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  Napoleon III, on the other hand, laid the principal blame for the defeat at Franz Joseph’s door and admitted to Prince Ernst that he “regarded” the French victory “as the purest fluke…. His army had been in the poorest condition, and his generals had shown no aptitude for leading a large army; the Austrians had fought much better than the French and … there could be no doubt that they would have won Solferino if the Emperor had allowed the reserves to move forward. The Emperor of Austria, he said, was a man of great standing, “mais malheureusement il lui manque l’énergie de la volonté [but unfortunately he lacked the will].”63

  Even Duchess Ludovika criticized Franz Joseph’s eagerness to prove himself as a military commander, writing to Marie of Saxony, “I really had not expected such a defeat one after another … and that it was the emperor himself who was leading the forces, I think, makes the event even sadder; I could not even approve his leaving Vienna during such difficult times, and now his return will be most unpleasant.”64

  Meanwhile, Sisi had organized a hospital for the wounded in Laxenburg. Franz Joseph: “Put the wounded wherever you want, in all the houses of Laxenburg. They will be very happy in your care. I cannot thank you enough.”65 After the bloody battles, 60,000 of the sick and wounded had to be seen to. All the hospitals in Austria were not enough by far.66 Convents, churches, and castles had to take in the patients. It took months before the fate of the wounded soldiers was decided; they either died or survived as cripples or in good health. A great deal of money had been spent on outfitting the army. No provisions had been made for medical treatment of the wounded, however.

  The young Empress was suddenly confronted with these problems. She began to inform herself thoroughly by reading the newspapers, and she arrived at a firm stance that opposed the military and the aristocratic, purely absolutist regime of her husband. We do not know precisely what personal influences had a part in this change and whether the Bavarian relatives were responsible during their visits to Vienna. But that increasingly the young Empress took an unequivocal stand on the side of the people and the newspapers was as obvious as was the fact that these political questions also began to enter into the struggle between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. For though Elisabeth spared her husband direct reproaches, she ascribed all the evils to Archduchess Sophie’s reactionary influence—as did the Austrian bourgeois intellectuals.

  The twenty-one-year-old Empress even attempted to give the Emperor some political advice (which echoed the “voice of the people”): Why not conclude a peace as soon as possible? Franz Joseph, however, had no intention of listening to his wife’s suggestions. He replied defensively, “Your political plan contains some very good ideas, but we must not give up hope that Prussia and Germany will yet come to our aid, and before that time, there can be no thought of negotiating with the enemy.”67

  It is astonishing how uninformed the Emperor was about the political plans and principles underlying Prussian policies. Even at this late date, when the war had long since been lost, he could still harbor such illusions. The Emperor had no recourse but to trust in God, “Who will surely guide everything for the best. He tests us severely, and we are surely only at the beginning of worse afflictions, but we must bear them with resignation and always do our duty in everything.”68

  Elisabeth’s political suggestions met with little success. Her inquiry whether Grünne (who was hated in the army) would be dismissed was also answered in the negative by the Emperor. “No thought has ever been given to making a change for Count Grünne, and I do not consider it at all. In general, I beg you not to believe what the papers say, they write so many stupid and wrong things.”69 Instead, he urged his wife to eat more, to go horseback riding less, but most of all, to get more sleep. “I implore you, give up this life at once and sleep during the night, which nature intended for sleep and not for reading and writing. And do not ride so much and so vigorously.”70

  Nor were the two mothers, Ludovika and Sophie, delighted at the young Empress’s interest in politics. Ludovika to Sophie: “I believe the presence of the child will fill many hours of the day, will calm her, will occupy her, animate her domestic senses, give a new direction to her habits and tastes. I would like to fan every little spark, nurture every good impulse.”71

  Only a few days after the Emperor had turned down Sisi’s suggestion that he make peace quickly, he himself admitted the futility of the war. Nevertheless, the initiative for an armistice came, not from him, but from Napoleon III, the arch-scoundrel, as Franz Joseph called him.72

  The Treaty of Villefranche obligated Austria to relinquish Lombardy, at one time her richest province, an Austrian possession since the Congress of Vienna. Though Venetia was to remain in Austrian hands, no one seriously believed that this last Italian possession could be held for long.

