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Two days later, he was entreated by some Hungarian noblemen who came there to renounce his share of government in the Kingdom of Hungary also

The dynasty’s subjects, supported by the western powers, violently renounced the unity that had been given them under the Habsburg Monarchy, and declared their national independence

Men had been predicting the collapse of the Habsburg Empire since the days of Napoleon: in an age of national states, this Empire, which included eleven peoples, seemed to defy the spirit of The Times in a particularly flagrant manner

the peoples had developed a national consciousness

This new national consciousness ran side by side with, and often counter to, the patriotism inspired by the Emperor. First the ‘historic’ peoples—Germans, Hungarians, Italians and Poles—thought of themselves as nations, rather than as Habsburg subjects, and many of them demanded to have their own states

expected to redeem the Monarchy’s prestige in a short war; he was taken aback when the Russians and French came in, and still more so when the war dragged on beyond October 1914

The Habsburg Monarchy was not fitted for a long war. The Empire was not very highly industrialized, and had to take a large part of her arms from Germany

This was the decisive moment in the collapse of Austria-Hungary

The Germans did not bully the Habsburgs as they bullied their satellites a generation later

most of the Austrian Germans and most of the Hungarians wished to fight to a victorious conclusion. Charles therefore stood by, wringing his hands as the Germans resolutely went on tearing Europe apart. He could do nothing but make ineffectual gestures. The last Habsburg had become a ‘good German’

Some of the peoples were pro-German, hoping to profit from German victory in Europe: if the Germans ruled Belgium and Poland, who would worry if their Bohemian cousins took their bit of Bohemia for themselves, and who would worry if the Hungarians went on ruling Slavs and Romanians in a high-handed manner

Clearly, if Germany defeated France, then the German language would become obligatory in Bohemian courts

In 1918, the situation inside Austria-Hungary was desperate; strikes and mutinies became commonplace

It was clear that only German victory in the west could solve the internal problems of the Monarchy

All this gave the Germans a whip-hand over the Monarchy, so that there could be no question of a separate peace. To the Emperor Charles, who succeeded Francis Joseph at the end of 1916, it looked as if he was fighting only to make the Germans masters of Europe

These men answered the Allies’ problem: they offered at once an obstacle to German success, and a guarantee against the consequences of German failure

Up to the spring of 1918, few people had really wanted to see the Habsburgs expelled from Vienna, for they solved too many problems, or at least allowed these problems to be forgotten

To the end, Hungary refused to make concessions to anyone, and pointed to Austria as a woeful example

As a result, Hungary remained remarkably solid until the end, as Austria staggered from one liberal nostrum to another.

Charles decided that he must sue for peace

By this, the Habsburg dynasty pledged itself to carry out the Fourteen Points

Thus, when the Monarchy was overthrown in Prague and other centres, there was a minimum of fuss— military commands simply handed over nominal powers to the National Councils

It was revolution by telephone

In reality, Austria-Hungary had been finished from the beginning of September, for no one would now wish to be associated with the Habsburg dynasty

In the manifesto, these professors and the Emperor sought to win recognition by associating themselves with the nationalists

the embrace of the Habsburg dynasty was by this time regarded as the kiss of death, and all the National Councils, without exception, rejected the manifesto

the last asset of the Monarchy

In the Balkans, the Austro-Hungarian front went through much the same process of dissolution

in Albania

By November nth, the new authorities were functioning everywhere. Fear of popular disturbance, however, and of Bolshevik outbreaks, prompted them to request that Charles should abdicate

persuading Charles to renounce his part in the government of his lands—there was never a formal abdication

Hungary was declared a republic on November 16th. The following spring Charles, a lonely and dignified figure, went into exile in Switzerland

Since both the republican and imperial models were discredited and unacceptable to the victorious Allies, a royal restoration was inevitable; Wellington warned that there would be no peace in Europe unless the Bourbons mounted the throne again. The Congress of Vienna, held to define European frontiers after two decades of war, reversed Napoleon's conquests but was otherwise generous to France

The new monarch, Louis XVIII, had made a poor fist of it on his first return from exile in Britain in May 1814. He surrounded himself with appointees who had been out of government business for more than two decades and the first restoration was brought to an abrupt end by the Hundred Days. Louis fled once more, to return three weeks after Waterloo

Louis Stanislas Xavier Bourbon, grandson of Louis XV and brother of Louis XVI, became heir to the throne when Louis' son died in prison in 1795

If France is still France, it is thanks to the Russians

Then came 15 years wandering around Europe, including two in remote Courland in the Baltic, after which he came to rest for seven years in England

The Allies imposed financial indemnities on an economy that had been weakened by the demands of Napoleon's constant war-making and the effects of the British naval blockade

At the end of November 1815 a white-faced Richelieu signed the definitive peace agreement dictated by the Allies, lamenting that 'all is finished (by) this fatal treaty'

Russia, Prussia and Austria proclaimed their Holy Alliance and Britain joined them in the Quadruple Alliance

Ignoring the king's desire for national unity, royalists in various parts of the country exacted their revenge for events since the Revolution of 1789

France was on its way to being re-integrated into the European system. This reflected the country's continental importance; Europe could not function without it. The path to national recovery was faster than might have been expected in the summer of 1815

the Hexagon between the Alps and the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Channel could no longer aspire to dominate Europe as it had sought to do under Louis XIV and Bonaparte

After Walpole’s fall over his handling of the war with Spain in 1742, which George II had very much opposed, the King backed John, Lord Carteret only to be forced to part with him twice: in 1744 and 1746

The Hanoverian ambitions of both kings made their British ministries vulnerable to domestic criticism and Hanover itself to foreign attack, but they learned, however reluctantly, to accept the limitations of their position.

