Despite the mental weakness of Franz’s son Ferdinand,
Metternich supported his accession, perhaps also convinced that this young man,
perceived by the Archduke John as ‘wholly incapable of decisive action’, would
allow Metternich to run the affairs of state with the minimum of interference.
Indeed, Metternich proceeded to personify the system that now governed most of
Central and Eastern Europe far more than the Emperor.
Ferdinand’s reign witnessed huge encroachments by the
‘apparatus of the state’, with police informers and surveillance reaching
levels that would be achieved in Central Europe only in totalitarian states a
century later. It was a tribute to the popularity of the half-wit Emperor’s
predecessor that this unhappy state of affairs lasted thirteen years before
there was an explosion. As the Archduke Albert wrote of Ferdinand’s reign, ‘It
could not have lasted a year had not his predecessor enjoyed an unimpeachable
position.’
The ‘tyranny’ that was reported to have descended on the
Empire was much exaggerated by liberal opinion, especially in England. The
remarkable memoirs of The Times correspondent of the day, Charles Pridham,
describe vividly how the machinery of a police state was mobilised to watch and
monitor his every move as he attempted to get to Hungary to cover events there.
From Vienna to Trieste he was treated to every conceivable measure of
surveillance and official delay, worthy indeed of the wiles of the Eastern
European communists in their dealings with correspondents a hundred and forty
years later. But for the help of the British Consul in Trieste, who certainly
defied the instructions of his Ambassador in Vienna, the supine and ‘pragmatic’
Ponsonby, he would almost certainly never have made it into Hungary at all.
But though a price was eventually placed on his head by the
infamously severe General Haynau, Pridham suffered no physical violence and it
was somehow typical of the Metternich era that, despite the furious cries of
journalists and writers against the reign of censorship and confiscation, none
was ever imprisoned or physically attacked for attempting to subvert the rules.
There were no ‘show trials’. No records of torture during the Metternich
period, of individuals disappearing or of incarceration without due process of
law, exist.
Because the revolutionary events of 1848 affected the
structure of the army directly, they also threatened the existence of the
dynasty. Conditions in Vienna and Budapest suggested strongly that the fiction of
the Emperor Ferdinand’s reign be abandoned. The generals who were loyal to the
dynasty awaited orders from Vienna but from the Emperor there came nothing.
When Ferdinand went for a carriage ride, against the advice of his courtiers,
and saw the angry Viennese crowd jeering, he mistook it for innocent emotional
excess. ‘Ma Liebe Wärner! Schauens die oan! So a Stuam!’ (‘My darling Viennese!
Just look at them. How excited they get’), he observed in broad Viennese
dialect, utterly unperturbed. On another occasion when following a riot a stray
cow found its way into the Hofburg courtyards, he looked down from a window
languidly commenting to his horrified aides: ‘That must be the first stupid cow
to get into this palace without the help of any nepotism’ (‘ohne Protection’).
Fortunately for the dynasty, the moment brought forth the
men. Three distinguished soldiers emerged who, keeping their nerve, would
ensure the survival of the House of Austria. When the Emperor said Wir (We),
cynics joked that each letter stood for one of his generals. Chief among these
was a man in his 83rd year whom we have already encountered on the battlefields
of Europe a generation earlier: Field Marshal Johann Josef Wenzel, Count
Radetzky von Radec. As we have observed, there was nothing in Radetzky’s career
to suggest that he would for a moment either surrender or give up the struggle
for the Habsburgs. His greatest support was his popularity among his soldiers
but also – and this is rarely referred to – among the Italian peasantry. These
saw him as a guardian against the pretensions of their Italian aristocratic
landlords and the intellectual musings of the Milanese middle classes whose
ambitions carried no weight among the simple ‘contadini’; a class division
repeated throughout the monarchy.
Documents found recently in the USA indicate that Radetzky
was not the simple reactionary that he is sometimes painted. As a young man he
had embraced the Enlightenment ideals of the Josephinian era and had been one
of the first young officers of the Imperial army to join a Masonic lodge.