  The Swiss envoy reported that in Vienna the peace

  made a horribly unfavorable impression…. The halo that until now has surmounted the Emperor has shattered even among the lower strata of the people. For ten years, the most tenuous efforts were made to maintain the costly military system and to bring it to the highest degree of perfection, and now they realize that millions upon millions of guldens were thrown away to maintain a toy and a weapon for ultramontanism and for the aristocracy. If the Emperor returns with the idea of maintaining the present system of government and to rule with the help of the Concordat and his military protégés, the monarchy would face a dismal future, this system is rotten through and through and cannot but break.73

  In Hungary, a new revolution loomed on the horizon. Concerning conditions in Vienna, Dr. Seeburger felt that “the mood had never been worse than now, but Archduchess Sophie, to whom he [Seeburger] had told this, refused to believe him. In taverns and coffeehouses no one is afraid to slander the Emperor, but he is going hunting tomorrow in Reichenau, and the Empress is going to the same place, to go horseback riding.”74

  Sophie’s husband, Archduke Franz Karl, also labored under some misconceptions. He spoke “openly about the prevailing discontent, but at the same time he denied that it had any greater significance, because he was still being saluted. What flimsy reassurance!” Minister of Police Kempen remarked in his diary.75 Assassination plots were uncovered, one even in the Hofburg itself; a footman had planned to murder the Emperor and Archduchess Sophie. Ludovika found the people’s rage against the Emperor “as painful as it is outrageous … because it is directed specifically against the person of the Emperor, who is being unbelievably reviled; lies about him are spread that are so unutterably unfounded and unjust precisely against him of all people—Unfortunately, the rancor emanates largely from the military, which even abroad … expresses itself so bitterly about him.” The sentence that follows this passage is typical for Franz Joseph’s character; variations on it can be found in several contemporary sources, even in Archduchess Sophie’s diary itself: “in all this,” Franz Joseph “himself is, I would say, so innocent, for he is cheerful, actually that surprised me.”76

  Monstrous corruption in the military and financial systems came to light. Finance Minister Baron Karl von Bruck, devastated by the Emperor’s lack of trust, slit his throat. Ministers and generals were dismissed; besides Foreign Minister Buol, they were Minister of the Interior Bach, Minister of Police Kempen, General Gyulai, General Hess. It was very difficult for the Emperor “to allay the enormous mania for reorganizing and casting aside,” as he complained to his mother.77

  At the center of the criticism stood the Emperor’s adjutant general, his closest personal and political intimate and friend, Count Karl Grünne. He considered himself his sovereign’s whipping boy and accepted the blame that was by rights the Emperor’s. Even Ludovika knew: “The main hatred is directed at Grün[ne], because it is said that he deliberately kept him in ignorance of all the sad things that happened, about the terrible negligence, blunders, and fraud.”78

  Some years later, the liberal Neues Wiener Tagblatt wrote, “The name Grünne enjoyed an unpopul
arity that almost bordered on popularity.” He had been, the newspaper claimed, a “nonsystematic dictator,” a “head of government extra statum,” with the “halo of a vice emperor.” In the Council of Ministers, he had represented “often also the voice of the monarch.”79

  Under the pressure of popular opinion, the Emperor was forced to dismiss Grünne from his posts of adjutant general and head of the military chancellery—though he did so with great proofs of favor. Grünne did retain the office of chief equerry.

  Sisi’s friendship with Grünne remained unaffected by politics. After his dismissal, she wished him “especially a better happier time than the last has been. I still cannot accept that now everything is so very different from before, and especially to see a different person in your place, but my only consolation is that we have not lost you altogether, and you know how grateful I am to you for this.”80

  Emperor Franz Joseph exerted himself to the fullest to avert a curtailment of his absolute rule. Archduchess Sophie supported him. She abhorred the “popular will,” considering it an offense against the imperial majesty. In her letters, she complained of treason and refused to admit any fault in the “system.” She complained that “my poor son, hard pressed by the victory of injustice over justice, by treachery and disloyalty, nevertheless was unappreciated by many.”81

  A fair evaluation of the Empress’s political attitude, which was soon made plain to a larger group, must take into account the fact that her liberalism, which was considered (at court) so taboo, her anticlericalism, her enthusiasm for the constitutional state came to the fore during Austria’s darkest hour, politically speaking. In the most personal terms, it was the antithesis of the demands for divine right, absolutism, and aristocratic thinking espoused by Archduchess Sophie.

