ABSTRACT
The cosmopolitan Habsburg aristocracy and the Catholic high clergy hastened to proclaim their loyalty to the new nation states, and Emperor-King Charles was abandoned even by his splendidly caparisoned Arcieren, Trabanten, and Hungarian noble body guards, for whom this would have been the first genuine opportunity in history to defend their ruler. The differences between Hungary's prewar regime and Habsburg Admiral Miklós Horthy's new regime were mainly in tone and tactics. Liberation from the Habsburg yoke, it was commonly felt, would mark the dawn of a new era, the start of social reform and of a glorious national future. The end of the Great War did not bring peace to Habsburg realm: new wars flared up even before the armistice was signed, fought by armed civilians and scattered units of what had once been a single army. The only genuinely all monarchial institution maintained to the end of the Habsburg state was the so-called Common Army.
