The Coronation of Francis Joseph as King of Hungary in 1867

On June 8th 1867 there took place the coronation in Budapest of Francis Joseph as King of Hungary.

This followed upon the negotiation of the Ausgleich which created the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary and re-configured relationships within the Habsburg empire. The background to this settlement and its details can be read here. There is a fuller account with several maps here

Like all compromises the Ausgleich can be viewed in different ways. It brought stability to the Habsburg Empire, but entrenched Magyar authority over the whole realm of Hungary. Whereas before a single central authority in Vienna could balance - or play off against one another - the various minorities now power lay firmly over the Kingdom in Budapest with the Magyar elite. The possibility of a genuinely federal union based on historic and linguistic or ethnic divisions was pushed into the background. The Austrian half of the empire developed along more modern lines whilst it might well be argued than the Hungarian kingdom which retained a landowning agricultural model. However that agricultural base fed the whole empire so all did reasonably well.

The prosperity of post-1867 Budapest is obvious from the expansion and development of the capital city and its acquisition in these years of expansive and impressive public buildings on each bank of the Danube, including the restoration of the coronation church, the extension to the Royal Palace and most strikingly the enormous Parliament building with its inherent celebration of the realm's historic constitution.

Relations between the two realms were not always smooth and the Hungarian government acted as a brake on Austrian ideas of siding with France in 1870.

By the early twentieth century nationalist pressure groups were stirring - though how much and to what effect can be debated - and a feeling amongst some, notably Archduke Franz Ferdinand - that the Hungarians ought to be brought into line for the wider good of the Habsburg monarchy, meant that trouble was potentially brewing once the Emperor-King Francis Joseph died. having helped put the Dual Monarchy in place the Emperor-King refused to consider amending a project to which he had sworn.Events, of course, conspired to prevent the Archduke from trying to reconfigure it, and it was still in place when King Charles IV was crowned in 1916.

The history of the ceremonial and its significance within the historic Hungarian constituion can be read at Coronation of the Hungarian monarch

 

  The coronation of the King by the Prince Primate Archbishop of Esztergom and Count Andrassy

  Image: Pinterest/forum.aleaxanderpalace.org

 

A contemporary print by V.Katzler

The Hungarian King of Arms can be seen in the centre with his tabard and plumed hat.Behind the King and Andrassy is an Eastern-Rite bishop. Queen Elisabeth is on the left

 Image:Wikimedia 

 
 

A contemporary engraving of the Coronation 

Eastern-Rite bishops can again be seen in the right foreground. The Archbishop of Esztergom is shown here wearing achasuble rather than a cope as in the preceding and subsequent images

Image:Wikimedia

 

  A later painting of the Coronation

Image: Wikimedia

   

 The King ceremonially flourishes the sword in defence of the realm

 Image: Look and Learn from the Illustrtaed London News June 29 1867

 

 

Traditionally the Queen of Hungary is touched upon the right shoulder with the Holy Crown as part of her Coronation

Image: Pinterest

 

The King and Queen receive the acclamation of their people

Image: Wikipedia 

Queen Elisabeth on the day of the Coronation

Image: Pinterest

The following piece by Stephan Gruber is taken from the website The World of the Habsburgs ( Die Habsburger.net):

 

His spelling still not entirely reliable, the nine-year-old Crown Prince Rudolf gave an account in his school exercise book of the coronation ceremony held in St Matthias’ Cathedral in Budapest. Here, on 8 June 1867, using the Crown of St Stephen, Franz Joseph and Elisabeth were crowned King and Queen of Hungary by Hungarian Prime Minister Count Andrássy and the Primate of the Catholic church:

"In the church there were many magnates and officers, then the music started and the Primate and many Catholic and Greek bishops and very many other priests. Then came Papa and Mama. Mama sat down on a kind of throne, and Papa went to the altar, where a lot of Latin was read out … Afterwards, the drums resounded and Andrássy and the Primate put the crown on Papa’s head. Then the imperial orb and sceptre were placed in Papa’s hands.“

As a result of defeats in Italy in 1859 and against Prussia in 1866, Franz Joseph’s position within the Monarchy had been considerably weakened. This forced the Emperor into a hasty compromise with the representatives of Hungary, something his wife Elisabeth had also strongly favoured. In 1867, Franz Joseph agreed to the Compromise plan, which required the restoration of traditional rights and Hungary’s independence, and which reinstated the old Hungarian constitution dating back to the period before the 1848 Revolution. In personal union, Franz Joseph was now simultaneously King of Hungary and Emperor of Austria, but through the Compromise, the two halves of the Empire were two formally independent states of equal status.

