467. The Murder of Franz Ferdinand: The Victim (Part 3)
2024-07-07 00:55:04
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From an early age I have been traveling a lot. The differences, the directness of the received impressions of countries and people, of states and things, have offered me instruction, satisfaction, and joy. No wonder that, from early on, a wanderlust developed in me, which finally culminated in the desire to accomplish a voyage around the world, this wish has been fulfilled. What pushed me was the pursuit of the following. To achieve insight from personal observations of other parts of the world into foreign institutions and communities.
To come into contact with foreign people. To learn from foreign cultures and customs. To enjoy the sights of the wonderful works of art and foreign nature and its inexhaustible allure. in the open sea, on firm ground, in princely palaces, in meager huts, in metropolises, in solitary wilderness, in lush lowlands, in clear mountain heights, have I found what I have been looking for. Rich in experiences, in rare prizes, in collections, have I returned home.
So that, Dominic, was the preface to an account of traveling around the world which was published in 1896 by Franz Ferdinand, the Archduke, who, let's face up to it, has a truly terrible day on the 28th of June 1914. But before we come to that, let's have a look at his life, his character, and, more broadly than that, the whole world in which he inhabits, the world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And to do that, we've moved from the café, which was a very kind of Gavrilo Prince place, to kind of hang out, we've come to market itself as a Viennese café, so a kind of Habsburg vibe.
It's got a very Habsburg vibe in the Hotel Europa in Sarajevo. Hello everybody, I hope you enjoyed that little bit of audio footage of Franz Ferdinand talking as much as I did and, judging by their horrified expressions, the waiters did. So that preface actually is quite interesting, there's a website called Franz Ferdinand's World, and it gives you all his accounts. So he wrote this book about his voyage around the world, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who's of course known now only for one thing, which is being shot in Sarajevo. Well, two things in my case, because.
he's also known for an extraordinary photograph that was taken of him in Egypt, where he dressed up as a mummy. He did. And he's kind of wrapped up and he's in a sarcophagus and his little, bless him, his little Austrian face peering out with his whiskers and everything. Exactly. And I think anyone who is interested in the interface of Egyptology and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, I mean, you love that photo.
There are many such people.
So actually, the reason I thought that would be a fun introduction, not just because it would give you such a wonderful opportunity to show off your mastery of different voices, but also it's a Franz Ferdinand we don't normally think of. So we think of Franz Ferdinand, the man shot in Sarajevo, as the incarnation of kind of stolid Habsburg conservatism. So in that impression, I was kind.
of channeling an Austrian walrus. That's what I had in mind. Austrian walrus, exactly. But that's.
not entirely fair, is it? No. So that journey around the world, he did it in December 1892, and it took him the best part of a year. He came back the following October. It's actually an amazing journey, Tom.
Egypt, Aden, Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Singapore, Java, Hong Kong, China, Japan, New Guinea, Australia, New Caledonia, Borneo, Canada, the United States. I mean, there's surely a case that at the beginning of the 20th century, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been to more interesting places than almost anybody else on earth. And it was brave of him to.
go to America, bearing in mind what happened to his uncle, Maximilian, who ended up shot.
That's right. He actually goes to America. He goes to the great Chicago World's Fair in 1893.. He arrived in a private Pullman car, which was called Mascot, had a brilliant time. And I think what all this reminds us is that, actually, well, he is a much more interesting, complicated, and surprising person, I think, than the Austrian walrus caricature.
So the whole point of this series is to explain how and why the First World War began. And actually, rather like every other prince, the Archduke is often just written off as a bit of a cipher and a footnote in history, really. And as we'll see today, he is not a footnote in history. And his story is an excellent way to understand the Austro-Hungarian Empire, how it worked, what its future was, and some of the geopolitical dynamics in East Central Europe at the beginning.
of the 1910s. And I think that British listeners in particular will find certain echoes of dynamics in our own beloved royal family going on, because he's the nephew, not the son, of the ruling emperor. But the ruling emperor, I mean, he's been in power forever. And there is a kind of Elizabeth II quality to Franz Joseph, the emperor of Austro-Hungary. Christopher Clarke, in his brilliant book, Sleepwalkers, says how people dream of Franz Joseph.
He haunts their sleep.
And that's what people say of the Queen in a similar way. Yes. So Franz Joseph, the emperor of Austro-Hungary, came to the throne in 1848. And he'd seen two massive defeats in the first couple of decades of his reign. One was at Solferino, where the Austro-Hungarians lost northern Italy.
And one was at Königgratz, where they lost to Prussia. And they basically lost control of Germany. In 1863, Franz Ferdinand was born in Graz, in southern Austria. He's the son of Franz Joseph's younger brother, Karl Ludwig. And his mother is a princess of the two Sicilies, Princess Maria Annunziata.
She's a Bourbon. And he's growing up in an empire that has had to completely recalibrate itself. It's shrunk because it's lost some of its territory.
So again, quite like Elizabeth II.
Yes. When he's three. in 1867, the Austrians and the Hungarians agreed what was called the, And the way this worked was that the empire would effectively become a kind of strange federation. Half of it was the Empire of Austria. And half of it was the Kingdom of Hungary.
And there were different nationalities under each of those. So, for example, Croatia was run by the Hungarians. Transylvania was run by the Hungarians. But, for instance, Galicia, so what is now? Poland, bit of Poland and a bit of Ukraine, that was part of the Austrian half.
And it seems a little bit unwieldy, but actually, Franz Joseph, the Emperor, keeps it together. He is the symbol of stability that glues it together. He's very serious. He's very hard working. He's actually intensely conservative.
The Elizabeth II comparison is a good one, because, like her, he is the embodiment of dutifulness, of duty. He famously sleeps in this kind of iron bed. He's very frugal. He gets up at kind of four o'clock in the morning to do his paperwork. He's boring, and the boringness is the brand.
So his famous saying that he says every day, multiple times a day, when he visits some town, or he says, it was nice. We were quite pleased. Yeah. He never says anything but that. Yeah.
But there's something also faintly.
forbidding about him, almost kind of undead. So there's a famous description of him in the Rudetsky March, the Joseph Roth novel, coffered up in an icy and everlasting old age, like an armor of an awe-inspiring crystal. Yeah. Nice. Sorry, Tom, I'm in the middle of,
we've literally ordered some Sasha Torter to get into the kind of.
. I've got some cake. The Habsburg bite. Couldn't be more Viennese. And I think for Franz Ferdinand growing up in that world, it is quite a forbidding and intimidating world to grow up in.
So all the accounts of his boyhood, you know, there were different versions, but he seems to have been a very quiet, worried, awkward kind of boy. He's tutored at home. His mother died when he was very young, when he was about seven. He has a younger brother called Otto, who is basically more fun, more clever. Total kind of older brother.
You and I are both older brothers, so we have a lot of fellow feeling with Franz Ferdinand. Yeah. And the more charismatic brother. Yeah. The other problem he has is he's obviously completely eclipsed by his cousin, the Emperor's son.
So his cousin is Crown Prince Rudolf. And anybody who knows anything about Habsburg history will know Crown Prince Rudolf is a pretty extraordinary character. He is very charming. He is unreliable. He's mercurial.
He's idealistic. Like you, Tom, he loves fossils and minerals and.
stuff. But, unlike me, he's driven mad by syphilis, isn't he? Well, as far as we, yeah, so far.
I haven't been driven mad yet. No. So he's ravaged by gonorrhea and syphilis. He becomes a morphine addict. And in 1889...
Again, a point of difference between him and me. Again, a point of difference. In 1889, when Rudolf was 30 and Franz Ferdinand was 25,, Rudolf killed himself in a kind of suicide pact with his teenage mistress, Maria Bezzera, at the Meiling hunting lodge. This incredible story, the subject of films and operas and so on and so forth. Now, Rudolf was the only son of the Emperor.
Under other circumstances, the crown, the role of the heir apparent, would now have passed to the Emperor's brother, Maximilian. But of course, Maximilian has.
come to a very sticky end, hasn't he? Yeah, because he's gone off to be Emperor of Mexico.
and been shot. Exactly. So. actually, the title would now pass to Franz Ferdinand's father, Karl Ludwig. But Karl Ludwig is quite old and he's not in terribly good health.
So when Karl Ludwig dies, seven years later, Franz Ferdinand, the Emperor's nephew, is unexpectedly the heir to the Austrian throne and will inherit the reigns of this extraordinary multinational dynastic empire. Well, the description of it is usually ramshackle. Yes. Do you think it's ramshackle? This is a really thorny kind of historical question.
We know that Austria-Hungary broke up, obviously, at the end of the First World War. So I think for a long time, there was a lot of back projection. The classic thing that historians would say about it is it's stagnant, it's ramshackle. They always use the word sclerotic.
and all this kind of stuff. So Tim Butcher, in The Trigger, which we've been citing a lot, he quotes from the Baedeker to the Empire of 1905.. In this, the Baedeker points out that in some areas of the empire, people will drive on the right and some people drive on the left. Then Butcher says, it did not say what happened when the two driving styles collided. I guess that that is always the risk, isn't it?
With not just Austria and Hungary, but also all the various constituent parts who are not given equal status with Austria and Hungary, that they all have different interests. Occasionally, they're going to come into.
collision with each other. Well, occasionally, I mean, all the time. So, just to give people a sense of some of the nationalities, we're talking about Germans, Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, Ukrainians, Italians, Romanians, Croats, Slovenes, Slovaks, Serbs, and so on, and so on. We haven't even mentioned Bosnian Muslims. Now, the Austrians, I think it's fair to say, were generally the more liberal of the two partners.
The Hungarians treated their nationalities issue by basically pretending it didn't exist at all. But I don't think it is fair to say that Austria is a basket case or that it is doomed by nationalism. First of all, economically, it's actually reasonably successful. You've got a big customs union, integrated markets, transport network, factories, all of this stuff. It's actually booming, isn't it, at this period?
In the years before the First World War, the Austrian-Hungarian economy is growing by about 5% a year. My God, Tom. I mean, we'd give a lot for that. Right. What would we give for that today?
There actually isn't that much political violence. There is some, of course, but it's not as bad as political violence, for example, in Russia. You could argue. it's not as bad as the threat of political violence in Ireland, for example. Of course, there are a lot of nationalists, and all these different national groups are demanding more privileges and more airtime, more money, and all that stuff, more patronage.
But radical nationalists calling for violent separation are actually pretty rare. Even most nationalist politicians recognize they can probably get more by being in the empire and moaning about it than they would by breaking away.
Well, I mean, it's interesting, definitely, when it collapses, there are then a lot of nationalists who say, oh, we've made a mistake. I mean, particularly by the 30s. They say, oh,
I wish we were back with the Habsburgs. Because, of course, if the Habsburg empire breaks up, it is pretty obvious there will be a lot of fighting about who inherits which bits and where they draw the borders. Now, all of that said, of course, it's not perfect. For one thing, the court is incredibly conservative. I often wonder whether it's a classic case of kind of overcompensating, because they have been on the retreat, and because they have lost some of their former power.
So they're trying much too hard to pretend that nothing has changed. So Franz Joseph is pathologically conservative and hierarchical. We laugh at George V having his strict views about how you creased your trousers. I mean, Franz Joseph, the issue of what trousers you're wearing is an existential one.
He becomes a very melancholy, sort of pessimistic figure, not least because, I mean, his son has committed suicide. His brother has been shot. His brother has been killed in Mexico. But then his wife, the most glamorous woman in Europe, Sisi Elizabeth. The Diana.
She's the Diana with knobs on of her era. She was murdered on Lake Geneva by an Italian anarchist in 1898.. So from that point onwards, Franz Joseph becomes very lonely and sad and kind of reclusive. So Franz Ferdinand grows up in this world. He's in the army, commissioned in the army when he's 12..
He basically is steeped in the kind of the world of the Habsburg army, which is, of course, the one institution that's really holding the empire.
together. It's also, interestingly, it's an institution where the Austrian side is given a degree of primacy because everyone is expected to speak German, aren't they? Yeah, which the?
Hungarians don't. And we'll come on to this. For Franz Ferdinand, the fact that the Hungarians don't speak German is an unbelievable affront, absolutely intolerable. So he, you know, when you look at photos of him as a young man, he's always wearing very tight uniforms, admiring his enormous moustache, sort of sitting around in the officer's mess with the other Habsburg officers and things. And that's his milieu.
The problem for him is that the emperor has never recovered from the loss of his son and makes no effort whatsoever to disguise the fact that he considers Franz Ferdinand an absolute waste of space. So that when they first met after the Meiling tragedy, the emperor treated Franz Ferdinand really like dirt. Franz Ferdinand said afterwards, I've never been treated so coldly before. The mere sight of me seems to awaken unpleasant memories. It's like Denethor.
mourning Boromir. It totally is. Redicting Faramir. Yeah, no, absolutely. There was no.
warmth between them and never is. The sad thing is that Franz Ferdinand, he clearly admired Franz Josef enormously, was very respectful of him, never spoke out of turn, never criticised him, never betrayed a hint of his frustration. And yet the emperor continued to treat him with sort of cold indifference. Do you think this is why he's so rude to other people?
So kind of short with other people? Yes. Franz Ferdinand is famously a very short-tempered man.
And clearly a lot of this is, I think, because he's a very frustrated man. The round the world trip, for example, he's clearly curious. When you see those photos of him on the day of the assassination in Sarajevo, where he does, as you put it, he looks like an Austrian walrus. You don't think of him as a sort of curious man, as a stream trying to break its banks.
But that's why that photograph of him in the pharaoh's coffin is so unexpected and funny.
It is funny. So he does the round the world trip and he writes that lyrical passage about, about how much he loved seeing new experiences and learning and all this stuff. Then, a year later, he fell ill with lung problems. He probably had a version of TB, like Gavrilo Princip, and he was sent to Egypt to recuperate. That's when he poses as a mummy.
But when he's away, everybody thinks he's going to die. And they say, Oh, brilliant. His younger brother, Otto, is the new heir now. And the emperor and everybody else treats Otto as the heir. And Franz Ferdinand knows this and he's absolutely gutted.
And so when he comes back and everybody's like, Oh no, he's still alive. He's really hurt, I think, and disappointed by this. And so as, um, I mean, almost any account you read of him says, you know, he grew into a man, suspicious, morose, and violent, seeing enemies everywhere. And because of this, turning would be friends into enemies. He also has the same, I mean, to his credit, Tom, he has the same.
view of the human condition as I do. Yes, I saw this. So I always assume that everyone I meet is a rogue until the contrary is proved. It's exactly what I think. Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. What I think. Incredible. So, so we've already had Captain Benteen as a kind of analog to you from 19th century history. And now we've got Franz Ferdinand.
My dream dinner party is, Captain.
Benteen and Franz Ferdinand, Tom. No question. He's very hot tempered. He's exceptionally rude. Something else I admire in a...
So he's rude to servants. I don't approve of that, Tom, to be.
fair. I'm very polite to our servants. But when it comes to birds, I mean, he's terrible to birds, isn't he? You wouldn't want to be a bird with him when he's got his gun. You wouldn't.
Sorry, Tom,
I've shamed myself by taking a mouthful of cake. Theo is absolutely livid. So I don't approve of.
shooting birds. Have you seen how many he's shot in his life? I have. So 272,511 game kills, 5,000 of which were deer. So I'm assuming all the rest were birds.
100,000 trophies were on exhibit at his Bohemian castle. Yeah. In one day's hunt alone, he shot 2,140 game birds and animals. Astonishing. Different times, Tom.
And on his world tour, I mean, it's all very well you going on about, oh, he's out there being a hippie and discovering himself. No. He's shot elephants, emus, kangaroos, koalas, monkeys, tigers, grizzly bears. And when he went to Yellowstone Park and was kind of bored by the geysers, you know, he solved the problem of his boredom by shooting porcupines and squirrels. He's very keen on shooting.
At least he didn't take on a bison.
No. But to be fair to him, he's a very good shot. Yeah, fine. Well, that's a reassurance for the birds, isn't it? Yeah.
And actually, okay. I think a lot of listeners at this point will be thinking badly of Franz Ferdinand, not unreasonably. Of course, this is the age. Tom, I know you have a bizarre fetish about this, because you're very interested in the history of shooting game. You were desperate to recalibrate this series and have more shooting in it.
Well, there's already quite a lot of shooting and there will be more shooting to come.
There will be. So George V loves shooting. Aristocrats love shooting. I mean, this is big thing and it's become almost industrialized. so they have beaters who will basically send hundreds and hundreds of birds into the air, and you shoot them all.
And you're right. I would.
at some point like to do an episode on what's going on in Britain at this point. Yeah. Just on the case of the prosecution of Franz Ferdinand being a terrible person. I'll quote the German historian Michael Freund, a man of uninspired energy, dark in appearance and emotion, who radiated an aura of strangeness and cast a shadow of violence and recklessness. So this is the person who you're comparing yourself to.
I can see the parallels. Uncanny. But I mean, presumably that's.
not why you're sticking up for him. No, because actually there is another side to Franz Ferdinand, as we will see. So he might not seem the most obviously lovable character, but obviously the one thing he needs is a wife. Obviously. He needs a consort.
Now, Franz Ferdinand doesn't seem to have been a great man for the ladies. He is always complaining, basically, that women are stalking him and trying to marry him. So when he got into Britain in the mid 1890s, he said he'd had an absolutely terrible time, with all these sort of posh women being pushed at him. Hello, Franzi. Yeah.
He said. the designated fiancees moved about in a great herd and showed worrisome levels of persistence. But of course, if there were British families who are pushing their daughters forward, they were wasting their time because there was a list and they were not on it. So in 1825, something called the Habsburg House Law had been drawn up and every head of the House of Habsburg was bound by this law. Your bride had to be a Catholic, but also there was a list of families from which this bride could come.
So aristocratic. 15 princely houses, Auersberg, Esterhazy,
Kevenhülle, Lobkowitz, Metternich, and so on. I hope you enjoy that Austrian accent, Tom. And there were 33 houses that were not part of the monarchy, but were sufficiently aristocratic. So the Fugger-Babenhausens, the Hornluers, the House of Turm und Taxis, and so on and so forth. So this is Franz Ferdinand's list.
He regards this list with total contempt, which is interesting because he's such a conservative person in other respects. But he said to, he wrote to a woman friend of his, and he said, um, the women who have been offered to me are all, and I quote, chicks of 17 and 18, each one uglier than the last. So he's gallant as well as charming to servants. So he's not happy with the list. Now, one of his relatives, who was called Archduchess Isabella, decided that she would bag him for one of her daughters.
A guy called Gordon Brook-Shepard, who's written a lot about Austrian history, describes her as an immensely built and immensely ambitious woman. She's always inviting him to her house at Pressburg.
And he's very keen to go, isn't he?
Yeah, he's very keen to go and he keeps going back. And she's like, she's. obviously, this is fantastic. This is absolutely splendid. He's dancing with my daughters again, having dinner, telling anecdotes about shooting birds.
All is well. And then an absolute disaster. In April, 1899, they have a tennis party. Franz Ferdinand goes and he's in great form. And then he leaves and he leaves his watch behind.
I'm assuming it's a pocket watch rather than a wristwatch, because it's got a locket attached to it. It would be, wouldn't it? And a servant finds it and takes it to the Archduchess Isabella and says, found Franz Ferdinand's watch. Isabella opens the locket, looking forward to seeing which of her daughters it is. And horror of horrors, the picture in the locket is of a lady-in-waiting.
So this is Sophie. Countess Sophie Chotek von Tchotkova und Vognin. And Sophie Chotek has been attached for a few years to Archduchess Isabella's house. She is 27 years old. Franz Ferdinand is 37..
They're both mature and very serious people. Sophie Chotek is an aristocrat. Her family had been barons in Bohemia since 1556.. They'd been counts of the empire since 1745.. But, Tom, she is not on the list.
And so that's why she ranks as a lady-in-waiting.
Exactly.
And so she's ineligible.
Archduchess Isabella is outraged. So she kicks Sophie out of the house, immediately reports this to the Emperor. The Emperor says to Franz Ferdinand, what are you thinking? She's not on the list. You can have the Chotek or you can have the crown, but you cannot have both.
And so again, for British people, familiar with our own beloved monarchy, I mean, again, the echoes are very clear.
Except the difference, I think, Tom.
Because if Franz Joseph is Elizabeth II, then there is a definite element of Charles and Camilla here, isn't there? Because Charles, I mean, really, it's a great love story. He's pledged to Camilla.
You've got the honors list in mind again, Tom.
Yeah, always. If I don't get the order of the fleece from Edward Habsburg. But I mean, he seems to have loved Sophie. for the same reason that Charles seems so keen on Camilla, that she calms him down and makes him feel happy. She does.
And it's probably the only person who makes him feel happy, as far as I can tell.
I think that's absolutely right. Everybody says Sophie Chotek, she is a really decent,
sensible, she's polite, she's tactful, she is nice.
So basically everything he isn't.
Yeah. And she's great for him. Now, Franz Joseph, the Emperor, just is dead against this. They get, the cardinal archbishop of Vienna, gets all the relatives, everybody to gang up on Franz Ferdinand and say, drop her. You know, terrible decision.
Franz Ferdinand goes absolutely ballistic and he shouts at them and he says, your stupid marriage laws are the reason that half of the children in our family are idiots or epileptics, which obviously doesn't go well with them over the other relatives.
He's agreeing with James Joyce, who describes the Habsburgs as the most physically corrupt royal family in Europe.
So Franz Ferdinand might well have agreed with you. Franz Ferdinand just throws a massive wobbly, I must marry her. And eventually, the Emperor gives in. Franz Ferdinand sticks to his guns.
But only to a degree, right?
Right. So the Emperor gives in and he says, fine, you marry her, but here is the deal. I will raise her to a duchess, Duchess of Hohenberg. But if you think she will ever be Empress, be Queen of Hungary and Empress of Austria, and that your children will be Emperors of Austria, you know, you can forget about it. That is the deal.
It will have to be a morganatic marriage where she will never have the same status as you and neither will the children. Now, that is a big thing to ask of somebody. You will be Emperor, but your children never will. And it's a sign of how serious Franz Ferdinand is about Sophie. He says, fine, if that's what I have to do, I'll do it.
And so it is that on the 28th of June, remember the date, 28th of June, 1900, in the secret council chamber at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Franz Joseph, the Emperor, and all 15 archdukes of the Habsburg house go out on this kind of daze. He reads out the terms. Franz Ferdinand has to publicly agree to the terms. His wife and children will never have equal status to him. And then he signs a declaration of renunciation, a solemn oath.
That is it. Legally, you know, my kids will not inherit. A gutting, a galling thing for him, a humiliating.
Yeah, and terrible humiliations will be visited on Sophie, won't they?
Awful, awful. So I'll come to them in just a sec. Three days later, they go and they get married. They get married at a Habsburg castle in Bohemia. The emperor doesn't go.
None of the archdukes go. None of the uncles, brothers, and cousins of Franz Ferdinand. Franz Ferdinand is the only archduke at his own wedding. No cardinals go, no bishops go. A big deal for the Habsburgs, the ultra-Catholic family of kind of dynastic Europe.
It's just an ordinary parish priest who officiates. So basically, they have this sort of private wedding. And then they go to his castle at Konopishta with the one with all the trophies of birds.
And flowers as well. He's a big gardener, isn't he? He is. Again, like Charles.
Their honeymoon, they spend walking in the garden. And they call it the upper stations of the cross. Because they both feel completely embattled and humiliated by the terrible treatment by the rest of his family. And actually, as you said, it doesn't get any better. The guy who ran the court, Imperial Chamberlain, Count Montenuovo, was himself the product of a morganatic marriage.
I think from Napoleon.
Yeah. Some more of Napoleon's wives than somebody or something like this. And he is really bitter that Sophie has got above her station. And he, during the attempt to sort of discredit her, he'd circulated photos of her that he had retouched to make her look older and uglier than she was.
I remember the royal family touching up photos I heard of.
But so here's how it works. From this point onwards, when they go to court functions, when they all file him, Franz Ferdinand has to walk on his own as if he's not married. Everybody else comes in and she has to come in last. So all the other archduchesses and things come in. She has to come in last on her own for everyone to kind of...
She can't sit in the Habsburg box.
She can't sit next to him at the opera. She can't use the carriage, the official carriage. If a visiting monarch comes to have an official dinner and Franz Ferdinand is there as invited, the seat next to him for his consort is left empty as a sign. And she is forced to sit down kind of below the salt with the other people of her status.
But I think the glorious thing about her is that she doesn't seem to show her bitterness about this. She maintains her good humor, which is what Franz Ferdinand wants and needs from her.
Totally, yeah. They're incredibly happy as a couple. They're completely devoted. They have three children, Sophie, Maximilian and Ernst. We'll come on to the children a little bit later.
They basically spend most of their time at this castle, which is now in the Czech Republic called Konopiste. Every morning, he goes out and he assaults the local birds. Then in the afternoons, they spend their time gardening. And then the evenings, he's playing draughts with the kids and all that kind of thing. And they are, by the standards of their age, i.e.
with a lot of hunting, they are a really model, devoted, happy couple.
So they have a daughter, don't they? And two sons.
Two sons, exactly.
Neither of whom are going to inherit the throne.
Are going to inherit the throne. And actually, the thing about the gardening, Franz Ferdinand, lots of people won't know this. He is a great gardener. He's one of Europe's great gardeners. So Konopiste and his other castle, Archstetten, he creates these amazing rose gardens.
People say the best rose gardens in Central Europe. And he gets all these lovely messages about it. Would you like me to read you a message about this? So here we go. This is from somebody who comes to stay at his house.
Again, thank you from my heart for the precious hours I was able to spend with you in Klingsor's magic garden. That's a Wagner reference. That's a Wagner reference. I admire the organisational mastery and the fine colour sense show through in your landscaping. Glorious weather.
here. The roses in my rose garden are nearly all in bloom. Rhododendrons still flowering in spite of three weeks rain.
So which tender-hearted, sensitive, green-fingered, lovable-sounding person was that?
Tom, it's our old friend, the Kaiser. Oh, bless him. The Kaiser.
With his gardening shoes.
So the Kaiser sent that message to Franz Ferdinand. Well, Tom, the tragedy, he sent it two weeks before Franz Ferdinand was murdered in Sarajevo. And it just goes to prove what I've always said about this whole story, about 20th century European history. The real victim is, of course, the Kaiser.
And on that bombshell, I think we should take a break. And when we come back, we will continue looking at the life of Franz Ferdinand.
Hello, welcome back to Russia's History. I have a mouthful of Viennese cake. And the reason for that is that Theo has just been telling off me and you, Dominic.
For eating cake during the recording.
For eating cake during the recording. So, being very naughty. He's looking very cross, glaring at us. But I've now finished eating the cake.
There you go.
And I'm going to begin with a quote.
Oh, great, Tom, go for it.
So this is from Edward Crankshaw, who you've written down. I don't know who he is. I'm assuming a historian.
He wrote a book called The Fall of the House of Habsburg.
Right, brilliant, great title. There was more to Franz Ferdinand than his hunting and his rose gardens. He was a bitterly frustrated man, heir to a great empire, who saw his inheritance crumbling away from mismanagement and neglect. So no point of comparison there with Prince Charles.
No, right. So this thing about there being more to Franz Ferdinand. Franz Ferdinand is not just doing his roses and talking to Sophie and shooting birds. He is also increasingly interested in politics and the future of the empire. So we said at the beginning, of course, everyone knows now the Austro-Hungarian Empire did not last.
And the consequence was a very fragmented Central Europe and Southeastern Europe. And a lot of blood would flow. And so the question has always been, could the empire have survived? Franz Ferdinand gives this a lot of thought.
So can I ask you, just before you start on saying what his plans for the empire are, is your take on him and his plans that if he had not been killed in Sarajevo, if he had survived to become emperor, that the Austro-Hungarian Empire would have had a good chance of cohering and sticking together?
It had a chance. Whether it's a good chance is impossible to say. But the idea that it had to fragment, I mean, we can both think straight away of another multinational kingdom that has endured because we're both from it, the United Kingdom. So some multinational realms did survive. I mean, the Russian Federation is still going and it has a lot of people of different religions, different nationalities and languages.
So it's not impossible to imagine a Habsburg Empire that is not involved in war continuing. Maybe it loses bits.
But it heightens the sense of jeopardy, doesn't it? If we have a sense of Franz Ferdinand as a serious reformer.
Which he undoubtedly is. He undoubtedly is a serious reformer. By the mid 1900s, he's really thinking about this seriously. It's obvious Franz Josef is not going to live forever and that he, Franz Ferdinand, will take over. The great trend of the day, which we talked about in our Rise of the Nazis podcast, is for a kind of populist pan-Germanism.
So there's a guy called Georg Ritter von Schoenerer, who's the guy who invented the Hitler salute, Heil, the label Führer, all that stuff. So he is saying we need to reorient towards Protestant Germany. You know, Germany for the Germans, a greater Germandom. Franz Ferdinand makes it very clear. he absolutely despises this way of thinking.
He's very interested in all the minorities of the empire.
And so this is why he oddly, doesn't like the Hungarians. Exactly. Despite the fact that he's the king of the Hungarians. Because the Hungarians are very contemptuous, aren't they, of the minorities?
They are. I don't want to upset our Hungarian listeners. Well, no, they've moved on. The Hungarians don't come out terribly well from this story. So Franz Ferdinand, in the Belvedere Palace in Vienna, he almost sets up a kind of shadow government, makes links with nationalist politicians, national groups.
So he's genuinely interested. What do the Romanian peasants under the rule of the Magyars think? What are people saying in what is now Western Ukraine? All of this stuff. Now, the Hungarians are the great obstacle to this, because in the Hungarian half of the empire, they basically give their minorities no house room at all.
They can't vote. They have very little political expression. And Franz Ferdinand decides. the Hungarians are basically the massive obstacle. And he absolutely despises them.
That is a problem, isn't it? If you're going to become king of Hungary.
Probably the kindest thing he said about them was. he said they're a bunch of mustachioed gypsies. And in fact, again and again, I come back to the conviction, which I should go on expressing for as long as I live, that the so-called decent Hungarian simply does not exist. And that every Hungarian, be he a minister, a prince, cardinal, a tradesman, a peasant, a hasar, or a stable boy, is a revolutionary and a... And then he just drew a kind of line, so you can put in your own words and imagine what word he was thinking of.
So yeah, he absolutely despises them. And the way he wants to break their power, he thinks of two plans. And we alluded to them in our Gavrilo Princip episodes. One plan is that, effectively, instead of it being Austria-Hungary, it will be a kind of Austria-Hungary-Yugoslavia. So the Slav bits, particularly kind of Croatia, Bosnia, the Dalmatian coast, they will be a kingdom of their own, no longer under the thumb of the Austrians or the Hungarians.
And this is the thing that is so terrifying for Serbian nationalists.
Exactly. Now the alternative, there was a Romanian professor called Aurel Popovici, and he drew up a plan for a United States-Greater Austria. So there'll be 16 states, there'll be Austria, there'll be a little Hungary, there'd be Silesia, Bohemia, West Galicia,
Slovenia, Transylvania, and so on and so on and so on. And the emperor would be king of all of them equally, and it would be a federation. And you could sort of see how that would work, how that would...
Although the Hungarians would hate it.
The Hungarians would be absolutely furious, and it would probably provoke some kind of revolt in Hungary, I would imagine. But what a great country that would be if that still existed. Yeah. I mean, that would be a tremendous country. It would be like the EU.
It would be like the EU, but with a heavier emphasis on.
. On chocolate. On the sort of cakes that we're eating now, Tom, I think it's fair to say. Yeah. On kind of heavy coffee houses.
Yeah. Now, could he deliver on that? It's hard to say. What is undoubtedly true, though, is that he had a plan drawn up, ready to go for when he acceded, when he became emperor, he would change the suffrage laws in Hungary. Of course, that was a brilliant way of breaking the power of the Hungarian gentry who were his opponents.
If he says, actually, everybody in the Hungarian half can now vote.
So that would include Romanians?
That would include all the Transylvanian peasants and whatnot. Three million Croats, for example, can vote.
He's an improbable kind of enthusiast for broadening the franchise, isn't he?
He is. His other big thing, which we talked about in the first half, very briefly, is he's infuriated that the Hungarians want to use their own language in their bit of the army. Because actually the law is, you can only really have one language in the army, and that should be German, the language of the dynasty. That should be the glue that holds the empire together. That basically everybody's second language is German, and that that's the language of war.
So he's fighting the Hungarians all the time about this language issue. And yet the irony is, Franz Ferdinand, the one thing he never wants to do is to use that army. And this is where Serbian intelligence, the black hand, were dead wrong. Franz Ferdinand is not the leader of the war party. The one thing he stands for more than anything else is no war, and especially no war with Serbia.
Yeah, I mean, it's such a kind of tragic irony, isn't it? That the Serbs end up killing the one man who was holding the military establishment back from, and particularly one figure in particular, isn't there? Yeah. Who is Franz Conrad von Herzendorf. And he is another very romantic figure.
He's, yeah.
So he has a great crush on another man's wife.
Yeah.
And he's endlessly writing letters to her, isn't he? Which he's then too embarrassed to send.
3,000 letters.
So he just stores them up.
Yeah.
And basically, he wants to declare war on Serbia so that he can have a thumping victory, come back and get her.
Well, I think, to be fair to him, he's already semi-got her because he has this massive crush on this, Gina von Reininghaus.
That's it, that's it.
Who is the wife of an industrialist in Vienna. So Conrad, General Conrad, he had been friends with Franz Ferdinand, actually. He has this crush on this, Gina. I think they did start an affair, but they can't get married. And he thinks, well, if I can win a great war, I'll come back and, you know, we'll get married and that'll be absolutely brilliant.
And it'd be like gone with the wind, you know, that'll be absolutely tremendous. And so, as Chris Clark says in his book, The Sleepwalkers, between 1906 and 1914, Conrad repeatedly counseled preventive wars against Serbia, Montenegro, Russia, Romania, and even Italy, Italy, which was actually Austria's nominal ally at the time.
Christopher also says he came to see war as a means of gaining possession of Gina. I mean, there's another potential cause of the First World War.
Now, it's not just, it's obviously too simplistic to say, it's just because of impressing this woman. There are quite a lot of people in Austria who think Serbia is a kind of rogue state. It's a terrorist state.
But also it's become dangerous, hasn't it? So previously there's this guy who described Serbia as a rascally boy trying to steal apples from an orchard. But since the two Balkan wars, Serbia has expanded and it swallowed up Kosovo, the place of the great battle. And it's got all this. French loans, improved its armaments, improved its rail, got a vast new reservoir of manpower.
So it's starting to look a bit menacing.
I think that's absolutely right. I think the Austrians think the Serbian threat would only get greater. And Franz Ferdinand thinks the way we deal with it is we change our own internal arrangements so that basically Serbia is no longer a magnet to people inside the empire. But General Conrad and others think, no, we actually just go after Serbia right now, teach us a lesson. And that's the best way to ensure long-term security.
But the risk with that is that Serbia is allied to Russia.
Exactly, that Serbia is Russia's patron. So actually, the person who Franz Ferdinand turns to as an ally in these internal arguments is his fellow Rose Garden fancier, the Kaiser. So the Kaiser is the one person who's actually really nice to him, who's kind to him.
And a big fan of Sophie.
And a big fan of Sophie. So for those listeners who are inclined to look poorly on the Kaiser, because, I mean, let's be honest, the Kaiser's a complicated man.
So shall I read what a top historian has written about this relationship between Franz Ferdinand and the Kaiser? The two men loved going hunting together and looked forward to the day when they would be emperors together, swaggering around with their huge mustaches and ridiculous hats. And that top historian, Dominic, was yourself.
Yeah, in Adventures in Time, the First World War. So they would meet up and they would wear hunting gear and compliment each other on their massive mustaches. And they would go and shoot some birds. And then the Kaiser would come back and he would be really nice. He would make a point of being nice to Sophie.
So when they went to Germany-.
He goes up in my estimation. I feel sorry for Sophie.
Yeah, the Kaiser would say, come and sit by me, Sophie. He'd be really kind to her. All this kind of thing. He wrote letters all the time to Franz Ferdinand saying, don't feel stressed about when you're emperor. It'll be brilliant.
We'll have a great time. I will be your friend. I will always stand by Austria. All of this stuff. It sounds flippant, but Franz Ferdinand is quite a lonely man, ostracized by the rest of the family and by the court.
The Kaiser's friendship means a lot to him. And he will often say to the Kaiser, give me a hand here. People are talking of war. The Hungarians are being difficult. Use a bit of your influence, if you can.
And the Kaiser usually says, I'll do what I can.
And is it right that the particular moment of crisis is in the wake of these two wars, these two Balkan wars, when Serbia has expanded by something like over 80% of its territory?
Exactly. So the first Balkan war, as we said, October to May, 1912, 1913, it's everybody basically ganging up on the Ottomans. Conrad says again and again, let's attack Serbia. now. Franz Ferdinand is appalled at this.
Let's not stoop to this hooligism. Let us stay aloof and watch the scum bashing each other's skulls. So he doesn't hold the Serbs and their antagonists in tremendous regard. He actually gives a public toast to peace. What would we get out of war with Serbia?
All we'd get from beating Serbia.
So how do the Serbs misread him so badly?
Because I think they're projecting onto him a stereotype of Austria that is an anchor of their ideology. Their ideology is Austria is a bullying oppressor. Franz Ferdinand has a gigantic moustache and shooting loads of birds. Ergo, he is also a bullying oppressor. And it doesn't fit in their demonology if he's actually a sort of peace figure.
But then, as you say, in the Second Balkan War, where everybody ganged up on Bulgaria, the Serbs conquered a lot more of the Balkans. And reports are going back to Vienna. We have them. We know them. They're there in the archives from Austrian consuls in the Southern Balkans saying there are horrendous massacres.
There's horrendous ethnic cleansing going on. Entire villages of Albanians or people who describe themselves as Turks or Muslims, wiped out by Serbian paramilitaries. So the Austrians think, oh, the Serbians are very bad guys. And yet again, Franz Ferdinand says, no, we're not going to get involved. It would be the end of the empire if we ever fought a war with Serbia, because it would mean war with Russia.
A war with Russia, he writes at one point, will finish us. Should the Kaiser of Austria, the Emperor of Austria and the Tsar, knock each other off their thrones and clear the way for revolution? No way. I mean, it's very prescient, actually.
It's amazingly prescient. And just again, it kind of ratchets up the sense of tragedy, really, that this is the man whose death will ultimately result in precisely those results.
So when that crisis is over in the autumn of 1913, the Austrians have not got involved. The Balkan wars, it seems, have ended. The Kaiser comes to Konopishter. They have an absolutely brilliant time. They shoot 1,100 pheasants.
There's some great banter, Tom, about St. George.
About St. George, who we've just done a podcast on.
You'll enjoy this. Franz Ferdinand, one of his hobbies was collecting pictures of St. George and the dragon. Yeah, I should have put this in the podcast. He had 3,750 different representations of St.
George and the dragon. And he shows them to the Kaiser. He says, look at you, wasting your time with that naval race, with the British, building dreadnoughts. I've already beaten the British. I have more images of their patron saint than they have in Windsor Castle.
And the Kaiser thinks this is absolutely tremendous. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, I am liking that very much.
But actually, actually, Franz Ferdinand, I mean, he's quite keen on Britain, isn't he?
I was so shocked at that impression, Tom, I nearly fainted. He actually had been very down on Britain about 10 or 20 years earlier. But by this point, he's actually, you know, he doesn't mind it. Not least because they are also really into shooting birds. But I was about to say they're very nice to Sophie.
Well, there's that as well. But principally, it's about shooting pheasants.
We're a patriotic podcast, Tom, and I have to say, George V and his court come out very well from what happens next. Because they also invite Sophie and Franz Ferdinand over to Windsor for a week. And this is great for Sophie. I mean, this is a big deal for Franz Ferdinand and Sophie, to go to what is considered the kind of premier court in Europe and to be treated as equals.
And they're nice to Sophie, and that's great.
I mean, actually, George V's diary is hilarious on this. On Tuesday, we got over a thousand pheasants, 450 ducks.
I like the entry for Friday. An awful day, blowing and pouring with rain, a regular deluge in the afternoon. But they still got 800 pheasants and nearly 400 ducks, even though it's raining.
And actually, everybody says the Archduke, they say he's a wonderful man. What a brilliant man. Because no one is a better killer of birds than the Archduke, the Duke of Portland. He proved himself first class. He's the equal of any of my friends.
Given enough practice, he would be the equal of any of the best shots in the country.
High praise.
So everyone says it's great. At dinner, Tom, do you know who they sit in opposite? Your friend, top fisherman Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary. And they talk about world peace. Serbia, Albania, they go into all the Balkans and Sir Edward Grey.
And everyone says, oh, what a tremendous man. the Archduke is. Queen Mary, the Archduke is most amiable. He's making an excellent impression. His wife is so nice, agreeable and easy to get on with.
Very tactful. And actually, afterwards, she says to somebody, he used to be very un-English, but she's been such a good influence on him. They're lovely people. That's nice. So he comes back to Austria.
He's very pleased with himself. All good. Has Christmas with his family.
So this is 1913.
1913.
. But he does have something hanging over him, which is a few months earlier, the governor of Bosnia, General Potiorek, has said to him, wouldn't it be nice if you came to watch our army exercises in Bosnia at the end of June? Do a little visit to Sarajevo. Fly the flag. Very good for kind of relations with the locals.
Habsburg authority. All of this. Now, the thing is, again, this is a detail I think a lot of people miss. People say, oh, he really wanted to go because he and Sophie could be together, and all of this. Actually, he doesn't really want to go.
It's going to be very hot. He's not that keen on it. He has had, as we said, problems with his lungs. He's very anxious about the heat. And he knows, they all know, that there is a security risk.
It's often said they are completely oblivious to the security risk. That's not really true. It's in the governor's interest to downplay it, because it'll make him look a better governor. But Franz Ferdinand is not an idiot. He knows perfectly well this is an age of assassinations and there's always a risk.
But putting, I mean, putting good spin on it, making the best of a bad job, he can take Sophie, because the emperor kind of very grudgingly gives permission, doesn't he?
Franz Ferdinand goes to see him on the 4th of June. Remember from the previous episode, the 4th of June is the day the killers arrived in Sarajevo. The same day, Franz Ferdinand in Vienna goes to see the emperor. He says, I'm not really looking forward to this. It's going to be so hot.
I'm not feeling great. What will make life really easy for me is if I could take Sophie. And the emperor, for once, says, fine, if you must. Take your damned wife with you. So he's going to go.
The next day, of course, is the day that there is that sort of coded warning from the ambassador to the finance minister. It would be a good idea to cancel it. That's not passed on to the authorities in Bosnia, to the governor. So the plan is there is going to be very little security, because the point is to show that we don't need it.
No, it's a normality.
So let's get into the sort of countdown. Franz Ferdinand. on Sunday, the 7th, he goes to the Vienna Derby. That's all great. Everyone makes a fuss of him and Sophie.
And in fact, in the next day's papers, lots of people comment about how she's the best dressed and she looks great. And he's very pleased with that. The following week, his old friend, the Kaiser is back. Back to look at the roses. Designed his own hunting uniform.
Love it. I love it. Green jacket. And he's got hunting boots.
He's got massive boots. He's got this ridiculous little hat. They have a chat about the reform plans. Franz Ferdinand says to the Kaiser, I would like you to help me with the Hungarians. You know, get them to give more concessions to their peasants and the Slavs and stuff.
And he says, it's really crucial to do this. He's no fool, Franz Ferdinand. He says that Romanian minority is really important because Romania is moving away from us and towards Russia. We can't afford to alienate the Romanians. Therefore, we should really be thinking about what's going on in Hungary and having reforms and keeping them on side.
And actually, the Kaiser says, you know, I'll do my bit. Don't worry. You can rely on me. And the visit is such a success that Franz Ferdinand says, this has been brilliant. After the summer is over and I'm back from Bosnia, let's have a hunting weekend.
And you know who we should have along? George V.
So say what you like about the First World War. It saved the lives of a lot of birds.
I know, but it ruined what would have been a brilliant weekend. An absolutely brilliant weekend. I mean, that's my dream dinner party, actually. Captain Benteen from the Custer series. The Kaiser, Franz Ferdinand, George V.
I'd be in my element.
Whereas I'm just thinking of the birds.
Yeah, you're all cards, aren't you? I'm all hearts. When the Kaiser is gone, they open up the castle because it's their annual open date for people to come and see the gardens.
I imagine Sophie's lovely.
A big deal for Franz Ferdinand, this.
Lovely to children, I imagine.
I think, actually, they're quite reclusive. They don't really mingle much because they're kind of shy. They're modest people, Tom.
Oh, I imagine they're going out and being charming to, you know.
Oh, no, I have to disappoint you.
Wiping the snot from a little girl's face. That kind of thing.
Is that your definition of charm?
Yeah, well, kind of, yeah.
Okay, fine.
The people's archduchess.
Which is not an archduchess, is she? Well, the people's lady-in-waiting. So now we're at the weekend. They have a long weekend. They have multiple castles.
So they go to their summer castle, which is a place called Krum on the border between what's now the Czech Republic and Austria. And they just have a family weekend. I mean, it basically sounds like a British caravan holiday from the 1970s. They go on long walks in the woods. They play bowls.
They play board games with the kids. So the kids are Sophie's 13,, Max is 11 and Ernst is 10..
Go on space hoppers.
And this is, you see, they're both going to Bosnia. It's the longest they'll ever have been away from the children. So this is their kind of farewell to the children. We will be back soon. We are going to go do this business in Bosnia and then we'll come back and we can crack on with the summer.
So then on Wednesday, the 24th, goodbye to the children. And they're going to go. Now they're going to go separately. Sophie's going to go by train via Budapest. But Franz Ferdinand is very interested in the Navy.
So he's going to go partly by boat. He's going to go down, get a kind of dreadnought, actually Austria's one dreadnought from Trieste down the coast of what's now Croatia. And then he will take a yacht upriver into Herzegovina and then a train the rest of the way. An odd thing happens when he gets the train from Vienna to Trieste. There's an electrical fault on the train and the train gets very hot.
There's obviously no fans, but also they have to rely on candles for light. And Franz Ferdinand says to his kind of Chamberlain, see, this is how it's going to start. He says, first an overheated carriage, then there'll probably be someone will try and shoot me in Sarajevo. And then, if they can't quite finish off the job, there'll be an explosion on board the ship afterwards. He makes this kind of joke, but he says explicitly, I do not want to live in a bell jar under a glass jar.
We're always in mortal danger. We just have to put our trust in God. And actually the rest of the journey unfolds with that incident. He goes down the Dalmatian coast, he gets the yacht, then he gets the train. And on the 25th of June, he arrives in the spa town, not far from where we are, Tom, Ilića, which is up in the hills above us, just outside Sarajevo.
Sophie is already there and is waiting for him. And at that point, they have three days to live.
Brilliant stuff. And in our next episode, we will trace the fateful events that lead up to his assassination, a day that changes the world. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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