Europe was on the course for war, but its scale and duration were less likely than a major, but probably fairly localized war of some kind.
 

BooNZ

Banned
What British-sponsored coup are you talking about here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jameson_Raid

Actually, Nicholas already had some setbacks with the Russian people--most notable the Revolution of 1905 and this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khodynka_Tragedy
The 1905 'revolution' also arose during wartime conditions and in the following years resistance groups (especially in Russian Poland) were thoroughly infiltrated by Okhrana agents.

Technically speaking, though, Britain and France can relieve some pressure on Russia by attacking Germany from the West. Indeed, I doubt that a German attempt to restore the Russian monarchy would have went over very well either in Russia or among the international community.
The Russians had the largest army in the world with the greatest number of cavalry, so I doubt Nicholas would require German boots or hooves on the ground. The Germans could merely run diplomatic interference, control the borders and pressure A-H to do the same and the Russian monarchy is more than capable of dealing with the revolting rabble itself.

Given Nicholas II's incompetence, I myself am not sure that you are correct in regards to this.
Providing the Russian army are not distracted by a significant hostile third party, it should not be much of a challenge for the Russian Army to take care of business.
 
Oh, I certainly agree with you that it is possible that a Hungarian attempt to secede would trigger a revolution inside of Hungary. Indeed, this could very well work to Franz Ferdinand's advantage.



http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/8-things-didnt-know-franz-ferdinand/

"Franz Ferdinand wrote in his notes that once he became emperor he would introduce universal suffrage, a.k.a. one-man, one-vote. But not for the reasons you may assume; Franz Ferdinand was no friend to democracy, said Cohen.

He was interested in weakening Hungarian power, said Cohen, which he hated and believed was the barrier to change. Greater rights for south Slavs, Czechs and other subjugated ethnicities on the Hungarian side of the empire would undermine their political sway, and consolidate power in the crown."

Thus, it looks like Franz Ferdinand was both a proponent of universal suffrage and a semi-absolutist.



Completely agreed; indeed, without outside support, such a secessionist movement would certainly fail.

Also, there is no way in Hell that Germany would support a secessionist movement on the territory of its ally Austria-Hungary!

Revolt may be an overreaction. To put simply, the parliament would have imploded in such a scenario - monarchist and 48-ers would found themselves on the same platform - and to simply put, very few on the lower levels would risk the rope for treason for the magnates. All cc 500 of them could start to secede, good luck with that.

Now, on the other hand, FF introducing universal suffrage would be somewhat extremely unlikely: would he change the hungarian elite for socialists? Hardly. FJ was not fond of the hungarian elite, but he had no better allies either. And the Czeczs were in the austrian part of the empire, with much better franchise and with an unsolved question - this Cohen chap romanticize FF a lot.
FF was to simply put, a dick: no one liked him and he does not liked anyone maybe except Willy, because of their hunting trips.


And for secessionist movements in general: the 2 nations able to support such a movement were Germany and Russia. Any russian support would have been at least a poisoned chalice because of their panslavist and balkan ambitions. And german support was extremely unlikely. So, i think, we could agree, that there were no support for that under the OTL circumstances - hence i see no chance for it.
 
As you can see, the European political situation was simply extraordinarily unstable during the pre-WWI era.
Yet in every case except the last they found a peaceful solution to avoid war.


I don't know about that; France and Russia vs. Germany would force the latter to fight a two-front war, which was basically the nightmare scenario for German military planners.
Against France unless the French are willing to violate Swiss or Belgian and Luxembourgian territory Germany will have a short front along good defensive terrain with secure flanks. Before the Schlieffen plan became all the rage Germany had expected to follow an eastern front first policy.
 
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