When Frankie Met Eddie

IN JANUARY I visited the Czech town of Mariánské Lázně, which is in an area of Bohemia populated by German settlers in the 12th century at the request of the region's Czech rulers.
It became a famous spa exporting millions of bottles of water, much of which was sold in an evaporated form as a laxative.
The town, under its former German name of Marienbad, was the site of a famous meeting in 1904 between Britain's King Edward VII and Austria's Emperor (Kaiser) Franz Joseph.
I was reminded of this today when sorting through photos on my computer.

Statues in the town commemorating the meeting of Franz Joseph (left) and Edward VII

Edward was apparently keen to detach Franz Joseph from his alliance with Germany, but had no success.
I guess that because I, like the two monarchs, have lived part of my life in the 20th century, their meeting does not seem so long ago.
But since Edward was born in 1841, and Franz Joseph even earlier in 1830, both were mature men when the Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870, and that conflict does seem a long time ago to me ...