The Empress Elizabeth of Austria

Karl Tschuppik, Eric Sutton

• Publisher: Borodino Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781787205208
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This is the English translation of the 1929 German language biography of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, by Austrian journalist and writer Karl Tschuppik.Elisabeth of Austria (1837-1898) was the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I, and thus Empress of Austria, Queen of Hungary and Queen consort of Croatia and Bohemia.Born into Bavarian royalty, Elisabeth ("Sisi") enjoyed an informal upbringing before marrying Franz Joseph at the age of sixteen. The marriage thrust her into the much more formal Habsburg court life, for which she was ill-prepared and which she found uncongenial. Early in the marriage she was at odds with her mother-in-law, Princess Sophie, who took over the rearing of Elisabeth's daughters, one of whom, Sophie, died in infancy.The birth of a male heir, Rudolf, improved her standing at court considerably, but her health suffered under the strain, and she would often visit Hungary for its more relaxed environment. She came to develop a deep kinship with Hungary, and helped to bring about the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary in 1867.The death of her only son Rudolf, and his mistress Mary Vetsera, in a murder-suicide tragedy at his hunting lodge at Mayerling in 1889 was a blow from which Elisabeth never recovered. She withdrew from court duties and travelled widely, unaccompanied by her family. She was obsessively concerned with maintaining her youthful figure and beauty, demanding to be sewn into her leather corsets and spending two or three hours a day on her coiffure.While travelling in Geneva in 1898, she was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist named Luigi Lucheni who selected her because he had missed his chance to assassinate Prince Philippe, Duke of Orléans, and wanted to kill the next member of royalty that he saw.Elisabeth was the longest serving Empress-consort of Austria, at 44 years.

Two — IN A GOLDEN CAGE

I AM as much in love as a lieutenant and as happy as a God,” writes Franz Joseph to his friend Albert von Sachsen. Indeed, in those days he was quite communicative, more so than he had ever been before. Only an experience of great happiness could have broken through that armour of inborn and acquired aloofness, so that the happy man could not withstand the impulse to tell his happiness to others. The young Emperor, tied as he was by all manner of obligations, had in his choice of a wife shown more independence than many a free citizen of the middle class. He felt that his courage and resolution were truly rewarded by the companionship of this gifted and beautiful child of nature, who opened his eyes upon a new world. It was observable, and indeed it is confirmed by all eyewitnesses, that this enrichment of his experience brought out the more cheerful and friendly aspects of his nature, and made him less constrained and more optimistic. The astute King Leopold of Belgium, who saw Franz Joseph at the time of his happiness, writes to his niece, the young Queen of England, that it was amazing how “genial and happy” the Emperor had become: one could not help liking him—“the kindness and candour in his ardent blue eyes” and the “delightful gaiety” that in no way detracted from his “innate authority.” Duke Ernst of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, brother of the Prince Consort of England, is even more explicit: “I find the Emperor extraordinarily changed for the better since I last saw him: he has grown stronger, and freer, and more determined in his movements. In spite of the rather gloomy and bleak aspect of affairs, the Emperor was full of the cheerfulness and animation of youth: the establishment of his domestic happiness seems to have had a beneficent effect on his character.”

It was Elizabeth who induced the Emperor to take a larger view of his position. All prosecutions for lèse-majesté and disturbance of public order were quashed, five hundred persons convicted of so-called high treason were set free, and the sequestrations in Lombardo-Venetia were suspended. A kindly hand opened the prison doors and snatched the rope from the executioner. The suspension of the state of siege in Galicia, Hungary, and the Voivodina, and the transference of legal authority to the ordinary constitutional courts, saved many from death or prolonged imprisonment. Even certain unfortunates who had already been condemned to the halter, notably three women sentenced to death by the Hermannstadt Court Martial, the widows of the landowner Kenderessy zu Mikefalva, of Professor Török of Maros Vásárhely, and of the farmer Szentkiretyi, were released almost at the foot of the gallows. The hearts of the people went out to the young Bavarian Princess, and it is no mere phrase to say that they regarded her as a good fairy who had brought good luck to Austria. It must have been an intoxicating feeling for the young Empress to realize that her mere presence could mitigate the official attitude of mind, common to all Governments, and born of experience and statecraft, that scents evil everywhere and relies on force alone.

She had the marvellous experience of being loved: she roused the young Emperor to enthusiasm, she gave him wings and there were moments, and hours, when he was quite near to her. Might it not be that earth would lose her power to drag him down? When they were together, far from any intruding eyes, Elizabeth thought she possessed him entirely. She was too young and too wanting in experience to have any suspicion of the precariousness of this happiness. Franz Joseph was the most affectionate husband; he was a willing slave to Elizabeth’s freshness and charm, but always withdrew once more into the fastness of his own nature.

