High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Radetzky March, by Joseph Roth, chronicles the decline and fall of the Austro Hungarian Empire via the story of the Trotta family's elevation to the nobility. The Radetzkymarsch is an early novelistic example of a story featuring the recurring fictional narrative participation of an historical figure, the Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria (1830 1916); the Trotta family story continues in The Emperor's Tomb (Kapuzinergruft, 1938). The Radetzky March relates the stories of three generations of the Trotta family, professional soldiers and career bureaucrats of Austria-Hungary from imperial zenith to First World War nadir. In 1859, the Austrian Empire (1804 67) was fighting the Second War of Italian Independence (29 April 11 July 1859), against French and Italian belligerents: Napoleon III of France, the Emperor of the French, and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia.