The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) by Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
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Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy >> The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria Hungary, Volume I. (of 2)
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In this obligation to submit to the laws of the land he differs
from his grandmother Queen Victoria, and from his ally, Emperor
Francis-Joseph, the tenure of whose thrones was originally based on
what in olden times was known as the Divine right of kings. Thus, in
England, as in Austria, and even in Spain and Portugal, the mediaeval
theory still prevails that "_the king can do no wrong!_" Queen
Victoria, for instance, is not below the law like Emperor William,
but above it. No court has jurisdiction over her, and legally speaking
there is no jurisdiction upon earth to try her in a civil or criminal
way, much less to condemn her to punishment.
Of all the prerogatives enjoyed by Queen Victoria, the one, however,
of which the kaiser is the most envious is her supremacy of the state
Church of England. His ambition is to acquire the same position with
regard to the whole Lutheran Church as she enjoys over the Anglican
denomination. This dream, difficult of execution for reasons which I
will proceed to explain, originated with his great-grandfather, King
Frederick-William III., who first conceived the idea of a species of
Lutheran Kaliphate, with its headquarters at Berlin, and its Mecca at
Jerusalem.
His successor, King Frederick-William IV., took up the notion with all
the enthusiasm natural to his mystic character, and kept one of his
most trusted statesmen and confidants busily employed for years in
endeavoring to federate all the Reformed Churches, with the exception
of that of England, under the protectorate and supremacy of the
Hohenzollerns. Emperor William goes still further. He aspires to
become, not merely the temporal head of the Lutheran Church throughout
the world, but likewise its spiritual chief, its pontiff, in fact, in
the same manner that the czar is the chief ecclesiastical dignitary
and the duly consecrated spiritual head of the national Church
of Russia. William bases his claims to the dignity of a
_summus-episcopus_ on the fact that he is a titular bishop and
archbishop, some nineteen times over, for his ancestors, when annexing
the various petty states and sovereignties in bygone times, always
made a point of getting the mitre with the crown, and the crozier
with the purple and ermine. Many of the petty states of Germany in
mediaeval days were ruled, not by temporal rulers, but by archbishops
possessing the rank of sovereign and the title of prince.
The ecclesiastical dignity was, in fact, inherent, and part and parcel
of the sovereignty. Consequently, when Emperor William's ancestors
acquired the one, they likewise secured possession of the other, and
thus among his many ecclesiastical titles is that of Prince Archbishop
of Silesia, and it is in his ecclesiastical capacity that he has
conferred canonries and deaneries upon the military and civil members
of his household.
Of course, the difficulty in the way of the emperor's recognition as
the supreme head of the Lutheran Church is the fact that the Lutheran
faith is by no means confined to his dominions. Lutherans constitute
the major part of the population in Wuertemberg, Saxony and Baden, as
well as in all the other non-Prussian states of the Confederation,
save Bavaria. Besides this, there are millions of Lutherans in
Austro-Hungary, the Netherlands, Russia and Scandinavia, who could not
recognize his supremacy without disloyalty to their own rulers, all
of whom, with the exception of the king of Saxony, the Czar and the
Austrian emperor, are, like himself, members of the Reformed Church.
His celebrated pilgrimage to Jerusalem a year ago, the first
pilgrimage of a German emperor to the Holy Land since the days of the
Crusades, clearly showed the trend of the kaiser's aspirations. He
had invited all his fellow-Protestant monarchs to accompany him to
Jerusalem, either in person or to send one of the princes of their
houses as their representatives, and to ride in his train when he
made his entry into the Holy City of Christendom. But not one of the
sovereigns thus invited responded to the invitation tendered, and
William had no German or foreign prince with him during this memorable
pilgrimage.
It was the most extraordinary thing of the kind that has ever been
seen, the strangeness of the affair being intensified by that same
mixture of the mediaeval with the intensely modern and up-to-date
ways which constitutes so peculiar a phase of William's character. The
emperor rode into Jerusalem by the same route as that followed by the
Founder of Christianity on the first Palm Sunday, wearing a flowing
white mantle, and mounted on a milk-white steed. He prayed at dusk
with the members of his suite in the Garden of Gethsemane, piously
kneeling on the ground, pronounced a religious discourse on the Mount
of Olives, received the Holy Communion in the Coenaculum, that is to
say, the house in which, according to tradition, Christ celebrated
the Last Supper,--nay, he even preached a full-fledged sermon on the
occasion of the dedication of the Church of the Saviour at Jerusalem,
and traveled by road from Jerusalem to Damascus! And yet, destroying
all the romance and old-time glamor that might otherwise have
surrounded this imperial crusade, was the fact that he was a
"_personally conducted" Cook's tourist_, that his meals were prepared
by French chefs, that champagne was the ordinary beverage at his
table, and that, while tramcars were used to go about Damascus, the
railroad was selected by him to get back from Jerusalem to Jaffa!
Emperor William has a weakness for preaching, and it must be confessed
that he does it well. He possesses a very ready gift of speech,
and his fervent religious belief seems to serve as a species of
inspiration to his eloquence. Thus on board the Hohenzollern, during
his annual yachting cruise along the coast of Norway, he invariably
conducts divine service on Sunday morning, taking his place in front
of an altar erected on deck, upon which the German war-flag is
spread, in lieu of an altar-cloth. Luther's hymns, accompanied by the
trombones of the band, are sung. Then the emperor reads the epistle
and the gospel with great feeling, and recites the liturgical prayers
with considerable fervor. Next he preaches a sermon, which, as a rule,
is of his own composition, and extemporary, though occasionally he
will read the sermon of some well-known pulpit orator.
It has been observed that he is always much more indulgent in cases
of inattention on the part of the congregation when he reads a
sermon than when he preaches one of his own. Any sailor who has the
misfortune to fall asleep during the discourse is disciplined, and
his name figures, of course, on the punishment roll on the following
morning, when the day's report is presented to the emperor as the
commanding officer of the ship. If the sermon has been one of his
majesty's own composition, as a rule he allows the punishment to
stand. But if the discourse happens to have been of less illustrious
origin, he will almost invariably order the penalty to be remitted,
adding, with a smile of indulgence, that "the sermon was rather
dreary, wasn't it?"
At Berlin and at Potsdam the kaiser keeps his court chaplains
under very strict discipline, and they expose themselves to a stern
reprimand if they presume to extend their pulpit orations beyond the
term of ten or, at the most, fifteen minutes. Emperor William very
justly takes the ground that if they are sufficiently concise in their
remarks, they can say all that they have to say within that space of
time, and if their discourse is prolonged beyond the stipulated period
it loses its force and its power of retaining the interest and the
attention of the congregation.
The emperor does not hesitate to call the divines to account when
they enunciate doctrines of which he does not approve, and whereas
in former reigns a court chaplaincy was regarded in the light of
an office for life, it is now considered as a merely temporary
appointment, so frequent are the dismissals.
At the Dome at Berlin, and at the Garrison Church at Potsdam, the
emperor follows the service with an air of mingled devotion and
authority that is rather amusing. While most devout and fervent in his
prayers, and joining in the hymns in such a manner that his ringing
baritone voice is easily discernible above the rest, his eyes wander
in a stern fashion around the church, quick to note any member of the
congregation who is not behaving with proper decorum and reverence. He
conveys the impression that he considers it to be his duty to keep the
congregation in proper order, and if he finds that either he, or the
imperial party is being stared at with any degree of persistency or
curiosity, he at once sends off one of his officers to sharply warn
the offenders. Indeed, he has more than once caused it to be made
known through official communications to the press that he thoroughly
disapproves of being stared at when attending church, and engaged in
his devotions.
Like William, Francis-Joseph has made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and
the Holy Land, but it was without any fuss or pomp. In fact, there are
few persons, save those connected with the Court of Austria, who are
aware that Austria's ruler ever visited the Holy Land. He went there
in 1869, traveling in the strictest incognito, and attended only
by two of his gentlemen-in-waiting and two servants, after the
inauguration of the Suez Canal, at which he had been present. There
was no solemn entry on horseback into the city that witnessed the
foundation of Christianity, and while he prayed at the Holy Places
like Emperor William, he did so quietly and unobtrusively, without
attracting any attention. His pilgrimage was characterized by the same
unaffected humility that distinguishes his religion from that of his
brother monarch at Berlin.
William's faith still retains the enthusiasm and, if I may use the
word, the exuberance of youth, whereas that of Francis-Joseph,
though even more fervent, is chastened, humbled and mellowed by the
experience of many a cruel sorrow and many a hard blow. To some
of these he would have succumbed had it not been for his religious
belief. There have been at least three different occasions during
his fifty years' reign when he would have abandoned his throne,
and abdicated his crown had it not been pointed out to him by his
spiritual adviser that it was his duty--his religious duty--to remain
at his post, and to bear with bravery the trials with which he was
overwhelmed.
The first of these occasions was at the close of the disastrous wars
of 1866, when the march of the Prussians on Vienna was only stayed
within a few hours' distance of the capital by the ignominious peace
of Nicolsburg. The second time was when he lost his only son by the
frightful tragedy of Mayerling, and he saw his boy's body refused even
Christian rites of burial by the church, until he had been able to
convince the kindly old pontiff at Rome that the poor lad's mind was
unbalanced at the time that he took his life. The third occasion was
when his lovely consort, to whom, in spite of all that is said to the
contrary, he was so deeply devoted, was taken from him by the hand
of an assassin in a foreign land, and under peculiarly heartrending
circumstances.
Moreover, he saw the body of his brother Maximilian brought home from
the Mexican plain of Queretaro, where he had been shot down by a file
of soldiers as if a vulgar criminal; he stood by the deathbed of
a favorite niece, burnt to death before his eyes in the palace of
Schoenbrunn, when her dress had caught fire from a lighted cigarette
which she was endeavoring to conceal from him and from her father; he
followed to the grave another favorite of his, a nephew, accidentally
killed while out shooting. Indeed, there is no end to the tragedies
which have gone to sadden the life of this now septuagenarian monarch,
and while on ordinary occasions, especially when engaged in military
inspections or in great court functions, he appears to retain the
elasticity, vigor and temperament of a man still in his prime, yet
when in church or chapel, attending divine service, and so wrapped up
in his devotions that he becomes oblivious to his surroundings, the
restraint which he puts upon his feelings at other times disappears,
and one is able to realize the extent of his sufferings, and how
supreme is the consolation that he finds in his religion.
Vienna is the only capital in the world where one can see a
full-fledged monarch kneeling bareheaded in the streets, and offering
up prayers in the most fervent manner, the spectacle exciting not
ridicule, but sentiments of profound reverence and sympathy on the
part of the people--Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans from Herzegovina
and Bosnia--who throng the thoroughfares of the beautiful city on
the Danube. The sight is witnessed each year, on the occasion of the
_Corpus Christi_ procession. This glorious procession starts out from
the Cathedral of St. Stephen at an early hour in the morning, and the
entire route through the various streets which it traverses Is kid
with boards, over which grass is strewn. At various points along the
way there are altars, or so-called _reposoirs_, where the Sacred Host
is placed for a few moments, the emperor and the great personages with
him kneeling piously on the ground and offering up prayers.
The procession is opened by choristers, then come priests and monks
with hands crossed upon their breasts, next the rectors of the various
metropolitan parishes, displaying their distinctive banners like
the knights of old. The municipal authorities, the officers of the
imperial household, the Knights Grand Cross of the various orders, the
cabinet ministers, and the principal dignitaries of the army, of the
navy, and of the crown. Finally, comes a magnificent canopy borne by
generals, under which walks the tall and stately Cardinal Archbishop
of Vienna, carrying the Host, to which the troops lining the route
bend the knee while presenting arms, the civilians behind them baring
their heads, while the women cross themselves. Immediately behind the
Host, bareheaded and alone, with a lighted candle in his hand, and
wearing the full uniform of an Austrian field marshal,--a snow-white
cloth tunic with scarlet and gold facings,--strides the aged emperor,
still erect as a dart, with all the slender, shapely elegance of a man
of thirty, in spite of his three-score years and ten. He is followed
by the archdukes, conspicuous among them the gigantic Archduke Eugene,
grand master of the Teutonic Order, in the semi-ecclesiastical habits
of his rank, while the procession is brought to a close by escorts of
the superbly arrayed Archer and Hungarian Body Guards.
The spectacle is impressive, and the silence along the route, save for
the chanting of the choristers, and the recitation of prayers in an
undertone by the clergy, adds to the solemnity of the occasion. In
days gone by, the murdered empress used to figure in the procession
in full court dress and followed by her ladies, but now women take no
part therein.
Another remarkable religious ceremony in which the emperor plays the
leading part, and which is only to be witnessed nowadays at the
Court of Vienna, is the washing of the feet of twelve aged men on the
Thursday of Holy Week, in memory of the washing of the feet of
the twelve apostles on the first Holy Thursday by the Founder of
Christianity. The ceremony takes place at the imperial palace, in
the presence of the entire court. The twelve old men, each carefully
dressed for the occasion, who have been brought from their homes to
the palace in imperial carriages, are seated in a row, and, after a
brief religious service celebrated by the cardinal archbishop, the
emperor kneels in front of each, and washes his feet in a golden basin
filled with rose water, the ewer being carried by the heir to the
throne, while the prelate who holds the office of court chaplain hands
to his majesty the gold-embroidered towel with which the feet are
dried after having been washed. When the emperor has reached the end
of the line there are more prayers, and the blessing; then a banquet
is served to the old men, at which they are waited on in person by the
emperor, the various dishes being handed to him by the archdukes and
princes of the blood. The old people are finally sent home, each with
a purse containing gold pieces, and a large hamper, wherein are placed
several bottles of fine wine and the remains of the various dishes and
gastronomical masterpieces which have figured on the table during the
banquet. As a rule, the old men dispose of these for considerable sums
of money to wealthy Viennese, who are only too delighted to purchase
them, and thus to be able to boast of having partaken of the emperor's
hospitality!
Brought up by parents who axe renowned for their religious bigotry,
in the absolutist school of the great Prince Metternich, Emperor
Francis-Joseph has experienced the utmost difficulty in reconciling
his religions belief with his obligations as a constitutional monarch,
for he has been repeatedly obliged to give his sanction as a sovereign
to reforms enacted by the legislature of Austria, and particularly
of Hungary, which were strongly opposed by the Roman Catholic Church,
fiercely denounced by the clergy, and condemned by the Vatican. That
he should in matters such as these have sacrificed his religious
prejudices and conscientious scruples to what he conceived to be his
duty as a constitutional monarch, speaks volumes for his strength of
character, and for his uprightness as a ruler. There is only one thing
that he has declined to do, in spite of all the pressure brought to
bear upon him by his ministers and by his allies: he has absolutely
declined to visit Rome so long as the Pope remains deprived of his
temporal sovereignty. Ordinarily the most chivalrous and courteous
of monarchs, and extremely punctilious in the fulfilment of all the
obligations imposed by etiquette, he has up to the present moment
refrained from returning the visit paid to his court at Vienna by King
Humbert and Queen Marguerite nearly twenty years ago. Leo XIII., like
his predecessor, has intimated that he would regard any visit paid to
the King of Italy in the former Papal Palace of the Quirinal at Rome,
by a Catholic sovereign, as a cruel affront to the occupant of the
chair of St. Peter. The only Catholic ruler who has visited King
Humbert at the Quirinal, in spite of this papal protest, is Prince
Ferdinand of Bulgaria, who was at the time subject to the ban of
the church, in consequence of the conversion of his little son from
Catholicism to the Greek orthodox rite, in order to insure his
own (Ferdinand's) recognition by Russia as ruler of Bulgaria. But
Francis-Joseph has never consented to set his foot in Rome, although
it has been pointed out to him that the existence of the triple
alliance was imperilled by this slight placed upon King Humbert and
Queen Marguerite. He did not hesitate to declare that he would rather
forego the alliance than affront the Pope by visiting Rome under the
present circumstances.
One little scene, in conclusion, which I witnessed at Vienna, has
always remained impressed upon my mind, illustrating as it does the
democracy of the Catholic Church, if I may use that expression, and
demonstrating the good old emperor's belief,--so different from that
of Emperor William,--that in the eyes of the Almighty all men are
equal.
It transpired at the funeral of Cardinal Gangelbauer, the popular and
universally venerated Archbishop of Vienna. The obsequies took place
in the ancient Cathedral of St. Stephen. Military and ecclesiastical
pomp were combined with the magnificent ceremonial of the Austrian
court for the purpose of rendering the last honors to the dead
prelate. The entire metropolitan garrison was under arms, and lined
the streets through which the funeral procession passed. The bells
of all the churches in the metropolis were tolling throughout the
ceremony, and added to the solemnity of the occasion. The stately
Papal Nuncio performed the funeral service in the most impressive
manner, and when he stood on the step of the high altar, and raised
his hands aloft to pronounce the absolution, the whole of the vast
assemblage bowed down, the wintry sunlight streaming through the rich
stained glass windows, falling alike upon the reverently bent head of
the monarch, and those of the peasant mourners who stood by his side
at the head of the bier. For the dead cardinal was the son of an old
farmer, and his brothers, his sisters, and his nephews, all of them
plain, humble peasants of Upper Austria, were kneeling there in their
peasant garb with the emperor in their midst, and surrounded by the
glittering uniforms of the archdukes, the princes, the generals,
cabinet ministers and ambassadors assembled around the coffin. There
was no undue exaltation or timidity on the part of the peasants,
no undue condescension or contempt on the part either of emperor or
dignitaries for the lowly rank of their fellow mourners. All seemed
thoroughly to realize that they were equal in the face of death, and
in the presence of their Creator.
It is only in a metaphorical sense that William can be described as an
Anointed of the Lord. For whereas Francis-Joseph was both anointed and
crowned as King of Hungary in 1867, Emperor William has never been the
object of either of these ceremonies. The fact of the matter is that
there is a good deal of difference of opinion concerning the dignity
of a German emperor; for while William claims that it is identical
with the status of the emperors of Austria and Russia, the
non-Prussian states of Germany insist that it is merely titular,
inasmuch as he has no control or jurisdiction in the various federal
states which constitute the empire, such as Bavaria, Saxony and
Wuertemberg, each of which has an independent king in nowise subject,
but merely allied to the Prussian monarch.
It is only in time of war, and for the sake of successful co-operation
that the supreme command of the united German military forces is by
special agreement vested in the hands of the German emperor--a
tribute to the superiority and pre-eminence of the Prussian military
reorganizations. It is true that Prussia has since then, by degrees,
endeavored to encroach upon the independence of the federal states.
But this is strongly resented, to-day more than ever, and William
is constantly being reminded by the non-Prussian press, by the
non-Prussian governments, and even by the non-Prussian reigning
dynasties that they are not vassals, but allies of Prussia.
The German emperor has no crown as such, nor any civil list, and
with the solitary exception of his eldest son, all the members of his
family figure merely as royal Prussian, not imperial German princes.
Thus, for instance, Prince Henry, the brother of the emperor, is
addressed not as imperial highness, but only as royal highness.
Had William attempted to have himself crowned as German emperor, it
would merely have had the effect of attracting public attention to the
difference existing between his own status as emperor and that of his
fellow-sovereigns of Austria and Russia, besides which it would
have raised all sorts of troublesome questions with the non-Prussian
courts, and intensified their sensibilities and prejudices. If, on the
other hand, he had caused himself to be crowned king of Prussia in
the ancient city of Koenigsberg, where all Prussian kings have been
crowned, the ceremony would have had the effect of impressing upon the
world at large the fact that the only real crown to which William can
lay claim, and which he is entitled to wear, is the crown of the kings
of Prussia.
That is why he has never been either crowned or anointed, differing in
this respect from Francis-Joseph, Emperor Nicholas and Queen Victoria,
all of whom have experienced both ceremonies, which by the masses of
Europe, especially among the uneducated and ignorant, are considered
indispensable to endow the majesty of the sovereign with a sacred
character. The Hungarians did not consider Francis-Joseph as entitled
to their allegiance and loyalty until he had been crowned at Pesth
with the crown of St. Stephen, and anointed with the sacred oil, and
there is no doubt that the Bohemians would be transformed from the
most turbulent, malcontent, and troublesome of his subjects into his
most devoted lieges, were he to comply with their demands, and have
himself anointed and crowned as King of Bohemia, with the crown of
Saint Wenceslaus.
Nor was Emperor Nicholas of Russia considered a full-fledged Czar
of Russia, nor his consort a czarina, until he had been anointed and
crowned at Moscow, nearly two years after his accession to the throne.
In fact, until the time of his coronation, his mother, the dowager
empress, enjoyed precedence of his wife on all official occasions, on
the ground that she was the widow of a crowned czar, and had herself
been solemnly crowned as the consort of Alexander III., by her
imperial husband, whereas her daughter-in-law, the younger empress,
had enjoyed no such advantage up to that time.
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