  Notes

  1. Sophie, March 5, 1855 (in French).

  2. Sexau Papers, to Therese of Bavaria, from Vienna, March 22, 1855.

  3. Festetics, June 26, 1872 (in Hungarian).

  4. Eugen d’Albon, Unsere Kaiserin (Vienna, 1890), p. 176.

  5. Wiener Tageblatt, September 15, 1898.

  6. Schnürer, p. 256, September 18, 1856.

  7. Festetics, June 2, 1872.

  8. Ernst II of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Aus meinem Leben und aus meiner Zeit (Berlin, 1888), Vol. II, p. 174.

  9. Bern, December 21, 1860.

  10. Corti, Elisabeth, p. 74.

  11. Ibid., p. 68.

  12. Schnürer, p. 259, December 4, 1856.

  13. Daniel Freiherr von Salis-Soglio, Mein Leben (Stuttgart, 1908), Vol. I, p. 79.

  14. Schnürer, p. 259, December 4, 1856.

  15. Ibid., p. 264, March 2, 1857.

  16. Richard Sexau, Fürst und Arzt (Graz, 1963), pp. 79f.

  17. Schnürer, p. 267, from Budapest, May 19, 1857.

  18. Crenneville, from Budapest, May 9, 1857.

  19. Schnürer, p. 267, from Budapest, May 19, 1857.

  20. Ibid., p. 270.

  21. Sexau Papers, to Auguste of Bavaria, July 23, 1857.

  22. Schnürer, p. 280, from Vienna, November 3, 1857.

  23. Sophie, August 4, 1857 (in French).

  24. Sexau Papers, from Munich, December 30 and 31, 1857.

  25. Ibid., July 27, 1858.

  26. Ibid., to Marie of Saxony, November 21, 1857.

  27. Ibid., from “Possi,” August 5, 1857.

  28. Ibid., to Sophie, May 15, 1858.

  29. Wiener Zeitung, August 23, 1858.

  30. Ibid., August 26, 1858.

  31. Sauer, ed., Sämtliche Werke (Vienna, 1937), Sec. 1, Vol. 12, Pt. I, p. 92.

  32. Sexau Papers, from Munich, March 12, 1859.

  33. Sophie, January 13, 1859 (in French).

  34. Sexau Papers, January 23, 1859.

  35. Marie Louise von Wallersee, Die Heldin von Gaeta (Leipzig, 1936), p. 16.

  36. Sexau Papers, to Marie of Saxony, January 27, 1859.

  37. Wallersee, pp. 17f.

  38. Sexau Papers, to Marie of Saxony, March 2, 1860.

  39. Wiener Zeitung, April 29, 1859.

  40. Bern, May 19, 1859.

  41. Ibid., Enclosure with the above report.

  42. Sophie, May 9, 1859 (in French).

  43. Sophie, May 28, 1859 (in French).

  44. Khevenhüller, Summary for 1859.

  45. Schnürer, p. 292, from Verona, June 16, 1859.

  46. Joseph Redlich, Kaiser Franz Joseph von Österreich (Berlin, 1929), p. 243.

  47. FA, Nischer-Falkenhof, Diary of Leopoldine Nischer.

  48. Grünne, n.d., 1859.

  49. Sexau Papers, to Marie of Saxony, June 3, 1859.

  50. Nostitz, Vol. I, pp. 10f., from Verona, June 2, 1859.

  51. Ibid., p. 11.

  52. Sexau Papers.

  53. Joseph Karl Mayr, ed., Das Tagebuch des Polizeiministers Kempen von 1848 bis 1859 (Vienna, 1931), p. 515, June 6, 1859.

  54. Ibid., pp. 532f., September 4, 1859.

  55. Roger Fulford, ed., Dearest Child (London, 1964), p. 286. The first note on this page in source, concerning the Queen of Naples, must be corrected to refer to Marie (and not Therese).

  56. Nostitz, Vol. I, p. 14, from Verona, June 7, 1859.

  57. Ibid., p. 16, from Verona, June 7, 1859.

  58. Redlich, p. 245.

  59. Ernst II, Vol. II, p. 499.

  60. Heinrich Laube, Nachträge zu den Erinnerungen. Ausgewählte Werke, Vol. IX (Leipzig, 1909), p. 433.

  61. “Die Schlacht bei Solferino,” Das Volk, June 25, 1859.

