Twilight of Empire

by Greg King

  That Monday morning Rudolf awaited two mysterious communications, a letter and a telegram from an unknown correspondent or correspondents. Voting on the Army Reform Bill was scheduled to take place in Budapest; as Count István Károly was in regular telegraphic communication with Rudolf over the next thirty hours, it is possible that this letter and telegram concerned events in Hungary. Perhaps they reported the violent pro-Magyar demonstrations in the streets of Budapest that forced postponement of the parliamentary vote until the following day; perhaps they alerted him that prospects for the vote no longer favored those seeking independence from Austria.3

  Rudolf Püchel recalled that, on reading the telegram, the crown prince anxiously folded it up and remarked to himself, “Yes, it has to be.”4 Before leaving Vienna, Rudolf sat down and wrote his farewell letter to Count Ladislaus von Szögyény-Marich, which he carried with him to Mayerling. This directed Szögyény-Marich to “open my desk here in Vienna” and deliver the letters found within. “I must die, it’s the only way to leave this world like a gentleman,” Rudolf added. Yet Rudolf continued to waver. With the Hungarian situation unresolved and the vote pending, it seems that he still harbored some hope of an outcome favorable to his plans. Indeed, that same morning he told Marie Larisch that “a great deal may happen in two days,” suggesting that he had not yet made a final decision.5

  Retreat to Mayerling offered Rudolf brief respite as he awaited word from Hungary and pondered his fate. Yet despite the romantic legend, no evidence suggests that Mary journeyed to the lodge intending to kill herself. In fact it seems likely that Rudolf only asked her to join him at Mayerling during their brief meeting at the Hofburg that Monday morning. She brought nothing with her—no toiletries, and no clothing other than the ice-skating costume she wore to the Hofburg. Unaware of Rudolf’s plan to end their affair, she seems to have expected nothing more than a romantic rendezvous.

  While Rudolf had long discussed killing himself, evidence that Mary was suicidal is extraordinarily slim: The Mayerling tragedy amplified what little did exist. Helene Vetsera later recounted that, according to the French tutor Gabriel Dubray, Mary had once mentioned the suicide of a student named Henri Chambige. A year earlier, having made a pact with his mistress, Chambige shot her and then turned the gun on himself; having bungled his own death, he was tried and convicted of his lover’s murder.6 Dubray was surprised at Mary’s “astonishing familiarity” with details of the case, and by her remark that a friend had told her that Chambige should have used a hand-held mirror to better adjust his aim.7 Yet Mary was merely repeating what Rudolf—the unnamed friend she mentioned to Dubray—had told her about István Kégl’s suicide using a hand-held mirror to improve his aim. Rudolf, not Mary, was obsessed with the case, once interrupting his protesting wife’s conversation with a courtier to wallow in the details.8

  At Christmas 1888 Mary sent Marie Larisch a signed copy of the joint photograph they had taken at Adele’s on November 5, writing underneath, “True until Death,” and adding in a letter, “This is the last photograph I shall ever have done.” This sounds ominous, but Mary then explained that she meant to emulate the camera-shy Empress Elisabeth and avoid future photographs, so that no one would “remember me except as a pretty young girl.”9 Then there was her autumn 1888 letter to Hermine Tobias, in which Mary wrote that she and Rudolf had discussed a suicide pact—compelling except for the next sentences: “But no! He must not die. He must live for his people. Everything surrounding him must be only fame and glory.”10 And on November 5 Mary wrote to Hermine that she would “have to kill myself” if her mother or sister learned the truth about her liaison with Rudolf. Given that both Helene and Hanna were well aware of the affair, this seems to have been a careful bit of dissembling aimed at the morally censorious Tobias.

  The emotionally volatile Mary was given to such exaggerated outbursts. In January, according to a bit of thirdhand gossip, she supposedly hinted to a courtier that in a few weeks she would be dead.11 It says something about the frequency of Mary’s histrionic declarations that no one took them seriously. Nor was the note Marie Larisch handed over to Helene Vetsera on January 28 particularly damning. Once again Mary insisted that she could not “go on living,” but this was the sort of melodramatic exclamation to which she was prone. Her line that she could be found in the Danube seems to have been nothing more than an attempt to conceal the fact that she’d fled Vienna for Mayerling.

