B008AITH44 EBOK (36 page)

On February 17, 1867, Gyula Andrássy was named the first
constitutional
prime minister of Hungary. On that day, Ferencz Deák enunciated his memorable expression of thanks to “my friend Andrássy, the man of providence truly bestowed upon us by God’s grace.” In this context, it is important to remember that at this time the Empress was frequently apostrophized as “the Beautiful Providence granted to the Hungarian fatherland.” In Hungary, this and other analogies underlined the belief that two people above all others were responsible for the reorganization of the monarchy: Andrássy and Elisabeth. Conciliation was their joint achievement.

The Bohemia and Moravian diets, on the other hand, had to be shut down in March “because of the advancing concessions to Hungary!!” as Sophie angrily noted.
⁷¹
The marshal of Bohemia, Count Hugo Salm, and Prince Edmund Schwarzenberg came to dinner with Archduchess Sophie and gave vent to their powerless resentments. Equally powerless in the face of the decision taken by the Emperor and his prime minister, Beust, were the political figures in Vienna.

Elisabeth’s Hungarian friends in Vienna, especially Ida Ferenczy and Max Falk, complained of the court’s spiteful acts, expressed primarily in pettinesses. For example, the court carriage, which came every day during the spring to take Max Falk from the offices of the First Austrian Savings
Bank to Schönbrunn, began to arrive late on most days. During spells of warm weather, a closed carriage, upholstered in velvet, was sent; and when the spring rains poured down, an open carriage stood waiting outside the bank. Falk observed court protocol by wearing top hat and tails, with a starched shirt, whenever he called on the Empress; now he was forced to give his lessons sopping wet one day, bathed in perspiration on another. The Empress repaid him with cordiality and friendship, and with her allegiance to the Hungarian cause.
⁷²

Elisabeth’s first visit to Hungary after conciliation was truly a triumphal procession. Josef Eötvös, now minister of culture in Andrássy’s
government,
wrote Max Falk from Budapest, “Your high-born pupil was
received
among us with flowers. Day by day the enthusiasm grows. Firmly as I believe that never before has a country had a queen more deserving of it, I also know that there has never before been one so beloved. … I was always convinced that when a crown breaks, as the Hungarian crown broke in 1848, it can only be welded together again by the flames of feeling aroused in the hearts of the people.” For centuries, he went on, Hungarians had hoped “that the nation would love a member of the dynasty truly, with all its heart; and now that we have achieved as much, I have no further misgivings about the future.”
⁷³

Elisabeth paid homage to the compromise by displaying marital
affection.
Her letters to Franz Joseph from this period are full of tenderness; one from Budapest, for example, reads, “My beloved Emperor! Today I am also very sad, without you it is infinitely empty here. Every minute I think you will walk through the door or I will hurry to you. But I firmly hope that you will return soon, if only the coronation would take place on the 5th.”
⁷⁴
At this time, Sisi was composing all her letters to her husband and her children in Hungarian.

In May 1867, the Emperor, in a throne address, retroactively requested the Imperial Council to grant approval of the conciliation with Hungary, at the same time promising the western half of the empire—the kingdoms and provinces represented in the Imperial Council, as it was to be
awkwardly
phrased from then on—a further development of the constitution beyond the provisions of the October Diploma of 1860 and the February Patent of 1861, for the new order must, “as its essential consequence, provide the same security for the remaining kingdoms and provinces.” He promised the non-Hungarian provinces “every extension of autonomy that corresponds to their wishes and without endangering the total monarchy that can be granted.” Franz Joseph characterized the reorganization as “a
work of peace and harmony” and begged that “a veil of forgetfulness” be spread “over the recent past, which left deep wounds in the empire.”
⁷⁵

*

Weeks before the coronation, the preparations began. Day after day, the Viennese could watch as great quantities of boxes and chests, rugs, even carefully wrapped state coaches, were loaded onto Danube steamers and sent from Vienna to Budapest. From china through flatware to table linens and furniture, everything necessary to housekeeping at the imperial court had to be sent to the castle in Budapest. At the very least, during the celebrations, more than a thousand people had to be provided with meals. The carriage and horses for the equipages were shipped by the same route.

In Budapest, there were different problems. In no time at all (and at horrendous prices, as the diplomats groaned), lodgings had to be found and made ready for the many visitors. The police were kept fully
occupied
with clearing Budapest of suspicious characters and followers of
Kossuth
during the festivities. (From his exile, Kossuth had let it be known in no uncertain terms that he would continue to advocate Hungarian independence and that he rejected both the compromise and Franz Joseph’s coronation.)

The coronation (June 8, 1867) began at four o’clock in the morning with a twenty-one-gun salute from the Citadel of St. Gerhardsberg (Saint Gerhard’s Mountain). At that early hour, people were already streaming from the countryside to the city, to line the streets. The ladies of the magnates kept their dressmakers and hairdressers working through the night to make certain to be ready promptly at six o’clock, when they began to wait in long lines of carriages to drive to the Church of St. Matthew in Budapest.

At seven o’clock, the coronation procession set out from the castle. Eleven standard-bearers, chosen from among the high nobility, preceded Gyula Andrássy, wearing on his chest the large cross of the Order of St. Stephen and carrying the holy crown of Hungary. He was followed by gonfaloniers bearing the state insignia resting on red velvet pillows. Then came Franz Joseph.

