The risings of 1848—Princess Mélanie Metternich’s excited account
of it—Disorderly flight of Metternich from Vienna—The House of
Habsburg saved by “three mutinous soldiers”—Abdication of the
Emperor Ferdinand in favour of his nephew, Francis Joseph—Hübner’s
description of the ceremony.
If we want to look at the disturbances which broke up the old order
in Austria through contemporary eyes, our most helpful document will
be the Diary of Metternich’s wife, Princess Mélanie—so called, _tout
court_, as an indication that she ranked, like the Archduchesses, as
one of the Olympian goddesses of Viennese Society. One seems, as one
reads it, to be listening to the shrieks of a fluttered bird; for
Princess Mélanie understood as little as a bird would have understood,
the true significance of the uprising. Sheer wantonness was, for her,
the sole motive of the revolutionists; black ingratitude towards good
rulers was their distinguishing characteristic; and the outcome of the
agitation could only be “the end of all.” All that because the students
and the artisans had announced that they desired a “Constitution.”
Already we have seen Princess Mélanie predicting that, if Guizot fell,
all was lost; and, after the events of February, 1848, in Paris, she
saw horrors accumulating on horror’s head:—
“Poor Germany is already in a blaze. Never were times graver or more
solemn. Every hour brings forth a fresh event, and fresh troubles are
perpetually being added to those already in existence.”
All the thrones in Germany were, in truth, being shaken, though they
were all eventually to recover; and now the privileges of the Austrian
throne itself were being challenged:—
“Kossuth has moved a resolution which the Chamber of Deputies
has approved. These people actually demand nothing less than a
Constitution for Austria!... The agitation is general, and the terror
is great. People are so alarmed—especially the great financiers—that
they propose concessions to the popular demand, and see no chance
of safety except in making them. One would say that Hell had broken
loose. God alone can dam the torrent which threatens to swallow up
everything.”
At first, the trouble was confined to Hungary; but the contagion
spread:—
“Here, too, the public is very much disposed to ask for a
Constitution, and our various provincial assemblies are beginning to
pass the most regrettable resolutions. May God enlighten us and give
us the strength to be firm! That is all that I pray for.”
And then:—
“The news from Germany gets worse and worse. There no longer _is_ any
Germany in the true sense of the word, for all the German sovereigns
have been compelled to make concessions.... One really needs
superhuman moral force to withstand this popular agitation.”
So the trouble came nearer and nearer; and it became clear that
Metternich himself was the object of popular hostility. Threatening
letters were received. A piece of paper was found affixed to
Metternich’s door, bearing the words: “Down with Metternich. We want
concessions!” Princess Mélanie herself received a significant warning,
at one of her own receptions, from Félicie Esterhazy:—
“She let fall the following laconic remark: ‘Is it true that you are
going away to-morrow?’ ‘Why?’ I asked her. ‘Because we were told that
we had better buy candles in order to be able to illuminate to-morrow,
as a great event was about to happen.’”
A great event did happen on the morrow—though not the event which
Félicie Esterhazy had in view; and Princess Mélanie witnessed it. She
saw a demonstration on the Ballplatz, and heard an agitator, lifted on
to the shoulders of his companions, shouting:—
“Long live the imperial house! We want concessions in conformity
with the spirit of the times (cheers). Give us freedom of the press
(cheers); let justice be administered publicly (cheers); let there
be freedom of thought (cheers)! Let those who have outlived their
usefulness resign and go (tremendous acclamations)!”
And Princess Mélanie complains that “no one interfered with this
indecent demonstration,” and that “no one attempted to silence the
brawlers.”
She called the demonstrations “indecent” because they were obviously
aimed at her husband, who, far more than the Emperor, symbolised that
_ancien régime_ which the students and artisans were resolved to
end. The Emperor, indeed, was merely a weak-minded, good-natured old
gentleman to whom no one wished any harm. He was as ready to grant
concessions as to give alms; and his subjects knew it, cheered him
when he drove through the streets, and decorated their barricades with
his portraits. Their objection was not to him, but to his police, who
took Princess Mélanie’s old-fashioned view of concessions: notably,
therefore, to Metternich, the policeman of genius.
It was idle for Metternich to protest, as he sometimes did, in after
years, that, though he might sometimes have governed Europe, he
certainly had never governed Austria. The people knew—or thought
that they knew—better. The chief article in their simple creed was
that Metternich must go; and the sole question for Ferdinand and his
Court and Ministers was whether Metternich should or should not be
thrown overboard as a Jonah who brought ill luck to the Austrian ship
of state. The upshot appears from these entries in Princess Mélanie’s
Journal:—
“At half-past six, Clement was sent for to the Palace.”
“Yes, Clement has resigned.”
