Warm and Witty Side of Attila the Hun

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  When the Irish novelist Bram Stoker was looking for a sinister character from medieval Eastern Europe upon whom to base a vampire, Dracula was a logical choice. Was he a vampire? Of course not.

  It should be noted, however, that when in the 20th century archeologists opened Dracula’s sarcophagus in the Snagov monastery crypt, it was empty of human remains, containing instead only the bones of an animal identified as a wolf.

  The degree of darkness of the so-called “Dark Ages” (476 – 800 A.D.) has been exaggerated for dramatic purposes in film and print; but it really was pretty dark. For example:

  On Christmas Day in the year 800, Charlemagne, King of the Franks was crowned (Holy) Roman Emperor by the pope. He was the ruler of what is now France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, about 2/3s of Italy and a chunk of Spain. He was fluent in five languages.

  He was also totally illiterate!

  When he decided to build a cathedral in Aachen, his capital city (which is in Germany, adjacent to the Dutch and Belgian borders), he had to send all the way to Constantinople to find an architect; and when he decided to start a school in that cathedral to educate his nascent imperial bureaucracy, he had to send all the way to England to find a teacher, namely Alcuin of York. A dark age it was indeed.

  Quite well known is the comment attributed to Louis XIV of France, the paradigm of the absolute monarch: "L 'etat, c 'est moi," I am the state. Less well known, but perhaps more circumspective, is the statement made by his successor, Louis XV, whose own successor, Louis XVI, was beheaded by the French Revolution: "Après moi, le déluge," said Louis XV. After me, the flood.

  Frederick I (the Great) of Prussia had a very low opinion of humanity in general and his own relatives in particular. This can be seen in the fact that in his will he ordered that rather than being interred with his forbearers as would befit a great king of the Hohenzollern dynasty, his remains were to be buried with those of his dogs. His wishes were ignored, of course. He is buried on the grounds of San Souci, his palace in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam.

  Louis XVI was known for neither his intelligence, his perspicacity, nor his sense of humor—on July 14, 1789, the day when the storming of the Bastille inaugurated the FrenchRevolution that eventually cost him his throne and his head, his diary entry read, "Went hunting. Shot three grouse"—but even he had his moments.

  In late 1776 Benjamin Franklin departed for Paris as special emissary of the Continental Congress, with orders to do whatever was necessary to secure an alliance with France. This Louis was unwilling to do, at least until the American victory at Saratoga in October of 1777 convinced him that we might actually be able to win, with his help. But until late 1777, he would not even meet with Franklin.

  Everyone else of consequence in France was not so reticent. Franklin, it must be remembered, was a major international figure, second only to Voltaire as an embodiment of the Enlightenment in the minds of many Europeans. Inventor of the Franklin stove, the bifocal eyeglasses, and the harmonicum (which was not the same thing as the harmonica, by the way), the scientist who identified lightening as electricity and tamed it with the lightening rod, the publisher of Poor Richard's Almanac who contributed to Diderot's Encyclopedia, creator of the first public library system, the backwoods philosopher right out of Rousseau's image of the unspoiled natural nobleman uncorrupted by civilization, etc., etc., etc. France loved him. King Louis XVI had not met him, but could not stand him.

  Louis' sixteen-year-old niece in particular was obsessed with Franklin. Monsieur Franklin this, Monsieur Franklin that, on and on, day after day, until the king was driven to distraction. At last Louis decided upon a way of putting an end to it.

  In the 1770s, lavatories were rare. (The palace at Versailles had none. 700 rooms and no lavatories.) The common people disposed of their body wastes somewhat casually; people of means had what were called chamber pots, similar to the commodes used today by many elderlypeople. The contents of the chamber pot, after the person of means evacuated his or her bowels, would be disposed of by servants.

  On her seventeenth birthday, Louis XVI's niece was presented with a remarkable gift from her uncle: a chamber pot crafted of silver, with the face of Benjamin Franklin etched into the bottom of the bowl.

