By Scott A. Grant
mail@floridanewsline.com
During a 40-year period that evenly overlapped the turn of the 20th Century, a group of radicals terrified the established world. They called themselves Anarchists and despite the name, they were actually organized. They had meetings and newspapers and an agenda. That agenda was decidedly anti-government and anti-capitalist.
The Anarchists expressed their dissatisfaction through assassinations. They called the attacks “Propaganda of the Deed.” The idea was that lone assassins sacrificing their lives for the cause and killing government and business leaders would prompt a revolution that would bring down the corrupt institutions of power.
In 1881, an Anarchist exploded a bomb killing Tsar Alexander II. In 1892, a different Anarchist attempted to shoot Carnegie Steel president, Henry Frick. Frick survived and nearly beat his attacker to death. Four attempts were made on the life of John D. Rockefeller. In the 1890s, the president of France and the prime minister of Spain were both assassinated.
In 1901, an American Anarchist with the unpronounceable name of Leon Czolgosz shot President William McKinley. Despite heightened security following the Anarchist assassination of King Umberto II of Italy earlier that year, Czolgosz was able to approach McKinley in a receiving line with a pistol bandaged in his hand.
Vice President Teddy Roosevelt was sworn in as the new President. Eleven years later, Teddy had his own run in with an Anarchist. On the way to give a speech in Milwaukee, Roosevelt was shot. His lengthy 50-page speech, folded in his breast pocket slowed the bullet and saved his life. Famously, Teddy went and gave his speech despite a bullet hole in his chest.
Meanwhile, in the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Hapsburgs were suffering through their own version of hell. Crown Prince Rudolf, the only son of Emperor Franz-Josef and his spouse, the Empress Elisabeth, was unhappy. He did not like his pretty wife. Like many unhappy men, he sought solace in booze and other women. He contracted a venereal disease that made him infertile. Princess Stephanie of Belgium had borne him a daughter. Now, she too was infected and infertile.
Rudolf wanted to ask the Pope for an annulment, but Franz-Josef forbade it. The 30-year-old Crown Prince locked himself away in his grand hunting lodge with his favorite mistress, a curvy 17-year-old Baroness named Maria. They wrote each other emo-like letters expressing their soulful angst. Then one day, overcome by their misery, they entered into a suicide pact. They were found dead in a pool of their own blood. The Empress Elisabeth never recovered. She wore black for the rest of her life.
This left the Empire without a direct heir. The crown would now pass to Franz-Josef’s younger brother and when he died in 1898, to his nephew Archduke Franz Ferdinand. That same year, the Empress Elisabeth was vacationing incognito in Switzerland. When a local paper announced her presence, she caught the attention of an Anarchist. Luigi Lucheni had travelled to Geneva hoping to kill the French Dauphin. The Dauphin slipped through his fingers. The distraught Empress presented a second opportunity. He stabbed her through the heart with an industrial file.
In June of 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand travelled to Sarajevo with his wife. Bosnian Anarchists planned to blow up his car. They failed but injured some of the guards in the trailing vehicle. Franz Ferdinand insisted on visiting the injured in hospital. He got lost on the way and ran into another Bosnian Anarchist named Gavrillo Princip. Princip shot him dead. The world was plunged into a bloody war that brought down four monarchies and killed about 20 million people. Arguably, that war led to an even bloodier second that killed more than 70 million more.
People believe what they want to believe. Each generation imagines that their travails are worse than those that came before. We want to imagine that everything is new. History begs to differ. It does repeat and we as a society are sadly doomed to repeat it.
Scott A. Grant is a historian and author. By day, he is the Chief Investment Officer of Standfast Asset Management.
