Today marks the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Puebla. I took a long look at the importance of the battle two years ago. One item to expand upon: As I discussed, the French setback in 1862 fatally doomed the French effort to install Maximilian, the younger brother of Austrian emperor Franz Joseph, as emperor of Mexico, leading to Maximilian’s execution by firing squad in 1867. Had Maximilian lived, he would have become the next in line for the Austrian throne when Franz Joseph’s only son, Crown Prince Rudolf, died in a joint suicide with his mistress in 1889. There are a lot of other contingencies: Maximilian’s Mexican empire might have failed anyway, and he formally renounced his claim to the Austrian throne in 1864 when he sailed for Mexico. But the brothers may well have reconsidered that renunciation after Rudolf’s suicide, or they might have considered a son of Maximilian (had he had one; that’s another story) as the next in line, had the Mexican empire endured. In either event, it was the death of Maximilian without an heir that caused the Austrian line of succession to run to Franz Joseph’s second brother, Karl Ludwig — and, on Karl Ludwig’s death in 1896, to Karl Ludwig’s son Franz Ferdinand.
It was, of course, Franz Ferdinand’s assassination that started the chain reaction that led to the First World War. That reaction, beginning with Franz Joseph’s insistence on punishing Serbia for its involvement in the assassination, was deeply informed both by Franz Ferdinand’s status as heir to the throne and by the tenuous condition of the Austrian line of succession, and the history of violence, including the assassination of Franz Joseph’s wife in 1898, Rudolf’s suicide, and Maximilian’s execution. We never know what furies today’s news will unleash later.