CHAPTER XIII
An interval of peace—Beginnings of trouble with Prussia—Habsburg pride precedes a Habsburg fall—Refusal to sell Venetia to Italy—Italy joins Prussia—The war of 1866—The disaster of Sadowa—Benedek’s failure—Shameful treatment of Benedek by the Empire—Vain attempts to conciliate him—His widow’s comments.
Between 1859 and 1866 Francis Joseph had a seven years’ respite in which to solve his problems; but 1866 found them still unsolved. At home he had advanced a little way towards Liberalism, and then withdrawn; abroad, he had let himself become entangled in the net spread by Bismarck. Nor can the two mistakes be separated; for it was largely because he had failed to conciliate his subjects that he could not face his enemies. The fact that the Hungarians were still sullen made it comparatively easy for Prussia to turn Austria out of the German Confederation.
Space forbids one to say more of the difficulty between Austria and Prussia than that it was the difficulty which arises when two men have to ride the same horse, and both of them want to ride in front. It was brought to a head by dissensions over the settlement of that complicated Schleswig-Holstein question concerning which a British statesman once remarked that only two men had ever understood it, and that one of the two was dead and the other in a lunatic asylum. An agreement on the question, concluded at a personal interview between Francis Joseph and the King of Prussia, was described by Bismarck as “no better than a piece of sticking plaster”; and no doubt Bismarck made it his business to see that the sticking-plaster did not stick. He first secured French neutrality at a famous interview at Biarritz; and then he proceeded to negotiate with Italy.
Here again we see an instructive example of Habsburg pride preceding a Habsburg fall. Italy had recently proposed to buy Venetia from Austria. Francis Joseph, knowing that the Venetians loathed him to a man, had nevertheless replied, in a scornful communication, that Austria’s military honour and dignity as a first-class Power required him to retain them as his subjects:—
“She would be unaffected by an offer of money or by any kind of moral pressure. She could only abandon the territory of her own free will in the event, not specially desired by her, of a war which terminated gloriously for Austrian arms, and facilitated the extension of the Austrian Empire in the direction of Germany.”
In one and the same despatch, that is to say, Austria insulted Italy, and invited Italy to help her in despoiling Prussia. That was a rash temptation of Providence; and the result of it was that an Italian envoy went to Berlin to negotiate a treaty. Then Austria was frightened, and offered to eat her words and cede Venetia, if only Italy would leave her free to deal separately with Prussia. It was a tardy and clumsy piece of suppleness, and it did not answer. Victor Emmanuel liked fighting, had promised to fight, and fought.
We all know what happened: how the defeat of the Italians at Custozza by the Archduke Albert was more than counterbalanced by the defeat of the Austrians at Sadowa; and how Austria had to accept her humiliation, submit to be turned out of the German Federation, and surrender Venetia to Italy, after a plébiscite had been taken to ascertain those “wishes of the population” which Francis Joseph had so haughtily refused to recognise. The figures give eloquent evidence of the feelings of alien races towards Austrian rule. They were as follows:
For annexation 640,000
Against 40
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Majority for 639,960
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The result, one may be sure, would have been pretty much the same if a plébiscite had been taken in the Trentino, and South Tyrol. There also Austrian rule was unsympathetic; and that sore still remains open, with the result that, though Austria and Italy are now nominally allied, they are very far from being friends, and Italy still awaits her chance of responding to the lamentations which continue to reach her from the Purgatory of the Unredeemed. We shall see what we shall see in this connection when Austria is next embarrassed; but meanwhile we must return to Francis Joseph’s part in this great drama of 1866. His sphere of action was not the battlefield, but the council chamber; but there his prestige was felt, even in the hour of his discomfiture. Europe was still, to some extent, a family party in which the sentiment prevailed that Kings and Emperors must not be too hard on each other; and German Europe, at any rate, was still fascinated by the spectacle of the magnificent façade of the House of Habsburg, and reluctant to damage it in the spirit of Goths and Vandals. Even Bismarck’s “realistic politics” had to allow for that sentiment; and it was a sentiment of which Francis Joseph, on his part, instinctively perceived the value. His perception of it is the solid fact at the back of the strange story of his shameful behaviour towards General Benedek: a story in which he figures as the Jesuit convinced that the end justifies the means and that individuals must be sacrificed ruthlessly to the interests of the Order.
