The rebellious Slav subjects of the sclerotic Habsburg monarchy called it the "graveyard of nations". However, for most people in the east and south of the Austro-Hungarian empire the early years of the 20th century were, in retrospect, a golden age: peaceful and law-governed in a way that contrasts poignantly with the totalitarian decades that followed. The great pity is that Emperor Franz Josef II, who ruled the empire from 1848 to 1916, enjoyed robust good health, living to the overripe old age of 86 and blocking the changes that modernity required of his country. Under a different monarch with a more reformist bent, the empire might have survived for many happy decades more.
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