The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross & Crescent (8 page)

Hocher, the son of a professor of law at Freiburg University, had been the most powerful politician in Vienna for a number of years. Originally a jurist and administrator, he joined with Schwarzenberg, Sinelli and Lamberg in bringing Leopold into the coalition against France in 1673. The stage was set for a period of unyielding opposition to Louis XIV, and Hocher was perfectly attuned to the arguments for continuing it after the Austrian setback at Nymegen. At the same time he championed the authoritarian experiment in Hungary. It followed that he was not the man to recognise very quickly the need to revise or reverse this double programme of militancy in the west, and autocracy in the east. In 1682 his health deteriorated, and his failing powers were a grave misfortune for the government of which he remained so important a prop. Königsegg, whose family came from Swabia, was a younger man. He had many departmental differences with Hocher, but he tended to agree with his rival on diplomatic questions and his advice to Leopold ran along similar lines. Schwarzenberg, whose family ranked infinitely higher than Hocher’s, and somewhat higher than Königsegg’s, cannot be fitted so easily into this group. He joined the party of Hocher and Sinelli in 1673, but ten years later the French ambassador at the Hofburg believed that Schwarzenberg was the one politician in Vienna friendly to France, and who therefore spoke good sense: that is, he recommended Leopold to accept Louis XIV’s terms for a settlement in Germany on account of the Ottoman danger.
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He died on 26 May 1683, eight weeks after Nostitz-Reineck, twelve weeks after Hocher; the Turks reached Vienna eight weeks later still. Leopold allowed his servants to grow too old or too ill in office. It was another sign of his uncertain touch in using them.

One of the strongest interests in the Hofburg at this date was represented by the reigning Empress. Leopold married for a third time in 1676, choosing for his bride Eleanor-Magdalene of Pfalz-Neuburg. It was a decisive moment in the rise of an ambitious princely family. If Philip William of Pfalz-Neuburg’s inheritance of Berg and Jülich in north-western Germany, together with Neuburg on the upper Danube, was modest, if he had spent a long and restless life on a variety of unsuccessful attempts to better himself, his daughter’s alliance with the Emperor opened up reefs of the purest gold for this minor
branch of the Wittelsbachs. Philip William exploited his diplomatic triumph to the uttermost, and the new Empress soon combined her supreme title with sufficient influence over Leopold. The results were spectacular. One sister became Queen of Spain, another Queen of Portugal. The eldest brother married a Habsburg princess, another was
Deutschmeister
or Master of the German Order, and others accumulated ecclesiastical benefices at Brixen, Trent, Breslau, Freysing and Augsburg. In 1685, with the Emperor’s support Philip William himself succeeded to the Elector Palatine’s title and inheritance. The rise of the Neuburgs involved the ascent to power of a new statesman in Vienna.

Theodore Stratmann, Philip William’s vice-chancellor, had helped to negotiate Eleanor-Magdalene’s marriage, then transferred to the Emperor’s service, and rose to a post of the very highest importance in March 1683 when he became Court Chancellor on Hocher’s death.
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Stratmann was a fine and level-headed man of business, who handled affairs of state with considerable skill during the next ten years. It cannot be doubted that he served the Habsburgs well, nor that he continued to take sympathetic account of the Neuburg family interest in western Germany.

Another circle in the Hofburg was presided over by the dowager Empress Eleanor, Leopold’s Italian stepmother, a gifted and animated leader of society for many years; and among those who turned to her for patronage, and appeared at her brilliant parties, was a refugee prince named Charles of Lorraine.

