Why Francis Joseph was called “The child of the gallows”—His affront
to Napoleon III. and its consequences—The Bach system and the
objections to it—Francis Joseph’s _bonhomie_—The attempt on his
life—Impressions formed of him by the King of the Belgians, and Lady
Westmorland—The story of his romantic marriage.
It is a curious fact that Francis Joseph, who was to find the hangman
so much work to do, was given, at his birth, the nickname of “the child
of the gallows.”
The story is that his mother, in the later days of her confinement,
threw the scalding contents of a coffee-cup in her husband’s face, and
declared that she could be safely delivered of a child on one condition
only—that a free pardon were granted to some criminal lying under
sentence of death; and there was nothing for it but to satisfy her
whim. The only Austrian subject fulfilling the conditions was clearly
guilty of the blackest crimes; but he was let out of prison, to his
amazement, at the hysterical request of the Archduchess Sophia, whose
bowels of compassion then closed, never to be reopened.
Assuredly neither she nor anyone else prompted her son to compassion
when Italy and Hungary lay helpless at his feet. The clemency accorded
to a vulgar criminal was not to be extended to political offenders
until the heads of all the tallest poppies had been cut off for the
greater glory of the Habsburgs and their bureaucrats; and the policy of
repression enjoyed an illusory success. If the strong hand was a bloody
hand, the bloody hand was a strong hand; and Austria did not “muddle
through” her difficulties, but carved her way through them. She had
nothing as yet to fear from Prussia; she strode with jack-boots through
Hungary and northern Italy; and the House of Habsburg—bankrupt, but
with the most effective army in Europe—could once more afford to be
arrogant. So that we find Francis Joseph, as soon as his position was
secure, manifesting his family pride by a proposal that Napoleon III.
should be insulted.
Napoleon—the triumph of his _coup d’état_ having been confirmed by a
plebiscite—had written to his royal and imperial cousins to announce
his accession; and the question arose whether he should be welcomed
as a member of the family, or snubbed as a _parvenu_ intruding in
exclusive circles. Should he be saluted, according to the time-honoured
formula, as “Sir and Brother,” or should he be rebuffed by a cold and
contemptuous mode of address? Francis Joseph and his advisers favoured
the latter course. The Emperor, that is to say, who had waded to his
throne through the blood and slaughter of his subjects, despised the
Emperor whose subjects had merely elected him, and proposed to keep
him in his place by addressing him curtly as “Sir.”
It was to have been a concerted insult, simultaneously administered by
the Heads of the Houses of Habsburg, Hohenzollern, and Romanoff; and
the Foreign Ministers of the three countries exchanged despatches on
the subject. In the end, however, only the Romanoff showed the courage
of his arrogance; and the Habsburg, after going far enough to offend,
allowed himself to be intimidated into an appearance of courtesy. But
Napoleon was not conciliated. He bided his time, resolved that the
cousin who had devised the affront should pay for it. We shall see him
presently exacting payment on the fields of Magenta and Solferino;
but we must first follow Francis Joseph as he enters upon the path of
reconstruction at home. It was the period in which his personality
began to count.
He introduced what is called the Bach System—Bach being
Schwarzenberg’s successor in the Ministry of the Interior, a
bureaucrat, who wanted to Germanise everybody and everything, as German
bureaucrats always do: a process which pleased the Czechs and Croats
as little as the Hungarians. “This is good,” chuckled a Hungarian, in
conversation with a Croat. “The Austrians give to you as a reward what
they give to us as a punishment.” That, clearly, was a frame of mind
symptomatic of trouble to come; but two things staved off the trouble
for the moment. Austria was strong, and Francis Joseph was affable,
and could give the impression that his _bonhomie_ was his own and that
his severities were his ministers’.
He travelled about his dominions, making himself as pleasant as he
could; he released two thousand political prisoners, and reduced the
sentences of others. The mere possibility of such a magnanimous act
shows how terribly cruel the previous repression had been; but the
clemency produced a certain effect. No doubt Francis Joseph’s reception
in Hungary was, to some extent, stage-managed; but it was at least
possible to pretend that it had been enthusiastic. The fact that he sat
his horse like a centaur and spoke Hungarian like a native produced
its effect; and he knew what to ignore, and how to turn a compliment.