The undisputed highlight of the procession was the Queen. All the Hungarian newspapers described her appearance in detail;
Pester
Lloyd
, for example, reported, “On her head the diamond crown, the glittering symbol of sovereignty, but the expression of humility in her bowed bearing and traces of the deepest emotion on her noble features—thus she walked—or rather floated—along, as if one of the paintings that adorn the sacred chambers had stepped out of its frame and come to life. The appearance
of the Queen here at the holy site produced a deep and lasting impression.”
⁷⁶

At the solemn cathedral services, Franz Joseph was anointed King by the Primate of Hungary, but it was Andrássy—representing the palatine—who placed the crown on Franz Joseph’s head. Elisabeth, too, was anointed, but the crown, following an old custom, was held over her right shoulder—by Andrássy.

The ceremonies were accompanied by the singing of traditional psalms and one modern composition; years earlier, in anticipation of a royal coronation and at the request of the Prince Primate of Hungary, Franz Liszt had composed a coronation mass bursting with nationalist fire. Liszt
traveled
from Rome to Budapest specifically for the performance, but, as
Pester
Lloyd
objected, he was not allowed to conduct his own work because of the “strict ceremonial.” The fact that a non-Hungarian conductor and the Imperial Court Choir from Vienna performed this nationalist Hungarian work aroused considerable anger.
⁷⁷

A further highlight of the endless festivities was the ceremonial
procession
at the conclusion of the coronation across the suspension bridge from Buda to Pest. (At the time, the two cities were still separate; they were not combined into Budapest until 1873—five years later.) On this occasion, the ladies were spectators. All the participants in the procession were on horseback. The King rode his coronation white steed. Ludwig von
Przibram,
an eyewitness, reported:

The luxuriousness formed a harsh contrast to the extremely bad times. Thus, one Hungarian banker, for example, bought a set of antique buttons to go with a splendid Attila for his son, who was riding in the procession; the buttons alone cost 40,000 guldens. Count Edmund Batthyány had Karl Telepy, a painter, reconstruct his costume from medieval drawings. Under it, he wore a silver coat of mail made up of 18,000 links assembled painstakingly by hand. Count Edmund Zichy wore his famous emerald jewelry, valued far above 100,000 guldens, with some stones the size of hen’s eggs. Count Lajos Batthyány had a massive silver harness made; the horse blanket alone weighed twenty-four pounds.
⁷⁹
All this at a time when the Hungarian peasants lived in the most dire poverty.

Foreign observers found many an occasion for criticism behind all the pageantry; thus the Swiss envoy wrote, “The entire procession, in spite of its splendor and genuine grandeur, nevertheless affected the detached
observer
somewhat like a carnival prank, to which impression the archbishops on horseback contributed most especially. This piece of the Middle Ages simply does not suit our times, neither our level of evolution nor current political events.”
⁸⁰

What was peculiar about the mounted bishops was described by
Przibram:
Some of them had been strapped to their horses so that they would not fall off. “Now, if, to top it all off, a horse became excited by the noise and the shots, or if a loose girth slipped, more than one of these riders anxiously threw his arms around his mount’s neck, causing the towering headdress that was preventively tied under his chin to dangle from his nape, which contributed not a little to the amusement of the public lining the route.”
⁸¹

Countess de Jonghe, the wife of the Belgian envoy, also described the splendor of the festivities. “The Hungarian costumes transform Vulcan into Adonis”; but she also saw the reverse side: “When I saw the
handsome
gentlemen in their everyday dress: boots, a sort of buttoned-up frock coat, an ugly little neckerchief, rarely a shirt, they seemed to me to present quite a soiled appearance…. In all that, there remained a remnant of barbarism.”
⁸²

The solemn procession finally halted before the platform for taking the oath. Here Franz Joseph, garbed in the nearly thousand-year-old cloak and wearing the crown, spoke the formal words: “We shall uphold intact the rights, the constitution, the lawful independence and territorial integrity of Hungary and her attendant lands.”

The King’s traditional horseback ride to Coronation Hill was followed
by a lavish banquet, at which the guests helped themselves generously but Their Majesties took nothing but a little wine. As with all the ceremonies of that day, here, too, Andrássy remained close by the King and Queen. At this banquet, for example, it was his assigned function before and after the meal to pour water into a bowl held by pages, while the Prince Primate handed Their Majesties a towel to dry their hands.

The part played by the people in the ceremonies was mainly that of spectators. Only one event, the Night Festival, held on the common meadow, was open to everyone. Ludwig von Przibram: “Oxen and
muttons
were roasted on the spit or on veritable funeral pyres; the wine flowed from butts, goulash simmered in giant vats; a mixture of fish, bacon, and paprika was ladled from pots the size of wagon wheels; and all these pleasures were offered free.” At the center of all the hubbub, “the figure of the monarch, surrounded by a crowd of men and women, most of them in peasant dress, some of them on their knees, others with their arms raised high, shouting ‘
Elje!
’ and throughout, the twittering fiddles of a gypsy band playing wildly, the whole thing illuminated by the firelight of one of the open pyres—truly a romantic sight.”
⁸³

Two acts of mercy issued after the coronation transported “all Hungary into an almost frenetic enthusiasm,” as the Swiss envoy wrote. The first was a general amnesty for all political crimes since 1848 as well as reversion of all confiscated estates. “The amnesty is one of the most unconditional ever issued in the empire, for not a single convict or conspirator was excluded. Even Kossuth and Klapka, if only they swear loyalty to the crowned king and obedience to the laws of the land, can return quite freely to their fatherland.”
⁸⁴
(A short time later, the Emperor issued a
corresponding
amnesty for the western half of the empire.)