B008AITH44 EBOK (18 page)

Public pressure on the Emperor increased to create a modern state, and especially to grant a constitution.

The birth was a difficult one. Elisabeth recovered slowly, especially as she was not allowed to nurse the baby and therefore suffered from milk congestion and fevers. In this instance, too, no exception was made, in spite of Sisi’s pleas. As previously arranged, the child was fed exclusively by the wet nurse, Marianka, an “exceedingly beautiful” (according to Sophie) peasant woman from Moravia. Sisi’s convalescence took longer than
normal.
The fever recurred for weeks after the birth, weakening her
immensely.
Under these circumstances, there could be no question of the child’s being in his mother’s care. As she had done earlier, Grandmother Sophie once again assumed full responsibility for the nursery.

Since Sisi’s health did not improve by fall and winter, Duchess Ludovika was summoned to Austria once more. She arrived with several of the Empress’s younger sisters, and she also brought along the old family physician, Dr. Fischer, in whom the young Empress had more confidence than she did in Dr. Seeburger. Dr. Fischer’s diagnosis is not known. Sophie’s diary, too, is filled with remarks concerning Sisi’s illness, but no clear-cut symptoms (except for frequent fevers, general weakness, and lack of appetite) are recorded.

The old enmity between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law was not diminished by the birth of the Crown Prince. Matters grew so grave that Sophie complained to Ludovika, who for her part lamented, “Your letter made me feel very bad in one respect, I thought it was going much better and such things as you wrote me were no longer happening. It is a real sorrow to me that it always remains the same, and the years bring no change. It is an incomprehensible way to behave, an injustice that bothers me and makes me afraid, my only grief whenever I think joyfully of this happy situation, where everything is so arranged for happiness and the grateful enjoyment of such unusual happiness.”
³²

The only times Sisi’s illness disappeared were when someone from the Bavarian family was with her. In January 1859, her younger sister Marie—now married by proxy to the Crown Prince of Naples—stopped off in Vienna on her way to her new home. The beauty of the seventeen-year-old bride was admired even by Archduchess Sophie. “Her beautiful eyes hold
an expression of sweet melancholy which, if that is possible, makes her more beautiful still.”
³³

Marie spent two weeks in Vienna, lavishly spoiled by the Empress. “Sisi writes such happy letters … and Marie as well, it really must be a joy to see them together,” Ludovika wrote to Sophie.
³⁴
Sisi took her younger sister to the Burgtheater, to the Prater, to the Circus Renz. The two spent many hours alone chatting. “It was almost as if fate, well aware what was in store for our poor Maria in future, wished to grant her a few day’s delay,” Sisi was to say later.
³⁵

Ludovika, to be sure, worried that this strange solitary wedding trip would delude her daughter too much about the earnestness of life. “I am only afraid that Marie is having too good a time in Vienna, and I hope she will not compare her future position with Sisi’s, especially her
relationship
with her dear Emperor; God grant that she, too, will find marital happiness, but anyway it is not easy to withstand comparison with the Emperor. My hope lies in Marie’s gentle, submissive, more kindly nature.”
³⁶

Ludovika was still completely caught up in the old court ways of thinking. An alliance with the Neapolitan royal house meant a brilliant match for a duchess from Bavaria. Ludovika could not help knowing that the throne, supported by a harsh, even cruel, absolutist regime was
threatened
by revolts of every sort, though she may have been ignorant of the full extent. King Ferdinand II (“King Bomba”) was adamantly set against even the slightest liberalization and insisted on the divine right of his royal position. His reasons for marrying his son to young Marie were entirely political: The marriage turned the future King of the Two Sicilies into the brother-in-law of the Emperor of Austria. Given the threats from
Garibaldi’s
partisans to the south and the Sardinian troops to the north, support from the leading absolutist power on the Continent was politically
advantageous.
In these revolutionary times, the princes clustered as close together as possible.