“I have met many Hungarians,” he said on his return from his first
journey, “and every one of them was a man of heart.” It was what the
French call _le mot de la situation_; and it helped.
Another thing which helped was the attempt made on his life at about
this time by the journeyman tailor Libenyi, who tried to stab him in
the back of the neck while he was walking on the Vienna ramparts, but
struck a bone at the base of the skull, which turned the edge of the
blade. He bore himself gallantly on the occasion, making light of the
wound. “Do not be frightened, dear mother. My neck is merely a little
stiff,” he said to the Archduchess Sophia. “It is no great matter,” he
said to his officers. “After all, I was in no greater peril than my
brave soldiers in Italy.” These, again, were _mots de la situation_,
appealing to the imagination. The Hungarians had a chivalry of their
own which bade them repudiate the dagger as a weapon. Batthyany’s widow
and Karolyi’s mother—she who had uttered the curse—would no doubt
have been equally ready to pray God to smite the Emperor, and to thank
God for sparing him, in order that he might suffer; but the Empire as a
whole—not the Austrian section of it only—saw him as a gallant young
man who had had a fortunate escape. Deputations came from the remotest
parts of his dominions to congratulate him.
He was making a good impression, too, on shrewd observers. Bismarck,
then a young man, being sent on some mission to him, spoke of “the
fire of his twenty years joined to the dignity and thoughtfulness of a
riper age,” adding: “Were he not an Emperor, he would seem to me almost
too grave for his years.” The King of the Belgians, a little later,
reported very favourably of him to Queen Victoria:—
“The young Emperor” (he wrote), “I confess I like very much, there is
much sense and courage in his warm blue eye, and it is not without a
very amiable merriment when there is occasion for it. He is slight and
very graceful, but even in the mêlée of dancers and Archdukes, he may
always be distinguished as the _Chef_.... He keeps everyone in great
order without requiring for this an _outré_ appearance, merely because
he is the master, and there is that about him which gives authority,
and which sometimes those _who have the_ _authority cannot succeed
in getting accepted or in practising_. I think he may be severe _si
l’occasion se présente_: he has something very _muthig_. We were
several times surrounded by people of all classes, and he certainly
quite at their mercy, but I never saw his little _muthig_ expression
changed either by being pleased or alarmed.”
Lady Westmorland also wrote, at about the same time, to Mr. Hood:—
“I am very much pleased with the young Emperor, and especially with
his tender affection for his mother, and his tender and respectful
manner to her. He looks even younger than he is, and is not
handsome, but has a well-built, active figure and a most intelligent
and expressive face. He has a thoughtful face, and is perfectly
unaffected. His mother is a very interesting person, and is wrapped up
in this son, who seems likely to justify the pride she takes in him.
The father is a very poor creature, who cares for nothing but having
his leisure unmolested.”
The picture, save for the reference to the inadequate Archduke Francis
Charles, is a pleasant one. The portrait of Francis Joseph is the
portrait of a man whose personality was already a great asset to his
country; not at all the portrait of a man who was conscious of having
been cursed by the woman whose son he had slain, and feared that the
blows of fate would smite him—blow after blow from youth to age—in
untiring fulfilment of that curse. On the contrary, it is the portrait
of a fairly strong man who is also a decidedly cheerful man, with a
mind conscious of rectitude; and no doubt it is accurate as far as it
goes, for one cannot expect portraits to be prophetic. But the years
were nevertheless to be full of trouble: political trouble was soon to
strip the Habsburgs of treasured territorial possessions; while family
troubles were to make their name a by-word as that of the most tragic
house in Europe.
The political troubles were to begin with the bungling of Austrian
policy in connection with the Crimean war, when Austria tried to run
with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and gave offence to both. The
Tsar, having saved Francis Joseph’s throne in 1849, now thought himself
entitled to more gratitude than was shown to him. “The two stupidest
Kings of Poland,” he said to Valentine Esterhazy, “were John Sobieski
and myself”; for both of them had helped Austria in her hour of need,
and been deserted by Austria when they were themselves embarrassed.
