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Sat 07 Jul 2008How a family lost its way in a changing Europe
BIOGRAPHY:THE HAPSBURGS were the original eurotrash - multinational, multilingual, and debauched. After ruling the Austrian Empire for centuries, their luck began to run out towards the end of the 19th Century, writes Max McGuinness.
Emperor Franz Joseph's brother Maximilian was executed in Mexico after a quixotic naval expedition in 1867; his only son and heir, Rudolf, addled by venereal disease and morphine, was found dead with his mistress and a pistol in 1889; and his wife, the Empress Elisabeth, was bludgeoned by an Italian anarchist in 1898.
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