Word: habsburgs
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...Habsburg emperor, Rudolf II was exceptionally inept. During his rule, from 1576 to 1612, he was forced to cede Hungary, Moravia, Austria and Bohemia. Yet he had vision of sorts. He was an amateur astronomer, brought Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe to the Hradčany, his imperial castle in Prague, to perfect his stargazing. Rudolf's keen eye carried over into the arts, which he collected with all the magpiety of a Renaissance nobleman worshiping beauty. It was one of the world's greatest collections, but Rudolf could not hold on to it either...
During the Thirty Years' War, the Hradčany was sacked by the Swedes, who floated bargeloads of art homeward down the Elbe. The Habsburg descendants contributed to the losses. In 1749, Empress Maria Theresa sold off 69 paintings at bargain rates. After the Habsburgs moved their imperial seat to Vienna, they removed Rudolf's collection from Prague. Between 1865 and 1894 alone, Vienna's palaces gained 312 pictures, including Cranachs, Bruegels and Bassanos. The dispersal has gone on until art from Rudolf's Schatzkammer now hangs across the world, from New York's Metropolitan...
Adopting the Habsburgs. Of course, many other nations suffer from crawling bureaucracy, but Italy's problem is on the scale of Michelangelo's David or the triumphal march in Aïda. Barzini traces its origins back to the 16th and 17th centuries, when together with so many other of Italian society's "baroque" characteristics, it was imported by Italy's hated Spanish Habsburg rulers, and then adopted and glorified by the natives. Nowadays most Italians consider the archvillains to be the bureaucrats themselves. They have come to be known as i burosauri, a name derived...
...Likes Sacherforte? Many Austrians are also all too bitterly aware of the decline in their country's grandeur. The only time that the coalition has been seriously divided was in a dispute over a memory: two years ago, the Socialists voted to keep Otto Habsburg, Franz Josef's heir, out of the country, though he has renounced his claim to the throne...
...colonelcy and his own regiment. He was a major general at 22, a field marshal before he was 30. In his 54 years of service, the Emperor's new recruit was to liberate Central Europe after a century and a half of Turkish rule, to establish Habsburg hegemony in Italy, and then to hold it and the rest of the Holy Roman Empire against a far more powerful and expansionist France...