Charles,
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born in 1643, had inherited a claim on the succession to the duchy of Lorraine but his uncle Duke Charles IV long refused to recognise it, while the French systematically set about converting their military occupation of most of the Lorraine lands into a sovereignty ratified by international treaty. So the young boy flitted uneasily from court to court, discredited by many matrimonial schemes and a few irregular romances which all broke down. He settled in Vienna after 1662, volunteered in time for the battle of St Gotthard, and competed unsuccessfully for election as King of Poland on two occasions; he hoped to marry the dowager empress’s daughter (also called Eleanor) but this depended on winning a suitable title, in Poland or Lorraine or elsewhere. Then he made his mark, fighting superbly in the wars against Louis XIV, and reached the rank of Field-Marshal in 1676. His uncle had died by then and most states recognised him as the rightful Duke, Charles V of Lorraine. The Emperor allowed the marriage with Eleanor to take place in 1678, and soon afterwards Charles was appointed his viceroy in the Tirol. He failed to recover his duchy in the course of the diplomacy which put an end to the war in 1679, but his court at Innsbruck was well placed to keep an eye on future developments in the whole area west of the Rhine. His personal advisers were nearly all exiles from Lorraine and their primary impulse was to scheme for the day when the Duke could enter Nancy in triumph. In Vienna the dowager empress consistently championed her son-in-law’s interest.

By this date Charles looked an insignificant man in poor health, not fully recovered from war-wounds; but his appearance masked his piety, reserves of stamina, and willingness to take difficult decisions. That exuberant prose-writer, John Sobieski, composed the best pen-portrait of this unassuming warrior. The one great Christian hero of the year 1683 wrote of the other: ‘He has an acquiline nose, almost like a parrot’s; he is scarred by the small-pox; and he stoops. He wears grey, unadorned (except for some new brocaded gold buttons), a hat without a feather, and boots which were polished two or three months ago, with cork heels. His wig (a rotten one) is fair in colour. His horse isn’t bad, with an old saddle and trappings of worn and poor-quality leather. He is obviously little concerned with his appearance. But he has the bearing, not of a trader or an Italian, but of a person of quality . . . he deserves greater fame and fortune.’
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This was written after Charles had spent a whole summer fighting the Turks, but the impression given seems to do justice to the prince. He had a reasonable claim to the highest military offices at Leopold’s disposal. Indeed Montecuccoli died in the autumn of 1680, after combining for many years the two great posts of President of the War Council and the supreme command of Habsburg armies in the field. Leopold at once issued a patent reserving the second of these to Charles of Lorraine in the event of a future war.
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The man who was to be his colleague in 1683 and his fiercest enemy at court, Herman of Baden, also moved in the dowager empress’s circle in the 1670s. A younger son of the noble but impoverished house of Baden in western Germany, he had spent his youth restlessly striving for advancement. He collected ecclesiastical prebends (and became a Canon of Cologne Cathedral), took some share in impracticable plans for colonisation overseas, but finally made his career as a soldier and politician. He too distinguished himself in the campaigns against France. He was brave, ambitious, fussy and not very articulate in discussion; but he stoutly upheld the alleged need to continue at all costs and in all seasons the policy of resistance to French aggrandisement in the Empire. This accorded well with the general bias of opinion at court. Leopold, therefore, after some delay, appointed him in 1681 to succeed Montecuccoli as President of the War Council. The defence of Habsburg interests, particularly the distribution of forces between the eastern and the western fronts, would depend on the judgment of the new president.

Opposed to the international policy of Hocher and Herman of Baden was a strictly Catholic interest, which aimed at far more than mere defence of the Church. The dynasty appeared rigorously Catholic. The conversion of all Protestants who came to the Habsburg court, and wished to make a career, went remorselessly forward during this period. The great Protestant families of two generations back, in Bohemia and Austria, were Catholic again. Leopold, obedient to a tradition which had been thoroughly worked into his education, strove always to take account of the Church in his general conduct of affairs. But at the same time his ecclesiastical advisers had to take account of his
predicament as a ruler who was often compelled to disregard the purely clerical standpoint. He, and they, had to tack accordingly. Eager to defend and to strengthen the privileges of the clergy (and the ecclesiastical estates) they were occasionally forced to defer to the tough legal maxims and administrative practice of the Habsburg and Imperial chanceries, which wished to protect the interests of the state in questions of taxation, or of appointment to benefices. They likewise protested in vain whenever the Emperor’s diplomacy involved concessions to Protestant minorities in Hungary or Silesia. But what caused much more heart-burning to rigid Catholics was the military alliance of 1673 between the Emperor and the heretic Dutch, for a war against the Most Christian Louis XIV. Sinelli, the most influential of Leopold’s spiritual counsellors, had himself come to accept the necessity for this Protestant alliance. He certainly held that the Habsburg government was bound, first of all, to defend its interests against France. He could be satisfied that, in Hungary at least, the Catholic monopoly was growing more complete, but he had to neglect the larger issue of Ottoman dominance beyond the eastern frontier.

