My Own Affairs

by Princess of Belgium Louise

I will leave this mysterious shadow and speak of two others who have passed, whose existence touches us more closely and constitutes a problem of State to minds interested in this subject.

I see in imagination the ball where Francis Ferdinand d'Este showed by his attachment to the Countess Chotek what would eventually come to pass between them. He loved her and she loved him; they were married. This was a great event. The countess was clever and intelligent, and she was not personally displeasing to the Emperor. She knew better than to offend this narrow-minded being. But her rôle in the political events of central Europe, from the day when the death of Rudolph allowed her to dream of a throne (even though it was only that of Hungary), was more important than one imagined.

It has occurred to me more than once, that if France had known and would have put up with an Austrian policy, she would have found that the Countess Chotek, raised to the rank of Duchess of Hohenberg, had far different ideas from those of Berlin. Unfortunately France committed the fault (and she will forgive me for daring to say so, en passant) of separating politics from religion, and of forgetting that religion is the first of all politics. She bound her own hands, bandaged her own eyes, and advanced on Europe. There was very little chance for her to reach the Danube, the most important of all the European routes.

I knew how much the King of the Belgians deplored the blindness of France, and what he said on this subject to more than one distinguished Frenchman. It was to the effect that the disadvantage of democratic governments was that they were obliged to provide numerous schools of thought before they possessed the small number of principles which constitute the foundation and the whole secret of government. The religious principle is not the least of these.

In a country in which statesmen formerly abounded, and which has ended politically through corrupt foolishness, that destroyer of characters and convictions, Countess Chotek, the woman of solid beliefs, came into prominence through the possession of a political brain.

She made Ferdinand d'Este a man capable of action and energy. Her chief fault and that of her husband was that through fear of showing weakness, they did not know how to show kindness. The hereditary archduke and his wife were strict in maintaining their landed possessions, and they taxed the people with great severity.

It needed little to aggravate the latent hatred against the heir to the thrones in a state divided against itself, and, added to this rivalry, jealousy and general restlessness existed, and certain trifling matters due to the severity of Francis Ferdinand and the Duchess of Hohenberg were perfidiously exploited against them. The day of their death was decided, the way was prepared, and the instruments selected. But I must pass over the terrible events of yesterday, the result of which does not justify me to speak.

The hereditary archduke and his wife had a powerful camarilla against them. They were not in need of partisans and they could have opposed cabal after cabal, but their adversaries, who were nearly all hidden, had plans outside the Monarchy.

This is not the place or the moment to discuss the conflict of influences of which Vienna was the battlefield. It will be the work of some penetrating and impartial genius who will perhaps be in a position to enlighten the world as to the general worthlessness of the Court of Austria during the ten or fifteen years before 1914. He will then make known to the world the history of one of the most formidable conflicts of self-interest and vanity which the world has ever known.

At the Court of Vienna there was a camarilla consisting of a group of men, more or less filled with ambition, who gathered around the Sovereign, guarding every approach to him, and they exploited the Prince to the best of their hatred and avidity. As the Emperor became more and more of a figure-head the old favourites saw themselves confronted with the coming power. This power, for the less important reasons which are known, and for others greater than these, recognized the morganatic marriage of Francis Ferdinand, and the ardent Catholicism of the Duchess of Hohenberg, who, owing to her character and her ambitious dreams for her children, possessed both interior and exterior enemies. There resulted, therefore, a third camarilla, the most secret and the most redoubtable, for the simple reason that, in a Court where individuals fight amongst themselves, they indirectly fight the whole world. They do not betray merely this one and that one—they betray their whole country.