Austro-Russian enmity in the Near East dates from that desertion; but
the desertion was not complete enough to gain Austria the compensating
friendship of France. So that presently, in 1859, France would help
Sardinia to deprive Austria of the province of Lombardy, and Russia
would stand by, chuckling at her discomfiture. But that, again, is an
anticipation.
For the moment, indeed, all seemed well. Neither the political troubles
nor the family troubles were as yet in sight; and it must have
appeared, to any who gave a thought to the matter, that the Countess
Karolyi had pronounced her curse in vain. Francis Joseph was the most
eligible _parti_ in Europe; and the time having come for him to seek a
wife, he was not to have his marriage arranged for him by statesmen,
to suit their policy, but to fall in love, almost as Princes do in
fairy tales, in very romantic circumstances, though the romance, unlike
so many of the Habsburg romances, was to be consonant with Habsburg
dignity and self-respect.
It was not, of course, a Cophetua story. The Habsburgs are very fond
of imitating King Cophetua; but they do so to their disgrace, and at
their peril. Their names—unless good reason to the contrary can be
shown—are changed. They cease to be Archdukes, become mere Orths or
Wulflings, or Burgs, and are bowed, or kicked, as the case may be, out
of the imperial circle. But a Cinderella story—that is another matter;
and the story of Francis Joseph’s marriage is one of the most famous
Cinderella stories of modern times. Every fresh narrator of it adds
some fresh detail, whether romantic or picturesque; but the essential
facts in all the versions of the story are the same. It is always a
story of a match arranged by a match-making mother, and of Prince
Charming himself taking the matter into his hands at the eleventh hour,
preferring Cinderella to her sisters, insisting upon his own way, and
getting it, amid loud popular acclamations.
The Archduchess Sophia flattered herself that she had settled
everything over her son’s head. She wished to do a good turn to her
poor relations—the Wittelsbachs, Dukes in Bavaria, and cousins of
the reigning Bavarian House to which she herself belonged. There was a
strain of insanity in the House of Bavaria—in both branches of it, in
fact—as well as in the House of Habsburg; but the Archduchess Sophia
did not think of that. The eugenists had not yet spoken, and she might
not have listened to them if they had. Insanity, in those days, was
regarded—especially in royal circles—as the accidental misfortune of
the individual. “Tendencies” to insanity did not count; and any royal
personage who was not mad enough to be locked up was thought sane
enough to be married. Moreover, the Bavarian insanity was not, at the
moment, very pronounced. Ludwig I. was not accounted mad because of
his subjection to Lola Montez; and the vagaries of Ludwig II. and the
raving mania of Otto still belonged to the future. It seemed to the
Archduchess Sophia as right and reasonable as anything could be that
the House of Bavaria and the House of Habsburg should intermarry yet
again.
She talked the matter over with her cousin, Maximilian, Duke in
Bavaria. He had a daughter, Princess Helen, of a suitable age—a very
beautiful and charming girl; and it was settled between them that
Princess Helen should become Empress of Austria. She was trained for
that position as carefully as Francis Joseph was trained for the
position of Emperor; and Francis Joseph quite approved of the plans
which were being made for him—quite understood that his dignity
limited his choice—quite believed that all was being contrived for the
best by the best of all possible matrimonial agents. It was arranged
that Princess Helen should be brought to Ischl to meet him; the
subsequent announcement of his betrothal to her was, as it were, on the
order of the day.
He went to Ischl, and met Princess Helen. She was very charming,
but—still more charming, as it seemed to Francis Joseph, was her
younger sister, Princess Elizabeth: the Cinderella who was kept in the
background.
