NEW VERSION OF ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH'S MURDER.

Otago Witness, Issue 3335, 13 February 1918, Page 54

NEW VERSION OF ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH'S MURDER.

Was the Archduchess Stephanie indirectly responsible for the death of her husband, the Archduke Rudolph, heir to the Austrian throne, in the hunting lodge of Meyerling ? And were the shots that killed the Archduke and Marie Vecsera fired by the girl's relative, to whom she was bethothea? Did the Emperor Francis Joseph betray his brother Maximilian in Mexico? These are the questions raised and answered in the affirmative- by Count Roger de Resseguier, whose father was Francis Joseph's court chamberlain. The answers are- based, it is asserted, on family records and memoirs. Herbert Vivian has just written a book drawn from Count Roger's memoirs, under the title of "Francis Joseph and His Court." Count de Resseguier pays scant heed to certain legends that weave a veil., of extenuating romance over the character of Francis. Joseph's son. Rudolph did have liberal views, he admits, agreeing thus far with the Archduke's apologists'; he was even something of a rebel; he was undoubtedly tinged with some taint, of potential madness from the mother's side of the house as well as from the longrecurring insanity of the Hapsburgs; but, the author goes on, for all that could be said in his favour he was by no means an admirable character. Francis ' Joseph, as the Count de Resseguier presents him, was a libertine himself, and his son was worse. The Count asserts that two of the people who always knew the truth about Rudolph's death were his mother's friends —Countess Anastasia Wimpffen, at whose house the Crown Prince and the young Baroness Vecsera used to meet, and Countess Chorinsky-Mittrowsky. He says:—

"I can remember many long evenings when we discussed the tragedy of Meyerling at Modling, near Vienna, in a shoot-ing-box belonging to the Sovereign Prince of Liechtenstein. That is to say, they discussed it among themselves, for I was little more, than a boy. Besides my mother, Countess Chorinsky-Mittrowsky and her husband, the Lord Chief Justice, were there; also an Italian nobleman, Count Ceschi di Santa Croce, Grand Prior of the Order of Malta. During those evenings,' listening to the talk of those who had known the very souls of the dramatis personaj, all the secrets behind the scenes, arid-all sorts of details discovered by the secret police, I lived the whole tragedy over again, and I understood why the public could never penetrate its mysteries, for the lips of those who knew were sealed. - "But now, after so many years, there is no reason for continuing to hide what really happened, even though the .new i light may cast much responsibility upon a woman who can still plead many -extenuating circumstances—namely, the greatness of the offence which had been put upon her; perhaps, too, a failure to foresee the tragic consequences of her revenge. I allude to the lady who is now only Countess Lonyay, and ought to have been Empress of Austria. Stephanie, the widow of the Archduke. ... "Stephanie, daughter of Leopold, King of the Belgians, Avas very young when she married Archduke Rudolph' of Austria. ... It was a. A-ery unhappy marriage. Even the Emperor, though he had secretly desired the match, did not look upon her with favour, and the Empres Elizabeth always treated her very coldly. She also suffered a. good deal on account of the matrimonial adventures of her sister Louise, the wife of Philip of Coburg, her husband's most constant associate in debauch. Above all, there was the terrible infidelity of Rudolph. One can understand how the Archduchess must have locked up in her heart whole storehquses of hate. Tlien there were low intriguers always trying to take advantage of her discontents, and they induced her to shoot an arrow that travelled much farther than she had ever anticipated. That she certainly regretted." The Archduke had many love affairs before his relations with Marie Vecsera became notorious. But this one, according to the latest explanation, was more than the Archduchess could bear. The Count de Resseguier asserts that Marie was the daughter of a Greek princess, who had been the mistress of Francis Joseph many years before, and that when the Princess left the court a husband was found for her in the person of a baron of questionable title, whom the Emperor established in wealth and " nobilitv." There was always a suspicion in some quarters, says the Count, that Marie Vecsera was Francis Joseph's child. "But," he comments, "we need not complicate a drama that is already sad enough." At all events, he says, the man who was hastily summoned to become Marie's affianced husband when the Archduchess Stephanie had set detectives on the girl's trail, was either her uncle or her cousin—the Count do Resseguier does not remember -which, —and it was he, the narrator flatly affirms, who killed Marie and the heir to the Austrian throne. Of Stephanie's part the author, continuing, says : * "Archduchess Stephanie, for reasons

