The duchess’ ghost – part 2

Louise de Budos, Duchess of Montmorency

According to Saint-Simon, Louise de Budos died a victim of the Evil One.  As for Connetable de Montmorency’s re-marriage with Laurence de Dizimieu, it was due to another spell.

On the evening of the drama, pain caused by her niece’s death had thrown Laurence onto her lifeless body.  After having spent a long time kissing her remains, she had taken the beggar-woman’s ring off Louise’s finger.  She then immediately slipped it onto her own finger, like a pious relic…

The Connetable, lost in the pain of his suffering, returned straight to his castle, where all of the witnesses are able to see the sincerity of his despair.  And then, as soon as he starts to recover, he shows Laurence – whom he had never been able to stand before – a thousand marks of friendship.  She was pleased about these new dispositions and thought that they were because of his mourning.  But when she was preparing to leave for good, he asks her straight out to marry him.

Why?  Laurence is not rich and, on top of that, her face is quite ugly.  As for keeping her just to give a mother to his children, the Duke could have found closer relatives in his family and certainly less detested ones…  The first moment of astonishment over, Louise’s aunt, who is only 28, does not even consider refusing the dazzling offer made to her by the kingdom’s most eminent lord.  Who, at 65, still finds the most gallant letters in his mail from women offering themselves to him…

The Connetable is in such a hurry that he doesn’t even wait for Rome’s dispensation to fix his wedding date.  It is only some time after its celebration, that he thinks about turning to the Pope.  This mission is entrusted to Jean des Porcellets, Lord of Maillan, an important man in France’s South.  Rome scolds the Duke’s emissary, but accords its pardon.  On condition that a new marriage be held as soon as possible, this time according to the rules.

Meanwhile, during all this time, Laurence is not enjoying her happiness as she should.  She is continually asking herself questions.  How did love suddenly descend upon her prince?  One day, she comes to the conclusion that it is certainly her defunct niece’s ring that is at the origin of the miracle.  The friends in whom she confides laugh at her.  But as she is more and more tormented, they suggest that she simply get rid of it.  So, one day while she is walking in the gardens of Ecouen Castle, she throws the ring into a pond…

Almost at the same moment, Jean de Maillan returns from his Roman embassy.  The Connetable immediately receives him telling him that, not only is he not going to get married, but that he is even thinking of separating from Laurence as fast as possible.  The Pope, indignant at such extraordinary behaviour, then orders the Connetable to christianly marry immediately.  Long haggling begins.

Montmorency swears that if he can get rid of Laurence, who is despite everything his wife, he would never again marry, and would never again have children.  The Pope is inflexible and his power is so strong at this time that, on 18 April 1601, the marriage has to be publicly celebrated by the Bishop of Arles, at Beaucaire.

Laurence has hardly taken off her wedding-gown than her spouse demands an immediate separation…  With interdiction to ever set foot again in Chantilly…  To avoid being sued, Montmorency gives her an honourable revenue, but obliges her, as if in prey to an eternal resentment, to flee from castle to castle until his own death in 1614.

The Duke of Saint-Simon reports the Duchess' story in his "Memoires".

Half-mad and ignored at Court and in town, Laurence de Dizimieu lived another forty years.  As for Louise de Budos, who had known some extraordinary adventures while alive, she had some strange activity after her death, if we are to believe Saint-Simon.

“A tradition constantly believed in the House of Conde, says that Connetable Louise appears in the age that she had and with the clothes of her time, at the window of the Chantilly armoury, shortly before the death of the head of the House of Conde.  What is very certain is that, very few days before the smallpox of Madame the Duchess, a bastard of Louis XIV …[Louise-Francoise, known as Mademoiselle de Nantes, the daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan, who married Louis, Duke of Bourbon, the grandson of the Great Conde, in 1685]… the Great Conde being at Chantilly which he seldom left, Vervillon, his equerry, coming back from shooting and arriving at the castle at sunset, saw at the open window of the armoury, opposite the Connetable’s statue, a woman dressed singularly, leaning and very advanced on this window, and who was looking so far down, that he was only able to see her face a little and imperfectly.  Vervillon, who knew all about the House’s tradition and who knew that this room was always locked and its windows too, was so struck by this that he stopped.  Turning to the groom who was following him, he asked him if he didn’t see something at the window and what it was.  The groom told him that he saw the same form.  Vervillon, sure that he wasn’t imagining it, advances, still looking at it until, being very close to the door, he could no longer see it.  Instead of going to his bedchamber, he dismounts at the Concierge’s place and asks him why the armoury is open.  The Concierge replies that it isn’t, denies it, presents his keys, goes up straight away with Vervillon, shows him the locked door of the armoury, and unlocks it:  they all enter, find doors and windows all closed and no-one inside.  Vervillon, very astonished, goes to his bedchamber, taking the Concierge with him, telling him what he had seen, then to Monsieur the Prince de Conti, then exiled at Chantilly, and has the groom speak before them.  By word of mouth, the thing comes to the principal people of the household and frightens them.  Vervillon had been for years with Monsieur the Prince, [and was] a good man, greatly estimed, [and had] greatly mingled with men and women of the world.  He has lived more than thirty years since this and still has a lot of considerable friends…

“Two days later, Monsieur the Prince de Conde learned that Madame the Duchess had smallpox at Fontainebleau, from whence the Court had left because of it.  He went to join her, fell ill straight away and very promptly died there on 11 December 1686…”

The apparitions of Louise de Budos’ ghost are also related by Madame de Sevigne.

***

To be continued.

The duchess’ ghost

Louise de Budos, Duchess of Montmorency

In the middle of the day, on 26 September 1598, a great cry of affliction rises in beautiful Chantilly Castle, which has only just been finished.  Louise de Budos, Duchess of Montmorency, has just expired, when she was perhaps going to give a second son to Connetable Henri, to perpetuate his race.  In Chantilly and Fontainebleau, where the Connetable has gone to deal with some business entrusted to him by Henri IV, people are stunned and pained.  Henri de Montmorency’s beloved spouse, so gentle and so beautiful, was only twenty-three years old.

Montmorency will return to his castle only for the funeral service and to ask the Feuillant Brothers to found a monastery at Chantilly.  Then, before retiring, desperate, inside his Mello house, he has the doors and windows of the room where the unfortunate Louise died, nailed shut.  Three months pass, then a rumour begins to run throughout the Oise countryside.  A rumour which appears incredible.  It is said inside noble and middle-class homes, as well as in the slums, that the Connetable has re-married.  It is even said that the new spouse is a certain Madame de Dizimieu, Louise’s aunt, who was already living in his home while the Duchess was alive.  And the sign of the cross is made, for this delay is too short and the union is contrary to canonic texts…

Pierre de l’Estoile, the great chronicler of the epoch, comments on the event like this:

“Died in this time at Chantilly, in the bloom of her years and of her age, Madame the Connetable, the flower of Court beauties, a hideous mirror of God’s justice in her end, which was with appalling despairs, fears and moanings, serving as instruction to this century’s courtiers of both sexes, to fear God and not to do as she did who gave herself to the devil, who paid him by her vanity and curiosity, vices which most of the lords and ladies of the Court today make their god!”