As the monarch remained the ultimate political authority, his court remained the political centre, since it provided access to him

While it is true that George II’s closet was not as powerful as Henry VIII’s privy chamber, the insignificance of the Hanoverian Court has been overdone.

George I and George II both detested the Tories as the party whose ministry had negotiated the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession (in which George II had fought), and abandoned Britain’s allies, including Hanover. George I and George II both suspected the Tories of Jacobite inclinations and were alienated by Tory opposition to their commitments to Continental power politics

This forced both kings to turn to the Whigs, limiting their ability to break away in the event of a dispute. The rulers had to make concessions in ministerial and policy choices. George I fell out with Walpole and his brother-in-law and political ally, Charles Viscount Townshend, in 1717 when the ministers opposed his Baltic policy and supported his son, George, Prince of Wales, in the first of those hardy perennials of Hanoverian royal politics, a clash between monarch and heir

Similarly, George II came to the throne in 1727 determined to part with Walpole, but he swiftly changed his mind when he realised that it was expedient to keep the minister if he wanted to enjoy parliamentary support, have the public finances satisfactorily managed, and retain the stability of Britain’s alliance system

Instead, much of the credit for Britain’s modern constitutional monarchy rests with those who redefined the royal position between 1689 and 1707, and then made it work over the following half-century

Cumberland’s eventually successful generalship at Culloden serves as a reminder of the extent to which Britain had to be fought for from 1688, just as Continental dynasties such as the Bourbons in Spain in 1704-15 had to fight to establish themselves in succession wars

The role of the Crown was still central. However constrained and affected by political exigencies, monarchs chose ministers. General Thomas Erle, a long-standing MP, wrote in 1717, ‘The King is certainly master of choosing who he thinks fit to employ’.

If monarchs needed to appoint and, if necessary, sustain a ministry that could get government business through Parliament, this was a shifting compromise, and one subject to contingency and the play of personality

Walpole was also expected to find money for George’s female German connections, and to spend time as a courtier, attending on the royal family, as on July 3rd, 1724, when he was present at George I’s review of the Foot Guards in Hyde Park. Similarly, Newcastle and even Pitt had, at least in part, to respond to George II’s interests and views

Both kings were pragmatists, who did not have an agenda for Britain, other than helping Hanover. In this they present a contrast with George III

Neither man sought governmental changes akin to those introduced by Peter the Great or by Frederick William I of Prussia. Neither George had pretensions to mimic the lifestyle of Louis XIV or the Emperor Charles VI. Instead, they presented themselves in a relatively modest fashion, although both men were quite prepared to be prodded into levées, ceremonies and other public appearances

George II had the Guards’ regimental reports and returns sent to him personally every week, and, when he reviewed his troops he did so with great attention to detail

Strong Lutherans, George I and George II were ready to conform to the Church of England. Although they sponsored a number of bishops whose beliefs were regarded as heterodox, they were not seen as threats to the Church of England as compared to that presented by the Catholic Stuarts

Neither George I nor his son did much to win popularity for the new order (certainly far less than George III was to do), but, far more crucially, the extent to which they actively sapped consent was limited. This was crucial when there was a rival dynasty in the shape of the Stuarts, with ‘James III’ a claimant throughout both reigns

Ultimately George I and George II survived because they displayed more stability, and less panic, in a crisis than James II and VII had shown in 1688

Both rulers also sought to counter Hanoverian vulnerability to attack from France or Prussia.

Georges I and II benefited from the degree to which, while not popular, they were at least acceptable

By the close of George II’s reign, Britain had smashed the French navy and taken much of the French empire, becoming the dominant European power in South Asia and North America

International comparisons are helpful. In Sweden in 1772, Gustavus III brought to an end the ‘Age of Liberty’.

Hereditary monarchy placed less emphasis on individual ability than did its ‘meritocratic’ counterpart, whether electoral (kings of Poland) or dictatorial (Cromwell, Napoleon); but it had an important advantage in the form of greater continuity and therefore stability

his form was to prove a durable one, and it provided a means to choose, an agreed method of succession, and a way to produce individuals of apparent merit. This system, however, had only been  devised in response to the unwanted breakdown of rule by the British Crown. Within Britain no such expedient was necessary, nor appeared so. The world of Georges I and II was one in which republicanism found little favour in Britain

The famed Chinese pilgrim to India Fa Hsien (Faxien), noted that Gupta law was exceptionally generous; crimes were punished only with fines.

The surviving architecture includes palaces and purpose-built temples for both Hindu and Buddhist religions, such as the Parvati Temple at Nachna Kuthara and the Dashavatara temple at Deogarh in Madhya Pradesh.

The emperors also founded free hospitals for their citizens, as well as monasteries and universities.

Aryabhata's incredibly accurate calculation of pi as 3.1416, and his equally amazing calculation that the solar year is 365.358 days long.

Chandragupta's son, Samudragupta (ruled 335–380 CE), was a brilliant warrior and statesman, sometimes called the "Napoleon of India."

As with the collapses of other classical political systems, the Gupta Empire crumbled under both internal and external pressures.

Internally, the Gupta Dynasty grew weak from a number of succession disputes. As the emperors lost power, regional lords gained increasing autonomy. In a sprawling empire with weak leadership, it was easy for rebellions in Gujarat or Bengal to break out, and difficult for the Gupta emperors to put such uprisings down.

By 500, many regional princes were declaring their independence and refusing to pay taxes to the central Gupta state. These included the Maukhari Dynasty, who ruled over Uttar Pradesh and Magadha.