  After the defeat of Napoleon, the monarchs of Europe and/or their representatives met in Vienna to decide the post-war settlement (boundaries, territorial exchanges, dynastic restorations, etc.). It became very clear as the Congress of Vienna proceeded that a major rift was developing between the two Western powers, Britain and France, and the three Eastern powers, Prussia, Austria, and Russia. The King of Prussia, Frederick William III, suggested to Russian Tsar Alexander I and Austrian Emperor Francis I that they confer privately to coordinate strategy. The three drove out of Vienna into the Vienna Woods in an open carriage driven by a coachman. No other servants accompanied them and, inasmuch as they all spoke French, also no translators. But the horse bolted after being stung by a wasp and began galloping madly off despite the coachman's attempt to regain control. Soon the carriage struck a ditch and overturned. The coachman was killed and the three monarchs were deposited unceremoniously into a large puddle of mud and manure.

  As they struggled to pull themselves out of the muck, they saw a peasant driving his hay wagon slowly up the road. Francis walked in front of the slowly moving wagon and ordered the peasant to stop. "Drive us back to Vienna," he commanded.

  The peasant asked, "For how much money?"

  The Emperor was angered at being expected to pay his own subject for obedience. "Do you know who I am?" he bellowed. "Do you know who my companions are?"

  "No," the peasant said simply.

  "I am your lord Francis, Emperor of Austria, King of Bohemia, and Apostolic King of Hungary! These two men are the King of Prussia and the Tsar of All the Russias!" The peasant allowed his gaze to drift over the three filthy, muck-encrusted figures before him, and then, laughing, drove away. Francis was now outraged. "How dare you disobey me! You will be punished for this! What is your name?"

  The peasant called back over his shoulder, "I'm His Holiness the Pope."

  When he became Emperor of the French in 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte began thinking in terms of founding a dynasty. Up until that point he had been essentially a military dictator (which was what First Consul of the FrenchRepublic really was), and military dictatorship is not a hereditary office. But a monarch needs an heir. He and his wife Josephine had no children of their own, so he decided to divorce her and marry someone younger and of child-bearing age. He selected an Austrian princess, Maria Louisa von Hapsburg, the daughter of the Emperor Francis I. She promptly presented him with a son whom History knows variously as the King of Rome, Napoleon II, and the Duke of Reichstadt. (History knows Maria Louisa as Marie Louise.)

  What makes this marriage interesting is the dynastic connection it effected. Remember, Napoleon's rise to power was only possible because the French Revolution had overthrown the monarchy and had sent King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette to the guillotine. Marie Antoinette was herself an Austrian princess (Maria Antonia), daughter of the great Austro-Hungarian Queen Maria Theresa; her grandson, Marie Antoinette's nephew, was Emperor Francis; and thus Francis’ daughter, Napoleon's bride, was the grand-niece of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI.

  Thus it was that, with no sense of propriety, not of mention irony, Napoleon thereafter began referring to Louis as his uncle and Marie Antoinette as his aunt!

  Ludwig Van Beethoven was the first major composer able to avoid being dependent upon a royal or noble patron. Considering his attitude toward monarchs, this was probably a good thing. Once, when conducting a private concert for King Frederick William II of Prussia and his guests, he repeatedly stopped the chamber orchestra when the audience began talking during the performance. At last the king grew annoyed and demanded that the composer continue to conduct without interruption. Beethoven's response was that he would only do so if the audience paid attention. When Freder
ick William angrily reminded Beethoven that he was addressing a king, the composer replied, "Bah! Any lump of coal can be a king. There is only one Beethoven."

  From 1867 until 1908, the Chinese Empire was under the de facto rule of a woman named Tzu-Hsi (modern romanization: Cixi), commonly referred to as the Empress Dowager. Beginning as a teenaged concubine of the Emperor Xianfeng, she began ruling through her son as regent in 1867 and continued through her nephew and grandson until her death in 1908. Her impact upon a China in desperate need of reform, an impact which was largely negative, can be illustrated by the following anecdote: In 1900 the Boxer Rebellion, an anti-foreign outbreak, led to an alliance of eight nations (the European powers, the USA, and Japan) that then invaded China, captured Peking (Beijing), and took the Forbidden City. The Chinese armed forces, the navy in particular, were helpless against the invasion. The navy had been scheduled for modernization, but this had not occurred, because the Empress Dowager took the funds which had been designated for ship construction and with it ordered the construction of one single ship, which she named the "Boat of Purity and Ease." It was placed in the gardens of the ImperialSummer Palace. The boat was made of stone.