As a coronation gift, the royal couple were given the Baroque palace of Gödöllö. The Swiss envoy did not experience the ceremony in quite the same manner as the young Rudolf, finding it no longer contemporary in all its pageantry: ‘Despite its pomp and veritable magnificence, yet the entire procession gave the detached observer somewhat the impression of a carnival masquerade … This vestige from the Middle Ages simply does not fit with our times.’ The envoy moreover noted the irony of Franz Joseph being crowned by Count Andrássy:

"It gives an extremely strange impression to see the manner in which the man whose death sentence Emperor Franz Joseph had signed in 1849 and whose name was nailed to the gallows in Pest, now, eighteen years later, places the crown on the head of the monarch whose highest confidence he today enjoys.“

The Oath taking ceremony

A photograph that has been enhanced by engraving

Image: Wikiwand




The King taking the Oath


Image: Alamy



The King rides up the Coronation Hill

Image: Wikimedia



King Francis Joseph on horseback again flourishes his sword in sign of defending the realm from the Coronation Hill

Image: Die Welt der Habsburger



Statues in the Hungarian Parliament commemorating the Coronation of 1867

Image:Pinterest

All in all a veery impressive day and one which marked and symbolised a significant development in Habsburg and Hungarian history.

  

Emperor Francis Joseph

Today is the centenary of the death of the Empreror Francis Joseph in 1916. He died a few days short of the 68th anniversary of his accession, and his was the third longest reign of a European monarch to date.

His reign and era is often remembered or presented as period of stability, but was frequently one of political turmoil - the crisis of 1848-9 which brought the young Archduke to the Imperial throne in the stead of his uncle the Emperor Ferdinand, the conflicts over Italian unification with both Savoy and France in 1858-9, the war with Prussia and the loss of Venice in 1866 and the negotiation of the compromise with the Hungarians in 1867, as well as the failure of his brother to estanblish his own rule in Mexico and the summer crisis of 1914 that led to the First World War.

Moreover it was a reign marked by terrible personal tragedies for the Emperor and the Imperial family - notably the deaths of the Emperor Maximilian, of Crown Prince Rudolf, of the Empress Elisabeth and finally of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife at Sarajevo. The Emperor's response to news of his wife's murder in 1898 was " Am I to be spared nothing?" and such it must often have seemed to him.

He also displayed remarkable resiliance and a strong sense of duty to his people and inheritance as Emperor-King of Austria- Hungary, and enjoyed the devotion of the mass of his people.

A while ago I read the biography of the Emperor Twilight of the Habsburgs: The Life and times of Emperor Francis Joseph  by Alan Palmer - an Orielensis and noted writer of accessible accounts of nineteenth and early twentieth century figures - and what emerged was Francis Joseph's dry sense of humour. He is often presented as a rather arid, duty-obsessed figure in contrast to his beautiful and beguiling wife or his flamboyant son, but what Palmer brings out is a very Habsburg sense of the comic aspects of public life that is often missed in other accounts, or when presented in print can look cold or intimidating. In this book one senses the twinkle in the Imperial eye.

 

Image: Amazon

The Arms of the Austrian Empire and Kingdom of Hungary 

Image: Wikimedia

 

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]

Emperor Francis Joseph I

Today is the 180th anniversary of the birth of the Emperor Francis Joseph I, which seems as good an excuse as I can find to post this portrait of him as a young man - I think the portrait would be from about 1855. I had not seen this portrait before, and it is a reminder of the younger man before the venerable balding be-whiskered image became more or less definitive.

He is wearing the Order of the Golden Fleece, the star of the Order of Maria Theresa and the Fourth Class of the Russian Order of St George, which he was awarded in 1849 by Emperor Nicholas I for bravery under fire in the fighting in Hungary in the months following Francis Joseph's accession.