Austria-Hungary

Few monarchs have waded through such deep waters of sorrow as the venerable Emperor of Austria, who was born on August 18, 1830, and succeeded to the throne on the abdication of his uncle, the Emperor Ferdinand, and the renunciation of all rights by his own father. To the good-looking high-spirited lad of eighteen the world probably did not seem difficult to conquer, even though his dual inheritance was torn by inward throes of dissension. It was when he was twenty-three that he met his beautiful cousin Elizabeth, the second of the five daughters of the Duke Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria, at Ischl, and immediately fell in love with her, though she was only sixteen. Though negotiations had already been entered into for his marriage with her elder sister, he declared he would marry her and no one else, and in spite of her surprised exclamation as to why he should choose one so insignificant, when told of this prospect by her mother, he carried through his project and they were betrothed in three days, though not married till eight months after. The young couple were first cousins, their mothers being sisters. On that large family of sons and daughters of the house of Bavaria many sorrows have fallen. The tragic end of the Empress is described below; one of her sisters, the Duchess of Alençon, was burnt to death in the terrible fire at the charity bazaar in Paris a few years earlier. Another, having married the Crown Prince of Naples, was driven from the throne with him.

The Imperial marriage did not turn out a success. Elizabeth shared to the full in the eccentric tendencies of her family, an eccentricity which developed in the elder and reigning branch of her house into madness. She was of a melancholy temperament, and entirely without the power of adapting herself. Young as she was, her tastes were formed, and the somewhat wild out-of-door life she had led as a girl had imbued her with a hatred of functions and ceremonies. She was suddenly elevated to a supreme position in one of the most conventional courts in Europe. Small wonder was it that, in spite of her unquestioned beauty, she alienated the hearts of her courtiers by her want of tact and obvious dislike of court life.

Two daughters were born to her before the longed-for son, and one of them died. This increased her unhappiness, but when at length a prince appeared it was hoped things would go better. Unfortunately the Empress’s eccentricity increased rather than diminished. She took umbrage at the Emperor’s love affairs, which might have been condoned in one in such a position of temptation, and at last she left her home and children and wandered over Europe for many years.

Reconciliation was at length effected over the new Hungarian constitution, when the Emperor and Empress travelled in state to Budapest, there to be crowned King and Queen of Hungary. The ceremonies were magnificent. All the various races of the dominions were represented, as the writer of The Martyrdom of an Empress, says:

The Emperor has always been personally greatly beloved by his subjects, and Prince Bismarck once said, “Whatever dissensions the different nationalities of Austria may have among themselves, as soon as the Emperor Francis Joseph gets on horseback they all follow him with enthusiasm.”

The Empress always got on better with the Magyars than with her Austrian subjects, and was more loved by them. Her wonderful skill as a horsewoman endeared her to the Magyars, every one of whom is born with the love of horses in his veins. After the coronation the Empress set herself to master the Hungarian language, and though it is notably difficult, she became so proficient in it that the patriot Deak told her she was the noblest Hungarian of them all. Her openly expressed sorrow at the death of Deak was another link between her and the Hungarians, who grew to love her as they had loved no queen since Maria Teresa. The Empress Elizabeth’s knowledge of foreign languages was something exceptional; she spoke and wrote German, Hungarian, Czech, Polish, Roumanian, Italian, Modern Greek, English, and French. She was very fond of Byron, who, after Heine, was her favourite poet.

The youngest child of the Imperial couple, the Archduchess Valerie, was born the following year.

In 1879 the Empress visited Great Britain, where her firm and graceful seat as a horsewoman attracted as much admiration as in Hungary; she returned many times in later years, and rode to hounds with the Pytchley, Royal Meath, and in Cheshire, and no mount was too spirited for her to manage. She stayed also at the Isle of Wight, which she greatly appreciated, and her clever feats of swimming were only second to her horsemanship.

The Emperor, meantime, having borne first the burden of internal dissensions, and then the trial and humiliation of the war with Germany, grew old before his time and became grave and quiet.

Prince Rudolph married the Princess Stephanie of Belgium in 1881, and in 1883 their only child, a daughter, was born to them. She was about six years old when the terrible death of Rudolph fell as a heavy blow on his parents. The hot-headed young man was mixed up in intrigues unsuitable to his responsible position, with the result that he took his own life by shooting himself, and was found dead in a shooting-box at the end of January 1889. It is said that the Empress was never known to laugh again.

