Tom Holland

This episode is brought to you by the Lloyds 5k house deposit and this is something that was last seen in 1996.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah, so the 1990s looks now like a lost golden age of prosperity and positivity, doesn't it? Think of the sort of the advent of the Blair administration in 1997, all the enthusiasm and excitement that surrounded that, the economic growth of the time, the technological developments, the sort of sense of an endless golden summer where everybody's listening to Blair and Oasis and looking forward to buying their first houses. And that of course takes us to mortgages. Now the good news is that in a nod to the 1990s, Lloyds are offering 5k deposit mortgages to first time buyers. So search 5k first time buyer 1996

Tom Holland

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To learn more, check out Accenture.com Spotify, Cad Hoyos and the Prince of Coburg ordered Losczek to break down the door out of breath, half crying, Losczek whispered that he had to inform their Serene Lordships that a lady, the Baroness Mary Vetzera, was staying in His Imperial Highness's room. Coburg and Hoyos recoiled. They retreated to the billiard room. Loszek kept knocking and calling. A kitchen maid began to whimper. Within a minute the two emerged and repeated their order. Break down the door. Some servant had already brought a wood chopping axe. Lost Check raised it to smash the lock. The lock resisted. Lost Check hacked away at the white painted door panels. The axe crashed the panels splintered. Ravens fluttered up from the snow outside. The dogs barked and howled to the echoing blows. Lost Check hacked out a gash. The gash became a hole framed in jagged wood, smoky with blurred candles, dark with the drawn blinds. The room inside was visible. Only then did Loss Check drop his axe. The silence which followed changed the empire. So that is the climactic scene from Frederick Norton's great book A Nervous Splendor, which is a portrait of fin de siecle Vienna at the end of the 1880s. And it is a tremendously gothic account of the most notorious murder suicide in European history. A scandal so fantastically lurid that it makes the travails of our own beloved royal family, well, like nothing very much at all in comparison. And the context couldn't be more colourful. We're just outside Vienna. The year is 1888. Vienna, of course, at this period, the city of Mala of Klimt. The young Freud busy developing his theories of psychoanalysis. His notions about the sexual etiology of neurosis and the question of sex and neurosis will not be irrelevant to this story. And Vienna is the capital of an empire that is struggling to cope with forces that in the 20th century will have an absolutely explosive effect. Nationalism, antisemitism, a host of other modern pathologies. But the scene I just described, Dominic, I mean, it does read like something out of a kind of 19th century Gothic thriller, doesn't it? Like something out of Edgar Allan Poe.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah, absolutely it does. So, hi everybody. The scene is a remote hunting lodge in the woods outside Vienna. And the two principal characters. So I'm gonna give the game away right away. A killer is the 30 year old heir to the Austro Hungarian throne. He is Crown Prince Rudolph, an idealistic haggard man. He's off his face on morphine and champagne, he is riddled with gonorrhea and he is the kind of man who keeps a skull as a paperweight.

Tom Holland

I mean, he's another of the many people in history who look like our producer Callum, an astonishing number of them. But maybe the interesting thing about this, we did our series on Jack the Ripper and we pooh poohed the notion that a crown prince could be a. A killer in that series. But here there's not much doubt, is there?

Dominic Sandbrook

There's no doubt whatsoever. So there's Crown Prince Rudolph and then there is his accomplice and victim. And this is his teenage mistress, Baroness Mary Vetzera, who is a fashionista, she's a party girl, she's a social climber and she has become infatuated with him to the point of self destruction. And it's a brilliant, brilliant story. I mean, all through the decades, writers and artists have been drawn to it. There are manga comics, there are plays, there are Oper Ballet, Kenneth Macmillan's great ballet from the 1970s, a real favorite at the Royal Ballet in London.

Tom Holland

Yeah. Cause it was staged this spring at Covent Gardens.

Dominic Sandbrook

So it's a fantastic story and we'll get straight into it and we'll begin with the time and place which is a great favourite of the rest is history. The Austro Hungarian Empire. So worlds of gigantic cakes, even more gigantic moustaches, insanely dapper uniforms, waltzes, Nationalism, you know, simmering beneath the surface. The subconscious conscious sexual psychosis. Exactly. We are here for all of it now to remind listeners, particularly people who didn't hear our series about the build up to the First World War, when the Austro Hungarian Empire last featured. It's in Central Europe. It's this mosaic of languages and ethnicities. Half of it is ruled from Vienna, half of it from Budapest. There are 13 million German speakers, 10 million Hungarians, 5 million Czechs. There are Poles, Italians, Slovenes, Jews, you name it. And what binds them is their unity to the Habsburg dynasty. So it's a 13th century dynasty, the Habsburgs. Rudolph, of course, is a Habsburg. In his book that you mentioned, is brilliant book, A Nervous Splendor. Frederick Morton calls them manipulative, industrious, strangely modest, inexorable, decent, stodgy, staunch. Drabness was their secret. Drabness and patience. And the man who embodies this is Rudolph's father and that is Emperor Franz Josef I, a great favourite of the show. So because basically he lived forever, he's

Tom Holland

Elizabeth II, isn't he? Of 19th century history?

Dominic Sandbrook

He completely is. And we'll get. Because he's the father of the killer, we'll spend a bit of time with him because he's such an important figure in this story. So at this point, although he died in 1916, but at this point, 1888, he is not yet 60. And he was born in 1830 in Schonbrunn palace, the Austrian kind of Versailles outside Vienna. And he was really the ultimate Habsburg. He says if you take the sort of Habsburg spirit was that decent, stodgy, staunch, drab. He's peak Habsburg and distilled it in human form. You have this guy. So he's very, you know, he's very pious, pious Catholic. He's completely committed to the imperial ideal. He grew up as a little boy with a passion for uniforms and parades and toy soldiers. And that runs all the way through his life. And in the history books, he generally. Historians tend to kind of laugh at him because historians don't like people like this. He's a sensitive man, Franz Josef, but he's perhaps because he's sensitive, he's very stubborn and he's a stickler for order.

Tom Holland

Protocol. Right. Everything has to be governed by protocol.

Dominic Sandbrook

People used to joke that when he made love to his wife, he would always be wearing full regimental uniform.

Tom Holland

I mean, the ladies love a uniform.

Dominic Sandbrook

They do. And the uniform means a lot to him. There are loads and loads of stories of him losing his temper when people come to court in the wrong uniform. Most famously a story that there was a junior officer, you know, just a young bloke at a kind of ball or at a, you know, some function, had the wrong number of decorative buttons on his sleeve. And Franz Joseph said, how dare you? How dare you turn up with the wrong number of buttons? And various other people explained to the emperor that. That tailors had stopped making these decorative buttons because they were pointless. And Franz Joseph was absolutely crushed. And he said, it's quite wrong.

Tom Holland

It's monstrous, because this is a signal that nothing is stable and all may pass.

Dominic Sandbrook

Exactly. So as a just a thought about our protagonist, Crown Prince Rudolph. So he's growing up with a father who is intensely conservative, who's emotionally very taciturn, who is obsessed with duty and order, and not a man who will show strong feeling to his son, which I think is a factor in explaining how Crown Prince Rudolph gets to where he gets to.

Tom Holland

A faint echo of Prince Philip and Prince Charles, possibly.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah, I think there is a slight element of that, actually, in this story.

Tom Holland

Prince Philip was always kind of forcing Prince Charles into Spartan activities that he didn't really enjoy.

Dominic Sandbrook

I think Franz Josef would have approved of gordonstone as a school theme.

Tom Holland

Yes.

Dominic Sandbrook

So Franz Joseph became emperor when he was 18 years old. So it's the chaos of the 1848 revolutions, his uncle, Emperor Ferdinand, who was epileptic, abdicated. And in this moment of great tension and great flux for the Austro, the Austrian Empire, Franz Josef was parachuted in as emperor. And he stands from that moment onwards, he stands for stability, discipline, tradition and so on. He makes himself the fixed point, which is why you're parallel with Elizabeth ii, I think, is very well observed. I think they're both monarchs who, in an age of change, decide to play the part. They decide to become the embodiments of continuity. Now, an emperor needs an empress. And this brings us to Rudolph's mother. Oh, yes. So surely the most romantic, certainly the most romantic monarchical figure in Central European history, Elizabeth of Bavaria. Now, people in the English speaking world may not gauge just how popular she was in Central Europe. She was the focus of an absolutely intense cult personality. Cult, basically, if you think about Princess Diana in the 1980s and 90s, she's that on steroids. Her nickname was Cece and she was a sex symbol. She was a fashion leader, she was an influencer, she was the personification of glamour. She was a romantic heroine, she was a sportswoman for a lot of people. She was basically a saint and a martyr and her story really is bonkers. So she was born in 1837 into a sort of minor branch of the Bavarian royal family and her father was called Duke Maximilian and he was an absolute madman. He was obsessed with circuses and he, he didn't give her a proper education because, unusually, he hoped that his daughter would grow up to join the circus.

Tom Holland

Run away from a palace and join a circus.

Dominic Sandbrook

Exactly, exactly. So she's only sort of half educated. She's a bit of an autodidact.

Tom Holland

Well, do you know, Dominic, I've always found that a very appealing aspect of her because she, you know, she had this enormously long hair.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah, down to her ankles.

Tom Holland

Yeah, down to her ankles. And. And it was so heavy that she would complain that its weight gave her headaches. And so it took her maids kind of two or three hours every morning to, to comb it and to brush it out and to adorn it and whatever. And while she's doing it, she sits there learning difficult languages. So she learned Hungarian. She became hugely popular with Hungarians, as we will find out. And then she learned Ancient Greek and I had to learn Ancient Greek and I unfortunately didn't have as long, didn't have long hair and I didn't have attendance to. To comb it. But I nevertheless, while I was at my ablutions, I Would try and emulate Sisi by learning regular Greek.

Dominic Sandbrook

When you're combing your hair.

Tom Holland

Yeah.

Dominic Sandbrook

Okay, well that's impressive.

Tom Holland

So she's a role model still to this day is what I'm saying.

Dominic Sandbrook

She and Franz Josef have an incredibly romantic origin story as a couple. So when she was 15, she went with her mother and her older sister Helene Nene, she was called to the spa town of Bad Ischl.

Tom Holland

Great to have a spa town.

Dominic Sandbrook

It is great. And the reason they were going there was they were going to meet Franz Josef because the two mothers had agreed basically that Franz Josef would marry Helene. Franz Josef was then 23 and his mother, Sophie, she was called, had picked out Helene as a sort of German speaking Catholic, you know, ideal regal bride, imperial bride. When they met for tea, Helene was very shy and serious and she was poor at small talk, as was Franz Josef.

Tom Holland

Yeah, wouldn't he. I mean, he's shy and serious, isn't he?

Dominic Sandbrook

Exactly. But he was looking for something more. He didn't want another shy and serious person.

Tom Holland

He wanted a circus performer.

Dominic Sandbrook

He did. Cece was there and she was only 15 and she was basically there for, you know, she was along for jaunt. So she was in great form, joking, you know, good humored, shaking her very long hair. Exactly. She's a very elegant looking, sort of innocent teenage girl. And after this they'd had tea. Franz Joseph's brother said to their mother, he said, mama, Francie likes Sisi very much better than Nene. You will see he will choose her instead of the elder one. And their mother said, no, no, no, he'll do as he's told. I mean, he may be the emperor but he'll do as I tell him. Anyway, Franz Joseph went to see his mother that evening and said, it's Cece or nobody, I'm in love.

Tom Holland

I mean, how awful for Helene.

Dominic Sandbrook

Right gutting for Helene. Although the, the upside for Ellen is she didn't have to marry Franz Josef. So, you know, swings and roundabouts. Anyway, the next day they had a big ball and Franz Josef danced with Cece to the exclusion almost to everybody else. And when servants gave him loads of flowers give to all his dance partners for the day, he gave them all to Sisi. And people said, oh well, there's no fighting this. So the next day, which was his birthday, the two mothers said, they got together and they said, fine, you know, Franz Joseph can marry Sisi after all. So a very romantic story. They went for a midnight carriage ride and he wrapped Sisi up in his Military cloak. And he whispered in her ear, I can hardly say how happy I am to be marrying you.

Tom Holland

And he.

Dominic Sandbrook

To Franz Josef, you know, she is a dream. She's his fairy tale princess. And a year later, she arrives in Vienna for the wedding. And there are huge crowds, there's merch, there's an amazing scene. So the Countess of Westmoreland was. Was there to see it happen, to see her arrive. And she described how the boat docked, the Emperor ran onto the bridge and embraced her openly. And she said, I can't tell you the effect of the simple natural act. Not only thousands of spectators on the banks burst into prolonged cheers, but many eyes besides mine were wet. She's a thousand times better than her portraits. None of them an idea of her freshness, her air of candor and gentleness and intelligence. So this sounds great, right? This sounds fantastic, but the reality is a little bit different, you know, it's a fairy tale. We're not unfamiliar with this, of course, in modern British history, a fairy tale royal wedding that doesn't turn out quite as happily as you would think. So in his great book on the Habsburgs, Andrew Wheatcroft, British historian, says, behind the fairy tale image, the reality was a gauche and rather difficult girl, flattered, yet terrified by his overwhelming passion. This is absolutely right. Cece said herself, you know, why me? I'm so young, I'm so unimportant. I'll try to keep him happy, but will it be enough? She is absolutely crippled by self consciousness. She doesn't get on with Franz Joseph's mother.

Tom Holland

No, the mother's awful, isn't she? And when and when she has children, they're always taking the children away and not letting her have anything to do with them.

Dominic Sandbrook

Exactly. Constantly squabbling, you know, the worst kind of mother in law, basically. But in Ceci, I think, partly because she's been brought up to be in this circus, she never quite grows up. So she's always a little bit of a sort of spoiled child. She's very moody, she is brooding, she's stubborn. These are qualities that she will pass on to her son Rudolph.

Tom Holland

I mean, it helps, presumably, that she's incredibly beautiful and glamorous, because if you're moody and beautiful and glamorous, then it comes to seem part of the package, rather than just being annoying, of course.

Dominic Sandbrook

Exactly right. Exactly. So they have two girls almost straight away, Sophie and Gisela. But Sophie died of scarlet fever when she was 2. And I think this was probably for Sisi, who was only 20 at the time, a shattering moment from which she probably never really recovered, to be quite honest. Anyway, A year later, 1858, 21st of August 1858, she has a son. And this, of course, is giving Franz Josef what he wants, a male heir. And this is our protagonist, our killer, Crown Prince Rudolph. And he was named after Rudolf I, who was the first Habsburg to be King of the Romans, basically Holy Roman Emperor. And that name tells a story because at this point in time, the 1850s, 1860s, the Habsburgs, all the rage is what's called historicism. So they are looking back constantly to try to find some historical legitimacy for their embattled dynasty and their state. And Rudolph is the focus for enormous expectation right from day one. So they had a big gala at the Court Theater in Vienna to celebrate his birth. And they had an actress. I thought this would appeal to you, Tom. An actress playing the part of Cleo, the Muse of history, who has a golden tablet on stage. And she writes his name and the date of his birth on the tablet and then she says to the audience, but the rest of the tablet I leave empty. There must be room for his deeds and I divine greatness, which I shall record here.

Tom Holland

Yet it's like something from a Greek myth or a fairy tale, isn't it? Because of course his deeds will indeed be written down in the annals of history. But not quite as his parents would hope.

Dominic Sandbrook

No, exactly. So like his father, Rudolph is brought up effectively, he's trained to be a soldier because the army is the supreme Habsburg institution.

Tom Holland

I mean, Dominic, you say he's raised up. The day after his birth, he is appointed the colonel of an infantry regiment and given the Order of the Golden Fleece, which regular listeners may remember. Edward Habsburg, who is a member of the Habsburg, I think the only Habsburg we've had on the show and who did a whole episode about that space. And he promised me that I would join the Order of the Golden Fleece, a promise he hasn't yet delivered. And also, young Rudolph, he got his first military informant. He was two.

Dominic Sandbrook

That does not surprise me. So when he was six, he was handed over to a general to tutor him. And this bloke was an absolutely monstrous kind of military taskmaster. So he would wake the six year old Rudolph up by shooting a pistol over his head, like right by his ear.

Tom Holland

I mean, this is very Prince Philip, isn't it, with Prince Charles, basically waterboard

Dominic Sandbrook

him, like to prepare him for the, for the rigors of leadership. And he'd also make him. This is a mad detail. He would make him sleep at night in the zoo.

Tom Holland

What, in a cage with lions?

Dominic Sandbrook

I don't know. I just saw this detail and I wrote it down in the notes. I'd love to have time to research this proper, more in more detail. The zoo. The sleeping in the zoo.

Tom Holland

In the monkey house.

Dominic Sandbrook

Exactly. In the reptile enclosure or something. Anyway, Rudolph was completely traumatized by this. And basically, after two years of this, a courtier mentioned to his mother that this was happening and she complained. Sleeping with snakes. Yeah, she complained and the general was fired. But it obviously. I mean, take. You don't have to be a great psychoanalyst. You don't have to be sick.

Tom Holland

Yeah.

Dominic Sandbrook

This would probably really screw you up anyway. So it also tells you something about Cece's parenting, the fact that it's taken two years to notice that her son is sleeping in the lion enclosure. So she's not a terribly interested parent. I think that's reasonable to say. She's in fact, so self absorbed with her hair and her sort of brooding and whatnot that she doesn't really have time for her children. And when Rudolf was 2, she said to Franz Josef, she said, I need to go to Madeira for my health. I need to go immediately. And Franz Joseph said, oh, my God, you know, the doctors will have. I'll get the doctors to have a look at you. The doctors reported there was absolutely nothing wrong with her. And she said, no, no, I'm terribly ill. I absolutely must go to Madeira. Why? We don't know. They might have had a row or. I think quite possibly she's suffering extreme postnatal depression. But anyway, off she went to Madeira, spent the whole winter there. Then she came back to Vienna for a little bit, and then she said to Franz Joseph, I need to leave again. I need to go to Corfu now. And then she went to Corfu.

Tom Holland

And she loves Corfu, doesn't she?

Dominic Sandbrook

Oh, she absolutely adored Corfu.

Tom Holland

She builds the Achilleon.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yes, exactly.

Tom Holland

Which we've talked about.

Dominic Sandbrook

And Franz Joseph went to visit her in Corfu and said, you know, how are you getting on? Are you feeling better? She said, not really. I'll probably stay here for a while.

Tom Holland

Yeah, for a few weeks. Maybe months, maybe years.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah. And this is basically the story of the next few decades. She's traveling constantly.

Tom Holland

She goes to England a lot, doesn't she? Goes fox hunting in Northamptonshire.

Dominic Sandbrook

Bizarrely, she likes going to Northamptonshire. She also likes hanging out in Ireland and again, going hunting and sort of hanging out with the Anglo Irish Aristocracy. And then occasionally she'll go into Monte Carlo to play the tables in the casino.

Tom Holland

I mean, I think if I was a beautiful 19th century empress, that is what I would do.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah, right, you would go to the, you'd go to Monte Carlo in Corfu,

Tom Holland

I'd play the tables, I'd go fox hunting England, I'd hang out in Corfu, I'd be moody.

Sponsor/Advertiser Voice

Do you know what?

Dominic Sandbrook

Actually the parallels are uncanny. You know, like you. Yeah, as with you, her clothing, her weight, her appearance is discussed in the gossip columns of the world.

Tom Holland

Well, she's very tall, isn't she? Unusually tall and madly thin. So she, her waist is 16 inches. So the corsets are vice, like. And she never weighs more than £110 ever. And if she does, then she goes on these kind of massive. Well, she basically refused to eat and she goes to a gym. So she's one of the earliest women in European history regularly to go to a gym. And she has an absolute horror of fat women. And she raises her children to regard them with dread and terror. And she get. When she. One occasion she takes her young daughter to London to meet Queen Victoria and the poor girl has never seen a fat woman before. So she's Queen Victoria, she wets herself out of terror.

Dominic Sandbrook

Biographers had this great battle about whether or not she was anorexic or bulimic or something.

Tom Holland

Oh, I think she was, because occasionally she'd go off and eat cake.

Dominic Sandbrook

They would describe her eating enormous meals and then somehow miraculously being incredibly thin.

Tom Holland

And she would never eat meat, would she? She'd have beef steaks kind of squeezed and the blood would drip out and then she'd have it with watery soup.

Dominic Sandbrook

She probably suffers very badly from some form of mental health issues such as depression. And that would explain why she often seems so listless, so kind of blank, so also so self destructively reckless when she's hunting. People would say, you know, she's an incredible huntswoman, but one day she's going to fall off and break her neck and, and all of this and the

Tom Holland

corsetry, the whole corsetry thing, I mean, it's kind of, it's so extreme as to be almost fetishistic.

Dominic Sandbrook

Exactly. She's punishing herself effectively now while she's gone. Franz Josef, he has affairs with these sort of very boring, discreet middle class women who can be relied upon to keep quiet. And his most celebrated relationship is with an actress at the Court Theatre called Katharina Schratt. And that was basically set up for him by his wife. He'd long admired this actress. And CeCe said, well, as a present to you, I'll get her portrait painted and maybe you'd like to meet her. And she introduces them and they have this very close relationship. So Katerina Shrat would. She was basically his confidant and she was very jolly and she was a good listener. She would make him cakes, she would cook goulash for him and she would him all the backstage gossip. And CeCe was very happy with this and she encouraged it. And she would sort of. Sometimes the three of them would hang out together.

Tom Holland

Did they get on, cece and Katarina?

Dominic Sandbrook

I think it's cause cece had arranged it because she knew this actress was no conceivable threat to her.

Tom Holland

Yeah, I mean, cece's not a goulash cooker, I imagine.

Dominic Sandbrook

No, she's not gonna make you cakes and tell you great banter about, you know, actors. I mean, of course, if she joined the circus as was intended, it would've been a very different story. But the person that Franz Josef loves is always clearly ce. He's got her portrait in his study with her hair down to her ankles. He's always sending her presents in Corfu. He writes her sweet letters all the time. He always calls her my dear, dear angel. He signs himself your little man, or he literally calls himself your mannequin because she's much taller than he is. And I think there's something quite sad about his story. So he's this kind of lonely emperor, devoted to his people. He gets up at 5 o' clock every morning from his iron bedstead to do his paperwork. He has his lunch on his own of boiled beef. Always the same lunch. Then he goes out to meet his people. He always says exactly the same thing. I mean, even Queen Elizabeth II didn't do this. He always says it was at the end of every event. It was very nice. I enjoyed it. And then he goes home and then he writes letters to his runaway wife. So that's his story. Now, there is one respect in which Cece really helps him out. Because basically, in the first 20 years of his reign, everything has gone wrong for him and for Austria. They were beaten by the French and Piedmont, the Italians. Solferino in 1859 that lost Lombardy, Northern Italy for Austria paved the way for Italian unification. And he basically had to grant a kind of constitution and a parliament at home to make up for this. And then seven years later, he loses another war to Bismarck's Prussia. Basically takes seven Weeks. There's a catastrophic defeat for the Austrians at the Battle of Konigretz. And after this, the Austrians are driven out of the German speaking world, which is now free to unite under Prussian leadership to become Germany. That is a devastating moment for Austria and for Franz Joseph. Basically. He's been emperor for 20 years. Everything he's touched has turned to ashes. He's lost Italy, he's lost Germany. You know, Austria has been basically forced back into the Balkans. And as a reaction to this latest defeat, it looks like his empire might fall apart, because the Hungarians, who are basically half the empire and have rebelled already in 1848, they're now questioning the legitimacy of the entire enterprise. They're not paying their taxes, there's a huge political crisis. It looks as though the whole thing's going to fall apart. Everybody in Vienna hates the Hungarians and says they're terrible people. Except one, and you've already mentioned this,

Tom Holland

Tom, and that's Sisi. She's been busy learning Hungarian while having her hair done.

Dominic Sandbrook

She has. So she had gone to Budapest a few years earlier and she absolutely loved it. And she had this sort of fantasy of Hungary, a land of gypsy fiddlers, dancing bears.

Tom Holland

Yeah.

Dominic Sandbrook

You know, sort of counts of massive mustaches. All of this she loves retaining. Basically it's a rotating quality completely. She's incredibly popular in Budapest and she says to Franz Joseph, look, I can play a role as an intermediary with the Hungarians. And she introduces him to these nationalist leaders, Count Andrasy and Ferenc Deak, who are the big Hungarian sort of bigwigs. She passes letters between them. She encourages her husband to be, you know, flexible and to, you know, look for solutions and stuff. And the result of this is what's called the Compromise of 1867, which is a huge moment in Central European history, because what it does is it divides the Austrian Empire into two. There's a Hungarian half that will be ruled from Budapest and that includes Transylvania and includes inland Croatia. And then there's an Austrian half ruled from Vienna that includes what's now the Czech Republic. So Bohemia Moravia includes Galicia and Poland, and Ukraine includes Slovenia, and so on and so forth, forth. And in Vienna, Franz Joseph rules as Emperor of Austria, and in Budapest, he rules as King of Hungary. And to mark the occasion, in Budapest, he and Sisi are given a coronation, a new coronation. She's the first Hungarian queen to be crowned with the holy crown of St Stephen, to be given the scepter and the orb. And the Hungarians absolutely love her. They give her A palace. Whenever she goes, she wears Hungarian national dress. As said, SHE SPEAKS Hungarian. All of this. So it looks like everything's gone well. But with the Habsburgs in this period, there's always some sort of amusing calamity just around the corner.

Tom Holland

The next calamity, well, it's not exactly amusing, is it? But it's eccentric.

Dominic Sandbrook

It's an eccentric calamity. And we've done this on the show, haven't we, with Edward Shawcross. This was the. The story of Maximilian Habsburg who had gone off to become Emperor of Mexico. It's all gone terribly wrong for him. He's Franz Joseph's brother, and he ends up being cornered in Queretaro in Mexico and shot by a firing squad. And Franz Joseph's reaction is. So, Franz Josef, he's told, your brother's been shot by firing squad. He says, what a shame. He was an excellent huntsman and we will miss him at our next shoot. However, and I quote, we may still look forward to good sport, which I think is an admirably sanguine way to mark your brother's demise.

Tom Holland

As an Englishman, you're an admirer of a stiff upper lip, so one has to respect that.

Dominic Sandbrook

Exactly. So the net result of all this, we're now into the dual monarchy of Austria Hungary. The upside is it keeps the empire going. The downside is it basically institutionalizes constant squabbling between the Austrian and Hungarian halves of the empire about tariffs, budgets and the army and things like this. And it also kind of institutionalizes an instability at the heart of the empire. The Hungarians have had special treatment. Now. There are lots of other groups, Slovaks, Romanians, Croats and stuff, who are now being ruled from Budapest with an iron fist by the Hungarians. And they don't like this at all.

Tom Holland

They're resentful. They'd rather have the Austrians.

Dominic Sandbrook

The Austrians are a bit softer on their minorities than the Hungarians are, because the Hungarians are a bit more insecure, I think. So it's a great tragedy in some ways for the Austro Hungarians that the advent of proper parliamentary politics coincides with, effectively, the invention of national identities. So there's a great book on the Habsburgs by Martin Rady, and he has this whole thing about how this is the age when people are drawing up censuses, they're drawing national maps, ethnographic museums are inventing kind of unbroken histories, towns are putting up statues of national heroes. Basically, they're inventing fixed national identities where previously they were fluid. And in areas where the people are overlapping, you get different kind of linguistic Groups who will set up competing, and I quote, choirs, fire brigades, athletics clubs, savings banks, veterans associations, schools and so on and so forth. So they're basically, you might never have thought, am I a Hungarian, am I Romanian or whatever. But now people are forcing you to choose and those identities are becoming kind of locked in and these sort of different groups are, once they're formed, they're fighting for power and influence within this new system. Now the bloke who is brilliant at manipulating all this is the Austrian Prime Minister. He's called Count Eduard Tafa. He's of Irish descent, interestingly Irish landowners, they'd moved to Moravia in the Czech Republic and they'd settled there, done very well. And he had been Franz Josef's childhood friend. And he creates a coalition, this guy Tafa, of sort of Catholic clericals, German landowners, Czech nationalists, Polish nationalists and it's called the Iron Ring, his coalition. And he was very, very sort of suave and self knowing. He said of his own strategy, he said, my policy is muddling through. I'd like to keep all the nationalities of the monarchy in a state of balanced and well modulated discontent.

Tom Holland

Disappointed he didn't give that in an Irish accident accent.

Dominic Sandbrook

That's, that's bonus content, that's for club members, the Irish accent. Now as a. One of the things that he has to do as part of this is to keep the Czechs happy. So he basically allows junior civil servants in Bohemia Moravia to use Czech as rather than German. And that creates a backlash from some of the German speakers. And the German speakers say what? You're allowing the Czechs to use Czech? What are you giving away? You know, our supremacy within the empire to these kind of jumped up Slavs and the. Some of the German speakers say, look, Germany is brilliant. Germany's just been created under Bismarck, it's very modern, it's very dynamic, very militaristic. What are we hanging around for with like these people stuffing themselves with cake and talking to Slavs? Austria, Hungary is clearly destined for the scrap heap which our future lies in a greater Germany. And so in the 1880s, which is the decade leading up to the Myeling incident, you have the growth of this very noisy, aggressive pan German movement that is bitterly opposed to what they see as the sort of woke multiculturalism of the Habsburgs and would much prefer union with Berlin. And their spokesman is a guy called Georg von Schonerer, who is the leader of this tiny sort of German nationalist party and he is a pioneer of extremist anti Semitic nationalism.

Tom Holland

We Kind of know where this is going to lead.

Dominic Sandbrook

We do indeed, because Schoenura, he wants to change the calendar dating all years from the battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

Tom Holland

Yeah, the defeat of Augustus the three legions.

Dominic Sandbrook

Exactly so because he says that was the last point basically when Germany, the German speaking world, was free from the taint of kind of bourgeois Jewish capitalist. And we need to get back to that.

Tom Holland

And he doesn't like Christian festivals, does he? Because they're Jewish.

Dominic Sandbrook

Exactly. Get rid of Christmas and replace it with something called Julfest. And the Austrians greet each other by saying Grus Gott. He says get rid of that. Why don't we say Heil?

Tom Holland

Yeah, why not? Could really catch on.

Dominic Sandbrook

So you can see right where all this is leading because of course in a couple of decades a certain Adolf Hitler will be hanging around in Vienna and imbibing a lot of this. Anyway, back to Miling. That's the context. So let's now concentrate, let's get narrow the focus to Vienna in August 1888. On the 18th of August, Franz Josef is due to celebrate his birthday. It actually pours with rain, so it's postponed for a couple of days. And that means that it coincides with what's scheduled for the 20th, which is this guy, Georg von Schonera, the pan German extreme nationalist is due to report to the Landesgerichtstrasse prison because he's been sentenced to three months in jail for leading an attack on a Jewish owned newspaper. And the very next day, the 21st, our protagonist, our killer, Crown Prince Rudolph, is due to mark his own birthday. It's his 30th birthday and although none of them know it, it is also going to be his last. Because something is very, very seriously wrong with Crown Prince Rudolph.

Tom Holland

Are we going to find out what is wrong after the break?

Dominic Sandbrook

Definitely.

Tom Holland

Don't miss it then.

Dominic Sandbrook

This episode is brought to you by National Geographic. Tom, we're familiar, aren't we, with what happened in Pompeii when Vesuvius exploded?

Tom Holland

We absolutely are. So AD 79, Vesuvius blows its top debris rains down on Pompeii. It a pyroclastic flow which essentially entombs the city, entombs everyone left living there and it lay there waiting to be brought to light centuries and centuries later.

Dominic Sandbrook

Now in Pompeii, out of Time with Tom Hiddleston. Hiddleston will guide you between past and present. He will uncover the real stories of the people who lived through one of history's most notorious disasters.

Tom Holland

It is a cinematic masterpiece from the makers of Locust. And it brings the ancient world vividly to life.

Dominic Sandbrook

Watch Pompeii out of Time with Tom Hiddleston, Thursday at 8pm on National Geographic.

Tom Holland

This episode is brought to you by Hamilton the Musical Tom when we think

Dominic Sandbrook

of America's founding fathers, we think of dusty portraits, grim faced men with terrible teeth, and of course, unpaid tax bills, don't we?

Tom Holland

That's right. But what we don't see is the. The struggle, the resentment, the euphoria, the love, the wrapping. All in the name of American independence 250 years ago.

Dominic Sandbrook

That's what we loved, isn't it? About Lin Manuel Miranda's award winning musical Hamilton, which we went to see with our team just the other day. It brought the story of those turbulent years to life beyond the walls of a museum. From the room where it happened.

Tom Holland

It's an incredible depiction of the life and legacy of Alexander Hamilton, who was George Washington's right hand man, an incredibly politically significant figure. It is an absolute cultural phenomenon and you can experience it right now at London's Victoria Palace Theatre. Book tickets today@hamiltonmusical.com London. This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile. It's easy to ditch overpriced wireless with Mint Mobile.

Dominic Sandbrook

Sign up online@mintmobile.com history and get three months of premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on a limited plan. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details.

Tom Holland

This episode is brought to you by TikTok. Believe it or not, history isn't just in textbooks.

Dominic Sandbrook

It comes to life every day on TikTok. Millions of people are exploring the history of music, fashion, food and art and discovering new facts about the things they love.

Tom Holland

One scroll could take you from the roots of jazz to the flavors of ancient kitchens. And the next might reveal a quirky fact about how modern traditions came to be.

Dominic Sandbrook

Discover the past in new ways on TikTok, where curiosity never gets old.

Tom Holland

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Rest is History and to the story of one of the great royal scandals of Central European history. And indeed, I would go so far as to say European history full stop. And it is the late summer of 1888. We're at the heart of the Austro Hungarian imperial capital, Vienna, a city of almost one and a half million people. And Dominic, there is a case for saying that this is the heartbeat of what will become modern civilization, isn't it?

Dominic Sandbrook

Totally. So we already mentioned, you know, Marla Klimt and so. And we'll come back to them in a second. Second, Vienna has been completely transformed in the previous 30 years. So just to give people who haven't been to Vienna a sense of our stage set, if you like. And actually, that's quite a good phrase to use of Vienna. Franz Joseph's builders in the last 30 years have ripped down the old city fortifications and they've made way. The centerpiece of their sort of city planning project is probably at the time, the most famous boulevard in the world, which is the Ringstrasse. You go there today, it's still this kind of breathtaking spectacle. These magnificent buildings, the opera house, the court theatre, the Parliament, the City Hall, Museum of Natural History, the art museum, enormous buildings around this kind of circular. I mean, you might call it a ring road, if you're being dismissive. And their design tells you something about the Habsburg project in the 19th century, because the very first buildings on the ring were designed. They were historicists. So each building was sort of designed in a different, different historical style to reflect its function. So the City hall would be one star, the Parliament another. And basically they were saying, well, the Habsburgs are the heirs to all historical styles. But then by the 1880s, when they're finishing off the Ringstrasse, Franz Josef's architects had settled on just one style, which was Neo Baroque. And the reason they settled on this, which is quite sort of wedding cakey

Tom Holland

kind of florid paintings, isn't it? And all of that.

Dominic Sandbrook

Exactly. And the reason they did that is because at the time, in Bismarck's Germany, classic neoclassical was all the rage, which is kind of slightly colder and more austere. And the Viennese wanted to say, well, we're not like the Germans with their cold classicism. We're more fun, we're more, you know, a little bit more flowery.

Tom Holland

But I mean, that's not entirely a sensible policy, is it? Because if you've got a serious architecture and you've got a kind of wedding cake architecture, which one is, you know, gonna have the most potent empire?

Dominic Sandbrook

Well, I suppose so. I suppose so. Although I quite like that Habsburg style.

Tom Holland

Yeah, I like it. But it doesn't make me think these are gonna be the, you know, the master race.

Dominic Sandbrook

It makes me think they'll be excellent composers.

Tom Holland

Great composers, great cake, interesting theories about sexuality. Totally. But an ability to conquer much of Eastern Europe, I think. Probably not.

Dominic Sandbrook

Probably not.

Sponsor/Advertiser Voice

Yeah.

Dominic Sandbrook

They roll it out all across the empire. So if you go Even today to Trieste, to Lviv, to, to Krakow, to Prague, wherever you can see this sort of Habsburg architecture, it's very recognizable now. I called it a stage set. And this, this sense that it's a sort of baroque stage set is probably a bit misleading because as you said, you know, this is the city of psychoanalysis. It's the city of the future in lots of ways. So that summer 1888, there were the first long distance telephone calls in, in central Europe. They're from Vienna to the suburb of Baden, so it's just outside Vienna. So it's not that long distance and you're limited to 10 minutes. But people are very excited by this.

Tom Holland

I would like more.

Dominic Sandbrook

Well, actually what it is, the greetings that people gave the sort of, you know, Frau, you know, hair doctor, whatever, whatever took so long, they took so long that you basically only gave you like two minutes at the end of the call. Anyway, if you went to the Prater amusement parks, if you've seen the film the Third man, the, the kind of Ferris wheel and Orson Welles, if you go to the Prater amusement park, people would go there and they would buy themselves electric shocks. There was like an electric shock machine and there were safety regulations to stop people at extracuting themselves. But swells from the sort of aristocratic bits of Vienna would, would basically bribe the people running the machine to give them bigger and bigger shocks and they would just have, they were being carted off all the time to hospital ambulances because they'd electrocuted themselves.

Tom Holland

Right. So aristocratic self harm, bit of a theme.

Dominic Sandbrook

It's a theme now if we mentioned this book by Frederick Morton, A Nervous Splendor and he sort of, you know, zeroes in on a few characters. So you've got Gustav Klimt who is painting the new court theater. He's painting a ceiling panel called the Chariot of Thespis. You have Mahler, who's about to move from Vienna to Budapest to run the opera in Budapest. You have Freud, who then is in his 30 30s, he's a nerve doctor, but he's just beginning work on the theories of the sort of subconscious. And it's interesting that two of these names, so Mahler and Freud are Jewish. And actually there's lots of Jewish influence in Fantasiek to Vienna. So there's Wittgenstein, there's Schoenberg, there is Arthur Schnitzler, the great writer and so on. And that reflects a bigger story because the Jewish population of Vienna in the last 20 years has risen from 40,000 to well over 100,000, about 120,000. Often these are people who've come from Galicia, kind of Poland, Ukraine, on the newly built railways. And they now have legal equality, which they've only had since 1867. And they flood into the professions. So about 60% of Vienna's doctors are Jewish, about half of the lawyers. They're very prominent in art and in publishing and whatnot. And this, of course, means that they're very convenient and easy scapegoats for people like Georg von Schonera, who can point to them and say, this is why the empire is going wrong. Because we've allowed all these people to come to the capital and to play important parts in the cultural, intellectual life of the capital. Now there's one man that becomes associated with this Jewish presence, and he's a man who hates Schoonera and who hates the Pan German movement and has a lot of Jewish friends. And this is our protagonist. This is Crown Prince Rudolph. So this is the man who was born to be Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, Dalmatius, Transylvania, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All of this.

Tom Holland

So basically, his military education has made him kind of woke a little bit.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah, a little bit. So we were talking before the break about he slept in the zoo and been woken by pistol shots and. And as time goes on, when he enters his teens, it's obvious that he's very much his mother's son, Sisi's son. So he is like her. He is restless, he's brooding, he's very introverted. We actually have some of his teenage jottings when he was about 15.

Tom Holland

Yeah. Should I read them?

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah, why don't you read them in your. In your best Austrian accent?

Tom Holland

The kingdom still stands, a mighty ruin, continuing from one day to the next, but doomed finally to fall. For centuries it has endured, and so long as the people allowed themselves to be led blindly, it was good. But now its task is at an end. All men are free, and the next storm will sweep away this ruin.

Dominic Sandbrook

So he's not very optimistic about his own inheritance. And you might say, well, he's a sort of typical, typical teenager. A bit miserable, a bit. A bit downcast and depressive and whatnot. But I think there's more to this than your usual teenage woes. So we've got another quotation, Tom.

Tom Holland

I think thoughts of every kind race endlessly through my head. All is confusion my brain sees all day. No sooner has one thought gone than another takes its place. Each one compels me, each one says something different now gay and cheerful now

Dominic Sandbrook

raven black with rage.

Tom Holland

I fight them and struggle with them and out of it all the truth at last will come.

Dominic Sandbrook

He's not a bundle of laughs, I think it's true to say so. When he was 21, his father arranged a marriage for him and he arranged a marriage to Princess Stephanie.

Tom Holland

She a jolly, fun loving, fun loving bride.

Dominic Sandbrook

She's not a funster, she's a good person, I think, Stephanie, she's quite decent,

Tom Holland

good natured, I mean, considering her father.

Dominic Sandbrook

Her father is one of the worst people we've ever had on the show. Her father is King Leopold of Belgium.

Tom Holland

As in conglomerate.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah. So she's got the worst father in the world and she's been condemned to marry Crown Prince Rudolph. And actually the story of their wedding and you know, the wedding night is awful. She arrives in Vienna when she's 16 years old, but they have to postpone the marriage because it is discovered that her periods have not yet started. So she is then sent back home for a few months to Belgium, which is humiliating.

Tom Holland

That's not remotely embarrassing for a 16 year old old. Right.

Dominic Sandbrook

But it gets worse. She's sent back home, basically, you can come back once you've started menstruating. She comes back to Vienna, they get married, and then later in life she wrote a memoir of their wedding night. And I'll read it. It's. It's as follows. What a night. What torments, what horror. I had not the ghost of a notion of what lay before me, but had been led to the altar as an ignorant child. My illusions, my youthful dreams were shattered. I thought I should die of my disillusionment.

Tom Holland

Is this a kind of John Ruskin reaction? I mean, what's going on there?

Dominic Sandbrook

We don't know. I think what torments, what horror suggests she has not enjoyed it. Well, I mean, she's obviously not enjoyed herself. And I don't think it's that Rudolph has disappointed her by just turning to the wall and going to sleep. I mean, you wouldn't write what torment, would you?

Tom Holland

No, but is he kind of getting up to sinister sex games?

Dominic Sandbrook

I just don't know. I mean, Tom, clearly you're thinking about this. I don't want to accuse you of overthinking this extremely gory scene.

Tom Holland

Well, but it matters, doesn't it? Because if Rudolph is in the habit of. I mean, as we will see, he's very, very sexily driven.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah.

Tom Holland

And he's also very haunted by fantasies of violence and death. I think it's legitimate. To say, well, what was he perpetrating on his wedding night?

Dominic Sandbrook

I don't know. On your wedding night with like a 16 year old. I mean it's poor from him. It's, isn't it? Anyway, they actually did have a daughter called Elizabeth Marie. We don't have time to talk about her particularly, but she had an incredible life. So their daughter became a socialist in the 1920s, socialist activists and was called the Red Arch Duchess.

Tom Holland

God. So even woker than her father even woker.

Dominic Sandbrook

The Nazis sent her to Dachau and she lived an extreme age and died in 1963. Same year as John F. Kennedy.

Tom Holland

Yeah, yeah, the year of Beatlemania.

Dominic Sandbrook

She lived long enough to watch TV footage of the. Of people screaming at the London Palladium or something of the. The Beatles. Incredible. Anyway, the marriage was not a success. Rudolph was very dissolute. He's. He's a good looking man. I think you compared him to Callum and producer. So Callum will be pleased by that. Queen Victoria was a big fan of his. She gave him the garter when he came to England and used to tickle him, which is slightly weird and messes with your sense of Queen Victoria, I suppose.