The accession of Innocent XI as Pope in 1676 made this sort of compromise much more difficult.
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Innocent sharpened all the dilemmas. His ambition to pacify the west in order to launch an attack on the Sultan never slackened from the day of his election. He was the supreme exponent, in the seventeenth century, of that school of thought in Rome which paid particular attention to the Ottoman lands, supporting the missions (above all, Franciscan) in that area, pondering the memoranda of those who painted a facile picture of the radical flaws of Ottoman government, and concluding that this government was not only vicious and menacing, but weak. A holy alliance of the Christian princes against the Sultan, therefore, appeared the grand necessity of the time. Innocent believed in the absolute priority of the eastern question over the problems of the west. He judged the Nymegen peace-treaties simply as a means to this end, and in his view an obstinate Habsburg refusal to consider sympathetically Louis XIV’s further territorial demands after 1679 was an unworthy refusal to attend to the crucial issue in Hungary, Poland and the Balkans. He urged at Vienna a policy of appeasement towards Louis, and the result was a bitter struggle at court, with the papal nuncio Buonvisi firmly opposed by those who felt that the defence of Leopold’s stake in Germany and Flanders was overwhelmingly important.

In fact, for a number of years Buonvisi negotiated without any success.
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Innocent aimed at the speedy completion of an offensive alliance between the Poles and the Habsburgs and (if possible) the Czar of Muscovy, directed against the Sultan. This was premature, and not least because the Viennese court remained determined not to weaken its position in western Europe by provoking the Turks. The Ottoman campaigns in the Ukraine appeared to suit Leopold’s interest perfectly. Buonvisi argued, in 1678, that troops should be withdrawn from the west to take up their quarters in Hungary. The government agreed, after Nymegen, that some forces should be kept in
being and not dismissed, but proposed to use them for the defence of the Empire against further French aggression. Buonvisi went so far as to counsel a change of policy in Hungary, including the offer of some very modest concession to the Protestants; he had the greater menace of the Turks in view. But Leopold, advised by Hocher, refused to consider a more flexible policy until 1681. When he did so, his government was primarily disturbed by the imminent collapse of its position in Germany under Louis XIV’s pressure. The ministers were justifiably unable to concentrate on the alleged danger from Islam. Unjustifiably, they neglected it. The nuncio was powerless until the Turks began to intervene on a larger scale in Hungary. Then the government, Sinelli, and most of the interests with a voice at court, slowly swung round in order to face a threat which they had underestimated for too long. The nuncio, and also his colleague Pallavicini in Warsaw, were able to contribute effectively to the making of that alliance which had been part of Innocent XI’s purpose since 1676.

While Buonvisi tried always to focus the attention of the Austrian court on the eastern question (in its seventeenth-century form) the masterful ambassador from Madrid looked just as steadily to the west. Charles Emmanuel d’Este Marquis of Borgomanero, arriving at Vienna in May 1681, benefited from the labours of his immediate predecessors in the same post, who all worked to re-knit the combined front of the two Habsburg lines, after the catastrophic split between them which had contributed to the ending of the Thirty Years War, Austrian defeat in the Westphalian treaties of 1648, and the isolation of Spain later on. An accomplished diplomat, he pointed insistently to the dangers threatening the Habsburg position in Italy and Flanders, and rallied to the so-called ‘Spanish’ party in Vienna all the interests which Louis XIV had alienated in the Empire, even though they constantly tended to fall apart again into smaller, bickering fractions. For him the fate of rich territories stretching from Antwerp to Genoa was the paramount question of the future. His obvious ally among diplomats in Vienna was the Dutch envoy, his outstanding friend among the Viennese statesmen was Herman of Baden. If one factor stood out quite distinctly in the medley of Leopold’s court, it was the political antagonism of Buonvisi and Borgomanero, those two impressive Italian noblemen.