The circumstances of the interview in which he did so were afterwards
related by him to Hübner:—
“The Archduke Louis came to me and said: ‘These gentlemen tell me
that, if you could make up your mind to resign, order could be
re-established.’ I asked, ‘What is it that your Highness desires me
to do?’ He replied, ‘It is for you to decide what to do.’ Thereupon
I instantly resigned the office of Chancellor, and went into the
adjoining apartment to inform the Delegates of the States that I had
done so. One of these gentlemen spoke of generosity, and said that my
resignation put a worthy coping-stone upon a long career. ‘No, no,’ I
said. ‘It is merely a concession to the revolution.’”
But he not only had to quit office; he also had to leave Vienna, where
his life, in spite of his resignation, was not safe. He could not even
leave at his leisure, but had to depart in a hurry without packing,
dining with his friends, the Taaffes, and then driving off, in great
haste, to Feldsberg, whence he made his way through Germany and Holland
to England, where he landed just in time for his son Richard to be
sworn in as a special constable, and bludgeon the Chartists, shoulder
to shoulder with the future Napoleon III. The fluttered Diary records
it all in a succession of shrill screams: What has Metternich—once the
policeman of Europe—done to deserve such treatment! How black is the
ingratitude of man! But Princess Mélanie might as well have exclaimed
against the black ingratitude of water, which, under the exciting
influence of heat, expands into steam, and blows up the man who sits on
the safety-valve, without the least regard to his personal charm and
intellectual culture.
So ironical is fate; and there was a still more cruel irony in the fact
that the House of Habsburg, which owed so much to Metternich, seemed
rather relieved to be rid of him, regarding his policy as an asset but
his personality as an incubus. Alone among the members of the Imperial
House, Francis Joseph’s mother remembered to write a polite letter,
inquiring how he was getting on, and confiding to him the hopes which
were concentrated in her son, his political pupil:—
“My poor Franzi has been my sole consolation in our hours of trouble.
In the midst of my anguish and despair, I have continued to bless God
for giving me such a boy. His courage, his firmness, his judgment have
been unshaken—altogether beyond what one would expect from a lad of
his age—and have encouraged the hope that God will grant him a great
career, since He has given him the strength to face all the risks of
life.”
But though the Archduchess Sophie wrote in that charming vein, she
was herself one of those who had agreed that Metternich had better
be sacrificed, as he was so inconveniently unpopular; and Metternich
replied, not without a sense of bitterness, that he thought very
highly of Francis Joseph, and had a great affection for him, and was
quite confident that he would succeed in life as well as his mother
could wish, if only he remembered and applied the maxims of statecraft
which he himself had taught him. But he also, at the same time,
chuckled through his tears, observing that the jettisoning of the Jonah
did not seem to have saved the ship.
For order did not yet reign in Vienna; on the contrary, the revolution
was going from bad to worse, and the Court had to leave the capital.
First it went to loyal Innsbruck, in loyal Tyrol—whence Francis Joseph
paid his visit, already mentioned, to the Army of Italy. Then it
returned, under the illusion that things were going better; and then
it went off again to Olmütz. Hungary and Bohemia, as well as Italy,
were in open rebellion; and Vienna continued to throw up barricades
from time to time. Unwelcome Ministers were forced on the Emperor, made
concessions, and then gave place to others who promised still more
concessions. The conditions of 1789, said the people who knew history,
were giving place to the conditions of 1793. At any moment they might
expect to see the guillotine “going always,” and the Emperor’s head
rolling from the block into a basket.
Nor did the House of Habsburg, in that dark hour, save itself. On the
contrary. “The monarchy,” as Felix Schwarzenberg put it, “was saved
by three mutinous soldiers”: Radetzky, the octogenarian who would not
grow old; Alfred von Windischgraetz, the unbending aristocrat, who
was vastly more imperialist than the Emperor; Jellaçiç, the swaggering
and self-sufficient Ban of Croatia. They agreed, to put it bluntly,
that the Emperor Ferdinand was an old fool who had been bounced by
his Ministers into giving orders which it behoved them to disobey.
So Radetzky, being ordered to evacuate Lombardy, remained there; and
Windischgraetz, being ordered to hold a portion of his forces at the
disposition of the War Minister, replied that he could not spare them;
and Jellaçiç, being dismissed from his command, refused to give it up.
In that way, they collared the situation and saved it.
The Hungarians, marching on Vienna, were met by Jellaçiç and driven
back. Windischgraetz, after first putting down the rising in Bohemia,
marched down to Vienna and laid siege to it. Radetzky reinforced him,
and then the end was near. Windischgraetz, in truth, had other reasons
besides his loyalty to make him furious. His own wife had been one of
the victims of the insurrection—shot while she stood at an open window
to watch the rioting; so that it was not in the least likely that he
would hesitate to shoot, or allow the insurgents to surrender otherwise
than at discretion. First, therefore, he bombarded Vienna; and then he
forced the gates and stormed the barricades. There was a certain show
of resistance, but then, after a few military executions, order did
really reign, and the House of Habsburg was really saved, except in
so far as the Hungarians were still a menace to it. And the Emperor
Ferdinand’s first act, when his safety was assured, was to abdicate in
favour of his nephew, Francis Joseph.
