B008AITH44 EBOK (37 page)

The second great act of mercy was a provocation to all non-Hungarians and to those who had been loyal partisans of the imperial cause in 1848– 1849. The traditional coronation gift—a sum of 100,000 guldens—was, at Andrássy’s request, passed on to the widows, orphans, and disabled veterans of the Honved—the same nationalist Hungarian army that had fought the imperial forces in 1848–1849. This gift was to be a sign of the Emperor’s reconciliation with the nationalist ideas of 1848. The bitter commentary of Crenneville (and many other Austrians): “It is a base act. I would rather be dead than live to see such dishonor! Where is this leading us? To follow the suggestions of such a scoundrel is not governing. Andrássy deserves the gallows even more than he did in 1849.”
⁸⁵
At Andrássy’s instigation (he himself had been a Honved officer), the Honved was revived as the Royal
Hungarian Militia, though with the provision that in case of war, it would be subordinate to the common imperial and royal forces. It was never suggested that a similar concession be made to any other nationalist group.

A major part in these imperial mercies was ascribed, surely not
incorrectly,
to Elisabeth’s efforts. The Swiss envoy noted that Elisabeth was “currently the most popular figure in all of Hungary.”
⁸⁶

As a coronation gift, the Hungarian nation presented the Emperor and Empress with Gödöllö Castle to use as their private residence. About an hour’s drive from Budapest, the eighteenth-century structure held about a hundred rooms. It was surrounded by a forest of roughly 10,000 hectares, eminently suitable for hunting.

The gift represented a triumph for Elisabeth. After all, Emperor Franz Joseph had turned down her fervent request for this very same castle because he was short of funds. Now Andrássy of all people—in the name of the Hungarian nation—was fulfilling her dream. She showed her
gratitude
by spending many, many months of each year not in Vienna, but in Gödöllö or Budapest.

Elisabeth’s greatest gift to Hungary and to her husband, now the crowned King of Hungary and constitutional monarch, was her readiness to abandon her stubborn refusal to have another child. All the same, the fact that she offered this great sacrifice exclusively for the Hungarian nation was left in no doubt, to understandable anger in Cisleithania. Nor did she conceal the fact that she was determined to see this child treated differently from her older children, who were raised by Archduchess Sophie.

About three months before the expected birth, Elisabeth left Vienna and settled in Budapest, where everything had been made ready for the
confinement.
The two older children—Gisela and Rudolf—remained in Vienna. Emperor Franz Joseph shuttled back and forth between Vienna and
Budapest,
to spend time alternately with his children and his wife.

This most private decision to have another child grew out of the most political of motives, and it had political consequences, since it increased the contrast between Transleithania and Cisleithania. The Swiss envoy
reported
to Bern, “The more, however, the Empress tried to win the
Hungarians’
sympathies, the more she lost those of the population of the Austrian lands, and the wish was universally voiced that the child she was expecting might be a girl, for there was no denying that, in spite of the Pragmatic Sanction and all the subsequently concluded pacts, a boy born to the Queen of Hungary in the castle in Budapest would become the future King of Hungary, and thus, in time, a separation of the Hungarian crown lands from Austria would be effected.”
⁸⁷

Ten months after the coronation, in April 1868, Sisi’s last child, Marie Valerie, was born in Budapest. In Vienna, there was great relief.

Viennese gossip dealt at great length with this “only” child, determined to recognize none other than Gyula Andrássy as the father. When these tales reached the Empress’s ears, they only increased her hatred of the Viennese court.
⁸⁸
Franz Joseph’s paternity cannot be in doubt; it is proven by several intimate letters from the Empress to her husband; and then there is the indisputable fact that Marie Valerie, even more than the other children, resembled the Emperor. In spite of the immense curiosity and almost criminal inquisitiveness of a great many court appointees in an effort to establish an “indiscretion” on the part of the Empress with Andrássy, such attempts have never succeeded. Both the Empress and Andrássy were under constant sharp surveillance by innumerable court members. There can be no doubt that the two loved each other; but that their feelings led even once to a definite “lapse” is, according to the sources, quite
unthinkable
—quite aside from the fact that Elisabeth was not a woman who found anything in physical love that seemed worth the effort, and that in any and every situation, Andrássy never stopped being the carefully calculating politician.

The christening in the Budapest castle was a large Hungarian
celebration,
beginning with the arrival of the state coaches of the aristocracy, everything in full ceremonial ritual. Andrássy, as Hungarian prime
minister,
accompanied by Chancellor Beust, was the only one who drove his carriage directly into the courtyard; during the drive, he was hailed
enthusiastically,
as always happened wherever he went in Hungary.

The godparents were two of Elisabeth’s sisters, ex-Queen Marie of Naples (who proudly wore the Gaeta Medal and who, to everyone’s surprise, answered the Prince Primate in Hungarian—using phrases
Elisabeth
had earlier laboriously taught her to memorize) and Countess
Mathilde
Trani.