Elizabeth had not been trained for any great position. She was only
sixteen: a madcap and a child of nature—accustomed, in so far as
anyone in her station might be, to the untrammelled freedom of a
highlander. She roamed the woods and the mountains—though not, as
the author of “The Martyrdom of an Empress” tells us, with a gun in
her hand, in pursuit of game. There are stories of her playing the
zither, at the doors of cottages in remote Bavarian valleys, while
peasant children danced to the music; and she was strangely beautiful,
with haunting eyes and a wonderful wealth of hair. Depths of meaning
looked out of those eyes: indications of those mysteries of her soul
through which she was presently to figure as an unfathomable conundrum
challenging a curious world. Francis Joseph—tall, handsome, blond,
blue-eyed, a proud soldier and a gallant man, with no mystery or
semblance of a mystery about him—looked into the girl’s eyes, and was
conquered.
Elizabeth was not formally presented—it was almost by accident that
Francis Joseph first saw her. He was alone in a room when she entered,
in a simple white dress, with flowers in her hair, and greeted him
with a “Good morning, cousin.” He kept her talking—and, of course,
as he was the Emperor, she could not possibly run away and leave him,
however shy she felt—for quite a long time; and he ended by saying
that he hoped to resume the conversation at dinner, or at the dance
which was to follow. But Elizabeth feared not. She was still “in the
schoolroom”—not yet “out”—had “nothing to wear.” “Still if your
Majesty insists ...” she hesitated. “I do insist,” said Francis Joseph.
“Listen! We’ll play a comedy. Say nothing to anyone, but dress for the
party, and come down to it.” “But I shall be scolded.” “No, you won’t.
I’ll see to that—you can trust me.”
So the comedy was played; and, of course, when the Emperor expressed
his pleasure at seeing the unexpected guest, the scolding flickered
out; and, after that, matters progressed at a great pace, to the great
chagrin, as one cannot doubt, of Sister Helen. The Emperor outraged all
the proprieties by dancing half the night with the school-girl. When
the dance was interrupted for tea to be served, he showed her an album
containing coloured illustrations of the various national costumes worn
in the eighteen States of Austria. “There,” he said. “These are my
subjects. I wonder if you would like them to be your subjects, too.”
Then they danced again; and when the cotillon came, he presented his
little Cinderella with a bouquet of edelweiss, gathered with his own
hands, with the result that everyone except Cinderella herself began to
suspect that his intentions were serious.
His Cinderella, indeed, could hardly believe that his intentions were
serious, even when her mother told her so. “What! Me an Empress! But
I am nobody!” she exclaimed sceptically; but she had not long to wait
before the sense of her importance was brought home to her, for at
ten o’clock the next morning, Francis Joseph’s carriage rattled up
to the door of her hotel. “Is the Princess Elizabeth up?” he asked;
and the reply was that Princess Elizabeth had not finished dressing.
“Then I will see the Duchess,” he said; and he went up and made his
formal demand for his Cinderella’s hand, with the result that, half an
hour later, all the members of the Imperial family then in Ischl were
summoned to the little parish church, and there, to the strains of the
Austrian national anthem, the betrothal was solemnly celebrated. His
words to his affianced bride, as he came out of the church, are said to
have been:—
“This is the happiest day of my life. I owe my happiness to you, and I
thank you for the light which you have brought into my life.”
It was very sad, of course, for Sister Helen, who afterwards sought
consolation—but perhaps failed to find it—by marrying the Prince of
Thurn and Taxis. It was not altogether satisfactory to Duke Maximilian,
who raised such objections as Laban raised when Jacob proposed to marry
Rachel and leave Leah a spinster. It did not altogether please the
Archduchess Sophia, who was a masterful woman, and would rather have
got her own way than see her son insist successfully upon his. But
it was a love match; and that, after all, is the main thing in royal
as in other marriages. There was no need for the Court and Society
journalists to rack their brains for reasons for describing the union
as “romantic.” It was romantic on the face of it—as romantic as
anything in any fairy-tale.
And yet——
And yet, as it proved, things were not exactly what they seemed to be;
and that marriage, so romantically contrived and concluded, was to be
the starting-point of tragedies; the beginning—if one is superstitious
and takes that view of things—of the fulfilment of Countess Karolyi’s
curse.