“One cannot expect much of a man who has been educated by the Jesuits,” said the late Prince Consort, summing him up with curt scorn; and there will be no pleasant disappointment of expectations in the story which is to follow.
The interest of the Order, in this instance, meant the interest of the dynasty: whatever happened to Austria, the House of Habsburg must not suffer. Francis Joseph did not enter upon the struggle in a spirit of blind confidence: the Prussians, he knew, were armed with the new needle-gun, which might work surprising wonders. Defeat was possible; and if defeat occurred, a scapegoat would be wanted. Francis Joseph, as a young soldier, had been ready to take risks, and had gallantly assured Radetzky that “Austria had no lack of Archdukes.” But Francis Joseph in his maturity did not want it to be possible for anyone to say that an Archduke had led the Austrian army to disaster, lest his subjects should lose their illusions about his House, and the revolutionary spirit should revive.
His best general was the Archduke Albert; and he dared not risk him in conflict with Von Moltke. That Archduke had played an odious part, not yet forgotten, in the street fighting at Vienna. His men might follow him with reluctance; his defeat would disgust Austria with the dynasty itself; and the interest of the dynasty was, in Francis Joseph’s view, “the thing.” So the Archduke was given a comparatively easy task in Italy, and the really difficult work in Bohemia was forced upon General Benedek, who knew that he was unfit for it, and said so. He was too old, he pleaded; he did not know the country in which he would have to fight. As the Prussian General von Schlictling afterwards put it:—
“His experience was like that of a pilot who has all his life guided small boats over the shallows and by the rocks of his native bay with unsurpassable skill and knowledge of the locality, and has now for the first time to take a warship of the first class across strange seas and through cyclones of which he has no experience.”
It was a perilous, and almost a hopeless attempt; but Francis Joseph insisted upon his making it. He wanted to be sure, in case of disaster, of a scapegoat, who could be sent out into the wilderness, leaving the honour and dignity of the Habsburgs intact. So he sent Benedek a message through Adjutant-General Count Crenneville, begging him to accept the command as a personal favour, saying that, if he refused it, and the war turned out badly, his own abdication would probably be forced upon him. “In such circumstances,” wrote Benedek, “I should have acted very wrongly if I had refused the command”; and no doubt the dictates of discipline did necessitate his acceptance of it.
So Benedek marched to Sadowa: the battle which hit Austria as hard as Sedan was afterwards to hit France. His losses there were 7 flags, 160 guns, 4,861 killed, 13,920 wounded, and about 20,000 prisoners. He was “broken like an old sword,” and there was nothing for him to say, except:—
“How could we face the Prussians? They are men of study, and we have learned little.”
Or rather, though there was a good deal more which he might have said, he was persuaded not to say it either before the Military Court which reviewed his conduct, or elsewhere. As Adjutant-General Count Crenneville had been sent to him before, so the Archduke Albert was sent to him now, at Graetz, in Styria, whither he had retired after being deprived of his command. He was asked to give a written promise that he would not publish any of the correspondence which had passed between himself and his generals or himself and the Emperor, or publicly vindicate himself in any way. He gave that promise; and the proceedings begun against him were suspended. But then—we come to Francis Joseph’s perfidy.
Francis Joseph wanted a scapegoat badly; and he paid Benedek the compliment of believing him to be a more honourable man than himself. He acted indirectly instead of directly—semi-officially instead of officially; hitting at the man who was down, and had promised to make no attempt to rise, by means of an article in the Wiener Zeitung. The article began by stating that there was no law in Austria which punished incompetence; and it continued:—
“For the rest, the loss of the confidence of his imperial master, the destruction of his military reputation before the world of to-day and of the future, the recognition of the immeasurable misfortune that, under his command, has befallen the army, and, through its defect, has befallen the whole monarchy, must be a heavier penalty for the high-minded man that Benedek always was, than any punishment that could have come upon him by the continuation of legal proceedings.”