To conclude the festivities, there was a target shoot by the Budapest marksmen, in which the King and Andrássy also participated. Franz
Joseph’s
best shot was a modest “two,” and here, too, he was outdone by Andrássy, who, with a “four,” brought off the best score of the afternoon.
⁸⁹

Not surprisingly, in Vienna, these new Hungarian celebrations aroused unfavorable comments. Archduchess Therese, for example, wrote her
father,
Archduke Albrecht, “This Hungarian christening truly outrages me, but most of all because the Emperor was so coolly received at the theater. That act shows what an ungrateful nation this is!”
⁹⁰

Little Valerie—who was soon known in Vienna only as “the only child”
—was not very warmly welcomed in Cisleithania. Crenneville maliciously wrote about “the Hungarian child. She looks like any other baby, she did not cry, which does not prove Hungarian nationality.”
⁹¹

Elisabeth devoted herself to her youngest child with an excessive,
exclusive
love. A few years later, she told her lady-in-waiting, Countess
Festetics,
“Now I know what happiness a child brings—now that I have finally had the courage to love her and keep her with me.”
⁹²

Sisi’s love of her youngest child seemed so out of all proportion even to Countess Festetics (who was exceedingly well disposed toward the Empress) that she worried: “There is no moderation in her, and she suffers from this ecstasy rather than gaining happiness from it—a trembling fear for her [Valerie’s] health, then again the feeling that attempts were being made to turn the little girl against her.”
⁹³
Little Valerie’s precarious health during the next few years kept everyone around Elisabeth breathless, for the mother reacted with unbounded anxiety to every toothache, every slight cough.

The Empress also demonstrated her preference for Hungary in the next few years to such an extent that it was close to a provocation. Thus, she ordered that a mass be said on the name day of St. Stephen, the patron saint of the Magyars, in, of all places, the parish church of Bad Ischl.
Landgravine
Fürstenberg: “this little demonstration was attended by
no
one
else in the family,
elle
seule
et
ses
fidèles
”
[only she and her trusty cohorts]. According to the Landgravine, the occasion provided the people of Bad Ischl “with the greatest amusement, especially because there is no Sunday or holiday that she attends the parish church.”
⁹⁴

For the rest of her life, the Empress kept up her relations with the great men of Hungary—Deák, Andrássy, Falk, Eötvös. Nor did she leave any doubt that she recognized their greatness: “Today Deák comes to dinner, a great honor for me,” she wrote the Emperor in 1869.
⁹⁵
Needless to say, none of the great men of Austria—in politics, the arts, or the sciences—was ever invited to dinner by the Empress, much less having her consider such a visit an honor. The scene of the Queen weeping at the bier of the dead Deák in 1876 became one of Hungary’s patriotic icons.

The correspondence between Elisabeth and Andrássy (now as before by way of Ida Ferenczy) was kept up until Andrássy’s death in 1890. Andrássy’s adoration of the Empress was never in question and can be read in every line of his letters. “You know,” he once wrote to Ida, “that I have very many masters—the King, the Lower House, the Upper House, etc.—but only one mistress, and precisely because I know only one woman who can command me, I obey with great pleasure.”
⁹⁶

Elisabeth’s frequent and lengthy stays in Hungary led to constant
jealousies
in Austria. Another bitter complaint was addressed to the Emperor’s loss of authority. The same circles that at one time not only accepted but also approved Archduchess Sophie’s influence now criticized Franz Joseph’s obvious weakness in the face of his equally energetic wife. Elisabeth had gone too far; she had too clearly demonstrated her power over her imperial spouse.

For her part, the Empress, vulnerable to all criticism, made the
disgruntlement
of the Viennese court her excuse for withdrawing even more and working herself up into hatred of Vienna. Her private letters are full of derogatory remarks about Vienna and Austria. In 1869, for example, she wrote to Ida Ferenczy that her sister Mathilde was just as unable “to stand whatever is Austrian as can another”—by which she meant herself.
⁹⁷

Her Hungarian followers, such as Countess Festetics, for their part now accused the court of having “driven” the Empress “into solitude”: “And all because of the unfortunate Compromise with Hungary? It has happened—yes! it was her work—but is it such a great crime to give back to the Emperor a country, one half the monarchy? Is it so delightful to govern with powder and gunshot and with the gallows? Can it be worthy of a noble man to forbid speech to a land that has been promised a
constitution?”
⁹⁸
Here Marie Festetics expressed what could be heard from most Hungarians in endlessly new formulations. No matter how much the Viennese might object, the Hungarians, from the lowliest to the magnates, would not hear a word against their Queen.

Independent of all nationalist jealousies and independent of the person of the Empress, the establishment of the new Dual Monarchy of
Austria-Hungary
in the Compromise of 1867 met with objections from many “Old Austrians.” In 1876, for example, Baron Prokesch-Osten, an Orientalist, wrote to Alexander von Warsberg, a respected writer; the head of the Imperial Cabinet Chancellery, Baron von Braun, considered this letter of such importance that he copied it in his own hand. “For individuals as for nations and states, there is a calamity they bring on themselves. Partition has dealt Austria the death blow. Everything that happens now is its inevitable consequence, and it is immaterial whether she hurries to her future with clear-sighted or blinded eyes—it can only be one and the same.”
⁹⁹

Opinions of whether the Compromise with Hungary was to be seen as a positive or negative event from the Austrian point of view are divided to this day, more than a hundred years later. True, the alternative in all probability would have been the secession of Hungary from Austria, with
events paralleling those in Italy. Discussions of the Compromise therefore inevitably focus on whether Hungary’s remaining with Austria was
positive
or negative. By now, the arguments pro and con have assumed sizable proportions.
¹⁰⁰
From the Bohemian view (as well as the south Slavonic, Polish, Slovakian, and so on), however, the Compromise with Hungary could be regarded only as an unfavorable development.

On the other hand, the catastrophe of Königgrätz and the Compromise with liberally governed Hungary resulted in a weakening of imperial power. Emperor Franz Joseph was demoted to the rank of a constitutional monarch. The new constitution and the liberties he granted in 1867 both in Austria and in Hungary were the precondition for the flowering
experienced
in the economy and the sciences during the subsequent liberal era. The Austrian Empire, governed according to the strict principles of divine right, was transformed into the modern Dual Monarchy of
Austria-Hungary,
provided with generous liberal laws, headed by Emperor Franz Joseph as a faithful constitutional ruler.