B008AITH44 EBOK (26 page)

Archduchess Sophie’s diary gives indications that, after a year of military education, little Rudolf was high-strung and ill, and that the worst—his dying—was feared. But the Archduchess saw no connection with
Gondrecourt’s
methods, as Elisabeth did; like the Emperor, Sophie placed all the blame on Rudolf’s “delicate constitution.” The idea was that this constitution would be strengthened by further, always harsher toughening, ever more cruel drills.

The little Crown Prince was much too timid, much too afraid of his father to complain of the cruelties he experienced daily. Finally, one of Gondrecourt’s subordinates, Joseph Latour, began to take an interest in the unhappy child and went to the Empress with his reservations. He, too, did not dare to speak to the Emperor on the matter, for everyone knew that Gondrecourt was only carrying out the Emperor’s orders. At court, it was even said that Rudolf’s old “Aja,” Baroness von Welden, had gone on her knees to the Emperor and begged for more lenient treatment of the child. To no avail.

In this situation, when nothing less than her child’s life was at stake, Elisabeth took action. Later she related, “when I learned the reason for his illness, I had to find a remedy; gathered up all my courage when I saw that it was impossible to prevail against this protégé of my mother-in-law, and told everything to the Emperor, who could not decide to take a position against his mother’s will—I reached for the utmost and said that I could no longer stand by—something would have to happen! either Gondrecourt goes, or I go.”

This statement is confirmed by a highly significant document, which has been preserved and which casts a revealing light on the Emperor’s family life during this period. Elisabeth handed the Emperor the following
ultimatum
in writing.

We must see this document as in the nature of Elisabeth’s declaration of independence. It had taken eleven years for her to find the strength to stand her ground rather than, as before, taking flight into illness or trips abroad. Now she became vigorous—and prevailed.

Why at this particular time Elisabeth was in such a position of power may be clarified by a remark in Sophie’s diary. In a confidential
conversation,
Sophie reported, she told her “Franzi” that she wished him a second son; but by expressing this wish she also wanted to draw him out about how matters really stood in his married life. And the Emperor responded amiably. Sophie: “And one word … gave me, praised be God for it a thousand times, almost the assurance that finally Sisi had united herself with him anew.”
⁷⁹

Five years had passed since Sisi’s flight to Madeira, years filled with cares, illness, refusals, quarrels. Now at last, a move toward a proper relationship seemed at hand—and it was at this very time that Elisabeth threatened to go away if Rudolf’s military upbringing was continued.

The exceedingly sharp tone of her ultimatum reveals the new method the Empress used to deal with her husband. As recently as two years earlier, she had pined away, had sobbed and wept. Now she made demands—and he, who had earlier treated her like a child, now obeyed, at least in most instances. Archduchess Sophie also retreated more and more, since she could no longer be sure of her son, and she wept on the shoulders of relatives.

Now, when her beauty was at its height, Elisabeth had become the stronger one. She could put pressure on her husband—with refusal or with the threat of leaving Vienna again. She did not know the meaning of preserving the reputation of the dynasty or the state—which she
represented
as well. She saw her problems in purely personal terms, though at the same time she knew the extent to which Franz Joseph was aware of and fulfilled his obligations to the state and the dynasty. She knew very
well that he would have to give in to her demands when the reputation of the August House was at stake. It was the sheerest blackmail, and Franz Joseph capitulated, because he loved his ever more beautiful and more mature wife—in spite of everything.

The court officials, especially the ladies-in-waiting who had some
insight
into the couple’s domestic life, had much material for gossip. They bemoaned the Emperor’s weakness when confronted by his wife. However, Franz Joseph exhibited the same weakness in other instances. Countess Marie Festetics was “often astonished that the Emperor gave in to some urgent strong wish on the part of someone or other among his entourage, although the form in which the wish had been expressed seemed to him indecorous.” The Empress herself explained to the Countess the reason for this behavior. “The Emperor was well brought up and in his youth had a loving entourage. If someone submits a request in a respectful manner and he cannot grant it, he will know how to say no in his gracious way. But if someone approaches him roughly and demandingly, he is so
surprised
by this unusual manner that he lets himself be intimidated, as it were, and agrees.”
⁸⁰

Now Elisabeth exploited this weakness of the Emperor without scruple. To the extent that her demands related to Rudolf’s upbringing, they had a beneficial effect. To begin with, Elisabeth saw to it that the Crown Prince was given a thorough medical examination by the new imperial physician, Dr. Hermann Widerhofer. She next decided on the new tutor: Colonel Latour, who had been such an effective supplicant in the cause of little Rudolf and who had, as the future was to show, genuinely taken the boy to his heart. Under his new tutor, Rudolf flourished, regaining his health rapidly. Emotional disturbances, especially nocturnal anxiety attacks,
however,
stayed with him for years, indeed for the rest of his life.