The Emperor, at twenty-four, was a more settled character than most young men of his age. The idea of royalty had become so ingrained in his mind, the unfettered exercise of his own will and judgment so much a matter of course, that even in these early years he was not very susceptible to emotion, pleasant or otherwise. From the very outset of his reign he had at his side a man, Prince Fürstenberg, whose gifts of mind—indeed, they almost amounted to genius—entirely captivated the Emperor. Austria’s successes in the first years of Franz Joseph were his achievements. But the young Emperor’s intolerance of strong personalities had already become a marked trait in his character. Prince Förstenberg he had, so to speak, taken over with the Crown, and could hardly get rid of; but after the Prince’s death he chose as his successor the insignificant Count Buol, and at a difficult period acted as his own Foreign Minister. It was an unequal contest: on the one side the rising genius of Bismarck, the age-long experience of Continental Diplomacy, and the far-reaching Slav policy of Russia; on the other the young Emperor’s faith in the excellence of his own judgment, and the support of an incompetent Minister. For the serious crisis of the Crimean War, which reached its climax in Franz Joseph’s happiest year, the Emperor himself must be held responsible. And the price he paid for his taste for mediocrity was a high one: in a few months Buol had utterly gambled away the great inheritance left behind by Prince Schwarzenberg. The Emperor’s inner repugnance to men of genius and strong character did not arise from an over-estimate of his own capacities, or from any Caesarian delusions. From all that sort of thing Franz Joseph was quite free. It was his own essentially cautious nature that attracted him to caution and mediocrity in others. He was profoundly convinced that God had ordered the world on strictly practical lines, more or less as he proposed to organize his own life and Empire. To such a mind genius seems a luxury, a wild indulgence on the part of Nature; dangerous, like every high imaginative gift. Does not History, after the vagaries and excesses of genius, always return to sound mediocrity, to men of every-day unprovided with wings? Franz Joseph would never fly, and he would withdraw from Elizabeth’s lovely land a fantasy to his own sober domain, where what is practical, profitable, and understood of the multitude, stands for goodness and truth.

Too much weight need not be attached to the tales told by the more insignificant Austrian historiographers, that Elizabeth, the unfettered child of nature, was tortured and oppressed by the impersonal ordinances of Court procedure and Spanish Court ceremonial, as a healthy body might be by a steel corset. The Habsburg Court was, indeed, organized on this ancient, partly Spanish, pattern; it was governed by a system that dictated the relations of all its members, from the Sovereign downwards, and every section and department of it, upon every sort of occasion, was bound by a rigid procedure even in the most trifling details of daily life. But the existence of this ceremonial did not prevent every Sovereign conducting, within this system, his own existence in accordance with his own tastes. The great Empress, Maria Theresia, was also a Viennese housewife; her son Joseph lived, when he chose, outside etiquette of any sort; the Emperor Franz did not allow Court ceremonial to disturb his middle-class inclinations; and Ferdinand was certainly not born to play a part in any splendid ceremonial. Franz Joseph, in enhancing the concept of Royalty, also elaborated Court etiquette, but his private life was not in any way constrained by symbolic formalism. Elizabeth came from no peasant household: in spite of all the freedom that she had enjoyed as a child, she had been brought up as a Princess, and she knew the Munich Court. It was not her unfamiliarity with Vienna ceremonial that darkened the heaven of her young happiness. How greedily all her little transgressions against the ancient ordinances are exaggerated! Her slender shoes, her loathing of the sumptuous meals, her independence in arranging her day’s occupations, her neglect to keep a proper distance from her suite—such were the sort of accusations brought against her. From the very first day of their marriage the Emperor went out of his way to respect Elizabeth’s tastes, her chosen mode of life, and made it clear that they were to prevail over any Court procedure. They drove and rode out together without the usual accompaniment of Adjutants and Ladies-in-Waiting. Count Grünne, the Adjutant-General, expresses great annoyance at these impromptu excursions, which made it impossible for him to set in motion the secret agents and the police. He and the whole Court observed with amazement that the Emperor rejected any escort, and preferred to be alone when he drove out with Elizabeth. It was whispered among the horde of domestics that the Empress’s tastes were coming too much to the fore: she was taking the lead, and the Emperor was tied to her apron-strings.

