Mexican Empire - The History of Maximilian and Carlota of Mexico

I. Boyhood

MAXIMILIAN I, King of Bavaria, had numerous offspring by two wives. Several of his daughters married German sovereigns, Caroline, the eldest, becoming the fourth wife of the Austrian Emperor Francis. When it was proposed that Caroline’s younger half-sister Sophie should marry the Hapsburg Archduke Francis Charles, one of the Emperor’s sons by a former marriage, the bride elect threw herself at her parents’ feet and protested vigorously at the fate in store for her. That imbecile! she sobbed. Never! However, she was told that the alliance had been decided upon some years before at the Congress of Vienna, and that settled the matter. Sophie was accordingly wedded to her Archduke in the year 1824, and the fact that her own half-sister became her mother-in-law was not regarded as being in any way unusual for those times: it merely added another strand to the tangled skein of German Imperial Family relationships.

The Archduchess Sophie was probably the handsomest of the Bavarian sisters of misfortune, as the King’s daughters were known; she was certainly the cleverest and most determined. As she took leave of her parents after the wedding ceremony she said with a defiant toss of her head: I have resolved to be happy, and I am going to be. Henceforward the whole course of her life was to exemplify this resolution, supported as it was by a dominating personality, marked willpower and an undying devotion to the cause of the Roman Catholic Church.

Sophie was not in love with Francis Charles, whose intellectual attainments, it must be admitted, were not of a particularly high order. Furthermore, for the first six years of their married life her husband gave her no children. It was not altogether surprising that her natural desire for intelligent companionship should find expression in the most romantic and at the same time pathetic figure in the Imperial Court. This was the young Napoleon Francis, Duke of Reichstadt, son of the first Napoleon by the Austrian Emperor Francis’s daughter Marie Louise. The good-looking Duke, who had been born into the purple as King of Rome, was virtually held a prisoner in the Austrian capital, although he was regarded by his father’s supporters as the rightful heir and titular ruler of the French people under the style of Napoleon II. Politically he was no more than a pawn on the European chess-board which it suited the Austrian Chancellor Prince Metternich to move about at will. As an individual Napoleon Francis was a brilliant dreamer who hoped to stage a successful come-back with the help of his Bonapartist partisans. For encouragement and sympathy in his schemes he looked in vain to his mother, who was not interested and in any case was much too busy with her morganatic husband and lover in the Italian Duchy of Parma, which he ruled, to devote any time to her son’s upbringing. In his life the place of mother and sister was taken by Sophie. To his empty boyhood she gave the only warmth of friendship and understanding he had known.

At this time Napoleon Francis was mastering the rudiments of military training and chafing under the restraints of barrack-room discipline. The young couple would spend hours together in Sophie’s cheerful apartment in the Hofburg, Vienna’s imperial palace, where they would talk about the first Napoleon, for Sophie’s Bavarian father had been one of the French Emperor’s staunchest allies. At other times she would play graceful Italian airs on the pianoforte while the young Duke would listen enraptured and dream of a restoration of his dynasty. I will go, if France calls me, he said, but it must be Imperial France, not anarchy. For a short time during the hot July days in 1830 Napoleon’s heir thought that his hour had come, for there was revolution in Paris and the tricolour flew again. But the Fates decreed otherwise. Louis Philippe the citizen King, about whom the first Napoleon had warned his son, ascended the French throne complete with bourgeois impedimenta of umbrella and galoshes, while the unfortunate Napoleon the Second languished in his Viennese hot-house.

In 1831 the Duke was twenty years old. He radiated youth and beauty, wrote a friend who saw him at the British Ambassador’s New Year ball in the white, silver and green uniform of an Hungarian Grenadier Regiment. The dull pallor of his face, the melancholy curve of his mouth, his penetrating glance so full of fire, the harmony and poise of his movements endowed him with a charm that was irresistible. With the twenty-six-year-old Archduchess Sophie, the only woman who counted in his life, his friendship now developed into strong affection. During the summer of 1831 they saw a great deal of each other. At the imperial summer palace at Schönbrunn his apartments were situated directly above hers, which he could reach unknown to the Court servants by a small connecting staircase. To exactly what degree of intimacy this means of communication developed there is no means of discovering. One can only conjecture, for the lovers left no correspondence to show it.