  As noted in the introduction, History is often more exciting than fiction. The story of Gustavus Vasa, the founder of modern Sweden, illustrates this quite well.

  Sweden had been united with Denmark, Norway, and Iceland in the Danish-dominated medieval Union of Kalmar, but in 1513 the Swedes revolted against the Danes. The Danes won, and on November 4, 1520, Christian II of Denmark, Norway, and Iceland was crowned King of Sweden in the cathedral in Uppsala. Christian had offered the Swedish rebels amnesty as a condition of their surrender; one week after his coronation, he ordered the beheading of seventy of the nobles who had rebelled. More nobles were arrested and executed the next day, and spectators who expressed shock and sympathy were themselves immediately seized and killed. The property and estates of all the dead were confiscated by the crown.

  The Swedes refer to these events as the "Stockholm Bath of Blood," and whatever vestigial willingness to accept union with Denmark still existed was drowned in it. The son of one of the murdered nobles, imprisoned by the order of Christian II, was a young man named Gustavus Vasa. He contrived to escape his captivity, and made his way to the German city of Lübeck, one of Denmark's commercial rivals, where he talked the city fathers into giving him money and lending him a ship. He got back to Sweden and spent the next few months wandering around in disguise, hiding with friends in remote villages, often narrowly avoiding capture by the Danish occupying forces. He resolved to begin to organize what today would be called a national liberation movement.

  He rode north to his own province of Dalecarlia, resolved to organize there, from the hardy yeomanry, the beginnings of an army that might free Sweden from the Danes. Traveling icy roads, he sought rest in the home of a former schoolmate. This friend gave him every hospitality, and then went off to notify the pro-Danish forces that the escaped hostage could now be caught; but the friend's wife warned Gustavus to flee. Riding onward twenty miles, he found asylum with a priest who hid him for a week. Moving thirty miles farther, he tried to rouse the town of Rattvik to revolt; but its people had not yet heard, and would not believe, the story of the Bath of Blood. Vasa rode over frozen meadows twenty-five miles north to Mora, and again pleaded for a revolutionary uprising, but the peasants listened in skeptical apathy. Friendless and for the moment hopeless, Gustavus turned his horse to the west, resigned to seeking asylum in Norway.

  But furtive exile was unnecessary. The people of Mora received confirmation of the Stockholm massacre, and they rose as one man in support of Vasa and in defiance of the Danes. This small force was the nucleus of a larger one, for as word spread throughout Sweden of both the massacre and the uprising, the ranks of his rebel force were swelled by men from all parts of the country. The Swedes captured the city of Uppsala, and the Danes, taken unawares by the sudden rebellion, lost province after province to Vasa's forces, which in May of 1523 laid siege to Stockholm. Christian II was unable to send reinforcements to aid his occupying army because he was facing a rebellion in Denmark as well. He had attempted to destroy the power of the Danish nobility, but he had overestimated his own power, and underestimated theirs. With his army tied down at home by the revolt of the nobles, he could spare nothing but his navy for the Swedish conflict. The navy received orders to harass the Swedish coast, but Vasa again persuaded the city fathers of Lübeck to come to his aid. The Germans sent him ten warships, with which he destroyed the Danish fleet. Facing defeat in Sweden, at war with the military alliance of the commercial cities of the North Sea (the Hansiatic League), and unable to suppress the rebellion in Denmark, Christian fled the country in 1523.

  On June 7, 1523, the Swedish diet proclaimed the twenty-seven-year-old Gustavus Vasa king as Gustavus I. His dynasty, the House of Vasa, ruled Sweden for the next three hundred years.

  But dynasties do sometimes go extinct, and the House of Vasa was no exception. History is filled with little ironies, among which must certainly be included the history of the House of Bernadotte. Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte was a French marshal in the service of Napoleonic France, and when a candidate was needed for the succession to the throne of Sweden, Napoleon suggested Bernadotte.