already mentioned, was like a cloud charged with electricity, ready at any moment to launch her thunderbolt. Tho infidelity had been too patent; and it -was in everybody's mouth, and it shook her out of her usual altitude of proud contempt. Miserable agents volunteered their services, and gradually increased their ascendancy over her mind. Among them was a man called Schaeffer, manager of tho Argus Detective Agency. . . . Francis Joseph and his uncompromising partisans were more angry about this affair than they had been about any of the past follies of the Archduke. . • . Marie's mothjr sought an audience of tho old Emperor. ... It was now that her brother, or cousin. Baron I Baldazzi, appeared on tho scenes, and was betrothed to the wayward girl. But lie was not the man one'might have thought. He soon proved to be rather the guardian of the family honour than the convenient bridegroom. He installed the reign of terror. " But none of these events could alarm Archduke Rudolph. . . . And one fine day the Archduke, who had quite made up his mind not to be bullied, set out for his shooting box at Meyerling, in the neighbouring Winnerwald." He did not go alone or secretly, but set out in his usual landau. Marie Vecsera was with him. Other carriages followed with the usual boon companions of his shooting and other expeditions; his cousin, Philip of Coburg; Count Hoyos, two stalwart Alpenjaeger, and many good bottles of champagne. . . . The Archduke's carriages were Been on their way through Modling and Gaaden.

" Meanwhile a conference was going on between the Archduchess Stephanie and Schaefl'er at Vienna, and this was immediately followed by another conference between Schaeffer and Baldazzi and Marie's mother. It is difficult to reconstruct their conversation. There was certainly no mandate for murder oni the part of- either Stephanie or Marie's • mother. There was probably an incitement to provoke a scandal or even to use threats. But Baron

Baldazzi exceeded any such instructions by a very long way. He took a Remington rifle, perhaps under pretence of a shooting expedition, and set out in the afternoon by the Sudbahn railway .to Baden. There he took a carriage and drove up the Helenenthal, the other valley leading to Meyerling. But he sent back the carriage before he reached Meyerling. Then he took to the woods, where he was seen by two monks from Heiligenkreuz. Night was closing in." From a pine tree just outside the "shooting lodge, the Count continues, Baldazzi could look directly jnto a large lighted room on the first floor. What he saw was the group of people who had come from Vienna all ■ asleep, while the "■ candles burned low in their sockets, and Philip and Count Hoyos and the two huntsmen, were, the Count adds, intoxicated; empty champagne bottles lay on the floor. The narrator continues his story> — " Then Baldazzi fired without the least hurry or excitement. Ho fired at his be r trothed .and at the heir to the. Austrian T throne. He was' a crack shot, and he struck both through -the heart. Then he was seized" with mad fury. He threw away his gun, which was afterwards found by the servants of the Abbey, climbed down" into the ditchy swung himself up to the low window whose panes had been broken," entered the room, seized an empty bottle, and battered the heads of the two dead lovers. Bits- of glass were afterwards.found right inside their brains. Very early the same morning Count Hoyos and Philip of Cobnrg hurried off to Vienna to announce the death of the Archduke.

" That is the true story of the tragedy of Meyerling." One earlier chronicler says the young' Baroness was the one flower of loveliness and serenity that bloomed in the. darkness and sadness of the Archduke's life, that she was devoted to him, and that for him 6he sacrificed her reputation, her position, and at' last her life. According to other versions, the young Baroness "Vecsera was an adventuress,- she constantly played upon the lower- side of Rudolph's complex nature, led him into dissipations and despairs, and made him a victim of drugs. Upon the question of Marie's character the Count de Resseguier passes no judgment at all; he frankly says that he does not know whether she was good or bad, innocent or scheming. He describes her as very young, " a child, but by no means an ordinary child," that she had ambitions, and that, although she has been reputed beautiful} she was " short and rather stumpy, but she had a white skin and pretty, sad, black eyes." In seeking to show that Francis Joseph betrayed Maximilian, the Count de Ressequier starts out with the assertion that the older brother had always hated the younger, and recalls his mother's memory of a Court "function" where the two boys, aged 14 and 16, came publicly to blows; that Maximilian was making things very uncomfortable for the older Archduke when the two were separated, and Francis Joseph's jealousy was not mitigated when, 'upon many disagreeable occasions, their mother took .Maximilian's part. Of the Mexican affair, the Count, writes : " The unfortunate Maximilian was betrayed by his brother Francis Joseph and by Francis Joseph's partisans. I should not make such a statement if I were not possessed of proofs which fill all my youthful memories. Mv mother. Countess Erminia of Strachwitz, was lady-in-waiting at that time. She received a personal invitation from Maximilian and Carlotta, then starting for Mexico, to take over the supreme charge of the Court of the new empire.. Though she refused, she was. associated with many of the events I am now about to relate. My father, Count Hadrian de Resseguier, one of the Emperor's chamberlains, owned the great estate and castle of Nisko, between the Tatra Mountains and t'he San. Among his guests there were Father Fischer, Archbishop of Mexico, and Prince- Tturbide of the Incas, Maximilian's adopted

