war in 1916 was a great disappointment to the Allied parties, and they seemed to see some light at the beginning of the year when Brushilov launched an offensive. Subsequently, however, the Russian offensive was defused and, pressed by the German-Austrian forces, gradually retreated to the line of defense in the autumn of 1915.

On the Western Front, there was still a protracted war of attrition, and the Battle of Verdun launched by Falkenhein was hastily aborted, and he was dismissed from his post as Chief of the General Staff. The two major battles launched by Britain and France on the Somme did not make any progress, but inflicted heavy casualties on themselves.

The outcome of the naval battle at Jutland further increased the panic on the side of the Allies, and the subsequent capture of Saloniki by the Austro-Hungarian army and the seizure of the Aegean Sea accelerated the political turmoil in Britain. On 5 October 1916, Prime Minister Asquith presented his resignation and that of his cabinet to the King, and the British Cabinet collapsed. Lloyd George was appointed as the new Prime Minister, and his new trio with Sir Bona and Sir Edward Carson was tasked with running the wartime Cabinet and effectively wielded dictatorial powers.

After the Battle of Skagerrak, Heldon had been planning the Imperial Army's military operations in North Africa and the Mediterranean, but had to be terminated as the campaign was about to begin.

On November 21, 1916, at the age of 86, after 68 years of ruling the empire, Emperor Franz Josef died suddenly in his office at the Hofburg Palace, 11 days before his accession to the throne. The empire has lost a key figure who is loved by the people and sustains the entire empire, and his death inevitably plunges the empire into a temporary panic.

Lechelton had to hurry back to Vienna from Tripoli.

The old and old Hofburg Palace was shrouded in a sad atmosphere, and the old emperor lay peacefully in the middle of the hall, looking calm. Some of the noblewomen present had been sobbing quietly, and the nobles and ministers expressed their condolences to the old emperor in silence.

Archduke Friedrich, who had hurried back, stood in front of the old emperor, who had been solemnly placed in the hall, gazing silently at his countenance, while the emperor's youngest daughter, Princess Valery, stood in front of him and sobbed softly. The old emperor seemed very calm, and did not leave any last words, and in the last days of his life, the world left him with more loneliness and sadness.

The suicide of his only son and the assassination of his beloved Empress Elizabeth have brought him to the brink of collapse, and the aging emperor has continued to hold on to the turbulent empire and the glory of the Habsburgs.

As the second emperor of the Austrian Empire, Franz Josef was in decline at the time of his accession, and the Hofburg Palace in Vienna lost its status as the Holy Roman Empire and the Imperial Palace of the German Emperor. In a series of foreign wars, the Emperor Franz never tasted victory, losing the Lombardy region centered on Milan in the war with Napoleon III, and then forcing the Habsburgs to cede the Veneto to the Sardinians after the Austro-Prussian War.

However, the old emperor is gratified that in the current war that has swept the whole of Europe, the Austro-Hungarian army still shows the level of a world-class power, and has made remarkable achievements on the battlefield. The old rivals, the Italians, had been defeated, and the empire had captured Romania, Serbia, Mendenegro, Albania, Macedonia, and Bessarabia, taking over almost all of the previous Ottoman legacies in the Balkans, and in one fell swoop seizing from the Russians the lowlands along the Black Sea coast and the Crimean Peninsula, which had previously belonged to the Ottoman Empire.

These achievements were enough for the old emperor to rest in peace with a smile.

A week later, the new Emperor Friedrich was crowned the Austrian Emperor at St. Stephen's Cathedral.

Compared to the enthronement of the old emperor Franz Joseph and his brother-in-law Wilhelm II, the coronation process of Lechelton was much more uneventful. It was a time of war, and the hostile parties would certainly not be present, and there would be no emissaries from Romania, Serbia, Mendenegro, etc., because the emperor himself was now king of these countries.

The Austro-Hungarian army temporarily stopped the offensive, the battlefield became silent, and 1916 was spent in unease and speculation about where the future empire would go.

At the beginning of the new year, the whole of Vienna was in a state of depression, and the market had become very depressed due to years of war. Food and vital household items have been strictly rationed, and the soldiers are fighting while the people are suffering.

"Why is the Emperor so slow to determine the exact date of his coronation as King of Hungary?" At the Prime Minister's Office, Prime Minister Tissa was asking Foreign Minister Porchtot about the status and interests of Hungary as a representative of the Magyar aristocracy.

"He wants to make good on his promise." "If we can't do it, the emperor says he'll only be Emperor of Austria." ”

"He's blackmailing us to bend the government and parliament to his will." If, according to the emperor's wishes, the peoples of the empire were given equal power, then the Slavs could dominate the empire. ”

So the emperor said that he was not interested in Serbian possessions, and that he intended to maintain a relative balance among the various nationalities of the country. Germans, Magyars, Romanians and Croats, and, of course, he would add Bohemians. "In this way, although we lose the privilege of dominating the empire, we will not lose our balance." ”

"What if we don't agree?" Tissa said.

"The problem is that he is now very popular with the people, and although the Habsburgs have effectively lost control of the government after the revolution of 1848, the army has always been on the side of the emperor." Porchtot said that the Croats had been on the side of the Habsburgs during the war against Hungary in 1851, that the Magyars had long since lost control of it, and that although some Hungarian nobles had been able to take up positions in the Croat government, in practice the trend towards the restoration of the Croatian kingdom was inevitable. ”

"A new emperor?" The thought popped into Tisza's mind, but he quickly dispelled it, for Emperor Friedrich had established himself on the battlefield, that he had won the support of the army and the people, and that he was now a hero to the whole nation, a god of war.

In a head-on confrontation with him, it is only himself and even the entire Magyar aristocracy that will lose. However, it is really unacceptable to give up the privileges they have in the empire so lightly.

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