The negotiations with Hungary continued. Gyula Andrássy continued to travel back and forth between Vienna and Budapest, negotiating here and there, in constant communication with the Empress through Ida Ferenczy. Elisabeth’s daily sessions with Max Falk also continued, as did Eötvöss frequent letters to Falk, which Sisi continued to peruse.
Discussions at court about the Hungarians’ demands and their method of winning them through the Empress were heated and angry. The Bohemians felt relegated to the background, although Archduchess Sophie espoused their cause. But Sophie’s influence had waned considerably in recent times, while Sisi’s star had risen in the political as well as the private arena.
The concept of dualism—a large realm with two equally powerful political centers, Budapest and Vienna—was predicated on the elimination of the Slavs. Dualism assigned the political power of the state to two factions: the Hungarians, who were free to dominate all other nationalities in their section of the country (Transleithania); and the Germans, who would hold the same power over the proportionately much larger Slavic population in Cisleithania (the river Leitha being seen as the boundary). This division of power inflicted a great wrong on the Austrian Slavs. The objections of the uniformly pro-Bohemian Viennese Court Party to the Hungarian claims to power were more than justified.
Once again, Archduke Albrecht became the spokesman for the Court Party. He was one of the most important and most influential—and one of the most intelligent—Habsburgs of the nineteenth century. He was older by thirteen years than his great-nephew Franz Joseph, and his huge fortune dwarfed that of the Emperor. Now, after his 1866 victory at Custozza, which was widely and enthusiastically hailed, he possessed quite enough authority to make his voice heard in Austrian politics.
Since his term as military governor of Hungary, the field marshal was one of the most cordially hated men in Hungary. In these critical months, open opposition to the Empress came not from the Emperor or any of the ministers, but from Archduke Albrecht alone. Extremely violent confrontations ensued. Rumors were rife in public about vehement scenes between the two. No fewer than six reports on this conflict alone came to the information bureau.64 (No details about the matter are known, however; all the documents dealing with this fundamental political quarrel concerning the future of the Danube monarchy were subsequently removed from the bureau and are still missing.)
The discussions at court turned on the assessments of the Revolution of 1848. At the time, the imperial family had fled from Vienna to Olmütz and there had found loyalty and devotion, while the Hungarians, with their army of rebels (which included young Andrássy) marched on Vienna and the Emperor.
Now, suddenly, in the context of the Hungarians’ demands and constant political negotiations, 1848 was presented in quite a different light: Now the Hungarians spoke only of the wrong the Emperor had done to them at the time. The former revolutionaries—such as Andrássy—were celebrated as martyrs and heroes of the nation, while the Emperor who had pronounced his death sentence was depicted as the villain.
In this situation, too, the Empress, was partisan. Not only in the family circle, but also in conversations with such Hungarians as Bishop Mihály Horváth, she left no doubt whatever in her criticism of Franz Joseph, but at the same time she tried cleverly to bridge the old chasms: “Believe me, if it were in our power, my husband and I would be the first to bring Ludwig Battyany and the blood witnesses of Arad back to life.”65
Archduchess Sophie and Archduke Albrecht took up their old positions: They had no compassion for those who were hanged in 1849. As far as these Habsburgs were concerned, the dead were all of them merely rebels against the rightful rule of the Emperor.
Even the little Crown Prince was drawn into the dispute. Sophie had to tell him about 1848; “he always wanted to hear all the details,” she wrote in her diary.66 The Crown Prince also had a fondness for the romantic stories his adored mother told him about the heroes of the Hungarian revolution. The long stay in Hungary deeply influenced the eight-year-old’s intellectual and emotional development. He had an opportunity to witness the enthusiasm of the populace for his beautiful and politically active mother, and he, too, fell under Gyula Andrássy’s spell. Andrássy became his mentor, his political idol—and remained so to the end of Rudolf’s life.