A strong conviction that progress was to be welcomed never
left Radetzky. His support for those less fortunate than himself assisted many
military careers, notably Benedek’s. At the same time his human frailties
endeared him to his Italian soldiers who knew the rumours (perfectly true) of
his many illegitimate children and of his long, passionate and affectionate
affair with his Italian housekeeper, Giudita Meregalli, who was equally devoted
to him. Such a lifestyle was expensive and it was Radetzky’s tragedy to be
married to a wife who sought refuge from her husband’s many infidelities in the
relentless pursuit of material and costly luxuries. In 1798, he had married the
rather stiff Friulan Countess Strassoldo. In eighteen years she had dutifully
borne him eight children and, from 1805, two-thirds of every florin Radetzky
earned were sent straight to Gorizia for his wife and family’s needs, 4,000 out
of 6,000 florins, according to one letter from Radetzky to his favourite daughter,
Friederike Wenckheim. In 1816, the General only staved off bankruptcy by
pledging his debtors half of his future income. Even when he was made a Field
Marshal in 1836, the financial worries did not cease.
In addition to his eight children with Countess Strassoldo,
only two of whom would outlive him, the general had commitments with his
Italian Signora Meregalli. She was a voluptuous, capable woman whose
simplicity, warmth and charm were all any soldier could wish for. Milanese
history has embroidered her character with many details but all the
contemporary sources are agreed that she was a formidable cook. She had
‘conquered’ the old general with, among other gifts, her ravishing culinary
skills, not least her gnocchi di zucca and cotoletta alla Milanese, a dish
later exported to Vienna where it became the ubiquitous Wiener Schnitzel.
She too bore him eight children, five sons and three
daughters, all of whom Radetzky recognised as his own and whom he supported
financially. Nor was the soldier’s relationship with Signora Meregalli limited
to domestic issues. When he was away from Lombardy he wrote regularly about the
political situation in Europe generally. These letters show that he did not for
a moment underestimate his Italian cook’s intelligence. In one, he noted that
it would be just his luck to be posted to Bohemia when it was his real wish
‘with all his heart’ to return to Italy. He deplored London’s continual support
for Italian revolution, writing to his daughter Friederike: ‘As long as England
does not stop to lead the campaign to destroy Europe, there will not be any
peace.’
For Radetzky, Signora Meregalli was also a vital source of
information on what the Italians were thinking. Her connections with the
leaders of the Lombard rebels have never been proven, though they are alluded
to in Italian texts. In any event, as Radetzky’s letters of March 1848 show, he
knew the explosion was coming; that Piedmont was rearming and that all the
warning signs were there. These warnings he conscientiously passed on to Vienna
but his superiors filed them unread, being distracted by events nearer to home.
The Italians needed little encouragement to rise up. The
Milanese intellectuals, excited by Piedmontese and British propaganda, seized
weapons and began to menace the garrison. Confronted by an armed uprising,
Radetzky knew he had to move swiftly. After five days of attacks he brought his
forces out of Milan. The Imperial troops marched out of the city on a wet and
windy night. The cannons roared and the clatter of rifle fire filled the night,
illuminated as it was by the flames of the burning buildings. As Radetzky’s
advance guard punched a hole through the thin revolutionary forces holding the
Porta Romana, the troops marched along the Lodi road past the motionless figure
of their commander, who was watching with his small staff on horseback in the
torrential rain of a thunderstorm. The rain poured off his hat and coat and,
though drenched to the skin, the Field Marshal, motionless and calm, watched
his men. Finally when almost the last soldiers had passed, Radetzky was heard
to say ‘Wir kehren wieder’ (‘We’ll be back’) before riding off into the rainy
night.
As Radetzky retired into the formidable ‘Quadrilateral’ of
fortresses: Verona, Mantua, Legnano and Peschiera, the only good news seemed to
come from Tyrol, where the aged priest and veteran of 1809 Haspinger and the
grandsons of Andreas Hofer had marched towards Mantua to avenge their
grandfather’s death. Haspinger’s beard was now no longer red but silver white.
The fortifications Radetzky found on regaining the
Quadrilateral were in a parlous state. In Verona some outworks were held only
by three or four men. In Peschiera there was a garrison of fewer than 41 men,
of whom 17 were officially classed as invalids. But the old Marshal was
undeterred. From here he tore up the Italian peace overtures and made
preparations to destroy his opponents. He had trained his troops over the
previous years and he knew their quality. As early as 1833, he had written a
paper for the Archduke John on the possibilities of defensive campaigning with
Verona rather than the Mincio river as the key to his strategy. The experienced
soldier knew every inch of the territory and he had fought many campaigns
against far more deadly foes.