In spite of her poor health, Elisabeth accompanied her younger sister as far as Trieste. Their older brother Duke Ludwig (“Louis”) also traveled with them. With great astonishment, the three witnessed the medieval ceremonies with which the Neapolitans received their future Queen. A silk ribbon had been stretched across the center of the large hall of the
Governor’s
Palace in Trieste to symbolize the border between Bavaria and Naples. A large table under the ribbon had two of its legs in “Bavaria” and two in “Naples.” Marie was led to an armchair at the Bavarian end
of the table. The two doors, decorated with coats of arms and flags, now opened to admit the two delegations with an honor guard of Neapolitan and Bavarian soldiers respectively. Across the silk ribbon the authorized representatives exchanged the documents, bowed solemnly to each other, and passed the documents on to the attendants. The Bavarian representative now spoke the parting words to Marie. All Bavarians were allowed to kiss Marie’s hand once more. Then the silk ribbon was lowered, and Marie had to move to the “Neapolitan” armchair. The Neapolitan delegation was presented to her, then Marie was taken to the royal yacht,
Fulminante.
³⁷

A tearful parting of the sisters followed in the ship’s cabin. Now Maria Sophia, the seventeen-year-old Princess of Calabria, Crown Princess of the Two Sicilies, set sail for Bari with total strangers, people whose language she barely understood. The only living creature from her home that was by her side was her canary. What was waiting for her was an unhappy marriage, revolution, and expulsion from her kingdom.

Sisi’s brother Ludwig responded to the unhappiness of his two (imperial and royal) sisters in his own way. A few months after the spectacle in Trieste, he broke out of the rigid mold of court life. Against the wishes of the King of Bavaria and the ducal family, he married his love of many years, the bourgeois actress Henriette Mendel, with whom he already had a daughter. For her sake, he even renounced his birthright of primogeniture and considerable sources of income.

By now, Sisi was rejecting the court mentality so sharply that she made a point of welcoming her brother’s marriage, and she established a
pointedly
intimate relationship with the sister-in-law who was scorned in
aristocratic
circles. She maintained these loving ties to the end of her life.

Matters went far worse for her little sister Marie than Elisabeth had feared. The bridegroom was mentally and physically enfeebled, was a religious fanatic, and was impotent. Since King Ferdinand II died only a few months after Marie’s arrival, the seventeen-year-old became Queen—at the side of a sickly, anxiety-ridden King, in a kingdom threatened by revolution and external enemies. Ludovika soon sent photographs “of Marie and her king. He must be horrible; … Marie looks so pale and haggard.”
³⁸

All Italy was in revolt, the unification movement was unstoppable. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was not the only area threatened; the
Habsburg
principalities in Tuscany and Modena and the Austrian provinces in Northern Italy—Lombardy and Venetia—were also at risk. Backed by a secret pact with France, Piedmont fanned the political unrest with every means, to provoke Austria into military intervention.

Austrian politics fell helplessly into the trap of this maneuver. On April 23, 1859, Emperor Franz Joseph sent an ultimatum to Turin, demanding that the Sardinian “army be put on peacetime status and the partisans be dismissed.” The ultimatum was rejected by Cavour and seized on as the welcome occasion for warfare with Austria. This was the first time
Emperor
Franz Joseph issued an ultimatum that resulted in bloody war for which the country was militarily and politically ill prepared. This demand was not unlike the later ultimatum to Serbia issued in the summer of 1914.

Austrian troops marched into Piedmont—and were seen as the
aggressors
by all the world. France came to the aid of the little country. Franz Joseph expressed his outrage at Napoleon III. “Once again we stand on the threshold of a time when total destruction of the existing order is hurled into the world, no longer only by sectarian groups, but now also by thrones.”

Now, when war had already broken out, he tried to gain help from the German Confederation, and most especially from Prussia—“I speak as a prince in the German Confederation when I point out to you our common danger.”
³⁹

But there could be no thought of Greater German solidarity. Prussian policies had quite other aims. A weakening of the Austrian rivals suited Berlin only too well. Austria was left without help. The situation was hopeless.