  Glamorized in the Viennese press and viewed as enthralling scandal, suicide took on a surreal quality. Boasted about, treated as adventure, and transformed into a macabre form of mass entertainment, it fascinated fashionable elements in the imperial capital. Mary never expressed such interests or made ominous—if all-too-glib—declarations until her affair with Rudolf. The crown prince slowly drew her into his grim and growing fascination with death, until she was repeating his morbid thoughts as her own. As he had done many times before, Rudolf certainly told Mary he had pondered killing himself and, as he had done with many others, asked if she would join him in a suicide pact. It was just the sort of romantic idea that appealed to the emotionally overwrought seventeen-year-old.

  This almost lighthearted approach, driven by obsession and stripped of any sense of finality, clashed with reality. On January 18 Mary made out a will and locked it away in her jewelry case—suggesting that on some level she was toying with the possible idea of her own impending death. Yet only a week later, a fortune-teller’s ominous prediction of a looming suicide in her family so upset Mary that she could not sleep—certainly evidence that she had not yet abandoned her thirst for life.

  In fact—and in contrast to the despondent Rudolf—Mary passed the last weeks of her life in a state of exaltation. Everything in her actions—her flaunting of the affair, her declaration that she was Stephanie’s rival, her confrontation with the crown princess at the Reuss soiree—it all suggests a sense of triumph, not impending tragedy. She was looking not toward the grave but toward the future, one she now imagined that she would share with Rudolf. This almost certainly explains what happened on January 13: If, as seems probable, Mary confessed that she was pregnant with Rudolf’s child, she may well have felt that they now belonged to each other “body and soul.”

  Block by block, Mary’s fevered mind constructed a glittering imaginary palace—and Rudolf, fueled by too much alcohol and morphine, likely laid the inadvertent foundation with loose talk of his Hungarian plans and possible request for an annulment. Rudolf wasn’t a fool: Marrying a seventeen-year-old minor aristocrat of extremely scandalous reputation would scarcely serve his plans to found a new Hungarian dynasty. But unencumbered by such realities, Mary may have incorrectly filled in the unspoken blanks and believed that the ultimate fantasy was within reach. Already convinced of her hold over Rudolf and starring as the heroine in a liaison she painted as an epic royal romance, the credulous young woman may have envisioned a future at his side: his wife once he was free, mother of his heir, and crowned as his queen in Budapest. Eager to avoid unpleasant scenes and emotional confrontations, Rudolf could nod agreeably and let her believe what she wanted to, knowing that he could wait until fate forced his hand.

  And fate, in the guise of Franz Josef’s demand that he end the affair with Mary Vetsera, had now indeed done precisely that. The Hungarian scheme, as Rudolf confessed to Larisch, was far more important than any love affair. After avoiding her, after couching his messages to her in increasingly distant terms, after starting a new romance with a chorus girl, after bestowing his customary farewell gift of an engraved cigarette case, after complaining of her and begging Larisch to take Mary away—it all came down to an imperial order. Whether that order came with warnings of a possibly incestuous relationship, whether Mary was pregnant or not, whether worries about potential Vetsera blackmail played into the ultimatum—Rudolf’s father had unwittingly come to his rescue and given him exactly what he most wanted: a way out of his liaison with Mary.

  The break with Mary was unavo
idable, yet Rudolf lacked the courage of his convictions. The unfinished letter to Hanna makes clear that Rudolf waited until Tuesday to tell Mary of his father’s order. That Monday evening at Mayerling they were still awaiting word from Budapest: news that would determine his future, and news that she imagined would make her queen of Hungary. It was her misfortune that the liaison with Rudolf reached a climax just as his world collapsed.

  On Tuesday, January 29, Rudolf excused himself from shooting at Mayerling with Prince Philipp of Coburg and Count Josef Hoyos. Although he claimed a cold, it is likely that he remained at the lodge awaiting word of developments in Budapest. The Hungarian plot apparently hinged on that morning’s parliamentary vote. Even if Franz Josef had learned of the conspiracy, Rudolf might have clung to some sliver of hope that the situation would work itself out.