By the later Gupta era, the government was having trouble collecting enough taxes to fund both its hugely complex bureaucracy, and constant wars against foreign invaders like the Pushyamitras and the Huns.

In part, this was due to the common people's dislike of the meddlesome and unwieldy bureaucracy.

Even those who felt a personal loyalty to the Gupta Emperor generally disliked his government and were happy to avoid paying for it if they could.

In addition to internal disputes, the Gupta Empire faced constant threats of invasion from the north. The cost of fighting off these invasions drained the Gupta treasury, and the government had difficulty refilling the coffers. Among the most troublesome of the invaders were the White Huns (or Hunas), who had conquered much of the northwestern section of Gupta territory by 500 CE.

The Central Junta and its successor, the regency, were compelled to summon a Cortes in order to legitimize the situation created by the absence of Ferdinand VII, who was a prisoner in France. Conservatives conceived of this task as the mere supply of the sinews of war on behalf of an absent king.

With the help of an army corps and of conservative sentiment that had been outraged by the liberalism of 1812, Ferdinand returned from exile in France to rule Spain as an absolute monarch. In 1820 he was forced by military sedition to return to constitutionalism during the Liberal Triennium (1820–23). For the last, “ominous” decade of his reign, he returned to a relatively enlightened form of ministerial despotism. From 1814 to 1820 Spain attempted to reestablish its rule in America and to maintain an inflated wartime army with a permanent economic deficit.

When, on September 29, 1833, Ferdinand died, Isabella was proclaimed queen, with María Cristina as regent, precipitating almost immediately the outbreak of the First Carlist War (1833–39).

the power of the first consul was so well established that there was no hope of intervening in France. Instead, the house of Orléans became reconciled with the elder branch of the Bourbon family. Even so, Louis-Philippe never took up arms to fight with émigré forces for the royalist cause against other Frenchmen

On November 25 he married Marie-Amélie, a daughter of King Ferdinand IV of Naples and Maria Carolina of Austria. About this time there was some suggestion that Louis-Philippe should join the English forces in the Peninsular War. Maria Carolina—who held the real power in Naples and whose sister Marie-Antoinette had been executed by the French Revolutionary government—had long backed the campaign against the Revolutionary armies and Napoleon. She certainly would have supported such a move by her son-in-law, but nothing came of it, probably because Louis XVIII again feared any activity that might further the Orleanist cause.

Louis-Philippe returned to France at the First Restoration (1814). Although Louis XVIII refused to grant Louis-Philippe the style of royal highness (later allowed to him by Charles X), the king did grant Louis-Philippe the dignities traditionally held by the head of his family. More important perhaps, Louis-Philippe regained possession of the family estates and forests that had not been sold after his own emigration and his father’s execution. During the Hundred Days (1815) he returned to England instead of following the court to Ghent.

Under the second Restoration the duc d’Orléans was a steady and more or less open adherent of the liberal opposition

when Louis-Philippe had become king and his eldest son, Ferdinand-Louis-Philippe, was heir to the royal domain, he could reserve the Orléans inheritance for his other sons instead of merging it with the crown lands.

In 1830 Charles X’s attempt to enforce repressive ordinances touched off a rebellion (July 27–30) that gave Louis-Philippe his long-awaited opportunity to gain power.

The revolution that brought Louis-Philippe to power constituted a victory for the upper bourgeoisie over the aristocracy. The new ruler was titled Louis-Philippe, king of the French, instead of Philip VII, king of France. He consolidated his power by steering a middle course between the right-wing extreme monarchists (the Legitimists) on the one side and the socialists and other republicans (including the Bonapartists) on the other. The July Monarchy, with its “Citizen King,” could never command the support of all the factions, however. Its opponents resorted to political intrigue, insurrection, and even assassination plots. In July 1835 an attempt on the king’s life by Giuseppe Fieschi resulted in the deaths of 18 people and the wounding of many more, but the royal family escaped injury. Throughout Louis-Philippe’s reign, it was said that “for shooting kings there is no close[d] season.”

before abdicating in favour of his 10-year-old grandson, Henri Dieudonné d’Artois, comte de Chambord. On August 7 the provisional government of deputies and peers present in Paris declared the throne vacant. Following the terminology of the Constitution of 1791, Louis-Philippe was on August 9 proclaimed “king of the French by the grace of God and the will of the people.” A modified version of the Charter of 1814 was issued, which the new king was obliged to accept.

The death of the popular duc d’Orléans in a carriage accident in July 1842 not only grieved Louis-Philippe very deeply but also seriously weakened the dynasty. The new heir to the throne, the duke’s son Philippe d’Orléans, comte de Paris, was an infant for whom a regency had to be prearranged.

The marriage (August 1832) of his daughter Marie-Louise to Queen Victoria’s uncle Leopold I, king of the Belgians, established an excellent relationship between Paris and London, almost foreshadowing the Entente Cordiale.

The British were finally alienated by Louis-Philippe’s policy on the “Spanish marriages.” In an attempt to revive the traditional family alliance between the French and Spanish Bourbons, he had at first wanted his sons Henri d’Orléans, duc d’Aumale, and Antoine, duc de Montpensier, to marry Spanish Queen Isabella II and her sister and heiress presumptive, the infanta Luisa Fernanda, respectively. The British objected to this obvious threat of French predominance in Spain, and in 1843 Louis-Philippe agreed that Isabella should marry neither Henri nor the British nominee, Prince Albert’s cousin Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, but rather some Spanish Bourbon instead.

