CHAPTER V
The risings of 1848—Princess Mélanie Metternich’s excited account of it—Disorderly flight of Metternich from Vienna—The House of Habsburg saved by “three mutinous soldiers”—Abdication of the Emperor Ferdinand in favour of his nephew, Francis Joseph—Hübner’s description of the ceremony.
If we want to look at the disturbances which broke up the old order in Austria through contemporary eyes, our most helpful document will be the Diary of Metternich’s wife, Princess Mélanie—so called, tout court, as an indication that she ranked, like the Archduchesses, as one of the Olympian goddesses of Viennese Society. One seems, as one reads it, to be listening to the shrieks of a fluttered bird; for Princess Mélanie understood as little as a bird would have understood, the true significance of the uprising. Sheer wantonness was, for her, the sole motive of the revolutionists; black ingratitude towards good rulers was their distinguishing characteristic; and the outcome of the agitation could only be “the end of all.” All that because the students and the artisans had announced that they desired a “Constitution.”
Already we have seen Princess Mélanie predicting that, if Guizot fell, all was lost; and, after the events of February, 1848, in Paris, she saw horrors accumulating on horror’s head:—
“Poor Germany is already in a blaze. Never were times graver or more solemn. Every hour brings forth a fresh event, and fresh troubles are perpetually being added to those already in existence.”
All the thrones in Germany were, in truth, being shaken, though they were all eventually to recover; and now the privileges of the Austrian throne itself were being challenged:—
“Kossuth has moved a resolution which the Chamber of Deputies has approved. These people actually demand nothing less than a Constitution for Austria!... The agitation is general, and the terror is great. People are so alarmed—especially the great financiers—that they propose concessions to the popular demand, and see no chance of safety except in making them. One would say that Hell had broken loose. God alone can dam the torrent which threatens to swallow up everything.”
At first, the trouble was confined to Hungary; but the contagion spread:—
“Here, too, the public is very much disposed to ask for a Constitution, and our various provincial assemblies are beginning to pass the most regrettable resolutions. May God enlighten us and give us the strength to be firm! That is all that I pray for.”
And then:—
“The news from Germany gets worse and worse. There no longer is any Germany in the true sense of the word, for all the German sovereigns have been compelled to make concessions.... One really needs superhuman moral force to withstand this popular agitation.”
So the trouble came nearer and nearer; and it became clear that Metternich himself was the object of popular hostility. Threatening letters were received. A piece of paper was found affixed to Metternich’s door, bearing the words: “Down with Metternich. We want concessions!” Princess Mélanie herself received a significant warning, at one of her own receptions, from Félicie Esterhazy:—
“She let fall the following laconic remark: ‘Is it true that you are going away to-morrow?’ ‘Why?’ I asked her. ‘Because we were told that we had better buy candles in order to be able to illuminate to-morrow, as a great event was about to happen.’”
A great event did happen on the morrow—though not the event which Félicie Esterhazy had in view; and Princess Mélanie witnessed it. She saw a demonstration on the Ballplatz, and heard an agitator, lifted on to the shoulders of his companions, shouting:—
“Long live the imperial house! We want concessions in conformity with the spirit of the times (cheers). Give us freedom of the press (cheers); let justice be administered publicly (cheers); let there be freedom of thought (cheers)! Let those who have outlived their usefulness resign and go (tremendous acclamations)!”
And Princess Mélanie complains that “no one interfered with this indecent demonstration,” and that “no one attempted to silence the brawlers.”
She called the demonstrations “indecent” because they were obviously aimed at her husband, who, far more than the Emperor, symbolised that ancien régime which the students and artisans were resolved to end. The Emperor, indeed, was merely a weak-minded, good-natured old gentleman to whom no one wished any harm. He was as ready to grant concessions as to give alms; and his subjects knew it, cheered him when he drove through the streets, and decorated their barricades with his portraits. Their objection was not to him, but to his police, who took Princess Mélanie’s old-fashioned view of concessions: notably, therefore, to Metternich, the policeman of genius.
It was idle for Metternich to protest, as he sometimes did, in after years, that, though he might sometimes have governed Europe, he certainly had never governed Austria. The people knew—or thought that they knew—better. The chief article in their simple creed was that Metternich must go; and the sole question for Ferdinand and his Court and Ministers was whether Metternich should or should not be thrown overboard as a Jonah who brought ill luck to the Austrian ship of state. The upshot appears from these entries in Princess Mélanie’s Journal:—
“At half-past six, Clement was sent for to the Palace.”
“Yes, Clement has resigned.”
