the Slavs of the Danube valley by a process of
crystallization similar to that which brought about Italian unity.

[Sidenote: Army and Navy reorganized.]

From year to year the Archduke had acquired more and more weight in the
governance of the Empire, in proportion as his uncle's will grew weaker
beneath the burden of advancing age. Thus he had succeeded in his
efforts to provide Austria-Hungary with a new navy, the counterpart, on
a more modest scale, of the German fleet, and to reorganize the
effective army, here again taking Germany for his model. Among certain
cliques, he was accused of not keeping enough in the background, of
showing little tact or consideration in the manner of thrusting aside
the phantom Emperor, who was gently gliding into the winter of the years
at Schoenbrunn amid the veneration of his subjects of every race.

Another charge was that he appointed too many of his creatures to
important civil and military posts.

[Sidenote: Antagonism of Russia and Austria.]

We may well believe that this prince, observing the gradual decay of the
monarchy, tried to restore its vigour, and that his first thought was to
hold with a firm grasp, even before assuming the Imperial crown, the
cluster of nationalities, mutually hostile and always discontented, that
go to make up the Dual Empire. So far as foreign relations are
concerned, we may assume that he was bent on winning her a place in the
first rank of Powers; that he wished, above all, to see her predominant
all along the Danube and in the Balkans; that he even aimed at giving
her the road to Salonika and the Levant, though it were at the price of
a collision with Russia. This antagonism between the two neighbour
Empires must have often been among the topics of his conversations with
William II.

The Archduke needed military glory, prestige won on the battle-field, in
order to seat his consort firmly on the throne and make his children
heirs to the Caesars. He had been suspected, both in Austria and abroad,
of not wishing to observe the family compact which he had signed at the
time of his marriage with Countess Sophie Chotek. It was thought that he
perhaps reserved the right to declare it null and void, in view of the
constraint that had been put upon him. The successive honours that had
drawn the Duchess of Hohenberg from the obscurity in which the
morganatic wife of a German prince is usually wrapped, and had brought
her near to the steps of the th