It is known that Napoleon Francis was extremely fond of children. Sophie’s first child, Franz Joseph, had been born in the previous year, and the young Duke’s joy at its birth was scarcely less than its mother’s. He would fondle the infant for hours on his knee and amuse him with his watch-chain and other trinkets. By the time the Court returned to Vienna for the winter Sophie was again with child. It will never be known for certain who was responsible for its conception—Sophie’s husband the Archduke Francis Charles, or Napoleon’s l’aiglon, the Duke of Reichstadt. It may well be in this unborn child, which he was barely to live to see, that Napoleon II fulfilled the destiny which he strove so arduously and so vainly to achieve in his lifetime.

The young man’s health was bad, giving his friends serious cause for alarm. He began to lose weight and developed an unpleasant cough. He found difficulty in shouting orders on the parade-ground. Then one day as he was about to go on parade he was seized with a violent fit of coughing and began to spit blood. He could not disguise the dread truth from himself. He had consumption. Nevertheless, he continued to go on parade in all weathers, spent hours in the saddle, and seemed to take a fiendish delight in taxing his weak frame to the point of exhaustion. With the coming of summer in 1832 his condition grew worse. Sophie gave up some of her rooms in the Schönbrunn palace so that he might be more comfortable. It was a stroke of tragic irony that they were the very rooms which the lad’s illustrious father had occupied after he had vanquished the Austrian armies in the great campaigns of Austerlitz and Wagram.

Early in June Sophie returned to the palace after a short absence in Vienna. She was now in her eighth month, and from then on until the moment of her confinement she saw the ailing Napoleon Francis every day. They would still go for walks together in the lovely palace grounds, and when the young man was too weak to walk he would be carried into Sophie’s private garden where, in a beautiful setting of terraces and fountains, there was a little pavilion or summer-house. Here the Duke would stretch out on a long armchair every afternoon wearing a dressing-gown of red-and-white stripes with white trousers and a Greek cap that showed his blonde curls. Sophie would read to him, while he would play languidly with the infant Franz Joseph and stroke his hair.

A week later the rupture of an abscess in one of his lungs precipitated the final crisis. The physicians abandoned all hope and advised that he should receive the comforts of religion. To guard him from the painful impression that he was already a dying man, Sophie told him that he must join with her in receiving the Sacrament and unite their prayers for obtaining he, his health, and she, a happy delivery. This ceremony duly took place in the private chapel at Schölnbrunn, Sophie kneeling by his side and supporting him with her arms. That evening he declared he felt better, much refreshed and relieved. Some days later, after his mother, Marie Louise, had arrived from Italy, the invalid collapsed and was put to bed, and Sophie saw that the end was near. Nevertheless, Sophie kept up her long vigil by his bedside, although she herself was ill and in constant distress.

One day early in July Sophie did not come to Napoleon Francis’s room and in anxious tones the dying Duke asked where she was. He was told that her pains had begun. Thereafter from hour to hour he sent for news of her. Next day, it was July 6, 1832, they told him that the Archduchess Sophie had been safely delivered of a second son and that the newlyborn would be called Ferdinand Maximilian—Ferdinand after the Emperor Francis’s eldest son and heir to the Austrian crown, and Maximilian after her Bavarian father. A day later the infant Archduke was baptized with the assistance of several high dignitaries of the Church. Napoleon Francis felt at peace.

The dying man lingered on for two more weeks. The end came during a violent thunder-storm which broke over the palace in the early morning of July 22. Sophie was still confined to her room, and when the sad news was broken to her later in the day she was stunned with grief. For several hours she lost consciousness, her milk dried up, and a high fever set in. For the next few days her own life was despaired of. Gradually she recovered, but it was not the same Sophie.

