100 years ago today, on the same day as the Armistice with Germany, Karl, Emperor of Austria-Hungary made a desperate effort to save his Crown. He resigned the government of Austria (followed by a similar declaration on 13 November for Hungary) and retired from Vienna to Eckartsau. He did not abdicate. In fact he continued in this legal limbo for a further five months when the chaos created by the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was settled enough for an Austrian delegation to present him with an instrument of abdication which he signed and fled into exile in Switzerland. In Hungary he held on to the legal fiction until 1921 when he finally abdicated when his attempts to be recognized in Budapest came to nothing.