French opposition to the regime had become much more embittered. The industrial and agricultural depression of 1846 aroused widespread popular discontent, and Louis-Philippe’s constant refusal of any electoral reform meant that many members of the lower middle class—from whom he might still have drawn support—remained without the vote. Finally, his narrow-minded conservatism and his unwillingness to seek any solution for pressing political and social problems drove many divergent interests into union against him.

The July Monarchy was but one casualty of the great revolutionary movement that swept through Europe in 1848. In any case, a change had come to seem unavoidable in France.

The July Monarchy was really an anachronism. To the French people—for whom, whether or not they favoured the institution, monarchy meant the splendours and absolutism of the ancien régime

In power Louis-Philippe strove to implement his desire to rule as well as to reign. The political difficulties with which he was faced revealed in him the weaknesses of an obstinate man; increasingly, his only response to crises was words and theories, and ultimately inaction lost him his crown.

Adolf Fredrik, Gustav III’s father, was described by one English contemporary as having ‘the title of king, with hardly the privileges of a subject’. Unlike his British counterpart George II, he had no power to summon or dissolve his parliament.

Gustav was an unimpressive figure physically, weedy and foppish, and slightly lame since birth, but when he addressed the members of the Riksdag he made them flinch with his phrases of masterful contempt

The new constitution that Gustav now promulgated, in place of that of 1720-72, brought Sweden more into line with contemporary Britain.

The main difference between the British and Swedish systems was that, whereas in Britain the monarch’s executive power was in practice delegated to ministers more industrious, more  proficient and, for the most part,  more intellectually gifted than their royal master, in Sweden it was Gustav III himself who was indisputably in day to day charge

No other of the Enlightened Despots was more fond than Gustav of the time-wasting rituals of court life, the levées, formal audiences and ceremonial entries and exits.

Whereas Napoleon, in his coup d’etat of 19e Brumaire 1799 broke down and began mumbling in front of the popular assembly he was trying to overawe, Gustav III easily faced down his opponents in the Riksdag

Gustav III may well have held a record among monarchs prior to the nineteenth century for the number of other crowned heads he met. What Louis XV and Louis XVI of France or Ferdinand IV of Naples thought of him is uncertain, though none of these Bourbons were exactly noted for their insight into character. Pope Pius VI pretended to be delighted with Gustav (the first Protestant monarch ever to meet a pope) and made him a Knight of the Golden Spur. The other Enlightened Despots, Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great and Joseph II, agreed in thinking Gustav charming in a wearying sort of way, and faintly ridiculous. Leopold II, Joseph II’s brother and successor, perhaps the ablest politician among the Enlightened Despots – he was still only Grand Duke of Tuscany when Gustav met him

the Swedish king was a positive menace with his incessant scheming and readiness to interfere in other governments’ affairs

all radical improvements in national character take place during the severest wars’. Russia, having annexed the Crimea, had embarked on a titanic struggle with the Ottoman Empire which was absorbing stupendous quantities of manpower and treasure. At the beginning of 1788 he began making plans to attack Russia from the rear.

Gustav found himself far from his capital, stuck with an army that would not obey him. He was rescued  by the Danish government declaring war on him. Hurrying back to Sweden, Gustav rode to Gothenburg, 250 miles cross country in forty-eight hours – the last sixty miles quite alone and on borrowed farm horses, in blinding hailstorms – to rally the defences of the city against the invading Danes

The senior Swedish officers rejected all the courses of action proposed by Gustav and his latest discovery, William Sidney Smith, a British naval captain who had turned up without the permission of his own government; they even, according to Smith, talked of ‘proposing terms of Capitulation independent of the King’.

Catherine, still preoccupied with the war with Turkey, was glad to patch up a compromise peace

While the Stockholm crowds stood outside cheering him, Gustav confronted the chamber of nobles with a new constitution, and when they howled it down he coolly ordered the secretary of the chamber to record their vote as yes: a piece of blatant illegality combined with intimidation that anticipates the tactics of twentieth-century dictators. In fact, apart from giving the King the power to make war without the Riksdag’s consent, the new constitution marked little advance on that of 1772

Eleven weeks after Gustav rammed his new constitution down the throats of the nobles, the Estates General met at Versailles and by the time of the peace settlement with Russia the French ancien régime was well on the way to dissolution.

I cannot allow that it is right to support rebels against their Lawful King

Despite the fact that Sweden was virtually bankrupt in the aftermath of the Russian war he now offered to land 16,000 Swedish and 8,000 Russian troops at Ostend, in Austrian territory, and to march on Paris to overthrow the Constituent Assembly, with the support of an Austrian army advancing from the Rhine. In June 1791 he went to Aachen and was greeted there as a saviour by the French royalist exiles. While he was there Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette made their bid to escape from Paris

Marie Antoinette’s brother Leopold, who had succeeded Joseph II as Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of Austria the year before, was enraged by Gustav’s interference: there were some too, including Gustav’s uncle Henry of Prussia, who believed that his schemes for an armed intervention in France were merely a cover for a secret plan to seize Norway from the Danes

On March 1st, 1792, Leopold died – poisoned, it is said, by an aphrodisiac of his own concoction – but Gustav was destined never to learn that there was no longer any challenge to his self-appointed role as leader of the monarchist opposition to the French Revolution

Gustav III was only forty-six when he died. That was at least eight years older than the most brilliant of his predecessors on the Swedish throne, Gustav II Adolf, Karl X and Karl XII – and if he had lived a normal span he would still have been king at the time of Waterloo.

The economic weakness of his country, the inveterate opposition of the social class that elsewhere might have been a king’s chief support, and the increasing influence of the revolutionary ferment in France may have meant that, even if he had lived, he would not have been able to go as far as he dreamed: he is one of the great might-have-beens of history.

The Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium) and the left bank of the Rhine had been major battlefields in the war against the coalition, and French victories in those sectors were followed by military occupation, requisitions, and taxation but also by the abolition of feudalism and similar reforms. In 1795 Belgium was annexed to France and divided into departments, which would henceforth be treated like other French départements.

Strategic considerations and French national interest were the main engines of French foreign policy in the Revolutionary decade but not the only ones. Elsewhere in Europe, native patriots invited French support against their own ruling princes or oligarchies.

abortive revolutionary movements had already occurred in the Austrian Netherlands and in the United Provinces (Dutch Netherlands). When French troops occupied their country in 1795, Dutch "Patriots" set up the Batavian Republic, the first of what became a belt of "sister republics" along France’s borders.

By 1797 Prussia and Spain had made peace with France, but Austria and Britain continued the struggle.

In the process, northern Italy was liberated from Austria, and the Habsburgs were driven to the peace table, where they signed the Treaty of Campo Formio on 26 Vendémiaire, year VI (October 17, 1797).

The treasure coming from the sister republics was desperately needed in Paris since French finances were in total disarray.

In 1797 the government finally engineered a painful return to hard currency and in effect wrote down the accumulated national debt by two-thirds of its value in exchange for guaranteeing the integrity of the remaining third.

Why does Bismarck escape blame as the chief architect of 20th-century Germany – and thus the man who created a militarised political machine that only he could handle? He used to get plenty of blame, but historical memory does funny things and the enormity of Hitler’s regime (he was “Vienna’s revenge on Berlin” wrote AJP Taylor) seems to have blotted out the significant past. When I ask Germans now they sometimes say: “Well, Bismarck is remembered mostly for the social security system he set up,” one designed to neutralise the appeal of socialism, still recognisable and admired today.

In any case there is a sense in which the first world war was indeed over by Christmas 1914, only Bismarck’s autocratic heirs couldn’t accept it. Unlike in 1870 and again in 1940 the Germans had failed to take Paris in another lightning war that summer. At great cost in lives the armies of the despised French Third Republic – shovelling troops up from the capital in buses and taxis – and Britain’s “contemptible little army” (Kaiser Bill’s phrase) held the line at the first battle of the Marne, just 30 miles north-east of Paris.

Moltke was replaced as chief of the German general staff three days later, but the war went on: four Christmases, including one truce, to go. The winners would be the ones with the deepest pockets, not with the biggest Krupp gun or the silliest helmets.

If Trump succeeds in getting Americans to mix again in public at the height of the pandemic (many governors are unlikely to be so foolhardy with their constituents’ health), he will be risking the lives of hundreds of thousands if not millions

Just a week into his tepid embrace of social distancing, he’s ready to abandon the fight against the virus and instead force Americans to accept a new strategy for dealing with a pandemic: survival of the fittest.

It won’t work: The economy won’t bounce back if people don’t feel safe. “There will be no normally functioning economy if our hospitals are overwhelmed and thousands of Americans of all ages, including our doctors and nurses, lay dying because we have failed to do what’s necessary to stop the virus,” Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), the third-ranking House Republican said on Twitter.

It’s bad politics. As bodies of the elderly pile up, "GOP" will forever stand for something different: Get Old People.

It’s illogical: If he really sees things quickly returning to normal, what’s the point of a $2 trillion emergency spending package?

Above all, it’s immoral. Trump will be condemning to death the most vulnerable 1 or 2 percent who get the disease — and everybody else who can’t get medical care for heart attacks or injuries because hospitals are full.

“What is this, some modern Darwinian theory of natural selection?” asked an incredulous New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. “We are going to fight every way we can to save every life that we can,” the Democrat added.

Trump seems to be acting in near-total ignorance. “You can’t compare this to 1918,” he said of the great pandemic. “That was a flu where if you got it, you had a 50/50 chance or very close of dying.” In fact, the 1918 influenza mortality rate was 2.5 percent. The WHO puts coronavirus mortality at 3.4 percent, though that’s likely to fall.

Trump blithely proclaimed that “we can socially distance ourselves and go to work.” He suggested more hand-washing and less hand-shaking. “We lose thousands of people a year to the flu; we never turn the country off,” he said. “We lose much more than that to automobile accidents; we didn’t call up the automobile companies to say, ‘Stop making cars.’ ”

The annual chance of dying in a car crash is about 1 in 8,000. Seasonal flu mortality is 0.1 percent.

Americans understand this. Seventy-two percent think it will take months or longer for the virus to be contained, a CBS-YouGov poll found. Americans can see it took China three months to control the virus with severe measures.

“This cure is worse than the problem,” he said. “In my opinion, more people are going to die if we allow this to continue.”On the basis of that uninformed speculation, a reckless Trump would sign death warrants for millions.

Austria now tried to form an alliance that would threaten France into submission and stop the eastern rivals from fighting.

e Girondins or Brissotins) who wanted to take pre-emptive action, hoping that war would enable them to oust the king and declare a republic: the king’s failure to surrender to constitutional monarchy left the door open for him to be replaced.

there was terror in Paris. This was largely due to the fear the Prussian army would flatten Paris and slaughter the residents, a fear caused largely by Brunswick’s promise to do just that if the king or his family were harmed or insulted. Unfortunately, Paris had done exactly that: the crowd had killed their way to the king and taken him prisoner and now feared retribution. Massive paranoia and a fear of traitors also fuelled the panic. It caused a massacre in the prisons and over a thousand dead.

First Coalition, which was first between Austria and Prussia but was then joined by Britain and Spain

It would take seven coalitions to permanently end the wars now started. The First Coalition was aimed less at ending the revolution and more on gaining territory, and the French less as exporting revolution than getting a republic. More on the Seven Coalitions

many of the officers had fled the country.