When she emerged from her sick-room into the light of public view her friends no longer found the gay and understanding Archduchess that they knew. All gentleness seemed to have left her. It was a bad omen for the infant Ferdinand Maximilian.¹

2

The imperial summer palace of Schonbrunn was a magnificent place containing over fourteen hundred rooms and one hundred and thirty-nine kitchens, in addition to a riding school, menagerie and rare botanical gardens. But the main building was always chilly and lacked adequate internal heating. The infant babes of the Archduchess Sophie were almost always suffering in consequence from colds in the head. According to modern ideas, the rooms assigned to the Archducal family were practically unfit for human habitation. Disorder, dust and dirt appeared on every side. The elder baby’s room was actually situated above the guards’ lavatory, an arrangement which produced the most unpleasant effects, especially in summer-time. That the little Archdukes survived such an infancy at all is due partly to the good constitutions with which they were born and partly to the tender care lavished upon them by their nurse.

The nurse, as befitted her distinguished charges, came of a noble German family. Baroness Louise Sturmfeder was no ordinary nurse. She had a profound distrust for the physicians of the time, and in an age when it was commonly believed that consumption was caused by cold atmosphere she strongly advocated a regime of fresh air and exercise. The Aja or Amie, as she was known, loved her charges dearly, but the elder child was unquestionably her favourite. For a time she regarded the new baby Maxi as an interloper—the step-child—while Franzi was her own boy. Maxi was barely three years old when he saw this. Looking at her with his big blue eyes he said: Amie, you know I love you just as much as you love Franzi. The Baroness melted and gradually her jealousy disappeared.

It was inevitable that Maximilian should play second string to his brother, and the effect in the formation of his character was unfortunate. He perpetually strove to be better than his brother in everything. Yet they were essentially different. Maxi was dreamy and temperamental, liking books and music; Franzi was industrious and methodical and despised the arts as those things, diplaying a strong preference for soldiering instead. But in spite of their fundamental differences which made themselves apparent in their characters at an early stage, no shadow darkened their relations as children and later as boys. That they were happy together, and that Franz in particular loved his younger brother, is borne out by a few letters written by Franz in the schoolroom which have survived.

When he was five, Maxi developed some infectious complaint, probably measles, and was isolated in his rooms in the palace. The elder brother wrote to him every day until he was released from quarantine. Franz had developed a remarkable aptitude for drawing and he devoted this talent to the invalid’s diversion. I have a very bad cold in my head, wrote Franz in one of his boyish notes, and have a tallow plaster round my neck every night when I go to bed, but this shall not prevent me from writing to you and sending you drawings in anticipation of the delight of our being together again. A little later Franz wrote: We are amusing ourselves very well here with our cannon and with reading, although it is not half as jolly as when we are all together upstairs and can have all sorts of games and occupations. Then again: Grandmama has given me a fortress. After it has been set up it can be bombarded with a little cannon which makes it collapse. It is so nicely made and garrisoned with cardboard soldiers. Farewell, I shall continue to contribute as much as I can to your entertainment.

As each boy passed his sixth birthday he was removed from the tender care of the Aja and handed over to a tutor for schooling in earnest. Each boy had his own tutor who was in turn subordinate to the Chief of the Household or Ajo Primo. This latter individual was a Frenchman, Count Heinrich Bombelles, who had been recommended by the ex-Empress Marie Louise. For each boy he drew up a formidable scholastic curriculum which grew steadily more exacting as the pupils increased in age and included an amazing variety of subjects. When they were seven they put in thirty-two hours’ study a week divided between religious instruction, German, writing, geography, history, French, Hungarian, Bohemian and drawing. Each year the hours of study grew longer, until at seventeen each lad spent fifty-five hours a week on a wide range of subjects which included, in addition to the foregoing, book-keeping, law, technology, Italian, Polish, military studies and diplomatic. In addition, the students were thoroughly trained in the sciences of dancing, fencing, riding, swimming and gymnastics.