It can be seen that Pierre de l’Estoile makes no bones about accusing Louise de Budos of witchcraft.

The Duke of Saint-Simon reports the Duchess' story in his "Memoires".

One century later, Saint-Simon takes these facts and expands them with several witness reports.  Here is the strange story that the author of the famous Memoires makes of the event.  According to him, Louise de Budos, a young widow of eighteen, and her mother were beside the Connetable’s wife when she died in 1593.  Mother and daughter do what they can to relieve the pain of Montmorency who remains inconsolable for a long time.  One day when they are walking in the neighbourhood of Pezenas Castle, they meet a poor woman who asks for alms while holding a child in her arms.  Louise, moved at the sight of the baby, obliges her mother to give a few coins to the beggar-woman who gratefully thanks her and assures both women that if they wanted it, their charity would bear a thousand benedictions.  The condition is that they accept a ring that she holds out to them and which must be worn on the young widow’s finger.

Saint-Simon concludes:

“The advice was point by point followed and the Connetable married Louise de Budos”…

As we know, the story doesn’t end there and for five years little Louise and her great captain were perfectly happy.

Montmorency is frequently absent on campaigns beside the future Henri IV, who is doing what he can to hasten the time in France when every home will have chicken stew [poule au pot] on the menu.  Louise therefore often finds herself alone at Chantilly Castle which the Connetable has just had rebuilt.  One evening while she is with her aunt and the Count of Cramail, the entourage finds her complexion to be considerably altered.  Has she received some bad news about the Connetable?  Of course not, replies Louise who attempts to reassure her people.  A few days later, while she is on an after-dinner walk with these same two people, she suddenly leaves them, praying them not to move.  She advances towards a man who is standing at the corner of a pathway and seems to be waiting for her.  She joins him, stops beside him and talks to him for rather a long time.

When the man leaves, the aunt and Cramail join her, very intrigued.  The young woman appears so despondent that, this time, they have no doubts that she has just learnt some fatal news from the armies.  She again attempts to reassure them and is even more evasive and more depressed than the last time.

The next evening at dinner, when the desserts are about to be served, she is told that the man to whom she had spoken the day before is asking to speak to her again.  This visit appears to overwhelm her and she says aloud that she finds the man decidedly very pressing.  She prays that he be asked to wait, but leaves the table fairly quickly, firmly forbidding that anyone disturb her:  even if they were to hear some noise or the echoes of an eventual dispute, she insists.

Louise goes with her visitor to a study, situated near the Great Gallery, where she locks herself up with him.  The family, for the moment reduced, it is true, to her aunt and that gentleman, begin to find this comportment extraordinary.  For reasons which can appear just as singular to us, they leave her to confront the stranger for a whole twenty-four hours, and it is only in the evening after having held council with all of the people in charge of the castle, that they decide to knock on the door of the study.  It is locked from inside and they call and beg, but Louise does not answer.  They then resolve to break down the door.  A terrible sight awaits the witnesses:  Madame the Connetable is lying on the floor in a posture which freezes the witnesses in horror.  She is lying flat on her back, and her head has been twisted 180 degrees, so that her face is now completely turned toward the floor.  The face shows no sign of violence.

The unfortunate woman is of course dead and there reigns inside the room a sickening smell of sulphur.

To be continued.

A dead girl’s spirit in a teenager’s body

Lurancy Vennum, aged 13, fell into catalepsy. One day, her body awoke animated by the spirit of a dead girl.

The Vennums were happy people.  Landowners in Wisconsin, USA, they lived peacefully with their little girl Lurancy in a big house surrounded by a beautiful park.  Thomas Vennum’s only worry was to see the price of corn fall.  Julia Vennum’s only preoccupation was the success of her Sunday cake.  They had no problems and were without any worries or metaphysical anguishes.  As faithful parishioners of the Baptist Church, they sincerely believed that the Lord had conceived His Creation according to rules which excluded disorder and anything irrational.  Their Pastor said so.  In this limpid world, one and one made two, what was white could not be black and dead people had ceased living for good.

It is however, at the home of these good people, totally devoid of imagination, that one of the most fantastic stories of all time will unfold.

***

It began in 1877, when Lurancy, then aged thirteen, was suddenly afflicted with a curious ill:  at certain moments she seemed to go to sleep, her body became rigid and she fell to the ground.  During these attacks, which could last a few minutes or whole hours, she spoke strange words, described places that she had never visited and revealed secrets about the neighbouring farmers that Thomas and Julia Vennum, prudish and discrete, were embarrassed to learn.

Sometimes, Lurancy’s voice changed, took accents, and her parents had the impression that the neighbours that she evoked were speaking through her mouth.

These phenomena lasted a few weeks without the consulted doctors managing to agree on the origin of the strange ill with which the little girl was afflicted.  One spoke of puberty crisis, another of overwork at school.  As for a third, more imaginative, he claimed that it was a “state of cataleptic trance due to the sting of an unknown fly…”.

Then, one morning in February 1878, Lurancy rises, leaves her bedroom and goes into the kitchen where Mrs Vennum is preparing breakfast.  For a moment, the little girl looks around her “as if she was trying to discover where she was”, then she says to her mother in a ceremonious tone:

“Good morning, Madam.  Why am I here?  Why didn’t I sleep at home?”

Julia bursts out laughing, tells her to stop playing and eat her breakfast, calling her by her name.  Lurancy stiffens and says that her name isn’t Lurancy, but Mary…

Still thinking that her daughter has imagined one of those bizarre games that children sometimes invent, Mrs Vennum pours milk into a bowl filled with porridge and tells her to sit down and eat, calling her Mary this time.

As Lurancy doesn’t move, she looks up and is struck by her daughter’s fixed, shiny gaze.

“What’s the matter, Lurancy?”

“Not Lurancy, Madam;  my name is Mary…  Mary Roff, and I would like to go back home…”

This time, Julia becomes angry.  Mary Roff was the name of a young girl who had died thirteen years before in Dixville, a neighbouring village, and she doesn’t like people joking about the deceased.

“I forbid you to tell such stupid stories.  We shouldn’t laugh about certain things, you know we shouldn’t!  You didn’t know Mary Roff, but you should respect her memory.”

“Her memory?  But I’m not dead, Madam.”

“Stop, please!”

Lurancy then approaches her mother and, in a firm tone never used by her before, repeats that her name is Mary Roff, that she doesn’t know why she is not at home and she wants to return to her parents.

As Julia is considering her in astonishment, she adds:

“You must recognize me, Mrs Vennum, you met me one day at Doctor Simmons’ place where I had gone to fetch a syrup.  You had a white straw hat and I had a big blue bow in my hair.  As it was undone, you tied it for me…  We were in the window recess.  I remember that at that moment, James Oliver passed by in the street on his horse…”

Julia sits down, unable to pronounce a word.  All this is true.  Fourteen years before, she had met young Mary Roff in Dr Simmons’ waiting-room and had retied the adolescent’s bow.  A scene which had had no witnesses.  She doesn’t even remember having mentioned it to her husband.

How could Lurancy know these details?

Julia thinks that her daughter is again traversing one of her strange attacks and decides to wait until it passes.

