Habsburg lost the Throne, Rome a great State. For by summoning religious forces to serve its political ends the Crown aroused a spirit which at the start it clearly thought to be an impossible one. The attempt to stamp out Germanism in the old Monarchy by every possible means was answered by the PanGerman movement in Austria.
After the War of 1870, the House of Habsburg slowly but deliberately set to work with its last spark of determination to root out the dangerous German race—for this was surely the aim of Slavophile policy— and revolt flamed up in the nation, which was deter¬ mined to resist to the end in a way unknown in the more recent history of Germany.
For the first time men of national and patriotic feeling turned into rebels—rebels not against the State in itself, but against a system of government which, they were convinced, was bound to end by destroying its character as a nation.
For the