New taxes were levied to finance this war. The Swiss envoy reported to Bern, “This is a harsh blow to the populace of Vienna and the monarchy, and the rise in food costs, as well as increases in ground rents and house rents—which had already spiraled to an unprecedented height, soon
exceeding
conditions in Paris—are now being increased again by a
considerable
amount. There is no end in sight, and this will not improve the mood.”
⁴⁰

“For lack of participation,” for example, the Kunstverein (Art Society) had to close its exhibitions. “Like trade and business, art, too, is on the brink of ruin,” one Viennese correspondent noted.
⁴¹
Further examples could be cited endlessly.

The fact that at this very time the Emperor and Empress, surrounded by all the archdukes and archduchesses, went to the horse races in the Prater and graciously allowed themselves to be cheered was not likely to improve morale. Untouched by the war in Italy, by the misery of the people, a wondrously beautiful young Empress appeared and solemnly handed out the state prizes.

The Habsburg relatives, rulers in Tuscany and Modena, and their
families
were forced to flee. They sought refuge in Vienna. These numerous Italian Habsburgs were now permanent guests at the family dinner table in the Hofburg. They described their experiences at great length and fanned the anger at the revolution.

The imperial family clung to its illusions for a long time and formed erroneous opinions on what was happening. As late as May, Franz Joseph prettified the situation, telling Sophie that the French had lost a thousand men to the cold and lack of food. Sophie: “poor people, and in such an unjust cause. In Germany the armies are being rallied.”
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During these days, Archduchess Sophie sent 85,000 cigars, at a cost of 500 guldens, to the troops in Northern Italy.
⁴³
Whether they ever reached their destination is uncertain. Supplies were so poorly controlled that the Austrian soldiers often had to go into battle on an empty stomach, while behind the scenes, profiteers helped themselves to purloined goods. In spite of great bravery among the troops ravaged by hunger and a lack of organization, the generals’ incompetence lost the Battle of Magenta.

In the elegant Viennese salons, the ladies rolled bandages. Among them were the young Empress, Archduchess Sophie, and all the ladies of the court. Every day long trains brought countless numbers of the wounded and the sick from the theater of war. “They cursed and damned the generals who commanded them in Italy, and Gyulai in particular was the object of satirical poems and defilement,” Prince Khevenhüller recorded in his diary.
⁴⁴

After the embarrassing and bloody defeat at Magenta, Count Franz Gyulai, the commanding general and a close friend of Grünne’s, was removed from the supreme command. When the Emperor recognized Austria’s hopeless situation, he traveled to Northern Italy to cheer the soldiers by his presence. He still insisted that Austria was fighting for a “just cause against infamy and treason,” but increasingly he admitted to himself the seriousness of the situation. “We are faced with an enemy who is superior to us in numbers and very brave, who will employ any means, even the most evil, who is allied to the revolution and thus gains
reinforcements,
we are betrayed on all sides in our own country.”
⁴⁵

Franz Joseph dealt with this situation entirely as a soldier whose duty it is to go to war. Nevertheless, this decision, born of military romanticism, showed that he “was wanting a deeper insight into the nature of his actual position as a ruler,” his biographer Joseph Redlich noted.
⁴⁶
For the departure of the absolute ruler from Vienna also meant that diplomatic negotiations, especially those with the German princes, were interrupted, thwarting any opportunity for a nonmilitary accord. Just before his
departure, 
Franz Joseph asked the aged Prince Metternich how he was to word his will and what regency was to be provided for in case of his death.

The Emperor’s parting was heartrending. The children were driven to the railroad station in a six-horse carriage to wave at their father one last time. In her diary, Leopoldine Nischer, the baby nurse, described the dense crowd gathered around the carriage. “Also a number of weeping women thronged to the window, calling, ‘the poor children‚’ so that the little ones began to feel quite frightened.”
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