This curriculum, although varied and intensive, was not unenlightened. No superstition, said Maximilian’s tutor to him, for it is the limit of fear and weakness. Hence Count Bombelles strictly forbade the boys to carry rosaries, because, as the younger brother had occasion to remember in later life, such practices easily led to superstitious fetishism and mechanical prayer without soul or understanding. Similar emphasis was laid upon physical training, and in the summer months lessons frequently took place outside in the open air. We are having a jolly time here, wrote Franz from Schonbrunn in 1841: from nine in the morning to half-past five in the afternoon we are in the garden, where we also dine: and we swim, too, every day. At five we either go for a walk or have gymnastics, but on Wednesdays—like today—I go for a ride. But while Franz did not really feel at home on horseback, Max early showed signs of becoming a dashing and even reckless horseman. I cannot ride slowly, Max confessed. He loved to gallop madly across country, which gave him some idea of the delight of flying as well as the sensation of no longer belonging to this weak earth. Indeed from his earliest days he was a firm believer in the possibility of aerial travel. I still augur something wonderful from attempts at flying, he wrote as a young man; and if ever the balloon theory should become a reality I shall devote myself to travelling in the air and am certain that I shall find in it the perfect concentration of enjoyment.

Physically the Archduke Ferdinand Max grew up quickly and his height was set off by his frank blue eyes and fair hair. A slightly receding chin hinted at a certain weakness of character which was undoubtedly promoted by the light-hearted and easy-going ways of so many of his Viennese friends and contemporaries. Nevertheless, the sense of moral values which his teachers inculcated was of the highest. Twenty-seven precepts which he assumed as the guiding rules of life he wrote down on a card. This card, which he invariably carried on his person, included such admirable self-admonitions as Never joke with one’s inferiors, never converse with the servants, Listen to all; trust few, Never let oneself be carried away by the first impression, and When taking any step, think of the consequences. If these precepts were not always observed, the fact that the young man should have reminded himself so frequently of them at least shows a commendable striving after perfection in those moral virtues of which he felt that he fell short.

Unlike his elder brother, Max developed a taste for the distant and exotic. On his ninth birthday he was given a small thatched cottage which was erected for him under the shade of the large trees which stood near the celebrated Boulingrin, that same bowling-green on which poor Napoleon Francis had spent most of his time during the last painful weeks of his life and where Franz Joseph used to fire off his toy cannon. Whilst looking through the books of pictures in the Court library Max had come upon some savage tribesmen of Africa in their native dress, and he therefore adorned the cottage with replicas of their weapons and built a kind of kraal or compound with stakes. In the evenings a fire gleamed merrily while a huge stone idol and a boa-constrictor’s skin which hung from one of the trees completed the native scene. On one side of the cottage beside a picturesque waterfall Max slung a hammock between two of the trees, near to which, as he put it when reminded of the scene many years later, sat a handsome and intelligent green parrot presented to me in those merry days by Napoleon’s widow.

THE DUKE OF REICHSTADT (NAPOLEON II) HOLDING THE INFANT ARCHDUKE FRANZ JOSEPH

From the water-colour by Johann Ender in the Albertina Collection in Vienna

THE ARCHDUCHESS SOPHIE OF BAVARIA MOTHER OF FRANZ JOSEPH AND MAXIMILIAN

From the portrait by Josef Kriehuber in the National Library in Vienna

THE IMPFRIAL PALACE OF SCHONBRUNN

From a contemporaiy engraving

In this happy world of make-believe Max used to ponder about far-off climes and he formed the resolution to travel. The first opportunity of seeing something of the real world outside the confines of Austrian Court life came a few years later when in the late summer of 1845 he was taken on a trip to Venice and Trieste. The two tutors made up the party along with Franz Joseph and a younger brother, Karl Ludwig, who was a year younger than Max.

The journey from Venice to Trieste was made by sea, and Max was enchanted by it. He had made up his mind now. He wanted to be a sailor.

3

In 1835 the Emperor Francis died, but his grandson Max, who was three years old at the time, did not really remember him. The young Archduke did, however, have a lively recollection of the late monarch’s political testament, which had been drafted by the astute old Chancellor Prince Metternich as a guide to the new Emperor, who was Francis’s eldest son Ferdinand. Do not shift the foundations of the edifice of State, so ran this remarkable document. Reign and change nothing; plant yourself firmly and unswervingly in the soil of the principles by whose constant observance I not only guided the Monarchy through storm and stress but also secured for it the high place which it occupies in the world. In addition to Austria proper, the Empire included Hungary, Bohemia, Croatia, Slovenia, Galicia, Bukovina and the Italian provinces of Lombardy and Venice. Ferdinand now meekly acquiesced in the continuance of a political system which had been perfected over a period of twenty years by Metternich. In fact, the new monarch was so weak and incapable that he readily allowed all the business of government to be executed on his behalf by a commission known as the Conference of State. Poor Ferdy is an idiot, said the Viennese to each other, shaking their heads.