  62. Nostitz, Vol. I, p. 26, from Verona, June 26, 1859.

  63. Ernst II, Vol. II, pp. 500f.

  64. Sexau Papers, from Possenhofen, July 1, 1859.

  65. Nostitz, Vol. I, p. 33, from Verona, July 5, 1859.

  66. Weckbecker, p. 216.

  67. Nostitz, Vol. I, p. 30.

  68. Ibid., p. 28, from Verona, June 27, 1859.

  69. Ibid., p. 25, from Villafrancca, June 23, 1859.

  70. Ibid., p. 35, from Verona, July 8, 1859.

  71. Sexau Papers, October 20, 1859.

  72. Nostitz, Vol. I, p. 35, from Verona, July 8, 1859.

  73. Bern, July 13, 1859.

  74. Joseph Karl Mayr, “Das Tagebuch des Polizeiministers Kempen (September bis Dezember 1859),” Historische Blätter, 1931, no. 4, p. 88.

  75. Ibid., p. 106, December 22, 1859.

  76. Sexau Papers, from Possenhofen, November 11, 1859.

  77. Schnürer, pp. 294f., from Laxenburg, September 1, 1859.

  78. Sexau Papers, from Possenhofen, November 11, 1859.

  79. NWT, November 6, 1875.

  80. Grünne, from Schönbrunn, November 2, 1859.

  81. BStB, manuscript collection, to Amalie von Thiersch. March 1, 1860.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  FLIGHT

  The political crisis of the winter of 1859–860 went hand in hand with a serious private crisis in the life of the Emperor and Empress. In the political sphere, one piece of bad news followed on the last. Grünne’s successor as adjutant general, Count Crenneville, complained, “terrible prospects—state bankruptcy—revolution—misfortune—war. Poor Emperor, indefatigably striving for the best.”1

  Emperor Franz Joseph had no intention of letting his young wife share in his worries. He continued to discuss politics only with his mother, never with Elisabeth, who was developing opposing opinions. Annoyed, the Empress had to accept a situation in which she was pushed aside like a child and her suggestions were not even acknowledged. The tug of war between Sophie and Sisi was fiercer than ever.

  It can hardly seem surprising that the Emperor tried to keep out of the way of the endless quarreling of the two women in this already overcharged atmosphere and that he sought comfort elsewhere. Widespread rumors about Franz Joseph’s affairs began to circulate for the first time in his marriage, which was almost six years old. However, this was a turn of events the Empress was not ready to confront. Lack of experience, excessive sensibility, jealousy of her mother-in-law, the most severe st
rain on her nerves caused by her husband’s long absence—all contributed to her loss of self-control.

  She began to provoke those around her. In the winter of 1859–1860—at the very time when the Austrian Empire was trapped in the greatest political calamities and the Emperor’s unpopularity had reached unprecedented heights—the young Empress, normally so reserved, became a blatant pleasure-seeker. She, who until then had strictly refused to develop any social activities at court outside the official functions, now, in the spring of 1860, organized no fewer than six balls in her apartments. She never invited more than twenty-five couples—all of them, of course, young people of the first rank with impeccable genealogies, as was required at court. The peculiarity of these balls, however, was that only the young couples were invited, not the mothers of the young women, as was customary. This meant that Archduchess Sophie, too, was excluded.

  Landgravine Therese Fürstenberg, who did attend the balls, wrote that these “orphan balls” at the Empress’s were very amusing, but nevertheless did irritate court society not a little: “at first one was startled at such an enormity [not inviting the mothers], nothing could be done against the Supreme will.” Landgravine Therese wrote that at these balls, the Empress “danced with passion,”2 a partiality never remarked in her before or after.

  Furthermore, Sisi, who normally shunned all social events as best she could, also attended the large private balls. After a ball given by the Margrave Pallavicini, for example, she did not return to the Hofburg until six thirty in the morning, by which time the Emperor had already set out for the hunt, so that she no longer found him at home (as Archduchess Sophie noted in her diary). Political cares did not deter the Emperor, either, from going hunting as often as possible.