  But then three telegrams arrived at Mayerling, telegrams sent by Károly in Budapest.12 The parliamentary vote had been taken. Everyone thought that Prime Minister Tisza would be lucky if he could get 60 deputies to support Vienna’s Army Reform Bill; instead, a surprising 126 deputies voted in favor. “Down with the traitors!” Magyar nationalists shouted from the floor between loud hisses. “There are 126 traitors!”13 Defeat of the Magyar cause ended any push for independence: The Hungarian misadventure was over.

  Abruptly Rudolf cancelled his plans to return to Vienna and attend his sister’s engagement dinner. He wandered about in a daze: A gamekeeper remembered that the crown prince seemed preoccupied that afternoon—and with good reason. Rudolf could no longer avoid the consequences of his impulsive actions. The emotionally volatile Mary couldn’t and wouldn’t be shaken off despite Rudolf’s best efforts, and now she apparently believed that she was pregnant. Franz Josef had ordered him to end the affair with his teenage mistress and possibly revealed fears that she might be his half sister. There’d been the uncomfortable confrontation with Franz Josef, the annulment request, and revelation of the Hungarian conspiracy: Now Rudolf’s last tenuous hope for the future had crumbled away in Budapest.

  The emperor would never have allowed his subjects to learn of his son’s treachery, nor would he have subjected his heir to a court-martial. Franz Josef was too much of a traditionalist to have removed Rudolf from the succession, which would have brought public disgrace on the house of Habsburg. But Rudolf’s anxious and unbalanced mind probably amplified the humiliation he imagined loomed in his future. He might be stripped of what little autonomy and authority he possessed, his freedom restricted, and be forced back into the narrow confines of a controlled life beneath his father’s roof. Anticipating the worst, as he often did, Rudolf now saw death as the only escape from his escalating troubles. The crown prince’s fate was sealed.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  More than 125 years have passed since the tragedy at Mayerling. Shifting stories, deliberate lies, wild theories, and the disappearance of evidence have shrouded the story in seemingly impenetrable layers of mystery. Absent documentation, history can only speculate about what happened between Rudolf and Mary at that isolated lodge. But enough remains, when coupled with modern forensic evidence and psychological analysis, to weave together a plausible version of events, one that not only fits within the framework of known facts but also offers a believable and ultimately devastating reconstruction of those final, fateful hours.

  The telegrams from Károly on Tuesday, January 29, persuaded Rudolf to end his life. Having made the decision to die, he now faced the unpleasant ordeal of cutting Mary loose. She waited in his corner bedroom. Lacking courage and disliking emotional confrontations, Rudolf probably took the easiest way out with his volatile and unpredictable mistress. Sometime early that evening he told Mary that the emperor had ordered him to end the affair. “Today he finally confessed to me that I could never be his,” she wrote to Hanna that night; “he gave his father his word of honor that he will break with me. Everything is over!”1

  Rudolf clearly used his father’s order as a convenient excuse, a way to cloak the lack of romantic ardor that had been growing within him for the last month. It absolved him of responsibility and relieved him of having to admit so much: that he’d been trying to pull away, that he’d sent Mary his customary farewell gift of a cigarette case, that he’d turned his attentions to a chorus girl at the Karl Theater, and that he was still sleeping with Mitzi Caspar. By blaming a “cruel” emperor, Rudolf probably believed that he could let Mary down gently and direct any emotional outburst away from himself and toward his father. He could protest, commiserate, and portray himself as heartbroken without ever letting Mary know the truth.

  But Rudolf hadn’t counted on Mary’s childish ability to deny reality. He’d discussed his unhappy marriage with her; while inebriated he’d probably revealed something of the Hungarian plot and his requested annulment. Knowing that she’d never be acceptable as a royal consort, Rudolf was unlikely to have made any promises, but the impressionable Mary would have heard only what she wanted to. Her stunningly naive capacity for wishful thinking led to dreams that Rudolf meant to marry her and place her on the Hungarian throne.

  Those dreams now shattered, one after another. The affair was over; there’d be no Hungarian throne, and no annulment. The bleak reality must have crushed her, but Mary still had one last trump card to play: her apparent pregnancy. Even if Rudolf couldn’t be with her or make her queen of Hungary, a child would unite their futures and prove their love to the world. But any mention of this likely compelled Rudolf’s decision. There couldn’t be a child, not if it was at all possible that Rudolf and Mary might be half siblings. Arrangements could be made to eliminate the problem, but the risk was too great. In any case there’d be no united future for Rudolf and Mary: He planned to kill himself.

