Flashman And The Tiger

Appendix

The Emperor Franz-Josef (1830-1916) and Empress Elisabeth (1837-1898)

"The last European monarch of the old school", was how the Emperor Franz-Josef I described himself to Theodore Roosevelt, with good reason, for he enjoyed a longer full sovereignty than any other European ruler, from the 1848 revolution when, as a dashing prince of eighteen, he succeeded to the throne abdicated by his uncle, until the middle of the First World War, by which time he had become the venerable, bald, bewhiskered grandpaternal figure which gazes benevolently out from his best-known portrait, ;a fine old Austrian gentleman, revered but remote from his subjects and the terrible conflict which he had helped to make. It was a tragic climax to a reign which had been neither successful nor happy; his empire had dwindled in size and power to the brink of extinction, and his personal life had been darkened by misfortunes his adored Empress had been assassinated, his son had committed suicide, his brother had died before a firing squad, and the murder of his nephew and heir had plunged Europe into war.

If he does not emerge as an attractive figure from his biographies, or from Flashman’s brief sketch on short acquaintance, it is still hard not to feel sympathy for Franz-Josef. His own faults may have contributed to his ill luck in love and war and statecraft, but it would have taken a ruler of unusual intelligence and political skill to bridge successfully the long imperial sunset from the end of Europe’s ancien régime to the age of jazz and democracy and mechanised warfare, and these he simply did not have. He had tried to rule as an absolute monarch presiding over a centralised bureaucracy and suppressing nationalist ambitions (especially those of Hungary) among the ill-assorted races of his unwieldy empire; changing times had forced him into reluctant concessions, but his reactionary nature and passion for the detail of administration, over which he laboured conscientiously, had blinded him to those greater issues which he had neither the vision nor the temperament to understand.

Such virtues as he had were physical rather than intellectual, which befitted the romantic prince of his early days. Tall, hand-some, recklessly brave if unsuccessful as a soldier, a splendid horseman and ardent sportsman, he seems to have been amiable and kindly at his best, although one biographer writes of his "haughty and offensive arrogance", and quotes examples. His personal tastes were spartan, his manner dignified and formal, and he was punctilious in matters of protocol, a characteristic which was no help in his marriage.

Franz-Josef’s chief recreation was in rural pursuits, shooting above all, and he was never happier than roving the woods above Ischl with his gun, leading the simple life. His other love was the theatre, and its ladies, and the close companion of his old age was an actress, Frau Schratt, to whom he was so closely attached that he became known as "Herr Schratt".

His marriage to Elisabeth of Bavaria, the glamorous "Sissi" or "Sisi", began as a fairy tale and ended in unhappiness and tragedy. We have Flashman’s authoritative word for it that she was a rare beauty, although some of her portraits suggest that she was strikingly pretty rather than classically perfect. Franz-Josef fell in love with her at first sight, but he was not a faithful husband, and while his teenage bride never paid him back in kind, she was too lively and spirited to be a docile little Empress. Quite apart from Franz-Josef’s infidelities (which did in fact lead to her infection) there were causes enough of disagreement. Sissi detested the ultra-formal etiquette of a hostile court, was disliked by her mother-in-law, developed strong Hungarian sympathies, and had a decidedly eccentric streak in her nature, all of which combined to bring about the imperial couple’s estrangement. The adoration in which she was held, especially in Hungary, probably did not help.

She took to wandering about Europe, cruising the Mediterranean and hunting in England and Ireland, a royal gypsy admired not only for her looks and charm but for her generous interest in charitable causes, and for that wayward independence which had so shocked Vienna. She was a fearless horsewoman, an expert gymnast who worked out regularly in a portable gym, a health-and-beauty fanatic who wrote poetry, suffered periodic bouts of ill-health and depression, and all too often gave signs of that instability which led Flashman to doubt her sanity.

Elisabeth bore Franz-Josef three daughters and a son, Rudolf, who is remembered only as the chief actor in the tragedy of Mayerling, where he took his own life and that of his mistress in 1889. Nine years later Elisabeth was stabbed to death by an anti-royalist fanatic at Geneva. She was sixty years old. (See Henri de Weindel, The Real Francis-Joseph, 1909; Francis Gribble, Life of the Emperor Francis Joseph, 1914; Gordon Brook-Shepherd, Royal Sunset, 1987; A. de Burgh, Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, 1899; Andrew Sinclair, Death by Fame, 1998.)