The circumstances of the interview in which he did so were afterwards related by him to Hübner:—
“The Archduke Louis came to me and said: ‘These gentlemen tell me that, if you could make up your mind to resign, order could be re-established.’ I asked, ‘What is it that your Highness desires me to do?’ He replied, ‘It is for you to decide what to do.’ Thereupon I instantly resigned the office of Chancellor, and went into the adjoining apartment to inform the Delegates of the States that I had done so. One of these gentlemen spoke of generosity, and said that my resignation put a worthy coping-stone upon a long career. ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘It is merely a concession to the revolution.’”
But he not only had to quit office; he also had to leave Vienna, where his life, in spite of his resignation, was not safe. He could not even leave at his leisure, but had to depart in a hurry without packing, dining with his friends, the Taaffes, and then driving off, in great haste, to Feldsberg, whence he made his way through Germany and Holland to England, where he landed just in time for his son Richard to be sworn in as a special constable, and bludgeon the Chartists, shoulder to shoulder with the future Napoleon III. The fluttered Diary records it all in a succession of shrill screams: What has Metternich—once the policeman of Europe—done to deserve such treatment! How black is the ingratitude of man! But Princess Mélanie might as well have exclaimed against the black ingratitude of water, which, under the exciting influence of heat, expands into steam, and blows up the man who sits on the safety-valve, without the least regard to his personal charm and intellectual culture.
So ironical is fate; and there was a still more cruel irony in the fact that the House of Habsburg, which owed so much to Metternich, seemed rather relieved to be rid of him, regarding his policy as an asset but his personality as an incubus. Alone among the members of the Imperial House, Francis Joseph’s mother remembered to write a polite letter, inquiring how he was getting on, and confiding to him the hopes which were concentrated in her son, his political pupil:—
“My poor Franzi has been my sole consolation in our hours of trouble. In the midst of my anguish and despair, I have continued to bless God for giving me such a boy. His courage, his firmness, his judgment have been unshaken—altogether beyond what one would expect from a lad of his age—and have encouraged the hope that God will grant him a great career, since He has given him the strength to face all the risks of life.”
But though the Archduchess Sophie wrote in that charming vein, she was herself one of those who had agreed that Metternich had better be sacrificed, as he was so inconveniently unpopular; and Metternich replied, not without a sense of bitterness, that he thought very highly of Francis Joseph, and had a great affection for him, and was quite confident that he would succeed in life as well as his mother could wish, if only he remembered and applied the maxims of statecraft which he himself had taught him. But he also, at the same time, chuckled through his tears, observing that the jettisoning of the Jonah did not seem to have saved the ship.
For order did not yet reign in Vienna; on the contrary, the revolution was going from bad to worse, and the Court had to leave the capital. First it went to loyal Innsbruck, in loyal Tyrol—whence Francis Joseph paid his visit, already mentioned, to the Army of Italy. Then it returned, under the illusion that things were going better; and then it went off again to Olmütz. Hungary and Bohemia, as well as Italy, were in open rebellion; and Vienna continued to throw up barricades from time to time. Unwelcome Ministers were forced on the Emperor, made concessions, and then gave place to others who promised still more concessions. The conditions of 1789, said the people who knew history, were giving place to the conditions of 1793. At any moment they might expect to see the guillotine “going always,” and the Emperor’s head rolling from the block into a basket.
Nor did the House of Habsburg, in that dark hour, save itself. On the contrary. “The monarchy,” as Felix Schwarzenberg put it, “was saved by three mutinous soldiers”: Radetzky, the octogenarian who would not grow old; Alfred von Windischgraetz, the unbending aristocrat, who was vastly more imperialist than the Emperor; Jellaçiç, the swaggering and self-sufficient Ban of Croatia. They agreed, to put it bluntly, that the Emperor Ferdinand was an old fool who had been bounced by his Ministers into giving orders which it behoved them to disobey. So Radetzky, being ordered to evacuate Lombardy, remained there; and Windischgraetz, being ordered to hold a portion of his forces at the disposition of the War Minister, replied that he could not spare them; and Jellaçiç, being dismissed from his command, refused to give it up. In that way, they collared the situation and saved it.
The Hungarians, marching on Vienna, were met by Jellaçiç and driven back. Windischgraetz, after first putting down the rising in Bohemia, marched down to Vienna and laid siege to it. Radetzky reinforced him, and then the end was near. Windischgraetz, in truth, had other reasons besides his loyalty to make him furious. His own wife had been one of the victims of the insurrection—shot while she stood at an open window to watch the rioting; so that it was not in the least likely that he would hesitate to shoot, or allow the insurgents to surrender otherwise than at discretion. First, therefore, he bombarded Vienna; and then he forced the gates and stormed the barricades. There was a certain show of resistance, but then, after a few military executions, order did really reign, and the House of Habsburg was really saved, except in so far as the Hungarians were still a menace to it. And the Emperor Ferdinand’s first act, when his safety was assured, was to abdicate in favour of his nephew, Francis Joseph.
