Belated efforts had been made to steady his tottering throne. The
"ramshackle empire," a medley of states, races, and languages, was,
however, relentlessly and rapidly disintegrating. The political and
economic situation was desperate. The defeat of Austria and Hungary, in
that same war, sounded its death knell and brought its dismemberment.
Hungary sundered its connection. The conglomerate realm was carved up, and
all that was left of the once formidable Holy Roman Empire was a shrunken
republic that led a miserable existence until, in more recent times, it
was, unlike its sister nation, completely extinguished and wiped off the
political map of Europe.
Such was the fate of the Napoleonic, the Romanov, the Hohenzollern, and
the Hapsburg empires, whose rulers, together with the sovereign occupant
of the Papal throne, were individually addressed by the Pen of the Most
High, and who were respectively chastised, forewarned, condemned, rebuked
and admonished. What of the fate of those sovereigns who, exercising
direct political jurisdiction over the Faith, its Founders, and followers,
and within the radius of whose domains that Faith was born and first
spread, were at liberty to crucify its Herald, banish its Founder, and mow
down its adherents?