471. The Road to The Great War: The Austrian Ultimatum (Part 3)

On the 20th of July 1914 the heads of state of two great European powers - France and Russia - met in St Petersburg. Little did they know, though they may have suspected, that the Austrians were simultaneously writing up an Ultimatum, and waiting for the departure of the French to hand it to Serbia. Russia, at that time a vast continental empire under the leadership of the conservative, nervous Tsar Nicholas II, posed a major threat to the Austrians. It had modernised quickly and was in a far more confident position than it had been ten years earlier. Moreover, it had invested interests in the Balkans - the axis of their grain reserves - and little sympathy for the Austrians and their assassinated Archduke. Meanwhile, France felt itself to be a country in decline, long the whipping boy of Europe, and threatened by Germany - the growing, encroaching industrial shadow on its border. The time had come to recover French prestige in the world, and a war in the Balkans, guaranteeing the intervention of their most useful ally, Russia, may have seemed the answer…So it was that in the wake of their summit, both powers parted having cemented their alliance, eager to drive Britain into the co…