“Mr and Mrs Roff live more than five miles from here.  My husband will go to let them know and they will come to fetch you.  Meanwhile, eat your breakfast.”

The little girl docilely swallows her bowl of porridge and returns to her bedroom where she plunges into a book.

At midday, when Thomas returns home, Julia tearfully reports the extraordinary conversation that she had had with Lurancy.  He remains silent for a moment, then decides to go to see her to see if the attack is over.

But when he enters the bedroom, Lurancy calls him “Sir” and asks him if he has been to see her “parents”…

So, he brings her back to the dining-room and they sit at the table.  The meal is strange.  Before her consternated parents, the little girl does not stop joyfully evoking memories of her childhood in Dixville…

After dessert, Thomas says to his wife:

“We’ll wait until this evening.  If she is not better, I’ll go to see the Roffs…”

When he returns from work at the end of the afternoon, something new has happened:  Lurancy-Mary had declared to Julia that she remembered dying thirteen years before.  She had even spoken lengthily about her agony, going as far as reporting details about an incident which had unfolded in the mortuary chamber…

Thomas then took his horse and went to the Roffs’ place.

The Dixville farmers learned what was happening at the Vennum house with a mixture of astonishment and deep emotion.  Then they asked some questions and Thomas reported as faithfully as possible all that Julia had told him.  The parents listened quietly;  but when he arrived at the incident of the mortuary chamber, Mrs Roff let out a cry:

“It is not possible, Sir, that Lurancy could have said that.  At that moment, I was alone in the room next to my little Mary’s body…”

She has an attack of nerves and has to be carried to her bed.

***

To be continued.

Napoleon III’s health and France’s defeat – part 2

The Emperor's bladder stone makes horseriding extremely painful.

The 1870 defeat at Sedan led to the fall of the French Empire.  What was the true role played by the Emperor in this ill-fated campaign?  Or rather, what was the influence that his illness could have had on the unfolding of the events?

***

The symptoms are particularly painful.  All those close to the Emperor can attest to that.  The stone acts like a foreign body and is therefore responsible for the alteration and the inflamation of the organ in which it resides.  At the origin of nephretic colics, it can constitute an obstacle to the normal flow of the organ’s secretions.  In this case, urine.

The phenomenon of lithiasis, this formation of concretions, manifests itself, for renal lithiasis, by the appearance of sand in the urine.  These minuscule pieces of gravel formed in the kidney become little stones after their passage into the bladder.  Inside this organ, the stone can grow.  The size of Napoleon III’s stone causes the consulted doctors to advise an operation in 1870.  The Emperor will have this catheterism only in 1873.

In a letter written from Candem Place, Chislehurst, on 8 January 1873, to Madame Cornu, the Empress makes it known that her “dear patient” has just been examined by Sir Henry Thompson and W. Girle, and that the practitioners have recognized the existence of a stone the size “of a chestnut”.  They are very surprised that Napoleon had been able to remain on horseback for five hours on the day of Sedan with it;  they cannot believe it.  She then talks about the horrible suffering stoically endured by the patient.  Sir Henry Thompson is supposed to have exclaimed:

“The Emperor must have been a thousand times heroic to have remained on horseback during the Battle of Sedan:  the agony must have been constant and I have never known anything like it.”

***

Nonetheless, on 19 July 1870, France declares war on Prussia.  Everyone wanted this war:  Bismarck, Empress Eugenie, public opinion.  But did the Emperor want it?

***

The antagonism between France and Prussia appears in 1866.  On 3 July, Prussia crushes Austria at Sadowa.  Napoleon III lets Bismarck unify Northern Germany but wants, in compensation, the Rhine and the Alps, so as to give back to France its natural borders.  But Bismarck and King Wilhelm I of Prussia refuse any territorial concessions.  After this refusal, and to avoid war, Napoleon III asks for some territories outside Germany;  he is in fact thinking of annexing Luxembourg which, from 1815 to 1866, is part of the German Confederation.  But Prussia feels strong enough not to negotiate with France.  The talks fail.  If Bismarck has no need of France’s support, it is because he has assured the neutrality of the British Government and obtained that Russia would prevent the intervention of Austria in the case of a Franco-Prussian conflict.  In fact, despite the friendship which unites Franz-Josef and Napoleon III, Austria will remain prudently neutral during the conflict.

The Emperor, who is seriously ill at this decisive moment, prefers not to take the decision and lets events follow their course.  At this epoch, public opinion is hostile to war.  But the situation changes in 1870 and a War Party begins to manifest itself for, since 1866, the French People is having trouble accepting Prussia’s impunity.  At Court, Empress Eugenie is in favour of war;  as is the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Duke de Gramont.  For them, war should calm the Republican Opposition and gild the Empire’s prestige.

***

So, in Summer 1870, the French want war while the country is isolated diplomatically and possesses a completely disorganized army, in the aftermath of the Mexican campaign.  Opposite them, Bismarck is ready.

***

It is undeniable that the illness endured by the Emperor is one of the causes of incoherent politics.  But in what measure do these pains engender the war disaster?  Firstly, let us attempt to see if the officialisation of the illness had any repercussions on the Emperor’s politics.  Here are witness statements gathered from the key players still alive at the time of Doctor Cabanes’ investigation.

“(1)  The Emperor had, in 1870, such a stone that physical, intellectual and even moral activity were completely paralyzed:  which explains the defeats at the beginning of the campaign.

“(2)  Prince Napoleon claimed that the Empress had known about the consultation;  she denies it.  I have no personal opinion.

“(3)  Knowledge of the consultation would probably not have prevented the war, which was the obligatory response to a premeditated outrage, but it would certainly have changed the conditions in which it was done and the distribution of the Commands.

“(4)  The Empress never said:  ‘This war is my war.’

“Emile Ollivier.”

The same opinion was given by Monsieur Alfred Duquet, the most official historiographer of the 1870 war.

“As for the medical consultation of 1st July 1870, I think that the Council of Ministers kept it secret.  And, it is a fact that the divulgation of the scholarly professors’ opinion would have been of supreme political imprudence.

“There remains the famous words of the Empress:  ‘It is my war.’  It is true that these words have been often quoted, written many, many times, cursed by mothers and by good French people.  Only, did she say them?  I am not afraid to clearly answer:  no.

“In this, I am not influenced by my feelings toward Empress Eugenie, for whom I have always had antipathy because of her frivolity, her futility;  but I am unfortunate, in these times of about-face and of compromissions, to never hide the truth, even against my own interest, my own desires, and I confess not having had before my eyes a serious written proof or a decisive oral affirmation on the subject of this abominable declaration.  Unless there are new elements of conviction, this is the thesis that I shall uphold when I recount the origins of the 1870-1871 war, after having finished the account of the bloody combats and the gigantic capitulations of that terrible year.

“Alfred Duquet.”

So, Mr Duquet and Emile Ollivier, that is to say two men living at opposite ends of the political poles, agree in declaring that the Empress did not pronounce the ill-fated words that have been attributed to her; words probably apocryphal and invented afterwards, like so many other so-called historical words.

***

To be continued.