(One opponent of the war was called Robespierre.

France began 1793 in a belligerent mood, executing their old king and declaring war on Britain, Spain, Russia, the Holy Roman Empire, most of Italy and The United Provinces, despite roughly 75% of their commissioned officers having left the army.

The influx of tens of thousands of passionate volunteers helped strengthen the remains of the royal army. However, the Holy Roman Empire decided to go on the offensive and France was now outnumbered

France’s government now declared a ‘Levée en Masse’, which basically mobilised/conscripted all adult males for the defense of the nation. There was uproar, rebellion and a flood of manpower, but both the Committee of Public Safety and the France they ruled had the resources to equip this army, the organization to run it, new tactics to make it effective, and it worked. It also started the first Total War and began the Terror.

The French soldiers were constantly boosted by patriotic propaganda and a huge number of texts sent out to them. France was still producing more soldiers and more equipment than its rivals,

the revolutionary government didn’t dare disband the armies and let these soldiers flood back into France to destabilize the nation, and neither could the faltering French finances support the armies on French soil. The solution was to carry the war abroad, ostensibly to safeguard the revolution, but also to get the glory and booty the government needed for support

However, the success in 1794 had been partly due to war breaking out again in the east, as Austria, Prussia, and Russia sliced up a Poland fighting to survive; it lost, and was taken off the map. Poland had in many ways helped France by distracting and dividing the coalition, and Prussia scaled down war efforts in the west, happy with gains in the east.

Britain was sucking up French colonies, the French navy being unable to work at sea with a devastated officer corps.

France was now able to capture more of the northwest coastline, and conquered and changed Holland

Prussia, satisfied with Polish land, gave up and came to terms, as did a number of other nations, until only Austria and Britain remained at war with France.

At the end of the year, the government in France changed to the Directory and a new constitution.

all aimed at Austria, the only major enemy left on the mainland

Trump’s well-attested attempts to induce Georgia state officials to manipulate November’s election count in his favour were a crime, Fulton County prosecutors suggest. If so, why the delay? Charge him! Add to the rap sheet allegations of the ex-president corruptly channelling US taxpayer and foreign funds into his hotel and resort businesses.

It’s truly strange that in a land of laws, Trump still walks free, strutting around his fancy-pants golf course, holding $250,000 a head fundraisers, evading justice, encouraging sedition, and daily blogging divisive bile about a stolen election. The Big Kahuna peddles the Big Lie. What other self-respecting country would allow it?

Those who disagree—most crucially, millions of working-class Americans of all ethnicities—are excised from the public square.

The social-justice movement comes at the expense of justice; “anti-racism” ends up exacerbating racism.

How could this be? It’s difficult to stand against “social justice,” especially for those of us who are deeply concerned about inequality. We feel humility toward activists, writers and politicians who take up the language of racial justice, given how urgent the cause is.

The basis for today’s social-justice movement is a deep skepticism about liberal values like equality, justice and democracy. This is rooted in an academic discipline known as “critical race theory,” which takes elements from Hegel and Marx, along with postmodernists like Foucault and Derrida, to assemble a worldview that does not accept that equality can exist.

Napoleon Bonaparte, and he was taking a victory lap through a German university town after defeating the Prussian army, when he happened to ride past a German philosopher with writer’s block, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

a key element of his work became associated with the concept of mastery and domination, of one man exerting his will over others.

Society, culture and history were produced in the back and forth, or “dialectic,” between the powerful and the powerless—the master-slave dialectic, as Hegel’s pairing became known in subsequent iterations.

When Marx articulated his thesis of class conflict as the basis for all modern social existence, he was—in the view of Jean-Paul Sartre among others—expanding on the master-slave dialectic.

And if history progressed through a changing cast of masters and slaves for Hegel, or class struggle for Marx, for critical race theorists and their “anti-racism” inheritors, it’s white people and people of color in a binary that gives one side all the power and the other side none.

Over time, three other key ideas were grafted onto the master-slave dialectic:

false consciousness

a belief that the ideals of a society mean less than do the exceptions to those ideals

and a commitment to undermining the grand narratives that a society relies upon.

“False consciousness” was an attempt by Marxists to explain why the working class wasn’t buying into their worldview.

It turns out that working-class people are often conservative, a fact that has never ceased to bedevil and infuriate educated leftists trying to impose their desire for revolution. Instead of trying to understand the preferences of the working class, Marxists asserted that the poor workers were merely deluded, in the grip of a “false consciousness,” instead of a revolutionary one.

You can see the concept of false consciousness—and the condescension that is its hallmark—everywhere in critical race theory.

Its proponents classify people of color who don’t have radical views on race or who vote Republican as the handmaidens of white supremacy;

The idea of false consciousness is everywhere in the work of Robin DiAngelo, a prominent proponent of “anti-racist” ideology whose book White Fragility has sold close to a million copies. DiAngelo contends that white people who cry when accused of being racists actually prove their bigotry via these “weaponized tears,” which she deems “white racial bullying.”

If a society claims as its foundation a narrative that some members are excluded from, then the true meaning of that narrative is found in the exception, rather than the rule.

Postmodernist philosophers added to this a mistrust of the ideals that society claims to be built on:

postmodernists argued that the explicit mores of a culture have no objective value, but are instead a way for one group to benefit at the expense of another.

From this perspective, the Constitution isn’t a document that established the United States on principles of equality and freedom that the country failed to live up to.

Instead, the Constitution is a document fundamental to denying rights to those deemed ineligible, and justifying the ownership of enslaved persons.

