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.”