Elisabeth, the suffering empress – part 5

Elisabeth and Franz-Josef at Cap Martin in 1894.

What happened at Mayerling in the night of Tuesday 29 to Wednesday 30 January 1889?  What happened exactly?  The most fantastic historical enigma of the XIXth Century, the most poignant drama of old Europe, still suscitates the most diverse interpretations.  Mayerling is the drama of a man, a family, a world.  What tragedy unfolded in a pretty pavillion in the heart of a peaceful valley?  A ravishing, romantic place.  A nightmare in the Viennese forest.

What was the official version?  Crown Prince Rudolf, Archduke of Austria, intelligent but depressive, brilliant but unstable, was very unhappy in his private life.  Married for State reasons to Princess Stephanie of Belgium, he felt only lassitude at his spouse’s side.  The birth of their daughter Erszi had, for a while, permitted the hope of a reasonable, if not idyllic, understanding within the couple.  Unfortunately, Stephanie’s delivery had been difficult, and the doctors had warned her that she could not have any more children.  Rudolf, deeply saddened by the impossibility of giving a son to the dynasty, is supposed to have detached himself definitively from his spouse, judged to be ungracious, nasty and jealous.

Crown Prince Rudolf, Archduke of Austria.

In his public life, Rudolf nourished ambitions greater than those offered by the functions which he exercised.  His clandestine contacts with progressist and liberal milieux were many…  His writings, published under pseudonyms, criticised the line followed by Vienna.

In 1888, he had fallen in love with one of the daughters of the enterprising Baroness Helena Vetsera, the very young Maria – she is seventeen.  Rudolf is so taken with her that he addresses a marriage annulment request to Pope Leon XIII.  The request is refused and provokes, it is said, a violent scene between Franz-Josef and his son.  The Emperor is said to have ordered the Archduke to cease this scandalous liaison.  At the German Embassy reception on 27 January, Maria Vetsera is said to have ostensibly refused to curtsy to Stephanie.

Doubly disappointed, Rudolf is supposed to have decided to kill himself and asked Maria Vetsera to follow him in death.  Mayerling was the lovers’ last rendez-vous.

The official enquiry will attempt to establish the circumstances of the double death, carefully omitting to mention Maria Vetsera’s body.  Officially, the young girl was not at Mayerling…  Maria is buried very rapidly, during a clandestine ceremony which is particularly macabre:  her body, held upright by a stick, had been transported, seated, by carriage, to the forest cemetery of Heiligenkreuz, a few kilometres from Mayerling.

A series of confused and contradictory communiques will cast doubt – and discredit – on the Archduke.  There will be talk of Rudolf being poisoned by Maria Vetsera, who then killed herself.  After that, it was said that the Prince suffered from an embolism and that his mistress killed herself in despair.  Then, the version of a hunting accident is retained, founded on Rudolf’s passion for firearms.  But the “definitive” version is that of murder-suicide.  Maria Vetsera is killed by Rudolf, who then kills himself.  However, this official explanation comes too late, after too many others, to be accepted without question.

An evident reason for these hesitations is the shame felt by Franz-Josef, whose son is presented as a murderer and a suicide.  The only way to obtain the authorisation for a religious funeral from the Vatican is to prove a state of dementia.

According to this version, Rudolf, involved in sentimental failure, would have had no other issue but death.  By retaining this version, two essential variations can be added.  Firstly, Maria Vetsera, Rudolf’s mistress since 13 January [that is to say, for sixteen days], is pregnant and the rupture ordered by Franz-Josef comes too late.  Secondly, they are half-sister and half-brother, Franz-Josef having had a kindness for Helena Vetsera.  These two variations are not incompatible.

***

On Friday 11 March 1983, another version becomes public.  Austria’s last Empress and Hungary’s last Queen, Zita, was exiled from Austria from 1919 to 1982.  After the death of her husband, Emperor Karl, in 1922, she had lived some difficult times and raised her eight children.  While she was exiled in Switzerland, no historian nor journalist had ever officially asked her her opinion on the Mayerling tragedy.  The question was asked for the first time by the Special Correspondent of the Kronen Zeitung who published his enquiry in this Vienna newspaper in March 1983.

Born in 1892, three years after the tragedy, the former Empress was the only witness left of this imperial epoch who had very well known the contemporaries of the drama, in particular Franz-Josef and his two daughters Gisela and Maria-Valeria.  It is therefore natural to think that Empress Zita was better placed than historians to know what is hidden behind this State secret which is, after all, a family secret.

The Empress decided to speak so as to accomplish the mission entrusted to her by her husband Emperor Karl, who succeeded Franz-Josef, his great-uncle, in 1916, and who had received the task of rehabilitating Rudolf’s memory by producing the proof that he had been assassinated for political reasons.  War and death had prevented this.

Various remarks can be made about this new version.

Firstly, it is true that Franz-Josef made all those who knew about the drama swear to keep silent about it.  If Rudolf had really committed suicide after having killed Maria Vetsera, why continue to keep it secret once this official version had been given by the Court?  If Franz-Josef and Sissi had been very rapidly informed that their son had been assassinated and had accredited the suicide version for the public, it is because the political stakes were too high and high-ranking people in the Empire would have been compromised.  According to Empress Zita, Franz-Josef had said:

“I couldn’t do otherwise.  The monarchy’s existence was in danger.”

In this case, Mayerling would have been the first act in an enterprise of “destabilisation”, the assassination of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 being the second act.  The aim was achieved:  The Austro-Hungarian Empire, shaken by Mayerling, was dismantled at Sarajevo.

Secondly, after the first telegramme sent by the Emperor to the Pope to obtain the right to inhume Rudolf religiously, the Vatican had refused.  At this time, suicide excluded all indulgence by the Holy See.  Franz-Josef sent a second, coded telegramme to Rome, around two thousand words long, and the Pope immediately accorded the authorisation for a religious funeral.  The first telegramme has been found but the second has mysteriously disappeared.  It is in neither the Vatican’s archives nor those of Austria.  Why?  Countess Helena Esterhazy reported that her grandfather, who was Ambassador of Austria-Hungary to the Holy See and had received and decoded the famous second telegramme, told her later that its contents explained that it had been a political assassination.

To be continued.

Elisabeth, the amazon queen – part 6

The imperial family at Godollo.

During the Summer of 1876, the situation in the Balkans flares up.  Counting on Russia’s aid, Serbia and Montenegro declare war on Turkey.  Andrassy, whose anti-Russian feelings are exacerbated, makes it difficult for Emperor Franz-Josef of Austria to meet the Tsar.  The Emperor negotiates in the greatest secret with Alexander II, who wants to drag Austria-Hungary into a war of conquest.  He would like to occupy Bulgaria while Franz-Josef would annex Bosnia-Herzegovina.  However, Franz-Josef does not formally agree.

Disappointed that Franz-Josef is unable to join her, Sissi goes to Bavaria, accompanied, among others, by her new companion Plato, a shepherd dog who has replaced Shadow whom she will never be able to forget, however:  a marble statue of the big dog holding out his left paw has found a place in the smoking-room of the Imperial Villa in Bad Ischl.

