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Gisela was barely three years old, the Crown Prince a mere eight months.

Elisabeth accompanied her husband as far as Mürzzuschlag; when she left, she implored his retinue, especially Count Grünne, “You will surely always remember your promise to take good care of the Emperor; that is my only comfort in this terrible time, that you will do so always and on every occasion. If I did not have this assurance, I would have to be deathly afraid.” That Sisi, too, was convinced that in these difficult times, the Emperor’s place was properly in Vienna rather than on the field of battle in Italy is revealed in her letter to Grünne. “But you will surely do whatever is in your power to persuade the Emperor to return quickly and remind him at every opportunity that he is so sorely needed in Vienna as well. If you knew how much I worry, you would feel very sorry for me.”
⁴⁸

“The Empress’s discomposure surpasses imagination,” Leopoldine Nischer wrote. “Since yesterday [after her return from Mürzzuschlag], she has not stopped crying, will not eat, and always remains alone—at best, with the children.” The mother’s despair also affected the children. The nurse worried because “poor Gisela [is] somewhat disconcerted by the unceasing tears. Last night she sat very quietly in a corner, and her eyes were damp. When I asked her what was the matter, she said: ‘Gisela has to cry too for dear Papa.’”

Like most Austrians, the nurse also had family members in the army in Italy. Her brother-in-law died several days after the Battle of Magenta, her oldest son survived the Battle of Solferino.

Sisi was in a state of hysterical despondency. Ludovika: “her letters are soaked in tears!”
⁴⁹
She begged the Emperor for permission to follow him to Italy. Franz Joseph: “Unfortunately, I cannot grant your wish for the present, infinitely much as I would like to. There is no place for women in the restless life at headquarters, I cannot head my army with a bad example.”
⁵⁰

He tried to calm his wife, who was ailing again. “I beg you, my angel,
if you love me, do not grieve so much, take care of yourself, distract yourself as much as you can, go riding, drive with caution and care, and preserve for me your dear precious health, so that when I come back, I will find you quite well and we can be quite happy.”
⁵¹

Still in Verona, he wrote to Ludovika asking her to be so kind as to travel to Vienna, or at least to send her younger daughter, Mathilde, to cheer Sisi up.

Once again, Dr. Fischer came from Bavaria, this time at the request of a completely perplexed Sophie. Ludovika was outraged and almost
apologized
to her sister for her difficult daughter: “if only it were recognized that you do everything, how well disposed you are to others! God grant that things will be different again!”
⁵²

Once again, the Empress went on starvation diets, rode horseback for hours every day, turned inward, and fled the family teas and dinners Archduchess Sophie gave.

The number of Elisabeth’s critics grew. By now, even the imperial physican, Dr. Seeburger, was among them. He “poured out his reproaches and complaints about the Empress who, according to him, did not meet her obligations either as an empress or as a woman; though she was essentially idle, her contacts with the children were very casual, and though she sorrows and weeps for the absent noble Emperor, she rides horseback for hours, to the detriment of her health; between her and Archduchess Sophy an icy abyss yawns.”
⁵³

The governor of the castle criticized “the Empress’s bearing, because she smoked as she was being driven about, so that I grew truly uneasy at having to hear such things,” wrote the minister of police, Baron Johann Kempen in his diary.
⁵⁴
Even Queen Victoria of England heard of the shocking fact that the young Austrian Empress—like her sister Marie of Naples—smoked. Such tittle-tattle reveals the extent of the gossip.
⁵⁵

The Emperor cautiously reminded his wife of her obligations. “I beg you, for the love you bear me, pull yourself together, show yourself in the city sometimes, visit institutions. You have no idea what a great help you can be to me in this way. It will put heart into the people in Vienna and keep up the good spirit I require so urgently. See to it through Countess Esterházy that the Ladies’ Aid Society sends as much as possible, especially bandages for the many, very many wounded, perhaps also some wine.”
⁵⁶

Franz Joseph’s reports of military details, as well as the names of the dead and wounded, covered many pages, none of which could comfort the
Empress: “The fighting was so bitter that whole piles of the dead lay about. The many officers who lost their lives will be hard to replace.”
⁵⁷

On June 18, the Emperor issued a directive to the army that caused an enormous sensation. In it, the Emperor “immediately” assumed “supreme command over my armies in the field against the enemy.” He wished “to continue, at the head of my brave troops, the struggle Austria is forced to wage for her honor and rights.”

The decision by the twenty-nine-year-old strategically inexperienced Emperor in this precarious situation aroused vehement criticism, which was to prove justified only too soon. For the next battle, that of Solferino, was the bloodiest, sustaining the greatest losses, of the whole unfortunate war. It sealed Austria’s final defeat. The horror of the battlefield of
Solferino
under the burning sun was beyond all imagining. (It was here that, shaken by the helplessness of the wounded, Henri Dunant decided to found what became the Red Cross.)

The Emperor’s insufficient strategic skills, combined with overly hasty decisions to retreat, were the elements most responsible for the defeat. The ugly phrase “lions led by asses” made the rounds and was applied most especially to the Emperor.
⁵⁸
Since the beginning of his reign, the interest Franz Joseph had shown in the army was unsurpassed. No other department had so much money spent on it (and debts run up for it), and now all ambition was ending in a huge humiliation and a bloodbath.