Windischgrätz and
Jellačić
Prince
Windischgrätz
Josef Jellačić von Buzim
While Radetzky prepared his counter-offensive, two other
Habsburg generals moved to support the throne. The first of these was Prince
Windischgrätz, a general very much of the reactionary school with a heavy,
brutal face while the second was, perhaps, the most romantic of all Austrian
generals of the mid-nineteenth century, the Croat, Josef Jellačić von Buzim.
Together with Radetzky, the three made up with the initials of their surnames
the Imperial and Royal WIR (the I and J were interchangeable). If the Kaiser
used the royal We (Wir), he meant Windischgrätz, Jellačić, Radetzky – his three
generals.
It was Windischgrätz who subdued Prague and then came back
to deal with Vienna. The experience in Prague had hardened him even more. A few
yards from the famous ‘Powder Tower’, he had seen his wife shot by the mob
before his eyes. This tragedy persuaded him to suggest yet more radical steps.
It was clear to Windischgrätz that the existing Kaiser was simply not up to the
challenges of the moment. Metternich had fled Vienna. But Vienna was not
Berlin; Austria was no Prussia where the army could take over. It existed to
serve the dynasty, not to replace it.
‘We need a Kaiser we can show the soldiers,’ Windischgrätz
told his brother-in-law Prince Felix Schwarzenberg, nephew of the victor of
Leipzig in 1813. The obvious candidate was the young Archduke Franz-Josef,
barely turned 18 and known as the ‘Flower of the Habsburgs’. The boy was manly,
a keen equestrian and a splendid-looking officer. But before the abdication of
Ferdinand could even be thought of in practical terms, a number of Habsburg
family members would need to be persuaded, and this would take time.
The situation in Vienna certainly called for desperate
measures. In October, the Imperial family had to move to Olmütz for the second
time. The mob had stormed the Arsenal and, in an act worthy of the worst
excesses of the French Revolution, had hacked the hapless Latour to death, stringing
up his body from a nearby lamp-post, still alive. In March, Metternich, the
erstwhile ‘Coachman of Europe’ had already made his discreet exit from Vienna
and politics hidden in a laundry basket.
Meanwhile the Hungarian rebellion was in full cry. The Hungarians
wanted a constitution and demanded that all Habsburg troops stationed on
Hungarian territory should swear allegiance to the Constitution rather than the
Habsburg monarch. To make matters even more complex, the Hungarian troops were
scattered throughout the realm. Of the twelve Hussar regiments only six were on
Hungarian soil. Many were with Radetzky, and the last thing he needed was their
marching off to defend their constitution. While he permitted some Hussar
officers to return, the majority of the troops opted to remain. His troops,
including several regiments made up of Italians, were loyal.
Determined to seize the opportunity presented by the rather
indifferent quality of the Piedmontese troops ranged against him, Radetzky was
thunderstruck by a request from Ferdinand, now in Innsbruck, to make peace with
the Italians. Radetzky urged the young Prince Schwarzenberg to travel to the
Imperial court immediately to have the decision rescinded.
Radetzky had often contemplated the action he now faced and
had made the following manoeuvre the basis of many earlier exercises. As he
recalled: ‘An enemy army from the west pursues a much weaker Austrian Army
across the Mincio and occupies the heights of Sommacampagna but the Austrian
army retires on Verona and there reinforced resumes the offensive.’ This plan
became reality for Radetzky.
On 28 April, 30,000 Piedmontese troops attacked 6,000
Austrians at Pastrengo and were swiftly beaten back in a short, sharp and
defensive action, which would set the trend for the following weeks.
On 6 May the Piedmontese attacked again with a numerical
superiority of 3:1 at Santa Lucia where the 10th Jaeger battalion under Colonel
Karl von Kopal, together with a battalion of the Erzherzog Sigismund infantry
regiment, mostly made up of Italians, took up a strong defensive position. Two
companies of the Jaeger defended the cemetery, where the fighting raged for
hours. The two battalions held off and defeated three Piedmontese brigades in
an action which showed that, in the hands of the right officers, Italian troops
loyal to the Habsburgs were a formidable instrument against their confrères.
However, it did not all go Radetzky’s way. Three weeks later the Austrian
Tuscan division was defeated at Curtatone, and Peschiera, still weakly held,
fell to the Piedmontese.