Once again, the Emperor found himself trapped between Sophie and Elisabeth. And this time what was at stake was not family affairs but politics of the highest magnitude. It was a matter of nothing less than the question of Austria’s future—whether Germans and Hungarians alone should really share the power and thus disadvantage all other nationalities, or whether other solutions, which would include Bohemia, would have to be found.
In Vienna, the Empress employed her usual methods: She had toothaches or headaches whenever an official reception was in the offing. She did not appear at the solemn Easter vigil. She did not conceal her utter contempt for Vienna; but whenever a Hungarian came to the court, she sparkled in her full beauty, in matchless charm.
She kept her distance from her husband. Franz Joseph, for his part, was so much in love with his wife that he felt compelled to show his infinite, even abject gratitude for the slightest favor. And Elisabeth missed no trick to impose her will on the Emperor.
In February 1867, Prime Minister Richard Belcredi handed in his resignation (which was accepted). He did not mince words to explain his decision in a letter to the Emperor: “A constitutionalism that is based from the outset on the rule of only the Germans and Hungarians—definitely a minority—will never lead more than a fictive life in Austria.” He reminded the Emperor of his promise “that before a definite decision is taken concerning the question of conciliation, the countervailing opinions of the other kingdoms and provinces would be solicited. I consider it a point of honor to remain true to this promise and would have to see a great political error in the nonfulfillment of same.”67
As a former governor of Bohemia, Count Belcredi was not free to take any other attitude. His notes accuse the Empress of using the Emperor’s frame of mind during these months of misfortune “to support with renewed vigor the specific and selfish Hungarian endeavors, which she has patronized for a long time but hitherto without success.” Belcredi (and he was only one of many) charged the Empress with having abandoned her husband and pressuring him during the unfortunate months after Königgrätz. “To be separated from his family at such moments of heavy testing is to live in torment for anyone, but especially for a monarch, for whom intimate relations with others are made so much more difficult. Whenever I went to see him and found him totally isolated in the vast chambers of the castle, this always made the most painful impression on me.”68
Belcredi was followed as prime minister by Foreign Minister Ferdinand Beust, who thus exercised vast authority. Andrássy’s hopes of at least taking over the Foreign Ministry from Beust came to naught. Self-confident as he was, he told the Empress during one of their many political conversations that she should not interpret it as lack of modesty on his part if he harbored the conviction that at this particular moment, he was the only man who could be useful. Elisabeth barely let him finish: “How often I have told the Emperor as much!”69
Having had no luck with the Foreign Ministry, Andrássy now urged Elisabeth to advocate the prompt naming of a Hungarian ministry with extensive responsibility—under his, Andrássy’s, leadership, of course.
Archduchess Sophie resigned herself; early in February, her diary records, “It seems that an arrangement is being made with Hungary and concessions will be granted!”70
In mid-February 1867, the Hungarians pushed through the “conciliation.” The old Hungarian constitution was reestablished. The empire of Austria became the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, with two capitals (Vienna and Budapest), two parliaments, two cabinets. Only the minister of war, the foreign minister, and the minister of finance served both sectors (though the last of these acted in the dual capacity only for financial affairs that applied to the to
tal empire). According to the highly complex governmental structure, the Hungarians—who, in contrast to the peoples of the western half of the monarchy, represented a comparatively self-contained national bloc—were given excessive power, out of all proportion to their number in the total population. The costs were split in a ratio of 70 percent for Cisleithania and 30 percent for Hungary. This distribution formula, however, was to be renegotiated every ten years (a provision that eventually proved a major handicap). Now nothing stood in the way of Franz Joseph’s coronation as King of Hungary.
On February 17, 1867, Gyula Andrássy was named the first constitutional prime minister of Hungary. On that day, Ferencz Deák enunciated his memorable expression of thanks to “my friend Andrássy, the man of providence truly bestowed upon us by God’s grace.” In this context, it is important to remember that at this time the Empress was frequently apostrophized as “the Beautiful Providence granted to the Hungarian fatherland.” In Hungary, this and other analogies underlined the belief that two people above all others were responsible for the reorganization of the monarchy: Andrássy and Elisabeth. Conciliation was their joint achievement.
