Why I am a Partisan of the House of Habsburg

Whilst I have the added reason that HIRH Otto (R+I+P) was my daughter's godfather, I totally agree with this statement that my friend, Chevalier Charles Coulombe, posted on his Facebook page.

So I have been asked why I am such a Habsburg partisan - and it is a fair question. On one level, of course, as a "Cosmopolitan Monarchist" (as someone dubbed me), I am fervently in favour of all Christian Royal Houses being restored - most especially the Bourbons in France (though I wish the two houses were reconciled more than anything!); moreover, I can't think of a non-Christian republic that has been better off since its Monarchy was overthrown, abysmal as it might have been.

Beyond that, however, there is the fact that the Habsburgs also represent the idea of the Holy Empire, Abendland, the Occident - as, in their way, do the Romanoffs, whom I should also like to see restored. It is why I have have a special devotion to Ss. Constantine and Helen, Bl. Charlemagne, St. Henry the Emperor, and Bl. Constantine XI, and I do not begrudge the Orthodox their veneration of Theodosius, Justinian, and the murdered Russian Imperial Family.

As Vladimir Soloviev wrote in 1900: "For lack of an imperial power genuinely Christian and Catholic, the Church has not succeeded in establishing social and political justice in Europe. The nations and states of modern times, freed since the Reformation from ecclesiastical surveillance, have attempted to improve upon the work of the Church. The results of the experiment are plain to see. The idea of Christendom as a real, though admittedly inadequate, unity embracing all the nations of Europe has vanished; the philosophy of the revolutionaries has made praiseworthy attempts to substitute for this unity the unity of the human race — with what success is well known. A universal militarism transforming whole nations into hostile armies and itself inspired by a national hatred such as the Middle Ages never knew; a deep and irreconcilable social conflict; a class struggle which threatens to whelm everything in fire and blood; and a continuous lessening of moral power in individuals, witnessed to by the constant increase in mental collapse, suicide and crime — such is the sum total of the progress which secularized Europe has made in the last three or four centuries."


In the 119 years since he write those words, it has become ever more so. That is the ideal which the Habsburgs to a greater or lesser degree have always incarnated - and never more than in Blessed Emperor Karl and the Servant of God Empress Zita, who between them, both in their respective heritages and themselves epitomised all that was best in the Imperial and the European idea - and did so with a fervent piety and devotion that inspires all who truly explore it. So now you know.