The Radetzky March     by Joseph Roth, Translated by G Dunlop and E Tucker and Joachim Neugroschel Original title: Radetzkymarsch Original language: German Published by Mckay, David Pub. Date: 1996 Format: Hardcover Dimensions: (in inches): 1.08 x 8.33 x 5.29 ISBN: 0679451005 Edition: REISSUE List Price: $18.00 Not available for ordering Published by Everyman's' Pub. Date: 1997 Format: Paperback List Price: £9.99 Not available for ordering Published by Penguin Pub. Date: 1984 Format: Paperback Not available for ordering Published by Penguin Pub. Date: 1995 Format: Paperback List Price: £7.99 Not available for ordering Published by Allen Lane Pub. Date: 1974 Format: Paperback Not available for ordering

Click on image to see enlargement

‘To all my peoples’ — were the words the Austrian Emperor used to proclaim the outbreak of World War One to his subjects. This war signalled the start of the last act of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The sunset of the Hapsburg Empire and the consequent decline of a whole world is the theme of both The Radetzky March and its sequel The Emperor’s Tomb (also reviewed here).

In this earlier novel Roth follows events in the terrain under the rule of the double-headed Hapsburg eagle over three generations of the Trotta family. The Trottas emerge from social obscurity because of the heroic act of a Slovene lieutenant — the first notable Trotta — who saves the Emperor’s life on the battlefield.

Aided by his sovereign’s gratitude, Franz, the son of the battlefield hero, becomes a faithful Habsburg official, Captain of a district of Moravia. However his nephew, Karl Josef, dissipates his bungler’s existence — incarnation of the moribund Empire — in a hated military career, first in the Dragoons and then in an infantry regiment on the Eastern marches of the state, only to die ingloriously on the day after the outbreak of war.

In The Radetzky March the Trotta family legend of the hero of Solferino is linked with that of Franz Josef who, because of the battle in which he had shown an almost suicidal military valour, starts the legend; but in this way the Emperor ends up being deluded by both his own myth and that of the immutability of Austrian rule.

Roth’s masterpiece is an elegiac work, but one written in a measured and unsentimental style. It mourns the loss of a past age, recreating its glamour and its atmosphere at the same time as producing a lucid chronicle of its crumbling and sterile reality.

‘Straining greatly, Herr von Trotta managed to ask, «I don’t understand. How can you say the monarchy no longer exists?»

«Naturally!», replied Chojnicki. «In literal terms, it still exists. We still have an army — the count pointed at the lieutenant — «and officials» — the count pointed at the district captain — «but the monarchy is disintegrating while still alive; it is doomed! An old man, with one foot in the grave, endangered whenever his nose runs, keeps the old throne through the sheer miracle that he can still sit on it. How much longer, how much longer? This era no longer wants us! This era wants to create independent nation-states! People no longer believe in God. The new religion is nationalism. Nations no longer go to church. They go to national associations. Monarchy, our monarchy, is founded on piety, on the faith that God chose the Hapsburgs to rule over so and so many Christian nations. Our Kaiser is a secular brother of the Pope, he is His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty; no other is as apostolic, no other majesty in Europe is as dependent on the grace of God and on the faith of the nations in the grace of God. The German Kaiser still rules even when God abandons him; perhaps by the grace of the nation. The Emperor of Austria-Hungary must not be abandoned by God. But God has abandoned him!»’ p161-162