  The elderly King Charles XIII of Sweden and his Queen were childless and bereft of close relations, so there was no heir to the Swedish throne. To avoid internal conflict over the succession, not to mention the possibility of Russian mischief, Charles asked Napoleon, then at the height of his power and influence, to nominate someone for the elderly royal couple to adopt. Bernadotte was a perfect choice. From the standpoint of the Swedes, an experienced and respected military figure would be a fine king.

  And from the standpoint of Napoleon, he would be killing three birds with one stone. Bird number one: Sweden was a neutral power not under French control (as were neither Russia, an unreliable ally, nor Britain, an avowed enemy; Napoleon controlled everything else). Putting a French general on the Swedish throne would tie Sweden to France.

  Bird number two: Napoleon and Bernadotte disliked each other, and the marshal was frequently on the verge of insubordination. Napoleon had even stripped him of his command in 1806 for disobeying orders. The farther away he was from Paris, the better.

  Bird number three: Napoleon had arranged the marriage of Bernadotte to Désirée Clary, who had been engaged to Napoleon until he dumped her for Josephine. But Désirée's sister subsequently married Napoleon's brother Joseph, so she was constantly present at court and at family gatherings, and was thus a constant embarrassment to the emperor. (In addition, her behavior was extremely erratic; modern assessment suggests she may have been bipolar.) Again, the farther away from Paris ...

  So Bernadotte married Désirée and was adopted by Charles XIII. He thus became crown prince of Sweden, and his wife became crown princess. This situation led to three somewhat ironic developments.

  Irony number one: when Europe's kings united against Napoleon in 1813, instead of maintaining a connection with France, Bernadotte led Sweden into the anti-French alliance and played a key role in the ultimate victory over Napoleon. In the process he acquired Norway from Denmark, a territory Sweden retained until 1905. He became King of Sweden as Charles XIV John, and his wife became Queen, upon the death of Charles XIII in 1818.

  Irony number two: Napoleon had left Désirée for Josephine, but Josephine was unable to bear him children. Désirée gave Bernadotte a son, who succeeded his father as King Oscar I.

  Irony number three: the Bonaparte dynasty, overthrown in 1814, was briefly restored under Napoleon's nephew in 1854, and finally put to rest in 1871. The House of Bernadotte sits to this day upon the Swedish throne.

  In the years before Italian unification was finally accomplished, only the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia was ruled by an Italian dynasty, namely the House of Savoy, the Savoyard king at the time being Victor Emmanuel II. The Austrians ruled
Lombardy and Venetia in the north; the Papacy ruled the Papal States of Lazio, Umbria, Romagna and the Marches in the center; Bourbon nobles ruled the duchies of Parma, Modena, and Tuscany; and all Italy south of the Papal States were part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, also ruled by Bourbons.

  It was obvious to most Italian nationalists that unification under Victor Emmanuel was a goal both desirable and possible, a fact of which the Bourbons, the Austrians, and the Pope were all well aware. For this reason any expression of opinion in print or speech linking Italian nationalism with the House of Savoy was regarded as a crime and was punished severely.

  The Italians are great lovers of opera—many Italians maintain that they invented it—and one of the most popular operatic composers of the era was Giuseppe Verdi, whose major works (Rigoletto, La traviata, Aida, etc.) are still performed regularly all over the world. It was therefore no surprise to the authorities to find graffiti celebrating the composer on walls and bridges all over Italy. It took years for them to realize that when they saw the word V E R D I painted here and there in Rome, Milan, Venice, Naples, and elsewhere, they were actually seeing an abbreviation:

  Vittorio Emmanuel Rei D' Italia.

  Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy.

  Wilhelm I, King of Prussia and later Kaiser of the German Reich, was present as an observer at the crucial Battle of Sedan in 1870. When the battle was over, Napoleon III was a captive and the Prusso-German armies were moving on Paris, and Germany was about to be unified under the Prussian crown.

  The king had been by the side of his commanding general, Helmuth von Moltke, during the entire battle, but disappeared toward the end of the fight. Alarmed that Wilhelm might be wounded or captured, Moltke sent a search party to look for him. They found the king behind a tree, happily eating a large piece of chocolate which, he confessed, he had not wished to sharewith Moltke.