The Conference of State consisted of four ill-assorted individuals—the Archduke Francis Charles, heir to the throne and father of Franz and Max, whose mental capabilities were very little above those of the reigning Emperor; the Archduke Ludwig, a Conservative of the narrowest type; the Imperial Chancellor Prince Metternich, himself the apotheosis of reaction, and the Finance Minister Count Kolowrat, a Conservative who posed as a Liberal less out of any sense of conviction than from a desire to thwart the Chancellor, with whom he was scarcely on speaking terms. The Archduchess Sophie, though no more a Liberal than the Finance Minister, was not impervious to the signs of discontent which were increasing not merely in Hungary and Italy but in the heart of the Austrian Empire. She was acutely aware, too, that, since the Emperor Ferdinand was incapable of having any children, the succession must devolve upon her husband and ultimately upon their eldest son. Her great ambition was to see this son firmly seated on the throne and ruling a loyal and satisfied people. Hence she entered warmly into the Finance Minister’s intrigues against the old Chancellor and his puppet Emperor.

The scheming Sophie hoped that her political ambitions would be achieved gradually and constitutionally. But events moved more swiftly and more radically than she anticipated. The year was 1848, that political annus mirabilis. The trouble started in Paris. There the mob rose in February and dethroned its bourgeois ruler Louis Philippe, umbrella, galoshes and all. The revolutionary hysteria quickly spread to Austria. Soon the mob was thundering outside the Chancellery in Vienna while Metternich sat glumly at his desk, and a delegation of burghers endeavoured to induce him to resign. We have nothing against your person, Prince, pointed out an alderman in the delegation, but everything against your system. In a few minutes the leader of the mob was in the building and forcing his way to the Chancellor’s study. Metternich opened the door. The intruder gasped: Another five minutes and I shall vouch for nothing. Metternich saw the point. He turned calmly to the delegation and informed its members that, as they evidently believed his continuance in office would imperil the welfare of the monarchy, he would resign.

To the Archduchess’s consternation the revolutionary ferment spread rapidly and did not stop short even of the Imperial Majesty. On May 15, 1848, just a fortnight after Metternich’s dramatic resignation, a crowd of students forced their way into the Hofburg where the whole imperial family was then living, and literally at the point of the musket obliged the unfortunate Emperor Ferdinand to grant a popular constitution. By this time the Court was thoroughly alarmed. Ferdinand was induced to migrate to Innsbruck under the pretext of a pleasure excursion, taking with him Sophie and her sons. The Archduchess was indignant but had no alternative. As she put it, I could have borne the loss of one of my children more easily than I can the ignominy of submitting to a mass of students. In the future the shame of the past will seem simply incredible.

While news of risings in other parts of the Austrian dominions were received by the uneasy imperial family, the work of restoring law and order was entrusted to the Governor of Prague, Prince Windischgratz, a severe military disciplinarian, who allowed himself a free hand for the purpose and in whom incidentally the Archduchess Sophie found a valuable ally for her dynastic plans. In August the Court was able to return to Vienna, where a revulsion of popular feeling set in momentarily in favour of the feeble Emperor, but a second rising, which took place in October and resulted in the murder of the Minister of War, drove the Court away again. This time the Emperor sought the security of the old fortress town of Olmiitz in Moravia. Meanwhile Windischgratz and his troops quickly reduced Vienna and drowned the insurrection in blood.