Then she decides to return to Corfu, which had enchanted her fifteen years earlier.  Franz-Josef buys her a personal yacht, the Miramar.  It can be seen how much the Emperor shows almost unending material generosity to his spouse.  This time, Corfu retains her for only a short time, but Athens attracts her.  Her visit is of course concentrated on the ancient city.  She has read over and over again the Odyssey, seeking perhaps a comparison between Ulysses, the lost navigator, and herself, the wandering empress.

September unites the whole family at Godollo.  And a surprise guest arrives at Budapest Station:  Bay Middleton.  The Empress had invited him to come to hunt in Hungary when she had left England.  The presence of this officer, whose only merit is the fact that he is an excellent “gentleman rider”, surprises a few courtiers.  Sissi appreciates his simplicity, his frankness, and is amused by the permanent misunderstandings between Franz-Josef and Bay, without mocking him, however.  In fact, following a fall from horseback, the Englishman is almost completely deaf.  In approximative German and choppy English, the conversation between the two men is often funny.

Bay Middleton is an elegant man of around forty.  Fairly corpulent, he has flaming red hair and a tiny, matching moustache.  His face is literally covered in freckles and his nose seems a bit too big.  To compensate these faults, his teeth sparkle with whiteness and his blue eyes bubble with gaiety, making him attractive.  That Bay Middleton had begun by admiring the amazon, then the woman, is not original, since all men who approach the Empress fall in love with her.  That this dazzlement transforms into love, and that it is shared, is not proven.

In the Empress’ legend, nothing definitely proves that she accorded her favours to the officer, to the seductive Andrassy, or to other men overwhelmed by her beauty.  And they were very numerous.  On the other hand, the shared passions for horses, a political idea, dreaming, and other communities of views, either literary or poetic, are certain on Elisabeth’s side.  She has a vital need to use her energy, her enthusiasm, her gifts, even if, in the end, this whirlwind does not calm her anguish.  Her essential need is to communicate.

***

Franz-Josef and the Tsar have had laborious and long negotiations, but, on 15 January 1877, they sign an ultrasecret treaty in which Austria-Hungary will remain neutral in the case of a Russian war in Bulgaria or in Turkey.  Alexander II confides to the Emperor, in April, that a pacific solution must be excluded, since the new Sultan, Abdul Hamid, refuses the reforms wanted by the powerful countries.

“The moment for action has arrived.  My armies are receiving the order to enter Turkey.”

The 1877 conflict greatly recalls the Crimean War.

A young man is following the progression of the Russian troops with great interest.  It is Prince Rudolf, Archduke of Austria.  At seventeen, he had manifested his wish to not remain submitted to Prussia.  And, turning toward the Slavic peoples of the South, he had written:

“Austria must found a strong Danube empire”.

On 27 July, he is nineteen and is declared major.  He no longer has a preceptor, he now has a Household.  His Intendant is Count Charles of Bombelles who had been in the service of his uncle, the unfortunate Maximilien.  This choice suscitates diverse comments, for Bombelles is known for his immorality and Rudolf displays a great appetite for the joys of life.  One of his educators gives him a last piece of advice:

“Do not rush to empty life’s goblet in one swallow.  Enjoy the pleasures of existence in a measured way.”

On the other hand, Franz-Josef shows great open-mindedness about the Prince’s too-liberal lifestyle.

“My son’s youth must not be stolen from him like mine was,”

he says, remembering the heavy burden that he had received at the age of eighteen.

Prince Rudolf, Archduke of Austria.

Having spent Christmas at Schonbrunn, Elisabeth decides to go back to England, but she will be accompanied by Rudolf.  It is their first voyage together to a foreign land.  Elisabeth is happy that her son accompanies her but their intimacy remains glacial.  It is a new paradox:  she greatly appreciates his generous ideas, but remains awed by his intelligence.  Both very sensitive, they are unable to become completely close.  It is curious that Elisabeth, who is so instinctive, does not feel that her son is sometimes paralysed, even hurt by this fantasque mother, who is so seductive, and has so often left his father alone.  And when they make this voyage together, they see each other in London almost as little as in Vienna.  However, it must be noted that when the Empress dines with her son, she is particularly careful of her appearance.  Rudolf’s blue eyes contemplate, admirative, this mother who, at over forty, conserves a young girl’s silhouette.

Elisabeth remains only a short time in London, where she finds her sister, Maria of Naples, and goes to Cottesbrook Park, a Georgian home in Northamptonshire that she has rented for six weeks.  She is the queen of the hunt while numerous horsemen make spectacular falls.  Bay Middleton prevents the Empress from performing too many equestrian acrobatics.

Meanwhile, Rudolf is getting to know the political and business milieux of England.  His stay is very instructive.  Between a debate in the House of Commons and a technical visit to a spinning factory, he is discovering the workings of a country that is the workshop of the world.  His visit to Queen Victoria is a particular highlight.  The sovereign, who has been reigning for forty years and has been Empress of India for the last two, is charmed by Rudolf.  She invites him to spend a few days in the Isle of Wight, at Osborne House, to rest from the joys of London organized by the Prince of Wales, who is an expert in the matter – his reputation in this domain is well-established.

To be continued.

Elisabeth, the amazon queen – part 2

The imperial family at Godollo.

It is the time of year when Carnaval balls unleash the Viennese.  With Johann Strauss’ waltzes, Vienna is Europe’s ballroom.  The most popular evening is that of Mardi-Gras which unfolds in the grand ballroom of the Society of the Friends of Music, which Schubert had directed.  The redoubt is, of course, masked, but only the women hide their faces.  Sissi, who has just presided an official, boring ball, decides to go to the ball which has the whole town talking.  Such a ball, where she can protect her incognito, is a perfect example of what the Empress is always seeking:  to see and hear without being recognized.  Sissi is completely at ease with this plan, set up in Franz-Josef’s absence.

The Empress, like a disobedient young girl, pretends to retire to her apartments, dons a yellow brocade domino, hides her hair under a blonde wig and her face behind a black, lacy mask.  As a precaution, Ida Ferenczy, who is in a red domino, decides to call the Empress “Gabrielle”, to steer any eventual suspicions onto Gabrielle Schmidt, Sissi’s chambermaid.

Eleven o’clock at night.  Having arrived at the ballroom where it is difficult to resist the enticing violins, the two women remain on the gallery which dominates the frenetic farandoles.  The Carnaval encourages all sorts of audacities;  women can address gentlemen.  Ida Ferenczy notices a man on his own, who is young, very elegant, and whose face is unknown to her.  The Empress’ companion goes up to him, passes her arm under his, and asks him all sorts of questions to try to situate him.  Does he belong to the aristocracy?  Is he familiar with the Court?  The answers are clear:  the young man is a civil servant and his name is Frederic Pacher of Theinburg.  Very excitedly, Ida asks him:

“A pretty woman is with me.  She is getting bored all alone up there on the gallery.  Would you like to distract her for a little while?”

He agrees.  The civil servant is intrigued by the lady in the yellow domino, who speaks with a gentle voice but asks questions which are too precise to be innocent:

“I am a stranger here…  What do people think of the Emperor?  Are they happy with the Government’s politics?”