It was an abdication which had, long since, been contemplated, and even
arranged. Metternich, the Empress, and the Archduchess Sophie had put
their heads together and settled it. None of them had any illusions
about the Emperor, and it does not appear that the Emperor had any
illusions about himself. None the less, the secret had been well kept.
Hübner, Schwarzenberg, and Windischgraetz were the only people who knew
what was going to happen, or for what purpose the members of the royal
family, and the functionaries connected with the Court, were suddenly
summoned to assemble in the imperial residence at Olmütz at eight
o’clock in the morning:—
“At half-past seven” (writes Hübner, whose function it was to take
the minutes of the meeting) “the apartments adjoining the throne room
were gorgeous with civil and military uniforms. There were present
all the Archdukes and Archduchesses, with their ladies and gentlemen
in waiting, the Canons of the Chapter of Olmütz, and a few ladies
belonging to the aristocracy. Intense curiosity was imprinted on every
countenance. The most remarkable guesses passed from mouth to mouth
at this brilliant gathering, but—strange to say—no one guessed the
truth. The Archduke Maximilian asked me what it was all about. The
Archduke Ferdinand of Este addressed the same question to the War
Minister, and received, as did the brother of the future Emperor, an
evasive answer.”
Soon the proceedings began:—
“Punctually at eight o’clock, the folding doors of the throne-room
were thrown open to give admission to the Archdukes Maximilian,
Charles Louis, and Ferdinand of Este, to the Archduchesses Maria
Dorothea, widow of the Archduke Joseph, and Elizabeth, wife of the
Archduke Ferdinand, to the Ministers, to Marshal Windischgraetz,
to the Ban of Croatia, and to Count Grunne, Master of the Horse of
the Archduke Francis Joseph.... When the door was closed on us,
their Majesties, followed by the Landgrave Frederick of Furstenberg,
Prince Lobkowitz, the Emperor’s aide-de-camp, and the Landgravine of
Furstenberg, grand mistress to the Empress, together with the Archduke
Francis Charles, the Archduchess Sophia, and their son, the Archduke
Francis Joseph, entered. Their Majesties took their places on two
armchairs in front of the throne, and the Archdukes and Archduchesses
took theirs on chairs arranged in the form of a rectangle on either
side of the throne. The Ministers, Marshal Windischgraetz, and Ban
Jellaçiç stood facing the Emperor. There was a deep and solemn
silence.”
The silence was broken by the Emperor himself, reading the statement
prepared for him: the simple statement that important considerations
had decided him to transmit his crown to his nephew. Then it was the
turn of Felix Schwarzenberg. Ordinarily an impassive man, he now read,
in a voice shaking with emotion, the three documents which gave legal
validity to the transaction: the declaration that Francis Joseph had
attained his majority; the declaration that Francis Joseph’s father
renounced his own rights in his son’s favour; the Emperor’s formal act
of abdication. One after the other, the three documents were signed
by those whom they concerned; and Francis Joseph knelt—for the last
time—to Ferdinand, to receive his blessing.
_Sei brav, es ist gerne geschehen_, were Ferdinand’s words. Literally
it means: “Be good; I did it willingly.” Practically it meant: “Never
mind me. I don’t feel hurt in the least. On the contrary, I’m well out
of it.” He ceased, and the retiring Empress embraced the boy Emperor.
According to Hübner, the Archduchesses sobbed aloud, and there was not
a dry eye in the room; and while the eyes of the company were still
moist, the door was once more opened, and the courtiers, assembled in
the ante-chamber, were informed of what had passed. That done, Francis
Joseph rode out to review the troops, and receive their acclamations;
while the Emperor Ferdinand and the Empress Marianna quietly took the
afternoon train to Prague.
Thus the change was effected, quite simply, and almost without
ceremony. It almost looks as though everything was done in a hurry,
so that no one might have time to question the wisdom of doing it.
“Farewell to my youth!” said Francis Joseph when, addressed for the
first time as “Your Majesty,” he realised the change in his condition,
and the responsibilities to which he was committed, so soon after his
eighteenth birthday. But he had never known what it was to be young, as
boys of humbler station know it; and his opportunities of unbending,
as some monarchs unbend, were to be few. He was the sole hope of the
Habsburgs; he had to shoulder the whole burden of the Habsburgs; and he
was to find it heavy. Princess Mélanie, when the news of his accession
reached her, trembled for him:
“How is an Emperor of eighteen years of age to steer his course amid
such conflicting currents? I shudder when I think of him—the last
hope which now remains to us. May God bless him, and give him energy,
while giving his counsellors the wisdom which they will need!”
The grounds of her anxiety—particular as well as general—appear on
the same page of her Diary:
“They tell me that a Republic has been proclaimed in Hungary, with
Kossuth as Dictator.”
Which meant that Ferdinand had indeed reason to regard himself as “well
out of it,” and that Francis Joseph had not ascended an undisputed
throne, but one for the defence of which he would have to fight
desperately hard.