During the next six weeks a curious tragi-comedy was played out at Olmiitz. Putting their heads together, Sophie and Windischgratz decided upon a joint plan of action. They must persuade the weakened Emperor to abdicate, while her husband, Francis Charles, would renounce his claims to the throne, thus leaving the way open to her son Franz. The first step in this carefully prepared campaign was the appointment of a strong constitutional government headed by Windischgratz’s brother-in-law, Prince Felix Schwarzenberg, an energetic mixture of soldier, diplomat and roue with even less mercy in his makeup than Windischgratz. The next move was securing the Emperor’s agreement to surrender his imperial heritage. There was no difficulty over this as Ferdinand had long been tired of his care of state, which he proved only too willing to hand over. With his brother and heir Francis Charles the planners encountered harder going. Like most weak characters, Francis Charles proved obstinate. He pointed out that his father would never have approved the shirking of his divinely ordained responsibilities. It now happened most fortunately that a vision of the late Emperor appeared before the eyes of the puzzled Francis Charles as in a dream and announced that it was his will that the Archduke should stand aside in his son’s favour. The part of the imperial ghost, it may be added, was successfully undertaken by a courtier who was in Sophie’s pay and was later suitably rewarded for his pains. The trick worked, Francis Charles retired this time for good into political obscurity, and the eighteen-year-old Franz Joseph agreed to shoulder the imperial burden.

Of the young Archdukes only Franz himself was in the secret from the beginning. Max was not informed until the last moment, and even then, to keep up appearances, the boys did lessons with their tutors as usual. On December 1, 1848, while the boys were struggling with the elements of canon law, the Emperor issued an invitation to all members of the Court, Government and imperial family to attend the Archbishop’s palace early the following morning to hear an important announcement.

Punctually at the time appointed Archduke Max arrived with his younger brother Karl to find the throne-room packed with people and buzzing with excitement and curiosity. Immediately afterwards the Emperor and Empress came in with their household, followed by the Archduchess Sophie and the youthful Franz Joseph. Ferdinand took a seat before the throne, and amid tense silence rose and read a brief declaration in which he stated that important reasons had induced him to resign in favour of his nephew the Archduke Franz Joseph, while his beloved brother the Archduke Francis Charles had renounced his right to the succession. With this Ferdinand embraced the new Emperor, who had approached and knelt down before him. God bless you, he said in a voice breaking with tears. Be good. God will protect you. I was glad to do it.

Thus Franzi became Emperor of Austria. As he left the throne-room accompanied by his aide-de-camp Count Griinne, everyone present is said to have wept. Someone outside in the palace came up to the new Emperor and addressed him as Your Majesty. Franz Joseph started back suddenly, realizing the full import of the change which had just taken place. He turned and said simply: Farewell, my youth!

The new Emperor’s first task was the pacification of his disturbed dominions. The rebellious Italian provinces were easily subdued by the veteran Marshal Radetzky, but the kingdom of Hungary could only be recalled to the imperial fold with the aid of Russian troops which the Tsar Nicholas supplied. Max accompanied his brother the Emperor during the Hungarian campaign. With the Austrian first army corps under General Schlik they entered the town of Raab, which had been evacuated by the Hungarians on June 27, 1849, and they actively participated in the fighting which took place between Raab and Komorn. The fall of Buda a fortnight later foreshadowed the end of the campaign and enabled the Emperor and his brother to return to Vienna. A short time afterwards the rebel army capitulated.

To the terrible aftermath Maximilian at least was not insensible. The Hungarian Minister President and thirteen Hungarian generals were executed, over a hundred other Hungarian notables were hanged or shot, and nearly two thousand individuals imprisoned. This horrible vengeance was approved by the Emperor and carried out with the utmost rigour by the Austrian Commander-in-Chief, Baron Haynau, who became notorious for the public floggings of women which he ordered.

Thus were the Austrian provinces made safe for autocracy, but Maximilian felt disgusted. We call our age that of enlightenment, he wrote in his diary when reminded of these unhappy events some time later, but its shadowy side will also be commented on. In very many cities of Europe posterity will regard with amazement and horror the chambers in which without any question of law mere force has, under the influence of hateful revenge, condemned people to death at the notice of a few short hours, perhaps because they wanted something different from that desired by the power that stands above law.