He is prudent, but answers sincerely.  Then the face behind the lacy mask asks more troubling questions:

“Do you know the Empress?  Do you like her?  What do people say about her?”

The young man hesitates.  No, the lady in yellow cannot be the Empress.  The Empress would never come to a redoubt, and it is this reasoning which prods Elisabeth to be so imprudent.  The civil servant replies frankly:

“The Empress is a very beautiful woman.  I saw her on horseback at the Prater.  She is reproached with fleeing the crowd and being present so little, while she spends so much time with her dogs and her horses.”

This answer amuses Sissi.  The following question burns her lips:

“How old do you think I am?”

“Thirty-six…”

Sissi shudders.  He has exactly guessed her age, she whose youthful appearance is praised by thousands of admirers.  It is true that she is a grandmother…  Suddenly, this flirtation is no longer amusing Gabrielle.  She wants to leave.  But the Carnaval has its customs, and it is not acceptable for a lady in a domino to disappear after having asked so many questions, without a gesture of thanks.  The young man wants to kiss her hand, on condition that Gabrielle remove her glove.  She refuses;  the young man’s frankness seduces her, his audacity pleases her and, finally, reassures her.  The charm returns.  Joyfully she says to him:

“Stay and take me down to the ballroom.”

Then, the young man will live two surprising hours.  His companion is assuredly someone of high rank, doubtless a princess.  It is enough to see the way that she walks, her luxurious domino, and how ill-at-ease she is to be bumped in the joyous crowd.  And the lady in yellow talks to him continuously, passing in revue the political situation, sliding to higher subjects, unusual in a Mardi-Gras ball.  The young man who, before talking with Gabrielle, was wandering slowly in search of a one-night stand, is enthusiastic and perplexed.  The lady in yellow admits:

“Men are usually only flatterers.  One can only treat them with disdain.  As for you, you seem different.”

Gabrielle wants to know if he suspects her identity.  A vague feeling…  which he doesn’t dare mention.  She refuses to unveil her hand, but announces to him:

“We shall see each other again.  For example, would you come to Munich or Stuttgart, if I fixed an appointment there with you?”

Frederic Pacher of Theinburg is ready for any rendez-vous, at the end of the world if necessary.  What a strange woman, what an unusual, grave conversation amidst the laughing of Columbines…

The lady in yellow demands an ultimate promise:

“Take me to a fiacre, then leave the ballroom…”

The young man keeps his promise, but, while the ordered fiacre is driving up, he can no longer resist and tries to raise the bottom of the black mask hiding her face.  Ida Ferenczy rushes over and throws the lady in yellow into the fiacre, which leaves at a trot.

Mr Frederic Pacher of Theinburg remains alone.  And what if it was the Empress?  His head is inflamed, his thoughts are confused.  Is it possible?  Is it a dream?  On the following days, he tries to see her at the Prater.  By keeping watch, he finally sees her carriage drive by.  Their eyes meet.  It seems to him that the Empress displays emotion before closing the carriage’s curtain.

A week goes by.  The civil servant, who had given his address to the unknown lady from the ball, receives a letter posted in Munich.  With a mixture of emotion and curiosity, he reads:

“Dear friend, you will be surprised to receive my first lines from Munich.  I am passing through here for a few hours and I take this occasion to give you a sign of life as I promised you.”

Miracle:  she has not forgotten…  The young man rushes to his pen.  Gabrielle has indicated that he could write to her poste restante in Munich.  A second letter arrives, written from London.  Gabrielle complains about the fog, finds the city odious and is living amongst elderly aunts who have a cranky bulldog.

Frederic Pacher of Theinburg, whom Gabrielle calls Fritz, is perplexed.  The letter has been sent from London, but the Empress is still in Vienna, he has made enquiries.  Gabrielle stops writing.  No letter arrives from London, Munich or Vienna.

To be continued.

Elisabeth, the depressed empress – part 6

Empress Elisabeth of Austria with Shadow.

On 1 May 1865, the imperial couple inaugurates the Ringstrasse, a long, circular Viennese artery, the work on which had begun seven years earlier.  A new capital is rising from the ground.  But the gaiety of the ceremonies is attenuated by Rudolf’s health.  He has grown a lot, and is very pale.  His mother fears that he might have diphtheria.

July.  Holidays at Bad Ischl.  On the programme:  hunting and excursions.  Little by little, trophies are hung on the walls, starting at the entrance to the Kaiservilla.  The Emperor will collect here the antlers of two thousand chamois and one thousand six hundred deer, to which can be added an immense eagle killed in Hungary, the head of a bear killed on the Tsar’s territory, a boar’s head, and even a derisory weasel shot at Schonbrunn, on 29 December 1860.

Sissi and her husband go hiking like they did during their engagement.  And the Bad Kissingen cure?  Elisabeth feels well, she walks for hours without the slightest fatigue.  Must she take the waters?  Doctor Fischer is adamant:  the annual regularity of the treatment is the best guarantee of its efficiency.  Elisabeth reluctantly agrees, but she will make the briefest stay possible, barely a week.  Her cousin, King Louis II of Bavaria, does not come.  He has lost his illusions about Wagner, although he continues to have his operas played, and refloats his finances.

When she returns to the Kaiservilla, Sissi finds Bad Ischl ravaged by fire.  It is said that two drunken coachmen had been smoking in some straw.  A regional catastrophe.  Twenty-two houses destroyed.  The flames had licked the walls of the imperial villa, where the children were sleeping.  Emperor Franz-Josef is very upset, his beloved Bad Ischl is devastated.

Emperor Franz-Josef of Austria by Winterhalter (1865).

On 18 August the Austrian Emperor celebrates his thirty-fifth birthday.  At Bad Ischl, where the destroyed houses are being rebuilt, thousands of people surround the imperial couple, who cross the esplanade on horseback.  Popular enthusiasm is at its peak when Rudolf appears in a little carriage drawn by donkeys.

Rudolf incarnates the immediate future of the monarchy.  However, his education poses a very serious problem for his mother.  The child’s nervosity comes, of course, from his heredity, but the way that he is being raised aggravates his too-sensitive nature even more.  The Empress leads a tardy and difficult enquiry on this domain reserved for her mother-in-law.  She discovers that Rudolf’s governor, Colonel Leopold of Gondrecourt, chosen by the Archduchess, is a military bigot who ostensibly goes to daily Mass to be seen by the family, in particular by the Emperor and his mother.  The governor unites two qualities, one of them glorified by Franz-Josef, the other sung by the Archduchess:  he is a perfect soldier, he is an excellent Christian.

What does the Emperor want?  He wants his son to learn the profession of arms at an early age, therefore, that he become familiar with courage and danger.  Gondrecourt finds nothing better than to lock the little boy inside a hunting reserve near Schonbrunn and, having left him alone inside, cry out:

“Prince!  Take care, a boar is charging you!”

The stupidity of this experience is consternating.  Gondrecourt also finds it indispensable to impose cold showers on the child, and thinks it instructive to fire shots from a revolver during his sleep.  Rudolf is, quite simply, terrified.

Princess Sophia, Archduchess of Austria.