The Bohemia and Moravian diets, on the other hand, had to be shut down in March “because of the advancing concessions to Hungary!!” as Sophie angrily noted.71 The marshal of Bohemia, Count Hugo Salm, and Prince Edmund Schwarzenberg came to dinner with Archduchess Sophie and gave vent to their powerless resentments. Equally powerless in the face of the decision taken by the Emperor and his prime minister, Beust, were the political figures in Vienna.
Elisabeth’s Hungarian friends in Vienna, especially Ida Ferenczy and Max Falk, complained of the court’s spiteful acts, expressed primarily in pettinesses. For example, the court carriage, which came every day during the spring to take Max Falk from the offices of the First Austrian Savings Bank to Schönbrunn, began to arrive late on most days. During spells of warm weather, a closed carriage, upholstered in velvet, was sent; and when the spring rains poured down, an open carriage stood waiting outside the bank. Falk observed court protocol by wearing top hat and tails, with a starched shirt, whenever he called on the Empress; now he was forced to give his lessons sopping wet one day, bathed in perspiration on another. The Empress repaid him with cordiality and friendship, and with her allegiance to the Hungarian cause.72
Elisabeth’s first visit to Hungary after conciliation was truly a triumphal procession. Josef Eötvös, now minister of culture in Andrássy’s government, wrote Max Falk from Budapest, “Your high-born pupil was received among us with flowers. Day by day the enthusiasm grows. Firmly as I believe that never before has a country had a queen more deserving of it, I also know that there has never before been one so beloved. … I was always convinced that when a crown breaks, as the Hungarian crown broke in 1848, it can only be welded together again by the flames of feeling aroused in the hearts of the people.” For centuries, he went on, Hungarians had hoped “that the nation would love a member of the dynasty truly, with all its heart; and now that we have achieved as much, I have no further misgivings about the future.”73
Elisabeth paid homage to the compromise by displaying marital affection. Her letters to Franz Joseph from this period are full of tenderness; one from Budapest, for example, reads, “My beloved Emperor! Today I am also very sad, without you it is infinitely empty here. Every minute I think you will walk through the door or I will hurry to you. But I firmly hope that you will return soon, if only the coronation would take place on the 5th.”74 At this time, Sisi was composing all her letters to her husband and her children in Hungarian.
In May 1867, the Emperor, in a throne address, retroactively requested the Imperial Council to grant approval of the conciliation with Hungary, at the same time promising the western half of the empire—the kingdoms and provinces represented in the Imperial Council, as it was to be awkwardly phrased from then on—a further development of the constitution beyond the provisions of the October Diploma of 1860 and the February Patent of 1861, for the new order must, “as its essential consequence, provide the same security for the remaining kingdoms and provinces.” He promised the non-Hungarian provinces “every extension of autonomy that corresponds to their wishes and without endangering the total monarchy that can be granted.” Franz Joseph characterized the reorganization as “a work of peace and harmony” and begged that “a veil of forgetfulness” be spread “over the recent past, which left deep wounds in the empire.”75
*
Weeks before the coronation, the preparations began. Day after day, the Viennese could watch as great quantities of boxes and chests, rugs, even carefully wrapped state coaches, were loaded onto Danube steamers and sent from Vienna to Budapest. From china through flatware to table linens and furniture, everything necessary to housekeeping at the imperial court had to be sent to the castle in Budapest. At the very least, during the celebrations, more than a thousand people had to be provided with meals. The carriage and horses for the equipages were shipped by the same route.
In Budapest, there were different problems. In no time at all (and at horrendous prices, as the diplomats groaned), lodgings had to be found and made ready for the many visitors. The police were kept fully occupied with clearing Budapest of suspicious characters and followers of Kossuth during the festivities. (From his exile, Kossuth had let it be known in no uncertain terms that he would continue to advocate Hungarian independence and that he rejected both the compromise and Franz Joseph’s coronation.)