con. But it was my uncle, Count Oliver de Resseguier, now First Chamberlain of Galicia, who acted as Francis Joseph's chief instrument in that black business. At one time my family could talk of nothing else. ' "Maximilian succeeded Radetzki as Viceroy of Lombardy. He was set over the Hungarians as Governor-general. However, he displayed too much indulgence towards the Italians; he was too much liked by the Hungarians —so at least his opponents murmured at Vienna. And it seems to me ; at the back of the honours conferred on him, there lurked already the accusation that, making common cause with Italians and Hungarians, he was meditating high treason against his brother," the Emperor. " It was not only his brother, who distrusted him. At Vienna all the conservatism of the old rulers who had been despoiled by Napoleon formed a sort of entrenched camp against Archduke Maximillian. So he. who had made a love match with the' beautiful Princess Charlotte of Belgium, withdrew himself far away from all the hatred in the castle of Miramar, a white Norman dream among the red rocks of the Adriatic. But he

did not remain there long. While Charlotte rambled in the gardens, while he read romances in the aquarium, the Mexican intrigue was being prepared, the intrigue which was to bring death to him and madness to his wife. ' "My uncle, Count Oliver de Resseguier, returning from a colloquy with Francis Joseph, from whom he had asked leave to retain his commission in the Austrian navy while he went as chamberlain to Mexico, met a friend who also wanted to go out with the new Emperor. 'I have no family and have made my will,' my uncle ,said to him, ' but I should not advise anyone who has anything to lose to go where I am going.' And he knew what he was talking about, for he was an instrument of the Court of Vienna in that dark tragedy. Thus there was much talk at that-time about the departure.. And those who knew most must have recognised it as a sure preliminary to those Austro-French arrangements which cul-

minated later on in the first meeting of the two Emperors at Salzburg. With reference to that meeting, Countess d'Harmoncourt has related a serious incident.

" ' Your Majesty/ Francis Joseph said—- ' your Majesty, I need all your troops in Europe.' To which 111 replied coldly, ' To the detriment of your Majesty's brother.' " For Maximilian's last support in that unfortunate year 1867 lay in the French troops commanded by the treacherous Marshal Bazaine. The nretext then for -withdrawing the troops was political necessity. The real motive was the Emperor's implacable hatred of his brother." But the treachery s which Count Soger alleges went further than that. By advice of Count Oliver de Eesseguier, he says, the Empress Carlotta returned to Europe—at least, his explanation is, they wanted to save her. An agent of Francis Joseph, who possessed the technical knowledge of a naval officer, sought out Juarez, and\ gave him the plans of the Fortress of Q.ueretaro, says the narrator, in arguing for his point that Maximilian was betrayed into his enemy's hands.Thus is the story the Chamberlain's son tells of what he calls " the foul deed which, the public has not yet discovered, which has long . been known in Austria only to the many who dare not tell.". But this is not the only piece of Hapsburg Court intrigue to which the Count gives attention. He relates, for instance, the tale of Louis *of Coburg, wife of the notorious Philip and sister of the unhappy Stephanie, who was shut up in a madhouse, and adds that the intimacy of the old King Leopold of the Belgians with Baroness Vaughan was deliberately incited and built up by agents of Vienna in order to rpb the two Belgian Prin-

cesses of the lai'ge fortunes which they zwould., otherwise receive from their father,

and thus to keen them helpless under Hapsburg rule. Efe refers again and again to the money-getting proclivities of the - Hapsburgs, and for the late ' Francis Joseph he has scarcely a word that is good. The whole family he sums up at the end of a chapter, in which he traces the essential likeness between the stern and religions Franz Ferdinand and his gay and dissolute brother Otho. " That race.'.' he says, " is a mad and sanguinary anachronism."—]ST.Y. Times.