What does the Archduchess want?  She wants to prepare a prince of high moral value, raised in the faith of God.  But gossips report to Elisabeth – she now has her allies – that Gondrecourt is only a Tartuffe, who purposely passes under Franz-Josef’s windows at six o’clock in the morning, holding a Rosary and a Book of Prayer.  It is said that the volume contains, in reality, a box of cigars, and that the governor, instead of devotions, is going to take breakfast with his mistress, a blonde chorus girl from the theatre.  Dismayed, Sissi exclaims:

“This is madness!”

In fact, this very special education given to Rudolf can only accentuate his fragility.  The child is often ill, he is afraid of the dark, and of noise.  Franz-Josef and his mother do not agree with all of Gondrecourt’s initiatives, but think that Rudolf needs a bit more vigour.  Sissi is enraged.  A discussion begins with her spouse.  Franz-Josef hesitates, as he always does as soon as it concerns the Archduchess.  Sissi plays her last card:

“I can no longer tolerate this.  It is Gondrecourt or I!”

On this 24 August 1865, the Empress of Austria addresses a veritable family ultimatum to the Emperor, putting her whole life in the balance, confirming in writing her intentions:

“I wish to have full powers for everything that concerns the children, the choice of their entourage, their place of residence, the complete direction of their education, in a word, it is I who will decide everything until their majority.  Further, I desire that, for everything concerning my personal business, such as the choice of my entourage, my place of residence, all changes in the household, etc., I be the only one to decide.

Elisabeth”

She couldn’t have been clearer nor firmer.  This is no longer anger from Sissi, this is a warning from the Empress who is twenty-eight-years-old.  For the first time since their marriage, Elisabeth refuses to give up one inch of her authority.  In a few lines, she has become perfectly adult.

This peal of domestic thunder is followed by a Court revolution:  Franz-Josef gives in, he agrees with his wife.  Gondrecourt is replaced by Count Josef Latour of Thurnberg, who reveals himself to be an excellent educator.  And Prince Rudolf’s health is entrusted to a new doctor, Dr Widerhoger.  Sissi will ask him for frequent reports, and will read them attentively, when before, she was kept in ignorance by his predecessor.

It is an immense victory.

A radiant and serene Autumn succeeds these upheavals.  Sissi, very beautiful, calmer, is supported by her husband.  Her victory is also that of their united, fortified couple.  On 4 October, the day of Saint Francis (Franz), Sissi organizes a dinner to celebrate the Emperor’s patron saint.  To Rudolf, she recounts:

“At table, we laughed a lot, I made all the ladies empty a flute of Champagne to Papa’s health.”

And she adds that one lady-in-waiting had almost “become too gay” and that another “had difficulty standing upright”.

Sissi has only snatched her independence from the Emperor so that she can be closer to her husband.  Sissi is happy.  Her victory is that of love.

***

Elisabeth, the depressed empress

Empress Elisabeth of Austria with Shadow, her faithful Irish Airedale.

The exhausted Empress cannot accompany Emperor Franz-Josef  of Austria to Varsovia, where he must meet the Tsar.  Upon his return, he finds her even worse, shaken by spasms of coughing, still following her severe diet and physical exercise.  At the end of October 1860, her state alarms the whole Court.  After an Homeric struggle, Doctor Seeburger is replaced by a more intelligent doctor, Doctor Skoda, a lung specialist.  Upon examining her, he notes that the strong bouts of fever are due to an inflamation of the lungs.  At the Court, the fatal word “tuberculosis” is whispered.  Laryngitis?  Of course not.  It’s much more serious!  Doctor Skoda’s diagnosis and, above all, the remedy that he proposes, will be laden with consequences.  The doctor suggests that the Empress stay in a sunny country without delay.  A voyage!  The word has a miraculous effect…  She announces that she is going to leave as soon as possible.  Where can one be sure of finding sunshine in November?  Franz-Josef talks about the Adriatic, an Austrian sea thanks to Venice.  But Sissi declares that she wants to go to a foreign land, and chooses, we don’t know why, the island of Madera.

To be able to understand the rapidity of this decision, we must also examine the intimate relations between Elisabeth and Franz-Josef at this period.  Among her gymnastics, her diet and her mental state, Sissi does not have much room for physical love;  she is more romantic than sensual.  Certainly, the couple is in love, but their exigencies are no longer in harmony.  Sissi has “migraines”, and fears another pregnancy that she feels she would be unable to bear.  Three children in four years is a lot, and the last birth has exhausted her.  On his side, Franz-Josef is possibly tired of being the perpetual arbiter between his wife and his mother, and tired of the fantasies of an Empress who refuses to grow up.  Such a reaction is doubtless understandable.  In the course of the Summer, an insidious rumour traverses the Palace walls.  The Emperor, distressed and lonely, and whose fidelity has been exemplary up until now, may have found comfort with a beautiful Polish aristocrat.  Elisabeth can only feel wounded by this indiscretion.  And, added to her health, it is an excellent reason to want to leave Vienna.

The astounded population learns that the Empress is seriously ill, and that she is going to leave Vienna.  The idea of her departure has transformed Sissi.  Gay, joyful, she busies herself with the choice of her wardrobe and the organization of her route.  The departure is fixed on 17 November.  Elisabeth and Franz-Josef board the imperial train which rolls towards the North of Bavaria and stops at Bamberg.  The moment for goodbyes has come.  Franz-Josef knows that Sissi will stay away for a long time.  He has given her her presents for her birthday and Christmas, and Archduchess Sophia, making a great show of sadness, has done the same.  The Emperor has made arrangements for Sissi to lack nothing.  At twenty-three, the Empress is traversing a crisis.  Her departure leaves a distressed Emperor on the quay.  He is worried, but does not yet sense how much his life is about to become a solitary road.

No Austrian boat being able to welcome the Empress aboard, it is Queen Victoria who puts one of her magnificent yachts at her disposition, and it is waiting for her at Anvers.  She is welcomed there by the King of the Belgians, Leoplold I.  A gesture of courtesy and family relations;  the Belgian sovereign is the father of Sissi’s sister-in-law, Charlotte.

The crossing is appalling and the passengers are wobbly.  Revitalized, the Empress takes pleasure in the tempest.  For six years, she has been suffocating.  She is finding her breath again.  Sissi’s liberty is one thousand kilometres to the South-West of Lisbon, and five hundred kilometres from Africa.  Liberty is faraway from Vienna.

***

The British royal yacht Osborne drops anchor in the bay of Funchal, the capital of Madera.  The warm climate has fashioned the island into a subtropical garden.  The white, several-storeyed houses have layers of bougainvillea and hortensia flowing down their walls, mixed with the perfumes from orange trees.  As soon as she arrives, Sissi feels calmer.

A curious crowd gathered on the breakwater worries her, but, at the same time, comforts her.  Unknown faces can only be friendly.  A letter is handed to her in the name of King Pedro V, who welcomes her onto Portugese territory.