Elisabeth had full confidence in Latour. She had known him for a long time; he had been among the courtiers on Madeira. Elisabeth knew that, compared to the rest of the court, he held extremely liberal views. For this reason, he was mistrusted, even hated, at court and was forced to guard against massive intrigues. He was not, after all, an aristocrat like
Gondrecourt,
and he was a newcomer to the military field as well. He was interested, not in drill, but in education, even for soldiers. Rudolf’s
military
drill was reduced to the most basic exercises and to riding and shooting. Intellectual training was given precedence over the physical—exactly the reverse of what the Emperor had ordered a year earlier.

Now the Empress was the only one who determined the guidelines of
the new education. It was to be “liberal,” as the new teachers were expressly told.

Elisabeth also left to Latour the choice of teachers. The only criteria for selection were the educational and scholarly qualifications of the applicants. Thus, Rudolf’s teachers did not have to be military men, members of the clergy, or aristocrats, as had been the custom in court educations. When it came to competence pure and simple (a revolutionary demand), the bourgeois teachers and scholars had an advantage.

This revolution actually did take place. Aside from the religion tutor, Rudolf’s teachers were all bourgeois intellectuals. Since, like the majority of this class, their politics were unequivocally in the liberal camp, they were also pronouncedly antiaristocratic and anticlerical.

These teachers formed a foreign body at the Viennese court and were disliked accordingly. Gondrecourt intrigued behind the scenes against his successor, for example with Adjutant General Crenneville. He accused Latour of being capable only of “nursemaiding” his pupil but not of educating him. Furthermore, in Gondrecourt’s opinion, Latour had “
neither
the desired sense of chivalry nor the uprightness and necessary
distinguished
deportment … to exert a beneficial influence on the mind and character of the Crown Prince in daily intercourse.”
⁸¹
He requested Crenneville to intervene with the Emperor.

Time and again, Gondrecourt stressed the (indisputable) fact that his educational methods had been nothing but an expression of the Emperor’s wishes. “I have the reassuring belief at all times of having done only what His Majesty ordered me to do and do not know how to reproach myself with anything in regard to my system with the Crown Prince.
Furthermore,
I was happy to see His Majesty approve my views on the education of the Crown Prince at any time.”
⁸²

But the years of intrigues against Latour were without success.
Elisabeth
was steadfast in her protection of the pronouncedly anticourt
upbringing
of her son. With these teachers, Rudolf—according to the Empress’s expressed will—became a first-rate and well-rounded, cultured young man, who not only understood, but also approved the democratic ideals of 1848. It was not long before he saw the “basis of the modern state,” not in the aristocracy, but in the middle class. Through his
bourgeois
teachers, whom he admired and loved, Rudolf became an ardent liberal—and only too soon found himself in a bitter conflict with the court system over which his father presided. All the Empress’s enemies, however (and by now she had a considerable number), unable to prevail
against Elisabeth, now agitated against Rudolf, her son who was so like her but much weaker.

*

The power struggle over the Crown Prince’s education did not run its course without serious discord. Once again the Empress left the Hofburg in Vienna, this time a scant two weeks before Christmas. Once again an illness was used as a pretext for the public: She was suffering from swollen glands; she was cutting a wisdom tooth. Sisi’s precipitate departure to Munich (officially, to be treated by Dr. Fischer) did not make a good impression in Vienna.

Archduchess Sophie learned of her daughter-in-law’s departure only through a note that arrived when Elisabeth was already on the train. The hotel reservation in Munich was also not placed until after the trip had been begun. Clearly, Sisi did not trust herself simply to stay at her father’s Munich palace—mindful of the disagreements during her last visit in Bavaria.

Once again husband and children were forced to spend Christmas
without
the Empress; she did not return to Vienna until December 30. The Prussian envoy reported somewhat maliciously to Berlin, “In these sudden travel plans during the current time of year, we might search for some caprice in the exalted beautiful lady, which is nothing unusual in the princesses from the ducal Bavarian line (Queen of Naples, Countess Trani).”
⁸³

With all the understanding for the difficult situation at court, many nevertheless now doubted Elisabeth’s good will. Even Sisi’s favorite daughter, Marie Valerie, would later reproach her mother cautiously but firmly on this score. “How often I ask myself whether the relationship between my parents might not, after all, have turned out differently if in her youth Mama had had a serious, courageous will for it.—I mean, a woman can accomplish anything.—And yet she may be right that, given the circumstances, it was impossible to become more intimately one.”
⁸⁴

Crown Prince Rudolf, however, was grateful to his mother all his life for the fact that, in this situation, so crucial to his life, she had so rigorously and successfully taken his part.