Never would such chatter have passed the lips of the courtiers and lackeys if their alert eyes and ears had not seen and heard what the most powerful personages at Court thought about the new Empress. The Emperor’s mother, in that night of perplexity when she appealed to the Cardinal for help and counsel, had taken a decision. It was not anxiety for her own power that made her resolve to take the young Empress firmly by the hand. Mothers are clear-sighted where the welfare of their beloved children is concerned: much more clear-sighted than lovers. In choosing Helene for the Emperor’s wife she had not merely been guided by the caution which was as much a characteristic of Franz Joseph’s mother as of her son: her instinct warned her against Sisi, and her far-seeing mother’s eyes saw the self-will behind her young niece’s grace and beauty, and a stubborn nature behind the personal charm of the impulsive girl. It was impossible to make the lover see her point of view; but she would not allow Elizabeth’s education to be taken out of her control. She had hitherto held her hand, partly in the hope that her son would, after the first ecstasies were over, himself lead her back to the path that she, his mother, had so carefully prepared, and partly with the patience of an indulgent pedagogue, who leaves the holidays undisturbed only to introduce the stricter discipline when they are over. In this project of education there was not, at first, the slightest trace of any antipathy. The Arch-Duchess Sophie was so utterly possessed by her task of devoting her life to her son and to her mission, that in her scheme of education she wanted to avoid anything that might disturb her good relations with her daughter-in-law. She wanted to be a mother to Elizabeth as well as to Franz Joseph. This essentially simple woman could not grasp the fact that, for finely-tempered natures, this sort of pedantic fanaticism is the most irksome burden they can be made to bear. The victim has two ways of self-protection: diplomacy and open war. The diplomatic nature exploits all the arts of outward acquiescence, suppressing its own individuality, content to outwit the adversary in secret. It is a plebeian talent, mostly found in families that have to live under constraint and pass their lives in dependence. It is, in its cynical attitude to life, a bourgeois talent; it smooths the way of mercenary marriages and enables people to endure humiliation, shame, and loathing in the hope of some advantage. The other way—the way of war—presupposes an ambition to defeat the enemy. Both ways were closed to Elizabeth. It was not, indeed, very material whether such a charming, fastidious creature was sixteen years old or thirty, or whether she was “experienced” in the sense of possessing enough worldly wisdom to protect her own advantage. Elizabeth could not pretend; she could not so far subdue her nerves as to submit to the dictation of her mother-in-law. And she could not fight; for she did not wish to conquer. She could only defend herself and try to maintain her inner freedom. Her protector must be Franz Joseph.

Elizabeth entered upon her first bad days. She had been raised up to the heavens, but she began to find that eminence unstable: the omnipotence with which she had been so lavishly endowed proved but an empty gift; the glorified image of herself and her perfections, which had been presented to her so often, now began to fade. The young Empress was proof against the allurements of material power, her ascension into the heaven of Royalty she regarded as the gilding of her dream, not as the prelude to a career. None the less, her disillusionment was terrible. Never in her life had she received orders. Her mother could be strict, but she was so in a way that never hurt Elizabeth’s pride. Her father had never ordered her to do anything. He knew himself and his daughter too well, and he would have rejected such forcible methods as implying a fear of man’s inner nature: only badly-brought-up people needed a strong hand. Elizabeth was treated by her father with the fastidious consideration due to a Queen. Now, as Empress, the Emperor’s mother ordered her about like a girl in a boarding-school. All these instructions in Court matters were repugnant enough; and, in any case, it was a new world, hedged about by a thousand restrictions, with which she had to become acquainted. The constant constraint and surveillance of the twenty-four hours of the day were sweetened by instances from history and shown to be a necessary element of the institution of Royalty. In small conflicts Franz Joseph took the Empress’s part. She was not forbidden to roam alone over the vast park of Laxenburg, but she was not at all well received when, from such expeditions, she brought back children whom she had found playing in the avenues. The Empress, accompanied by one Lady-in-Waiting, drove out into the city, and left the Imperial carriage in the Michälerplatz while she did some shopping on the Kohlmarkt or the Graben. The curiosity of the public to get a glimpse of their seventeen-year-old Empress was very great—even greater than their amazement at the sight of this gentle, girlish-looking lady, who stood looking into shop-windows, buying gloves at one place and scent at another, and seemed so delighted to be able to behave for once like an ordinary person. The citizens in the Old City were not tactless, but their pleasure in the young Empress’s natural grace and their anxiety to get as good a view of her as possible, were such that she was inevitably followed about by crowds. The police were disconcerted by so unwonted a spectacle and became officious; there were reports and appeals to the office of the Grand Chamberlain, representations to the Emperor, and remonstrances by the Arch-Duchess Sophie. Elizabeth had to surrender this freedom, which in Munich had been taken as a matter of course. She was not even able to visit a theatre when she liked, or one of the Imperial Museums. On such occasions the Arch-Duchess would observe that Elizabeth had forgotten that she was no longer in the Bavarian mountains. Fortune had indeed chosen to place on the Imperial Throne an unconventional being, with all the attributes of true nobility, but the essential philistinism of Court ceremonial demanded a picture-book Princess, not a real Queen.