4

In 1850, greatly to Maximilian’s delight, came the first real opportunity of satisfying his taste for the sea. For his benefit a party was got up for a trip to Greece and Asia Minor in the imperial corvette Vulcan. The vessel sailed from Trieste at the beginning of September under the command of Admiral Julius Wissiak of the Austrian navy, and the other members of the party included, in addition to Maximilian, his younger brother Karl Ludwig; Prince Jablonowsky, ayoung man of their own age; an elderly scholar called Kaltenbeck; the boys’ drawing master, Professor Geiger, and the Court Physician, Dr. Fritsch. Maximilian kept a diary of the voyage, which showed that at the age of eighteen he was already a shrewd observer and, unlike his elder brother the Emperor, possessed quite a pleasing sense of humour.

For the past seventeen years—virtually since the time Greece had achieved her independence—the country had been ruled by Maximilian’s Bavarian cousin Otto, and during his absence, as, for example, occurred on the occasion of this visit, by his beautiful young wife Amalie, daughter of the Grand Duke Augustus of Oldenburg. This couple dearly loved their adopted land, but in spite of the fact that since 1843 the monarchy had at least in theory become constitutional, it could not be said at any time to have been either enlightened or particularly successful. The country was still a constant prey to attempted revolts and outbreaks of brigandage. Unfortunately, to quote an acute contemporary English observer,¹ Otto took no measures to root out the social evils that caused the one, or the political evils that produced the other. The King could form no firm resolutions himself, and he reposed no confidence in his ministers. They were indeed not worthy of much, for both Bavarians and Greeks displayed far more eagerness to obtain ministerial portfolios than zeal in performing the duties of the offices with which they were entrusted. King Otto observed the meanness of their intrigues and the selfishness of their conduct. . . . To ensure complete subserviency no minister was allowed to remain very long in office, and men were usually selected without influence or ability and frequently without education.

Although Maximilian’s views on Greece were naturally to some extent coloured by family considerations, the grateful traveller was by no means blind to the true state of affairs in the country. As all men who fought in the War of Independence have the right to bear arms, he wrote in his diary, robbery becomes especially easy to them. Often in the middle of a town a house is attacked. . . . Banditti in Greece are an understood thing. It appears that the morality of the Greeks is not raised by the ideas of King, fatherland, and brotherly love. Their own advantage is their guiding star. Even the marriages are not from affection, but in most cases bargains of convenience; and the reflection that you are committing a wrong upon another vanishes with them before the pleasure of filling their own pockets.

A few days after leaving Trieste the Vulcan steamed into Patras, where the party disembarked and arranged with the Austrian Consul to ride across country to Nauplia where the corvette would pick them up. The horses, noted Maximilian in his diary, "awaited us before the Consul’s house, who received us on the steps in front in his morning négligé. Only a few of the beasts and their bridles would bear inspection. The poor nags were in a frightful state of emaciation, and their harness was a conglomeration of chains, ropes, and bits of leather. The contractor, whom we will call Demetry, was busily employed in dividing the beasts among the riders, and at the same time praised their qualities inordinately, in which the Consul, whose equestrian comprehension appeared to be very weak, supported him zealously. As a protection against the sun, Maximilian sported a Chinese parasol made of extraordinarily light stuff, which, in spite of the ridicule of his companions, served him in good stead. This incongruous excursion was attended by two gendarmes who were a mixture of Bavarian and Greek—their heads belonged to their fatherland and their clothes or uniforms were Greek".

The hundred and twenty miles between Patras and Nauplia by way of Corinth were covered without mishap, although in the last stage of their journey the travellers narrowly escaped being attacked by a band of robbers who successfully plundered another party in the same neighbourhood. At Nauplia they found the Vulcan riding at anchor, and the journey was immediately resumed on board in the direction of the Piraeus.

At the port they were met by the Austrian chargé d’affaires and the King’s Chamberlain, General Griva, who invited them on behalf of Their Majesties to lodge in the royal palace. He is one of the few in whom the King has entire confidence, noted Maximilian of this official, and in the fatal Revolution he showed his strength of character. The history of his past is somewhat obscure, and there are malicious stories afloat which describe him as having some taste for robber life. His exterior corresponds with this last supposition. He has a gloomy, somewhat lowering countenance. His complexion and hair are extraordinarily dark, so that he gains much from the becoming Grecian attire.

On their arrival in Athens Maximilian and his brother were conducted to the palace, where they were immediately received by the Queen, who appeared to greet them in an elegant morning toilet. Queen Amalie was now thirty-two years old, and in Maximilian’s opinion united dignity and amiability in a rare degree. Later in the day they joined her for her daily ride. The Queen descended the broad marble steps, and sprang with great agility on a Turkish horse which awaited her. The rest of the party followed Her Majesty’s example and galloped past the guards in the palace square. The Queen on horseback is a truly pleasant, agreeable sight, noted Maximilian. She rides splendidly, has a firm seat, and guides her horse at full gallop over places which many of our famous riders would scarcely pass at a foot’s pace.

The usual sightseeing excursions were made in this agreeable manner, and Maximilian did not seem to think that Amalie exposed herself to any risk in her rides. In fact, remarked the young man, it is easily to be seen that it is the Queen who supports the newly established throne of Greece by her personal influence over the affections of her people. However, Maximilian could not deny that it was this same people which seven years earlier had threatened the royal pair with deposition if the King refused to grant a constitution. It so happened that the anniversary of the Revolution of 1843 fell during Maximilian’s visit, and the young Archduke accompanied Her Majesty to the Metropolitan Church where, in the words of her guest, she was expected to pray for the preservation of institutions which had plunged her beloved Hellas in confusion. On this occasion Maximilian noticed that she was pressing her lips firmly together instead of opening them in prayer. What the visitor failed to observe, and what indeed ought to have been a great object lesson for him in later years, was that the Greek throne, in spite of the personal virtues of its occupants, did not really rest upon the solid support and goodwill of the Greek people.¹

From Athens the Vulcan sailed eastward across the Aegean Sea to Smyrna. The first morning in Asia Minor, noted Maximilian, the first in the Ottoman empire, smiled on us joyfully. Before us lay the East with its wealth, its vegetation, its thousand dazzling appeals to the senses. The blossoms of Asia opened before us; our long-cherished dreams were realized. Into this tourist’s paradise the party plunged eagerly. They all bought Persian carpets in the celebrated Bazaar at prices which Maximilian considered extraordinarily low, and they cheerfully submitted to the rigours of the Turkish bath alleviated by die accompanying pleasures of narghile pipes and lemonade sherbet. They were entertained by the Turkish Governor Ali Pashi to a magnificent dinner at which out of particular politeness and courtesy the Governor tore off a soft bone from the roast and presented it to his distinguished guest with an amiable smile, exactly as if it had been a flower.

Maximilian was particularly interested in discovering the Slave Market in Smyrna, which, it must be admitted, he did with considerable difficulty since, as he put it, the Turks pretend to the Christians that it no longer exists, feeling a kind of shame at this barbarous sale of human beings. There was no doubt that it did exist, and at the Archduke’s suggestion the drawing master, Johann Geiger, went to some pains to record the scene. Maximilian remembered clearly what he saw there. The sight of a naked woman frightens me, he confessed afterwards. I am made to believe that sin is unbearably attractive.

The truth was that the Archduke Ferdinand Max was growing up.

5

Very soon after his return from this short voyage Maximilian entered the Austrian navy with the rank of Lieutenant.¹ His country’s naval power at this time could hardly be said to be imposing. Every florin spent on this service was grudged, and in the interior of the Empire it was scarcely known there was a navy at all. The revolt of the Italian provinces had proved that the Austrian fleet, such as it was, was unready, while the admirals were slow to put to sea. Although after the risings in 1848 the service was reinforced by a number of North Germans and Danes and the supreme command was given to the Danish Admiral Dahlerup, both officers and ratings were still largely composed of natives of the Italian provinces, and orders to the crews were invariably given in the Italian rather than the German tongue—factors which were to prove of considerable assistance to Lombardy and Venetia in their final struggle for independence. Furthermore, morale was poor throughout the service.

From the moment he entered the service Maximilian became aware of this lamentable inefficiency and he talked to his fellow officers of how it could best be remedied. At first he could get no one to listen to him with the solitary exception