The Austro-Hungarian case for war

To mark the centenary today of the commencement of hostilities in 1914 with the Austro-Hungarian attack on Serbia the blog Rorate Caeli reproduces the text of the manifesto addressed by the Emperor Francis Joseph to his people that day. This outlines the arguments of the Imperial and Royal government for the atatck on Serbia. It can be viewed at  He left, never to return.

Rorate Caeli in a second post reproduces one of the telegrams sent to the Serbian government from Vienna, with a commentary on what it unleashed. This can be seen in The Telegram.

Mayerling

It was on the morning of January 30th 1889, 125 years ago today, that the staff of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary discovered the bodies of the heir to the throne and his teenage mistress Mary Vetsera in their bedroom at the hunting lodge at Mayerling in Lower Austria.

 The hunting lodge at Mayerling as it appeared in 1889

Image: Wikipedia

Immediately shrouded by the Imperial household and government to conceal what had actually happened the story remains mysterious and not fully explained to this day. From members of the Imperial family downwards there have been theories some more or less far-fetched to explain the events of that night and the attempts to present what had happened in as favourable light as possible given the dreadful circumstances.

Crown Prince Rudolf

This photograph apparently is from 1889, and shows him clean shaven apart from his moustache, as in the photograph of his corpse below. The side-whiskers and beard which he is often shown wearing in photographs appear to have been a fashion he had in earlier years but had abandoned by the time of his death.
He is wearing the Order of the Golden Fleece and the star of the Order of St Stephen.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

There is an online life of the Crown Prince which can be read at Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria 

abnd one of his wife, who diedin 1945, at Princess Stéphanie of Belgium. The unconventional life of their daughter, who died in 1963, can be read at Archduchess Elisabeth Marie. There is an online life of his mistress which can be read at  Baroness Mary Vetsera.
 

Baroness Mary Vetsera

 Image: Wikipedia

The last photograph taken of Baroness Mary Vetsera (at right), wearing the dress in which she was buried. On the left is Countess Marie Larisch, cousin of Crown Prince Rudolf who arranged assignations between him and Vetsera. Her memoirs My Life are usually regarded as a very unreliable account of her part in the story. They are, incidentally, a source for T.S.Eliot's The Wasteland

Image: Wikipedia

The events and theories which seek to explain what happened are set out in this online article which can be read on the Mayerling Incident.

From what I have read over the years of the story I am inclined to believe the simplest, that Rudolf, for whatever reason, killed Mary Vetsera and then, some hours later, shot himself, rather than elaborate theories of a French plot - as apparently was the opinion of the Empress Zita - or that he was assassinated by Austrian special forces as an embarrassment and threat - as in Judith Listowel's biography of the Archduke. Other theories and possibilities are discussed in the last link cited above.

The events of that night still have the power to shock, and it is not surprising they have spawned and inspired so many explanations and also so many films, dramas, a ballet and books.

Crown Prince Rudolf placed in a bed for private viewing by his family at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. His head had to be bandaged in order to cover gunshot wounds. When he later lay-in-state, his skull was reconstructed using wax so that his appearance appeared normal.

Image: Wikipedia

There is an account of Mayerling as it is today here. The hunting lodge was turned by his parents into an enclosed Discalced Carmelite convent of nuns to pray in perpetuity for the soul of the Crown Prince, and it remains that to this day, and that seems as appropriate way as any of marking the anniversary.

The memorial church constructed by the Emperor and Empress at the convent at Mayerling

Image:hotel.travel2austria.com

** I have seen one curious, indeed bizarre, modern memorial the events of 1889. It is a modern house in the village of Wressell in the East Riding near the remains of the medieval castle and which bears in large letters the name "Mayerling". What a name to choose for your home.

Imperial memorabilia

A lock of Emperor Francis Joseph I of Austria's hair 

  

Image: ALEXANDER KLEIN/AFP/Getty Images/Daily Telegraph

Today's Daily Telegraph has a report about an auction sale in Vienna at which a lock of hair of the Emperor Francis Joseph sold for the equivalent of £8,900, and other mementos of the Emperor, such as a pair of cuff-links, were also snapped up, as indeed was a ring linked to the Corsican Ogre. The report can be seen here.

Imperial Maundy

The tradition of the mandatum was not confined to English kings - it survived as a practice in the Austrian Empire and in Spain during the reign of King Alfonso XIII.

" In 1850, Franz Joseph participated for the first time as Emperor in the second of the traditional Habsburg expressions of dynastic piety: the Holy Thursday foot-washing ceremony, part of the four-day court observance of Easter. The master of the staff and the court prelates chose twelve poor elderly men, transported them to the Hofburg, and positioned them in the ceremonial hall on a raised dais. There, before an invited audience observing the scene from tribunes, the Emperor served the men a symbolic meal and Archdukes cleared the dishes. As a priest read aloud in Latin the words of the New Testament (John 3:15), “And he began to wash the feet of the disciples,” Franz Joseph knelt and, without rising from his knees, washed the feet of the twelve old men in imitation of Christ. Finally, the Emperor placed a bag of twenty silver coins around the necks of each before the men were led away and returned to their homes in imperial coaches."

The Emperor washing the feet of the poor on Holy Thursday

A lithograph of circa 1910

From Daniel L. Unowsky, The Pomp and Politics of Patriotism: Imperial Celebrations in Habsburg Austria 1848-1916 (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 2005), p. 29.