The coronation (June 8, 1867) began at four o’clock in the morning with a twenty-one-gun salute from the Citadel of St. Gerhardsberg (Saint Gerhard’s Mountain). At that early hour, people were already streaming from the countryside to the city, to line the streets. The ladies of the magnates kept their dressmakers and hairdressers working through the night to make certain to be ready promptly at six o’clock, when they began to wait in long lines of carriages to drive to the Church of St. Matthew in Budapest.
At seven o’clock, the coronation procession set out from the castle. Eleven standard-bearers, chosen from among the high nobility, preceded Gyula Andrássy, wearing on his chest the large cross of the Order of St. Stephen and carrying the holy crown of Hungary. He was followed by gonfaloniers bearing the state insignia resting on red velvet pillows. Then came Franz Joseph.
The undisputed highlight of the procession was the Queen. All the Hungarian newspapers described her appearance in detail; Pester Lloyd, for example, reported, “On her head the diamond crown, the glittering symbol of sovereignty, but the expression of humility in her bowed bearing and traces of the deepest emotion on her noble features—thus she walked—or rather floated—along, as if one of the paintings that adorn the sacred chambers had stepped out of its frame and come to life. The appearance of the Queen here at the holy site produced a deep and lasting impression.”76
At the solemn cathedral services, Franz Joseph was anointed King by the Primate of Hungary, but it was Andrássy—representing the palatine—who placed the crown on Franz Joseph’s head. Elisabeth, too, was anointed, but the crown, following an old custom, was held over her right shoulder—by Andrássy.
The ceremonies were accompanied by the singing of traditional psalms and one modern composition; years earlier, in anticipation of a royal coronation and at the request of the Prince Primate of Hungary, Franz Liszt had composed a coronation mass bursting with nationalist fire. Liszt traveled from Rome to Budapest specifically for the performance, but, as Pester Lloyd objected, he was not allowed to conduct his own work because of the “strict ceremonial.” The fact that a non-Hungarian conductor and the Imperial Court Choir from Vienna performed this nationalist Hungarian work aroused considerable anger.77
A further highlight of the endless festivities was the ceremonial procession at the conclusion of the coronation across the suspension bridge from Buda to Pest. (At the time, the two cities were still separate; they were not combined into Budapest until 1873—five years later.) On this occasion, the ladies were
spectators. All the participants in the procession were on horseback. The King rode his coronation white steed. Ludwig von Przibram, an eyewitness, reported:
What was offered here in the way of splendor of national costumes, in opulence of harnesses and saddles, in value of the gems in clasps, sword belts and pins, in antique weapons, swords studded with turquoise, rubies, and pearls, and so forth, corresponded more to the image of an Oriental display of magnificence than to the descriptions of the impoverishment and exhaustion of the country. The overall impression, however, was nevertheless that of a feudal-aristocratic military review. One truly believed oneself transported to the Middle Ages at the sight of these national barons and gonfaloniers, laden with splendor, followed in silent submission by the beweaponed vassals and men in their service. Most particularly the several mountain tribes, variously clad in hauberks and bearskins, their most striking adornment being animal heads or buffalo horns, recalling the time when Christian Europe was forced to defend itself against incursions from the pagan East. No trace of the bourgeois elements, of guilds, trades.78
The luxuriousness formed a harsh contrast to the extremely bad times. Thus, one Hungarian banker, for example, bought a set of antique buttons to go with a splendid Attila for his son, who was riding in the procession; the buttons alone cost 40,000 guldens. Count Edmund Batthyány had Karl Telepy, a painter, reconstruct his costume from medieval drawings. Under it, he wore a silver coat of mail made up of 18,000 links assembled painstakingly by hand. Count Edmund Zichy wore his famous emerald jewelry, valued far above 100,000 guldens, with some stones the size of hen’s eggs. Count Lajos Batthyány had a massive silver harness made; the horse blanket alone weighed twenty-four pounds.79 All this at a time when the Hungarian peasants lived in the most dire poverty.
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