Count Alexander Mensdorff-Pouilly wrote to his cousin, Prince Ernst of Coburg, “May the
souls
of the many fallen, in the form of dream figures, disturb the nocturnal rest of those who, now comfortably ensconced behind their desks, plan political washouts.”
⁵⁹

The mood in Austria was so despairing that many people, aware of the poor political and military leadership and the unbearable burdens on the people, even wished for a defeat. Heinrich Laube, the director of the Burgtheater, who was born in northern Germany, recalled this time. “During all these wars—as well as later, in the year ’66—I saw with astonishment and shock that the mood of the populace had no great objection to our being beaten. Yes, if we were politically in order—they say out loud—it would be a pleasure to see our troops victorious. But as it is, as it is! The year ’48 was confiscated from us, and we gain concessions only when the government meets with difficulties caused by lost battles. I had only just become an Austrian, but this way of thinking was thoroughly repugnant to me.”
⁶⁰

Emperor Franz Joseph was made to feel the full brunt of the
consequences 
of the defeat. At no other time was the Emperor as unpopular with the people as during these months. The impoverished and angry populace blamed the terrible policies and poor strategy for tens of thousands of the dead, forced to give their lives for a province they considered foreign. Their rage went so far as to be expressed in public appeals for the Emperor’s abdication and for transfer of the government to his younger, more liberal brother, Max. A revolutionary mood thus obtained even in Vienna!

The strict censorship imposed on the Austrian newspapers kept them from giving free rein to their disapproval. The foreign papers dealt all the more critically with the young Emperor. Friedrich Engels, for example, endowed him with such expressions as “arrogant youngster” and “pitiful weakling”; he wrote that the courageous Austrian soldiers had “been beaten, not by the French, but by the overbearing imbecility of their own emperor.”
⁶¹

It was only too easy to ascribe the catastrophe in Lombardy to the military and aristocratic Kamarilla surrounding the inexperienced but
all-powerful
Emperor. A system that identified to such an extent with the military as that of Emperor Franz Joseph could not survive so massive a military catastrophe without some damage. Franz Joseph, disheartened, wrote to his wife, “I have grown wiser by many experiences and have come to know how it feels to be a beaten general. The serious consequences of our misfortune will set in eventually, but I trust in God and am not aware of any blame, nor any error in judgment.”
⁶²

Napoleon III, on the other hand, laid the principal blame for the defeat at Franz Joseph’s door and admitted to Prince Ernst that he “regarded” the French victory “as the purest fluke…. His army had been in the poorest condition, and his generals had shown no aptitude for leading a large army; the Austrians had fought much better than the French and … there could be no doubt that they would have won Solferino if the Emperor had allowed the reserves to move forward. The Emperor of Austria, he said, was a man of great standing, “
mais
malheureusement
il
lui
manque
l’énergie
de
la
volonté
[but unfortunately he lacked the will].”
⁶³

Even Duchess Ludovika criticized Franz Joseph’s eagerness to prove himself as a military commander, writing to Marie of Saxony, “I really had not expected such a defeat one after another … and that it was the emperor himself who was leading the forces, I think, makes the event even sadder; I could not even approve his leaving Vienna during such difficult times, and now his return will be most unpleasant.”
⁶⁴

Meanwhile, Sisi had organized a hospital for the wounded in
Laxenburg
. 
Franz Joseph: “Put the wounded wherever you want, in all the houses of Laxenburg. They will be very happy in your care. I cannot thank you enough.”
⁶⁵
After the bloody battles, 60,000 of the sick and wounded had to be seen to. All the hospitals in Austria were not enough by far.
⁶⁶
Convents, churches, and castles had to take in the patients. It took months before the fate of the wounded soldiers was decided; they either died or survived as cripples or in good health. A great deal of money had been spent on outfitting the army. No provisions had been made for medical treatment of the wounded, however.

The young Empress was suddenly confronted with these problems. She began to inform herself thoroughly by reading the newspapers, and she arrived at a firm stance that opposed the military and the aristocratic, purely absolutist regime of her husband. We do not know precisely what personal influences had a part in this change and whether the Bavarian relatives were responsible during their visits to Vienna. But that
increasingly
the young Empress took an unequivocal stand on the side of the people and the newspapers was as obvious as was the fact that these political questions also began to enter into the struggle between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. For though Elisabeth spared her husband direct
reproaches,
she ascribed all the evils to Archduchess Sophie’s reactionary influence—as did the Austrian bourgeois intellectuals.

The twenty-one-year-old Empress even attempted to give the Emperor some political advice (which echoed the “voice of the people”): Why not conclude a peace as soon as possible? Franz Joseph, however, had no intention of listening to his wife’s suggestions. He replied defensively, “Your political plan contains some very good ideas, but we must not give up hope that Prussia and Germany will yet come to our aid, and before that time, there can be no thought of negotiating with the enemy.”
⁶⁷

It is astonishing how uninformed the Emperor was about the political plans and principles underlying Prussian policies. Even at this late date, when the war had long since been lost, he could still harbor such illusions. The Emperor had no recourse but to trust in God, “Who will surely guide everything for the best. He tests us severely, and we are surely only at the beginning of worse afflictions, but we must bear them with resignation and always do our duty in everything.”
⁶⁸

Elisabeth’s political suggestions met with little success. Her inquiry whether Grünne (who was hated in the army) would be dismissed was also answered in the negative by the Emperor. “No thought has ever been given to making a change for Count Grünne, and I do not consider it at all. In
general, I beg you not to believe what the papers say, they write so many stupid and wrong things.”
⁶⁹
Instead, he urged his wife to eat more, to go horseback riding less, but most of all, to get more sleep. “I implore you, give up this life at once and sleep during the night, which nature intended for sleep and not for reading and writing. And do not ride so much and so vigorously.”
⁷⁰