Image and text: nobility.org March 7, 2011

A 1907 newspeper report says that thirty silver coins were given, but I am not sure if that is accurate.

In 1904 the ceremony was attended by Consuelo Duchess of Marlborough (1877-1964) who described it in her memoirs The Glitter and the Gold, published in 1953 and recently reprinted. The Vanderbilt heiress displays in her autobiography both a thoroughgoing pleasure in the privileges of her rank and an American edginess about such privileges, both of which are apparent in her account of the occasion:

[Text to be added]

An Imperial census return

With the census still in mind I am reminded of the story of the Emperor Francis Joseph insisting on filling in his census form himself, and giving as his occupation "Self-employed public servant."

The story is sometimes told so as to imply that he was an uninspired man with a form-filling mentality. The truth is different - anyone who read's Alan Palmer's excellent biography of the Emperor realises that in addition to his dedication to his duties as sovereign Francis Joseph had a very dry sense of humour and a taste for irony.

The story also illustrates a particularly Habsburg characteristic, that of dedication to governance with a sense of resignation to doing that which God had called them to do. Practical governmental intelligence and hours of desk work are the hallmark of the dynasty.The dreamers amongst them, or those who became overly philosophical, such as Emperor Joseph II, or more tragically, the Emperor Maximillian of Mexico or Crown Prince Rudolf, were not typical of the dynasty. Doing one's duty by God and those you were called to rule in a slightly prosaic way, relieved by humour and sound common sense made them the most successful of family businesses. With other monarchies the dynasty changed, with the Habsburgs the countries did.

The Crown of St Wenceslas

As today is the Feast of St Wenceslas it seems a suitable day on which to post about the Crown that bears his name, although, like that of St Stephen in Hungary is later in date than the actual life of the saint.

The Wikipedia article about it is here. I am reproducing, with a few adaptations, two passages from that article:

"[The] Crown of Saint Wenceslas is the part of Czech crown jewels (also called the Czech treasure) made in 1347. The eleventh king of Bohemia from the House of Luxembourg, and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV [Charles I of Bohemia] had it made for his coronation and forthwith he dedicated it to the first patron saint of the country St. Wenceslas and bequeathed it as a state crown for the coronation of future Bohemian kings, his successors to the Bohemian throne. On the orders of Charles IV the new Royal Crown was to be permanently deposited in St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague Castle. It was used last time for the coronation of King Ferdinand V [Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria] in 1836."

"[A]n old Czech legend says that any usurper who places the crown on his head is doomed to die within a year, as the Crown is in personal property of St. Wenceslas and may only be worn by a rightful Bohemian King during his coronation."

Another Wikipedia article on the same set of links states that "[i]t was originally held in Karlstejn Castle, designed in the 14th century by Matthias of Arras. Since 1867 it has been stored in St. Vitus Cathedral of Prague Castle."

Another, independent, account says that Charles ordered a very rich crown to adorn the reliquary containng the skull of his predecessor and Bohemia's patron saint, St. Wenceslas. The crown was to be removed from the reliquary only for the coronation of the kings of Bohemia.

In the cross on the top is set a relic from the Crown of Thorns. The crown is inlaid with ninety one gems (emeralds, sapphires, rubies and amethysts) and twenty pearls and decorated with four large Fleur de Lys.

The Crown is but one example of the flowering of the arts in Bohemia under the Emperor Charles IV - a glittering period in the history of the kingdom which included the building of St Vitus Cathedral in Prague, including the shrine chapel of St Wenceslas, the castle at Karlstejn, and the foundation of the University of Prague - the Charles University. For a biography of the Emperor look here.

Here Charles as Holy Roman Emperor, and wearing the Imperial crown. In the painting, a votive picture of the Archbishop of Prague, John Ocko of Vlasim, by Theodore of Prague and circa 1370, and now in the National Gallery in Prague, he is depicted with his eldest surviving son and heir, Wenceslas IV, King of the Romans until he was deposed by the Electors in 1400, and of Bohemia until his death in 1419, accompanied by Charlemage and St Wenceslas (wearing the appropriate Ducal cap), kneeling before the Virgin and Child.

Here is a detail of the Emperor:

At least one later Bohemian monarch was not overly impressed by the crown's appearance - on the eve of her coronation Maria Theresa described it in a letter as looking like a "fool's cap" - in other words a jester's cap.

The last Bohemian coronation was, as mentioned above, in 1836, but in September 1871 the Emperor Francis Joseph informed the Bohemian Diet of his willingness to take the Bohemian Coronation oath. The proposal, presumably as part of a plan to establish a relationship similar to that Austria had estanblished with Hungary by the coronation there in 1867 was abandoned due to protests from the German speaking population of Bohemia, who disliked the idea of rule by the Czechs. It is possible that had the Habsburg Empire survived in 1918 that Bl.Charles I and IV would have overseen some such similar process of devolution within his hereditary lands and that the Bohemian coronation would have been revived.

The term the "Bohemian Crown" applies to the lands dependent upon it rather than to the actual crown, as explained here.

Coat of arms of the Bohemian Crown until 1635. Quarterly of five. 1.The checuered eagle of Moravia. 2 The eagle of Silesia.3 The wall of Upper Lusatia. 4 The eagle of Upper Silesia. 5 The ox of Lower Lusatia. An inescutcheon with the lion of Bohemia. Atop the arms is the Crown of St Wenceslas.

There is an illustrated list of the Dukes and Kings of Bohemia here.

Arms of the Kingdom of
Bohemia