THE EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH IN 1866.
One can imagine Benedek’s anger at this black treachery; but he did not allow it to sting him into the retractation of his pledged word. He maintained to the end the attitude of an honourable man whom a dishonourable Emperor had tricked; and he bore contumely in silence. It was only in his will that he spoke out; but then he gave full vent to the indignation which he had so long suppressed. This is his last word on the matter:—
“That the Austrian Government, having in its hand my promise of silence (given to the Archduke Albert on November 19, 1866) and believing in the honourableness of my promise, should publish this strange article, in which my whole past was ignored, and that this Government article, which it is impossible to qualify, was conceived in the presidential chancellery of the General Staff, corrected and improved by Field-Marshal Lieutenant Baron John, Field-Marshal Archduke Albert and others, and finally published by order of the Government in all its peculiar features—all this surpasses my ideas of right, decency, and propriety. I suffered it in silence, and I have now, for seven years, borne my hard lot as a soldier with philosophy and self-denial. I take credit to myself that, in spite of it all, I feel no anger against anybody and am not soured. I am at peace with myself and the whole world and have a clear conscience; but it has cost me all my poetic feeling for soldiering. I should like to be borne to my grave with the utmost simplicity and without any military honours. A plain stone, or an iron cross, without any epitaph, must be put over my grave.”
Meanwhile Benedek refused ever again to put on his uniform, and lived as a lodger in a boarding-house at Graetz. Francis Joseph did not like it—it was a reflection on him, especially after Von Moltke had complimented Benedek as a commander of courage and merit; but all the overtures which Francis Joseph’s pride permitted him to make were met in a spirit of sullen resentment. When the Archduke Albert was directed to write to Benedek as to an “old campaigner and a brother-in-arms,” he replied “with cold respect.” The Crown Prince Rudolph was then directed to write to him; but he neither asked for an audience, as he was expected to do, nor even answered the letter, merely permitting the Crown Prince’s military tutor to fabricate and carry a message, thanking the Emperor “for the graceful way in which he has remembered me.”
“I am an isolated man” (he then said). “I need no external honour, and I feel that my internal honour is unstained. In this matter I acknowledge no earthly judge.”
Not long afterwards he died of cancer of the larynx; and even then the memory of the wrong lingered. This is what his widow wrote to her nephew in reference to the letters of condolence which she had received:—
“Bismarck’s letter, written throughout with his own hand, was the only one from a high personage which touched me; the telegrams from the Emperor and the Archduke left me very cold. When the Emperor sent the Crown Prince to us in 1873 as an apostle of conciliation, Benedek had suffered so much during the seven years that he refused everything and begged that they would not disturb the repose he had at last attained. The Emperor, always generous, had at least the goodness to ask if there was nothing he could do for me. He is generous. I thanked him sincerely: I need nothing.”
So the story ends; and it has been necessary to tell it at some length because of the luminous light which it throws on Francis Joseph’s character. Some historians have spoken of it as an isolated stain upon an otherwise blameless personality; but it is, in fact, of a piece with the whole personality, though the occasions which have called for such disagreeable manifestations of the personality have happily been rare. Francis Joseph was always able to give his equals, and has gradually learnt to be able to give his inferiors, the impression that he is genial affability incarnate. It is not natural to him to be mean or paltry—he very much prefers to be splendid. But there is, and has always been, at the bottom of his mind, a certain confusion of thought. If he has not mistaken himself for God, at least he has mistaken the interests of the House of Habsburg for that Higher Law to which the ordinary laws of honour and morality which bind ordinary men must be subordinated.
In the case under review the interests of the House of Habsburg needed a scapegoat; and therefore Benedek had to go out into the wilderness. He did not go out of his own accord; he was not driven out; he was tricked out by false pretences, and then pointed at with the finger of scorn. His widow’s letter, which we have just read, reads like a quiet, measured echo of Countess Karolyi’s curse, to the various fulfilments of which we shall come in the course of a few chapters. If she had less reason than Countess Karolyi to curse Francis Joseph, at least she had reason enough.