In the following year her youngest daughter, the Archduchess Valerie, married, and from that time the unhappy Empress travelled about a great deal incognito on the Continent, and staying at her palace Achilleion on Corfu. On this she spent thousands of pounds. Since her death it has been purchased by the German Emperor.

The end came on Sunday September 11, 1898, at Geneva, whither she had gone over for a few days from Territet where she had been staying. Accompanied only by a lady-in-waiting the Empress was walking along the quay between one and two in the afternoon to rejoin the boat which was to take her back to Territet, when a man rushed forward and struck her violently over the heart. It was thought at first he had only stumbled against her and caused her to fall, and though he was secured no great apprehension was raised by his strange conduct. The Empress recovered herself and went on board, where she fainted. It was then discovered that he had pierced her heart with a triangular file resembling a stiletto, which had inflicted only a small wound but bled internally. Brought back to Geneva she died in half an hour. The assassin, who had been arrested, turned out to be an Italian anarchist named Luccheni, who seemed to have no special motive for his dastardly crime beyond a general vendetta against crowned heads. Thus died the Empress Elizabeth in her sixty-first year, adding one more heart-rending sorrow to her husband’s darkened life. There is hardly any grief in the range of human relationships that the Emperor has not known. It was in the very year of his wife’s death, in the month of December, that he was preparing to celebrate his jubilee. Up to the present time he has reigned longer than any other European sovereign of whom we have record, having even out-distanced Queen Victoria.

There is loyalty of a very deep and true kind amongst all classes of his subjects; it is not the Austrians alone, but the Slavs and Tyrolese and Hungarians, who look with tender reverence on the aged man, now in his eightieth decade, who has lived far beyond the allotted span of man’s life. Loyalty it is none the less because it does not seek avidly the tittle-tattle as to royal doings so eagerly sought in Great Britain, nor does it lead to mobbing the Emperor in his capital when he goes among his subjects.

In character the Emperor is free from vanity and simple in his tastes. He has suffered so much that even had he not had dignity and courage as inborn qualities he must have gained them, otherwise he could never have survived the repeated blows of fate. He is sparing of words, but his thought penetrates below the surface. “His calm placidity enables him to see through the transparent motive of the self-seeker, the charity-mongering toady—a rare gift of kingship. An indulgent smile perhaps, but few stars and crosses are to be had for incense-burning to this Habsburg.” In spite of being a constitutional ruler, it is the personality of the Emperor that counts in a way that is felt in no other country. Perhaps it is because he forms the only link among so many nationalities, so many jarring, turbulent, and opposed aspirations, that his person is so strongly revered. Whatever else divides the Magyar from the Austrian and the Slav from the Magyar, here they are all at one. Quiet, reserved, shrewd, and kindly, he has learnt by many bitter experiences to play his hard part to perfection.

The Austrian National Anthem evokes as much feeling as in more homogeneous countries.

Since the Salic law runs in Austria the Emperor’s grand-daughter cannot succeed him, any more than his own two married daughters.

The latest, and in some ways the most terrible, tragedy of all that have fallen on the royal house is yet fresh in the minds of every one, for the assassination of the heir to the throne, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and his wife, in the streets of Serajevo took place on June 28, 1914. The Archduke was born in 1863, and was the son of the Emperor’s next brother. He was thus past middle life, and was a man of strong personality. His wife was of noble, but not of royal, blood, and had been lady-in-waiting to the Archduchess Isabella. At the time of the marriage the Archduke had to agree to give up all rights of succession for any children of this union, and therefore his two sons are now set aside in favour of their cousin, the Archduke Charles Francis Joseph, son of their father’s brother, the late Archduke Otto, who becomes Heir-Apparent. He was born in 1887, married in 1911 the Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma, and has already a little son. All the Emperor’s brothers have passed away before him. The Archduke Maximilian, his favourite, suffered an unhappy fate. He was offered the crown of Mexico by Napoleon III. He accepted, and in 1864 sailed for the “Kingdom” thus bestowed on him, but his army abandoned him and the republicans captured and shot him, thus adding another sorrow to the heart of the aged Emperor.