It was an abdication which had, long since, been contemplated, and even arranged. Metternich, the Empress, and the Archduchess Sophie had put their heads together and settled it. None of them had any illusions about the Emperor, and it does not appear that the Emperor had any illusions about himself. None the less, the secret had been well kept. Hübner, Schwarzenberg, and Windischgraetz were the only people who knew what was going to happen, or for what purpose the members of the royal family, and the functionaries connected with the Court, were suddenly summoned to assemble in the imperial residence at Olmütz at eight o’clock in the morning:—
“At half-past seven” (writes Hübner, whose function it was to take the minutes of the meeting) “the apartments adjoining the throne room were gorgeous with civil and military uniforms. There were present all the Archdukes and Archduchesses, with their ladies and gentlemen in waiting, the Canons of the Chapter of Olmütz, and a few ladies belonging to the aristocracy. Intense curiosity was imprinted on every countenance. The most remarkable guesses passed from mouth to mouth at this brilliant gathering, but—strange to say—no one guessed the truth. The Archduke Maximilian asked me what it was all about. The Archduke Ferdinand of Este addressed the same question to the War Minister, and received, as did the brother of the future Emperor, an evasive answer.”
Soon the proceedings began:—
“Punctually at eight o’clock, the folding doors of the throne-room were thrown open to give admission to the Archdukes Maximilian, Charles Louis, and Ferdinand of Este, to the Archduchesses Maria Dorothea, widow of the Archduke Joseph, and Elizabeth, wife of the Archduke Ferdinand, to the Ministers, to Marshal Windischgraetz, to the Ban of Croatia, and to Count Grunne, Master of the Horse of the Archduke Francis Joseph.... When the door was closed on us, their Majesties, followed by the Landgrave Frederick of Furstenberg, Prince Lobkowitz, the Emperor’s aide-de-camp, and the Landgravine of Furstenberg, grand mistress to the Empress, together with the Archduke Francis Charles, the Archduchess Sophia, and their son, the Archduke Francis Joseph, entered. Their Majesties took their places on two armchairs in front of the throne, and the Archdukes and Archduchesses took theirs on chairs arranged in the form of a rectangle on either side of the throne. The Ministers, Marshal Windischgraetz, and Ban Jellaçiç stood facing the Emperor. There was a deep and solemn silence.”
The silence was broken by the Emperor himself, reading the statement prepared for him: the simple statement that important considerations had decided him to transmit his crown to his nephew. Then it was the turn of Felix Schwarzenberg. Ordinarily an impassive man, he now read, in a voice shaking with emotion, the three documents which gave legal validity to the transaction: the declaration that Francis Joseph had attained his majority; the declaration that Francis Joseph’s father renounced his own rights in his son’s favour; the Emperor’s formal act of abdication. One after the other, the three documents were signed by those whom they concerned; and Francis Joseph knelt—for the last time—to Ferdinand, to receive his blessing.
Sei brav, es ist gerne geschehen, were Ferdinand’s words. Literally it means: “Be good; I did it willingly.” Practically it meant: “Never mind me. I don’t feel hurt in the least. On the contrary, I’m well out of it.” He ceased, and the retiring Empress embraced the boy Emperor. According to Hübner, the Archduchesses sobbed aloud, and there was not a dry eye in the room; and while the eyes of the company were still moist, the door was once more opened, and the courtiers, assembled in the ante-chamber, were informed of what had passed. That done, Francis Joseph rode out to review the troops, and receive their acclamations; while the Emperor Ferdinand and the Empress Marianna quietly took the afternoon train to Prague.
Thus the change was effected, quite simply, and almost without ceremony. It almost looks as though everything was done in a hurry, so that no one might have time to question the wisdom of doing it. “Farewell to my youth!” said Francis Joseph when, addressed for the first time as “Your Majesty,” he realised the change in his condition, and the responsibilities to which he was committed, so soon after his eighteenth birthday. But he had never known what it was to be young, as boys of humbler station know it; and his opportunities of unbending, as some monarchs unbend, were to be few. He was the sole hope of the Habsburgs; he had to shoulder the whole burden of the Habsburgs; and he was to find it heavy. Princess Mélanie, when the news of his accession reached her, trembled for him:
“How is an Emperor of eighteen years of age to steer his course amid such conflicting currents? I shudder when I think of him—the last hope which now remains to us. May God bless him, and give him energy, while giving his counsellors the wisdom which they will need!”
The grounds of her anxiety—particular as well as general—appear on the same page of her Diary:
“They tell me that a Republic has been proclaimed in Hungary, with Kossuth as Dictator.”
Which meant that Ferdinand had indeed reason to regard himself as “well out of it,” and that Francis Joseph had not ascended an undisputed throne, but one for the defence of which he would have to fight desperately hard.