Your symbol of freedom and equality is nothing more than a tool of repression, postmodernists argue. Failures, even at the margins, expose the hypocrisy of the whole, and define it as a lie.

You can see this at work in The New York Times Magazine’s Pulitzer-prize winning “The 1619 Project,” which marks the year that the first African slave was brought to American shores.

argued that, while history teaches 1776 as the year of our nation’s founding, we should consider whether “the country’s true birth date, the moment that our defining contradictions first came into the world, was in late August of 1619,” as the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jake Silverstein, put it in an introduction.

It can’t be that America was founded on values like equality and liberty and democracy that it imperfectly embodied and has subsequently strived to correct.

It must be that the true founding was slavery, its true nature revealed by this failure.

This is why the social-justice movement cannot recognize the huge gains that have been made in this nation on the question of race; if there is even one instance of racism left in America, it is proof again of this true nature.

As with America, some on the left find it impossible to see Israel as a flawed nation imperfectly striving toward the ideals of its founding. The occupation of the Palestinians can’t be a disastrous injustice. It must be that Israel’s foundation is defined by this injustice, that “Zionism is racism.”

the real threat here is not just mangled logic. It’s the erasure of the possibility of equality, of a common humanity, that requires we treat each other as equals before God and before the law.

Today’s progressive left, whose ideas have become prevalent in much of the American establishment that is now repeating its incantations, simply does not believe equality is possible, instead differentiating people by how much power they supposedly have, with no common humanity to call upon.

since the social-justice movement recognizes only power, every one of its proposals is designed not to create a more equal society, but to transfer power from oppressors to oppressed—while allowing those designated as victims to maintain claim to the status of oppressed.

Race is immutable, so it doesn’t matter how much real power a person of color wields; their race means they will never be anything but oppressed.

You might be wondering why this view, which erases equality and cites oppression as the root of everything, has mainstream appeal

It seems to me that progressive elites, despite their pieties, don’t really want to live in a more equal society. They prefer the imperfect meritocracy we live under—the rule of the smart, the talented and the rich, most of whom traffic in the fiction that their status was earned.

progressives see themselves as compassionate. What they needed was a way to explain the inequality found in the meritocratic system they hold dear, a way that made them feel they were still on the side of the good without having to disrupt what is good for them.

This is not the way to a more equal society. We cannot right the wrongs of racial inequality—an urgent task—by erasing the ideal of equality

Nor can we allow the fact that equality has been unequally enforced throughout most of our history to provide an excuse to throw it away, and build a newly racialized America.

the clues are elsewhere. At first, one notices them like glitches in the matrix. Maybe you read an unorthodox remark on Twitter, and watch as its author is insulted in the cruelest terms by thousands of people, many with words like “social justice” or “diversity and inclusion” in their bios

Hundreds of forces that were partnering with the United States to fight ISIS are now relocating and refocusing to fight Turkey and defend themselves. The Washington Post reports that the pace of Kurdish operations against ISIS has "significantly tapered off," as the Kurds have had to deprioritize their battle against the Islamic State because they've lost our support -- and because they have to focus on protecting themselves from Erdogan.

What's more, the United States' withdrawal from Syria will hurt our ability to gather intelligence there, as we lose eyes and ears on the ground and direct access to human intelligence networks. Our mission against ISIS in Syria was not over, and our withdrawal has only increased the risks posed by the thousands of ISIS members still on the loose in Syria.

Trump's reckless decision will impede our future ability to persuade partners to work with us on counterterrorism missions around the world.

Putin has hosted summits with key players in Syria before -- including one last February in Sochi between Russia, Iran, Turkey and Syria. Putin is scheduled to meet again with Erdogan this week and will probably try to trump the Trump administration's efforts to negotiate a "pause" in Turkey's military operations.

With Russian and Syrian forces now occupying former US bases in northeastern Syria and former US allied forces turning to both Assad and Russia for protection, we may have to rely on one of our biggest enemies -- Russia -- to work with Turkey to ensure the bloodshed stops.

Trump says he doesn't care if Russia (or China, or Napoleon Bonaparte) ends up protecting the Kurds, but he probably doesn't understand what Russia stepping in to fill our shoes means longer-term, as more countries turn to Putin, instead of to the United States, for support.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flew to Israel last week to try to assuage Israeli officials' concerns about what a US withdrawal would mean for Iran's ability to operate in Syria. US support for Israel has been a central piece of US foreign policy for decades, and President Trump likes to paint himself as the best friend Israel has ever had. Concurrently, he's also made countering Iran one of the pillars of his foreign policy approach.Yet even though Trump is leaving a contingent of US troops at the al-Tanf base in south-central Syria to deter Iran, the downgrade in US troop presence in Syria, and Trump's tweets about how Syria isn't a US problem, are likely causing Israeli officials to question how serious Trump is about protecting Israel from Iranian attacks from within Syria.

Trump's policy, then, is to gamble on some shady characters to keep Iran in check. That's a dangerous game to play based on Iran's history of attacking Israel from anywhere it can.

Foreign policy on the fly is Trump's calling card. Other leaders are probably banking on the fact that speaking with him alone -- without experts around -- is a sure way to get what they want out of him. Now that Erdogan's gotten Trump to go against his own experts' advice during one-on-one phone calls at least twice, the President is scrambling to come up with some semblance of a strategy. He's outsourcing our security to Erdogan, Putin and maybe even Assad to take care of what should be key US missions.