Sissi settles into the old Palace of Quinta Vigia, from whence the gaze embraces the port and the town in the form of an amphitheatre.  She is seduced by the banana trees, the tile rooves, the windows wide open to the sky.  She arranges to lead the least official existence possible.  Sissi is interested in all the flowers that surge among the bubbling water sources in the basalt, lives surrounded by birds, collects butterflies, adopts a giant toad, launches herself into amusing duos with the parrots.  She usually goes on solitary outings, sometimes on horseback, more often in a little carriage drawn by white ponies;  she has rented eight.  When clouds cover this paradise’s brightness, Sissi plays cards, perfects her Hungarian, listens, fascinated, to the stunning Traviata of Mr Verdi, badly handled by the little Barbary organ sent to her by Franz-Josef.  If only her husband and children were at her side…  To Gisela, she writes:

“I shall bring you back some pretty birds in an aviary and a tiny little guitar.”

But melancholy lies permanently in wait for her, and the first Christmas, three thousand kilometres away from her family, is difficult for her.

So, at the beginning of 1861, if the Empress’ physical health appears to be stabilised, her psychological health is worsening.  A mixture of remorse and anxiety torments her.  She becomes anguished thinking of her sister Maria, Queen of Naples, still under siege at Gaete.  The city will fall on 13 February, and Sissi will learn, with relief, that the Queen and her husband have taken refuge in Rome, where they have asked the Pope’s protection.

A new companion arrives for her from England, a big, white dog, a stiff-haired terrier of the Irish Airedale race.  Sissi calls him Shadow, a well-chosen name, for he will follow her everywhere, and will pose beside her on many photographs.  The photos of the time also show the Empress and her ladies-in-waiting dressed in sailor suits with matching hats.  The document will circulate in Vienna, provoking comments which are not always kind.  It is beginning to be said that the ill from which the Empress is suffering might be essentially connected to her character.  And, while the monarchy is living its most difficult hours with Hungary, Austria is deprived of its Empress, and the Emperor is deprived of his spouse.

To be continued.

Elisabeth, the bullied empress – part 7

Empress Elisabeth of Austria.

On 20 November 1856, the Emperor and Empress of Austria and their suite arrive in Trieste.  The Empress (Sissi), speechless with admiration, discovers the calm blue of the Adriatic.  The city is decorated and the population’s welcome seems amiable.  But a suspicious fire erupts in front of the Town Hall.  The official explanation is the accidental inflamation of the fireworks planned for the evening.  Sissi and her husband content themselves with this version.  When a heavy crystal crown, hung between the two masts of the boat on which they are going to sail on the bay, crashes onto the deck a few minutes before their arrival, emotion is high.  Is this a second regrettable coincidence or a first assassination attempt?

On 25th, Venice receives the imperial couple.  The word “receives” is in fact badly chosen;  Venice ignores their visit.  The crowd assembled on the Saint Mark square is silent.  The Venitians manifest their hostility by a total absence of acclamations.  Only the police and public servants attempt to create an illusion with a few loud cries.  The crossing of the square is uncomfortable.  A delirious crowd impresses, a silent crowd unsettles.  In the Basilica, Franz-Josef, contraried by this welcome, hides his pain, and Sissi squeezes the hand of her daughter Sophia, dressed in a blue velvet coat trimmed with zibeline.  Mother and daughter wear matching outfits.

On 29 November, the couple holds a reception at the Palace of the Doges.  Barely one quarter of the great families attend.  The ladies are insulted as they leave their gondolas.  The atmosphere is stormy.  At the Fenice Theatre, an opera temple, the acclamations are as rare as full boxes.

Back at the Palace, Sissi gives her impressions to the Emperor.  In her opinion, too much rigour, too many vexatious measures with regard to the Venitians explains the open hostility since their arrival.  For the first time, the Empress holds a political discourse.  Her message is one of tolerance and liberalism.  A little surprised, the Emperor listens to her, and agrees.  Again…

Emperor Franz-Josef of Austria.

On 3 December, Franz-Josef signs decrees proclaiming amnesty for the events from 1848-1849.  Further, several cities are dispensed from paying the forced taxes.  The effect is immediate.  Venice defrosts, and in the evening of the following day, another gala at the Fenice shows the degree of metamorphosis.  The couple is applauded and the Empress receives increased personal success.

In Venice, the atmosphere now being relaxed, the sovereigns decide to spend Christmas there.  Venice in Winter, the damp fog that effaces the old palaces and muffles the cries of the gondoliers, everything is so different from the Alpine Christmasses…  Borrowed from a botanical garden, the traditional fir tree is decorated for the nineteenth birthday of the happy Empress.  She savours the extraordinary liberty of visiting churches and palaces whenever she likes.

On 5 January 1857, the cortege reaches Vicence.  The city has always been proud.  It proves it by a very cold reception:  only two ladies of quality come to present themselves to the couple.

Four days later, at Verona, the ambience is improved by a big, popular, regional festival which has not taken place for the last ten years, the incredible Gnocchi Bacchanalia.  The idea is to stuff with food the most important public servant, in this case, the Governor of the city.  The unfortunate man is constrained to eat in front of the amused gazes of Sissi and Franz-Josef, amid total hilarity.  But the demonstrations take on a doubtful tone when the inhabitants insist that the imperial couple ingurgitate a lot of gnocchi too.  Is this just a simple participation in municipal joy or, on the contrary, a way of ridiculing the Emperor and the Empress?  In reply, the stay is shortened.  At Brescia, the crowd’s silence is insupportable.  It is explained by the city’s ferocious resistance to Vienna, in 1849.

Finally, on 15 January, Franz-Josef and Elisabeth arrive in Milan.  They are expecting the worst.  They are right, the worst will happen, and it will have for framework the splendid La Scala Theatre.  The police has a lot of trouble trying to fill its two thousand eight hundred seats.  The patrician families have made it known that their boxes will be occupied.  Alas, when the evening comes, and the imperial couple makes its entrance into La Scala, all of the places are taken with lackeys in black livery.  In the orchestra, on the four balconies and in the two galleries, Milanese aristocracy has had itself represented by its domestics wearing mourning.  The affront is total.  On this same day, Count Cavour, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Piemont-Sardaigna, declares to the Turino Parliament that “Italy is perfectly capable of governing herself”.

Although Sissi’s charm does not work in Milan, the Empress nevertheless insists that measures of clemency be taken, as in Venice.  An amnisty, the restitution of confiscated properties, and fiscal measures are immediately decided.

On 29 February, another gala at La Scala effaces the previous appalling impression.  The applause is double, for Sissi’s role has finally been recognized.  Countess Esterhazy is consternated, the Empress is taking the side of the revolutionaries…  The Press resumes the evolution in these lines:

“One is not yet for Austria but one is already for the Emperor.  Each senses the soothing hand of the noble young woman who has transformed the sovereign’s dispositions.”

Two conclusions can be drawn from this Italian trip.  The first is the influence that Sissi can have politically.  In time, no-one resists her charm.  The second is a certain suppleness in Franz-Josef when he is “on the ground”.  He knows how to adapt, react quickly, he attempts to fix his mistakes and even his faults.  For the Empire, as well as for themselves, the experience is positive.

Sissi has improved her health.  She needs it, for the return to Vienna makes the leaden weight of obedience fall back onto her shoulders.  From Italy, she has brought back a beginning of maturity and authority.  Unfortunately, the Hofburg remains a prison.  And Sissi is again oppressed…

To be continued.