Mysteries of the missing

by Edward H. Smith

Naturally enough, it has generally been held that the death of the crown prince and the romance with the singer explained everything. The archduke, in disgrace with the army, bereft of his truest and most illustrious friend, and deeply infatuated with a girl whom he could not fully legitimatize as his wife, so long as he wore the purple of his birth, had decided to “surrender all for love” and seek solace in foreign lands with the lady of his choice. This interpretation has all the elements of color and sweetness needed for conviction in the minds of the sentimental. Unfortunately, it does not seem to bear skeptical examination.

Even granting that Archduke Johann Salvator was a man of independent mind and quixotic temperament, that he was embittered by his demotion from military rank, and that he must have been greatly depressed by the death of Rudolf, who was both his bosom friend and his most powerful intercessor at court, no such extreme proceeding as the renunciation of all rank and the severing of family ties was called for.

It is true, too, that the loss of his only son through an affair with a woman of inferior rank, had embittered Franz Josef and probably caused the monarch to look with uncommon harshness upon similar liaisons among the members of the Hapsburg family. Undoubtedly the morganatic marriage of his second cousin with the shining moth of the theater displeased the monarch and widened the breach between him and his kinsman; but it must be remembered that Johann Salvator was only a distant cousin; that he was not even remotely in line for succession to the throne; that he had already been deprived of military or other official connection with the government; and that affairs of this kind have been by no means rare among Hapsburg scions.

Dour and tyrannical as the emperor may have been, he was no Anglo-Saxon, no moralist. His own life had not been quite free of sentimental episodes, and he was, after all, the heir to the proudest tradition in all Europe, head of the world’s oldest reigning house, and a believer in the sacredness of royal rank. He must have looked upon a morganatic union as something not uncommon or specially disgraceful, whereas a renunciation of rank and privilege can only have struck him as a precedent of the gravest kind.

Thus, Johann Salvator did not need to take any extreme step because of his histrionic wife. He might have remained in Austria happily enough, aside from a few snubs and the exclusion from further official participation in politics. He might have gone to any country in Europe and become the center of a distinguished society. His children would probably have been ennobled, and even his wife eventually given the same sort of recognition that was accorded the consorts of other princes in similar case, notably the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination at Sarajevo precipitated the World War. Instead, Johann Salvator made the most complete and unprecedented severance from all that seemed most inalienably his. Historians have had to interpret this action in another light, and their explanation forms the second version of the incident, probably the true one.

In 1887, as a result of one of the interminable struggles for hegemony in the Balkans, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha had been elected Prince of Bulgaria, but Russia had refused to recognize this sovereign, and the other powers, out of deference to the Czar, had likewise refrained from giving their approval. Austria was in a specially delicate position as regards this matter. She was the natural rival of Russia for dominance in the Balkans, but her statesmen did not feel strong enough openly to oppose the Russian course. Besides, they had their eyes fixed on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ferdinand had been an officer in the Austrian army. He was well liked at Franz Josef’s court, and stood high in the regard of Crown Prince Rudolf. What is most germane to the present question is that he was the friend of Johann Salvator.

In 1887, and for a number of years following, Russia attempted to drive the unwelcome German princeling from the Bulgarian throne by various military cabals, acts of brigandage, diplomatic intrigues, and the like. Naturally the young ruler’s friends in other countries rallied to his aid. Among them was Johann Salvator. It is known that he interceded with Rudolf for Ferdinand, and he may have approached the emperor. Failing to get action at Vienna, he is said to have formed a plan of a military character which was calculated to force the hands of Austria, Germany, and England, bringing them into the field against Russia, to the end that Ferdinand might be recognized and more firmly seated. The plot was discovered in time, according to those who hold this theory of the incident, and Johann Salvator came under the most severe displeasure of the emperor.

It is asserted by those who have studied the case dispassionately, that Johann Salvator’s rash course was one that came very near involving Austria in a Russian war, and that the most emphatic exhibitions of the emperor’s reprehension and anger were necessary. Accordingly, it is said, Franz Josef demanded the surrender of all rank and privileges by his cousin and exiled him from the empire for life. Here, at least, is a story of a more probable character, inasmuch as it presents provocation for the unprecedented harshness with which Archduke Johann Salvator was treated. No doubt his morganatic marriage and his other conflicts with higher authority were seized upon as disguises under which to hide the secret diplomatic motive.

Louisa, the runaway crown princess of Saxony, started a tale to the effect that her cousin, Johann Salvator, had torn the Order of the Golden Fleece from his breast in a rage and thrown it at the emperor, which thing can not have happened since the negotiations between the emperor and his recreant cousin were conducted at a distance through official emissaries or by mail.

Again, the Countess Marie Larisch, niece of the Empress Elizabeth, recounts even more fantastic yarns. She says in so many words that Crown Prince Rudolf was in a conspiracy with Johann Salvator and others to seize the crown of Hungary away from the emperor and so establish Rudolf as king before his time. It was fear of discovery in this plot, she continues, that led to the suicide of Rudolf. A few days after Mayerling, she recites, she delivered to Johann Salvator a locked box (apparently containing secret papers) on a promenade in the mist and he kissed her hand, exclaimed that she had saved his life—and more in the same strain.