  Rudolf had previously sought companions in a suicide pact: Stephanie, Mitzi Caspar, his adjutants—it didn’t seem to matter who joined him. But now, in a last, unselfish gesture, he decided that Mary must return to Vienna. Leaving his room at seven to join Hoyos for dinner, Rudolf asked Bratfisch to have his carriage ready to take Mary back to the capital early the next morning.2 He would face his future alone at the snow-embowered lodge.

  While Rudolf dined with Hoyos, Mary remained hidden in the bedroom, alone with her disappointment. She’d never be queen of Hungary, never be his wife; his protection would be gone, and not even her presumed pregnancy offered hope—not if worries about her paternity dictated future actions. She’d entered an enchanted world only to find rejection. Return to a hostile household, to be berated by her mother and threatened that she must marry her uncle to conceal her pregnancy, loomed on the horizon. It was too much for Mary to bear: She wanted no part of her hated former life. Then there was the inevitable public humiliation she would face. Not only would everyone know that her imperial lover had discarded her but once he had killed himself, Mary must have worried that she’d somehow be blamed for his actions.

  A situation so long teased about and toyed with suddenly became real. Mary had feared such an outcome when she lightly mentioned a suicide pact to Hermine Tobias, writing, “But no! He must not die! He must live for his people!”3 But now, with a bleak future in mind, Mary made her own decision. She would not allow herself to be shamed, to be sent back to Vienna; instead she would die with him, dedicated to the romantic fantasy she’d spun out in her head to the very end.

  Fashionable Vienna’s preoccupation with suicide, its almost lighthearted reveling in the dramatic details, likely exerted a strong pull on Mary’s mind. And, somewhere in her fevered imagination, she seems to have envisioned her death alongside the crown prince as the final rung on the ladder of her social ambition, a way to perpetuate the romantic myth in which she believed. If she could not share his life, she could share his death, and thereby prove her love to him, to her family, and to history. If the crown of Hungary could never rest atop her head, she would replace it with a crown of martyrdom and by doing so, ensure her immortality in a grand Wagnerian Liebestod.

  Mary had rom
anticized the scene that now stretched out before her. “In some place that no one knows,” she had written to Hermine Tobias, “after some happy hours,” she would die “together” with Rudolf.4 The snowbound lodge became the altar on which Mary would sacrifice herself. Outside a chill wind swept down the dark valley, blowing gusts of white powder against the curtained and shuttered windows; inside the bedroom a fire crackled in the stove and light from the gas chandelier blazed across the fussy, overstuffed red velvet sofas and chairs. Mary took up a handful of engraved stationery from the desk and began writing her letters, letters meant to portray herself as the heroine in an epic romance to the last: It was Mary and Rudolf, united in their forbidden love against a cruel and uncaring world. To her mother she claimed that she “could not resist love,” and was “happier in death than in life.”5 Mary’s letter to Hanna, repeated exactly this phrase, “I could not resist love”; she was happy to go with Rudolf “into the unknown beyond.”6 Only in the unfinished note to Hanna did Mary admit that Rudolf had ended the affair, adding, “I go to my death serenely.”7

  An unsuspecting Rudolf, meanwhile, dined with Hoyos, outwardly calm and charming. He ate heartily and drank a copious amount of wine. “The Vienna woods are beautiful, very beautiful,” he commented to the count. Then, as they sat smoking after the meal, Rudolf pulled the three telegrams from Károly from his pocket and waved them in the air. His previously jovial air vanished. He did not let Hoyos read them, but complained that Károly’s actions had left him “compromised.” According to Hoyos, Rudolf remarked bitterly, “The affair is absolutely disastrous.”8

  A little after nine that Tuesday night, Rudolf left Hoyos and returned to his rooms. After Rudolf warned Loschek to let no one in, “not even the Emperor,” Mary handed the valet her gold-and-diamond watch “as a keepsake of this last time.”9 The couple stepped inside, and Rudolf closed the door behind them.