Spawforth notes that the palace contained about 350 living units varying in size, from multi-room apartments to spaces about the size of an alcove. The size and location of the room a person got depended on their rank and standing with the king. While the crown prince (known as the dauphin) got a sprawling apartment on the ground floor, a servant may have nothing more than a space in an attic or a makeshift room behind a staircase.

Scholars have suggested a number of factors that led him to build a great palace complex at Versailles and move the French government there. It's been noted that by keeping the king's residence some distance from Paris, it offered him protection from any civil unrest going on in the city. It also forced the nobles to travel to Versailles and seek lodging in the palace, something that impeded their ability to build up regional power bases that could potentially challenge the king.

A series of gardens, created in a formal style, stood to the west of the palace (one of them today is in the shape of a star) and contained sculptures as well as the pressurized fountains capable of launching water high into the air. The formality and grandeur of the gardens symbolized Louis XIV's absolute power, even over nature

Despite the richness of the palace, the kings had to make do with makeshift theaters up until 1768 when Louis XV allowed the building of the royal opera. It contained a mechanism that allowed the orchestra level to be raised to the stage allowing it to be used for dancing and banqueting. Spawforth notes that the opera required 3,000 candles to be burned for opening night and was rarely used due to its cost and the poor shape of France's finances.

After the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette would be stripped of power, brought to Paris and ultimately beheaded. The palace fell under the control of the new republican government.Many of its furnishings were sold to help pay for the subsequent Revolutionary Wars. When Napoleon came to power, he had an apartment created for himself in the Grand Trianon, complete with a map room.

In 1871, after France had lost a war against Prussia, Kaiser Wilhelm I was proclaimed Emperor of Germany in the Hall of Mirrors, adding an extra layer of humiliation to the French defeat. For several years after this defeat, the situation in France was so bad that its Chamber of Deputies and Senate opted to meet at Versailles, rather than Paris, for reasons of safety.

Today, Versailles is one of the most-visited sites in France. Visitors are drawn to its architectural grandeur, the stunning water features (concerts are often played in the gardens during the summer) and its sense of history. 

Third, relatedly, the French view everything from the perspective of scarcity, meaning they assume they have to compensate for a lack of resources with smarts and courage, and by making the most of what they have.

It is true that at the heart of Foch’s thinking about war is a Romantic interpretation of “modern” warfare that owes a lot to Clausewitz as well as ambient French Romanticism, which encouraged rejection of materialist or positivist philosophies and valorized spirit and will.

Wars for Foch were contests between wills; the most obstinate wins. But they were also fundamentally about aggression. If you want to push your enemy back, “hit him, otherwise nothing is done, and to that end there is only one means: battle.”

Foch believed that strategy boiled down to maneuver. But the maneuvering had to be for the sake of setting up the decisive attack.

Napoleon maneuvered to kill. Foch believed he could teach the art of maneuvering to kill by studying not formulae for victory but rather fundamental “principles of war” that he believed should guide commanders’ analysis of how to proceed.

Foch’s catchphrase was said to have been “De quoi s’agit-il?” meaning “What’s it all about?” The idea is to think and adapt rather than do anything mechanically, an imperative that gave commanders full license, for example, to abandon the disastrous tactics of 1914 and try something else.

What he actually wrote is this: economy of force, intellectual discipline, liberty of action, security, strategic surprise, and the decisive attack.

what most French officers would say if quizzed about Foch: economy of force, concentration of efforts, and liberty of action.

“one does not hunt two hares at the same time.” Elaborating on the idea, he defined economy of force as the “art of [dispersing one’s efforts] [ in a profitable manner, of getting the greatest possible benefit out of the resources one has.”

Foch argued for what later would be referred to by Americans as mission command, and, in the French army, the principle of “subsidiarity,” which boils down to the idea that an officer should communicate his general intent to his subordinate officers, but leave to them the authority and autonomy to figure out the best way to fulfill it.

Intellectual Discipline and Liberty of Action

Just as when one walks through a dark house one extends one’s arm in front to guard against walking into obstacles, Foch wrote, an army must deploy a force ahead as well as to the sides and rear. The objective is to protect the major portion of the force, the gros, from being forced to react and thereby losing its liberty of action

Security

Though Foch spoke of the need for decisive battles with language that evoked the physical destruction of the adversary’s armies, he was really interested in imposing upon the enemy a psychological effect that was analogous to the effect ideally brought about by a surprise: namely, a combination of terror and paralysis.

Strategic Surprise and Decisive Attack

the French army today recognizes five principles of war. The first three are straight Foch: liberty of action, economy of means, and concentration of efforts. To these the French have added two more, reportedly derived from the 1992 book on strategy by Adm. Guy Labouérie (1933–2016). These are “uncertainty” and foudroyance.

Uncertainty quite simply is something one most go to great lengths to cultivate among one’s adversaries: uncertainty about what one is doing and going to do, where, when, and why

Foudroyance, derived from the word for thunder (foudre), means a sudden crippling shock. In truth, it amounts to a rephrasing of Foch’s principle of strategic surprise

At the 2019 “Principles of War in 2035” conference, participants discussed whether or not new technologies, new forms of conflict, and new contextual realities (such as new political landscapes, the role of the media, and the much smaller size of most militaries) had changed or would in the foreseeable future change warfare so significantly as to make Foch finally useless. In essence, the answer was no,

Foch’s principles also make particular sense given the French army’s lack of resources, compared not just to the U.S. military but even the French army of Foch’s day. Economy of means when means are limited is not a thought exercise

Foch above all counseled fighting smart, and trying always to answer “de quoi s’agit-il?” even if this amounts to nothing more than the imperative to take a moment and think through what one is trying to achieve. This seems self-evident, but recent American military history suggests civilian and military leaders could benefit from the reminder.