Even more irksome than all this misdirected etiquette was the constraint in matters of conscience. Elizabeth had to submit to being cross-questioned about her religion by the Emperor’s mother. She belonged to an ancient Catholic house, but, unlike the strictly orthodox Arch-Duchess, she did not regard her religious obligations as involving continuous and active confession. It was repellent to her to conduct her faith according to a prescribed hourly plan and to advertise her piety: her finer taste rejected those practical applications of the religious spirit which, in the Arch-Duchess’s hours of edification, were expounded as the essence of political wisdom. Helpful as Franz Joseph was when it came to conflict between personal freedom and etiquette, he was timid in those questions of conscience that his mother thought so important. Elizabeth began to feel the first bitter moments of isolation; she saw the Emperor weakening before his mother’s urgency, and she hated to have to surrender her own good conscience to a coarser nature. Much that went on in the coulisses of the Court never reached the Emperor’s ear. None of the gossip and slander of the courtiers, whose opinions and interests made them close allies, ever penetrated the silence that surrounded the monarch. In such matters the Empress was too kindly and too proud to carry to the Emperor all the tittle-tattle that she heard. She shut her eyes to all envy, malice, and intrigue; but, like every sensitive nature when first brought into contact with baseness, she learned to dread the grimace upon the countenance of evil. A woman who seemed born to be lavish of herself and to go through life free, self-confident, and candid, became, in her early womanhood, when apparently the darling of fortune and raised to the highest place of power, as nervous as a hunted roe.

From time to time the burden of this oppressive entourage was lifted. The Imperial pair went on their travels. It was not the intention of the Court official in charge of these arrangements, Minister Doctor Bach, to plan a pleasant journey for the Emperor and his young Consort: their visit to the various Austrian dominions had a political purpose. The most adaptable of Franz Joseph’s Councillors and, except the Finance Minister, Bruck, the only man of talent among them, knew how to maintain his influence against any possible attack: it fell to him to carry out the Emperor’s will, and it was by the dictates of that will, and that will only, that, through his officials and gendarmerie, he controlled the Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary. Six years before, this son of a Vienna lawyer had been a determined Radical; now he was the brains of the Autocracy. The young and gifted renegade had many enemies—the nobility disliked the upstart—but his adaptability, especially since he had become pious and devoted to the Church, won him the Arch-Duchess Sophie’s confidence. He was astute enough to realize that this strict autocratic régime could only persist if the profound discontent, disillusion, and embitterment among the various peoples of the Empire could be removed. The young Emperor must himself court popularity and win their sympathies, and the young Empress must stand at his side.

Elizabeth knew very little about the domain of which she was Empress. Her notion of it was as unlike the reality as a child’s drawing is like a photograph. What she had seen at home in Bavaria, an unaffected intercourse between primitive peasants and small towns-people and the Royal House, she thought to find in Austria likewise; and what she was told at the Viennese Court was no nearer to the truth. Little was known at Court about this singular Empire, which the Habsburgs had built up by cunning, force, and policy, by subservience, treaties, and marriages, and raised to the rank of a great Power. From the centuries-old experience of the Habsburgs the House of Lorraine had inherited a secret: the suppressed, yet ever present, fear of ultimate disaster. In the Hofburg at Vienna there was talk of the “White Lady,” who appeared by night in the corridors of that rambling palace. The apparition meant that a danger was threatening the Imperial House. The whispered legend had a material content: it recalled the great crises of the Dynasty in 1621, 1740, and 1809. Three times its fate was in the balance, three times it had to face the spectre of ruin: in the early days of Ferdinand II, after the death of Karl VI, and when Napoleon threatened the Habsburg power. Three times the proverbial luck of the House of Austria had averted disaster. Would the Habsburg luck endure? The ancient fear was still alive; but the downfall of the revolution had inspired a faith in force as the only means of survival. Was there a single one of the Emperor’s advisers who suspected that in those days of tumult the peoples of that Empire had for the first time opened their eyes? Was there one who knew how to interpret the efforts at Kremsier, the first attempt at a free understanding between the nations of Austria? Eleven races and eleven languages were growing up side by side, and not a single Minister had enough real imagination to foresee the result. The languages of Austria were, indeed, taught and learned at Court; but none knew the real aspect of even one of those races.

Imperial peregrinations are not a very useful method of getting at the truth. Receptions are strictly arranged beforehand: the Emperor sees none but servile faces, and every word uttered has to be first submitted for approval. He never gets in touch with the solid self-respecting men who really know their country and whose opinion is worth his hearing. Minister Bach is careful to see that none but c...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• One - THE FAIRY PRINCESS
• Two - IN A GOLDEN CAGE
• Three - FLIGHT
• Four - RETURN
• Five - DR. CHRISTOMANOS
• Six - LUDWIG’S DEATH
• Seven - RUDOLF’S END
• Eight - LAST YEARS
• Nine - THE MURDER
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER