The Congress of Vienna was a conference, lasting from September 1814 to June 1815, in which a large number of diplomats from various European nations met to create some sense of peace and stability in the wake of twenty-five-year-long streak of violence: the ten years (1789 to 1799) of the French Revolution and the fifteen years (1800 to 1815) of Napoleon’s reign. Tired of war and bloodshed, Europe wanted peace.
Klemens von Metternich was a German-born diplomat working for the Austrians. He organized the conference. The main principle was that there should be five roughly equal superpowers in Europe: the UK, France, Prussia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Russia. Matched in political, economic, and military strength, the five-way division of power should prevent any one nation from going on a rampage.
Each of the five superpowers was ruled by a dynasty, a royal family: in Prussia, the Hohenzollerns; in Austria-Hungary, the Habsburgs; in France, the Bourbons; in the UK, the House of Hanover; in Russia, the House of Romanov.
In a system of hereditary monarchies, marriages and the births of children were political events as much as, and sometimes more than, personal events. Unlike the common people, the royals were not always free to marry for love. Arranged marriages were not unusual.
So it was that Crown Prince Rudolf married Princess Stephanie of Belgium in 1881. Rudolf was the only son and heir apparent of Emperor Franz-Josef of Austria-Hungary. Rudolf had little interest in Stephanie, but the marriage was intended to improve relationships between Belgium and Austria-Hungary. Whatever affection Rudolf might have had quickly faded. He began to have a series of affairs. Disappointed with his life, he consumed large amounts of alcohol, cocaine, morphine, and opium. His life spiraled downwards in personal disintegration.
While Rudolf’s private life was a trainwreck, his political life was more productive. He was intelligent and well-educated, writing and reading several different languages. He was well-versed in philosophy and economics, authoring books, articles, and pamphlets. He worked with Carl Menger, an influential economist of the era, and envisioned a useful and productive role for the aristocracy in modern Europe.
In January 1889, Rudolf attended a celebration at the German Embassy in Vienna. It was the thirtieth birthday of Kaiser Wilhelm, the reigning monarch of Prussia. Both Rudolf’s wife and his current mistress were in attendance. This was the last time that he was seen in public, as historian Angus Robertson writes:
The day after leaving the German Embassy reception, Rudolf was driven through a snowstorm toward his hunting lodge at Mayerling in the Vienna woods. Collecting young Mary at a prearranged stop on the way, they arrived without anyone at the lodge noticing the presence of the young lover. When nobody answered from his locked bedroom on the morning of 30 January 1889, the door was forced open by Count Josephy Hoyos, the crown prince’s hunting companion. He found Rudolf and young Mary dead both with gunshot wounds to the head, suggesting a murder-suicide by Rudolf. Count Hoyos raced toward the Mayerling railway station to try to stop the Vienna-bound morning express train, so he could get to the capital quickly and tell the emperor. A telegraph to the Vienna owners of the railway line, explaining why the express had been stopped, arrived quicker than Count Hoyos, and Baron Albert Rothschild reported the shocking news to the German and British Embassies: ‘Diplomatic Vienna thus learned of Rudolf’s suicide before the emperor did.’
The deaths of Rudolf and Mary were personal tragedies, but they were also political shocks: diplomats around the world had reckoned Rudolf to be the successor to Franz-Josef. Each nation had to make projections about its foreign policy going forward: international relations would have to be revised.
Now Archduke Karl Ludwig would be the heir presumptive, and for all practical purposes the heir apparent. This news caused governmental recalculations around the globe, as Angus Robertson reports:
German ambassador Prince Reuss immediately broke the word to embassy counsellor Count Anton Monts, while at the British residence on the other side of Metternichgasse the door was ‘burst open’ by Baron Rothschild, in evening clothes with all his Orders on, who said: ‘I have come to tell you a very sad thing, the Crown Prince is dead!’
The death of Crown Prince Rudolf had a significant effect on the international scene. Details about the two deaths — was it a double suicide as the evidence at first suggested, or was there another, deeper, narrative being hidden? — would simultaneously be clues about the inner workings of the Habsburg administration. Angus Robertson continues:
Given that Rudolf was the heir to the imperial throne, the tragedy was doubly shocking; how did it come to this and what did it mean for the future of the monarchy? It led to huge interest in the capitals of the world. ‘Ambassadors in Vienna poked and pried, wrote home reams of hearsay and rumor. Queen Victoria implored her minister in Vienna, “Pray give all the details you can gather, however distressing they may be.” The papal nuncio, on the excuse of praying on the death scene, got admittance to the Mayerling lodge and nosed about for a morsel of truth.
Some observers conjectured that Rudolf had conducted secret talks with certain Hungarian factions, and that he chose suicide over the disclosure of those talks. Speculation is available in far greater quantities than information.
Karl Ludwig didn’t last long in the role of heir. He died in 1896. The new heir was Archduke Franz-Ferdinand, who was assassinated in 1914.
Crown Prince Rudolf, had he lived, would have spent twenty-five years as heir, and during those years, would have exerted influence on Franz-Josef and the operations of the Habsburg administration. In personality and temperament, Rudolf was different from Franz-Ferdinand.
Historians are left with a hypothetical question which, of course, can never be answered: had Rudolf lived, which impact might he have had on the global diplomatic scene? Had Rudolf lived, might World War One have been avoided?