Tom Holland

Well, you say that because Queen Victoria's son, say the future Edward vii, Bertie, the Prince of Wales. I mean he is a notorious lothario and he's incredibly impressed. So he said of Rudolph, for a young man of his age, it is surprising how much he knows about sexual matters. There is nothing I could teach him. And that's when Rudolph was 19.

Dominic Sandbrook

Would you want Edward VII to be your instructor? I mean.

Tom Holland

Well, Rudolph likes the future Edward vii.

Dominic Sandbrook

They love each other. Well, this will be coming up in, in the rest of this episode. Exactly.

Tom Holland

So he's a kind of jolly father figure, isn't he? So a contrast to his, his father and also to another member of the. The German speaking royalty who will be coming to in due course.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah, I can't wait for him to appear on the street. So Rudolph's favorite mistress was a woman called Mitzi Kaspar who came from Graz. It was said that she had worked as a prostitute in Madame Wolf's Vienna brothel. I don't know how true this is. She becomes very close to Rudolph, she becomes his great confidant. But she's only one of many lovers and it's generally accepted, I think that by the late 1880s Rudolf probably had severe gonorrhea and that he passed this on to Stephanie, his wife, which meant that she could not have more children. Children and Basically, the fact that they've both got the sexually transmitted disease doesn't greatly add to the harmony of the household.

Tom Holland

No.

Dominic Sandbrook

And by the late 1880s, there's a lot of rumor in Vienna that Rudolph is looking to have the marriage annulled in some way. I don't think. Personally, I don't think they were going to do that because I think that would have been a very difficult thing for a family like the Habsburgs to accept.

Tom Holland

Can I just ask what Rudolph's religious faith is? I mean, if he's going to go on and commit suicide and murder. Murder. That's not very Catholic behavior, I think

Dominic Sandbrook

it is skin deep at best, I would guess. I don't think it's as bad at all. He never seems to talk about God, particularly in his letters and in his sort of jottings, which we'll come to. So before the break, we got to his birthday, which is the 21st of August, 1888, and he celebrated that. That's when he turns 30 at his castle, which is called Luxembourg in the Vienna woods. And Stephanie was there, his wife, and their daughter Elizabeth. Elizabeth, who was only, I think she was 4 or so. But his parents didn't go. They just sent telegrams. And that tells you, you know, about their very sort of chilly, formal relationship. And Rudolph, I mean, this is where Callum, our producer, may object to the comparison. Rudolph had just shaved his beard. Callum still has his beard.

Tom Holland

Exactly. That's the point. That's the lesson that Callum has to learn. And also he has to learn not to get gonorrhea, which I think is a valuable lesson for any young producer.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah. Rudolf was very haggard. He seems constantly exhausted, which is actually a symptom of gonorrhea. He has this cough that he can't get rid of and he's necking morphine to deal with the cough. And he feels in private, in public, he gives nothing away. But in private, Rudolf clearly feels completely. He feels useless. He feels there's no point to his life, actually. He has very strong political views. He would love to see Austria become more modern. He was very interested in electricity. We mentioned the electric shocks in the Prater part. He still believes very much in the empire and the Habsburg ideal. He's very keen on the army. He wrote to his friend, who was a liberal newspaper editor called Modus Seps, and he said the army is the single central thread which in this chaos still stands for the Empire. He thought that the empire needed radical change. So he writes anonymously saying that we should change into A kind of United States of Europe, a kind of federation. He is always writing to this guy Seps, his friend and saying, you know, we're suffering from a sickness, we should have a purge and a cleaner, better Europe will emerge from this. Interestingly, I mean this sounds like very kind of, you know, radical late 19th century, early 20th century rhetoric. But one big contrast as I've already said, he's very keen on the Jews of the empire cause he's got a lot of very close Jewish friends. And actually this newspaper editor Seps is Jewish and that makes Rudolf a hate figure for Schonera and the pan Germans. They say he's a puppet of Jewish capitalism and all this.

Tom Holland

So aside from the whole killing his mistress and shooting himself angle, he might actually have made quite a good fist of being an emperor and the fate of middle Europe might have been slightly. Well, we'll discuss this I guess.

Dominic Sandbrook

I think if you're brooding all the time in a very slightly weird incel. I mean it's the opposite of an incel actually. But he's a man who would spend a lot of time on, on, on YouTube watching dark web material.

Tom Holland

Yes, but because he's not an emperor. Because he's not an emperor. But if he was an emperor perhaps he would have, I don't know, I'm clutching at straws here.

Dominic Sandbrook

I'll tell you what would have completely recast the map of Europe if he'd been emperor. He was not a fan of Austria's chief ally, the Germans. He's not a fan of the Germans.

Tom Holland

He prefers France, doesn't he? And he also prefers Britain. Britain. He likes its constitutional monarchy.

Dominic Sandbrook

He does. And he likes visiting Britain. And of course he likes Queen Victoria, he likes the future Edward vii. But there's one man in Europe whom he despises more than any other.

Tom Holland

Who might this man be?

Dominic Sandbrook

A man who lives rent free in Rudolph's head. A man who has just succeeded to the throne of Germany. It is perhaps the ultimate friend of the rest is history. The bounder bracket, general oaf Kaiser Wilhelm ii. So they're cousins and they're almost exactly the same age. I think Rudolf is five months older than Wilhelm and Rudolf absolutely despises Wilhelm. He hates him. And when Wilhelm became emperor of Germany Rudolf was appalled and he wrote to his friend Morris Sepps, he said by the grace of God he is dumb of the Kaiser but he considers himself the greatest genius. I imagine that in a few years he will bring Hohenzollern Germany to the pass it deserves. He is not wrong. So Crown Prince Rudolph has all these ideas in his head but he can't tell anyone. He has to bottle him up because his father doesn't give him anything to do. In fact the only thing his father lets him do, I mean I quite admire this. I like this and I'd actually love to get hold of this. His big passion project is a massive encyclopedia of the Austro Hungarian Empire. So when I say massive, it took 16 years to compile it. It was 24 volumes, it had 400 contributors and it was, it was 12,000 pages long and it basically goes through every part of the empire, its history, its geography, its architecture, its flora and fauna. All of this the nickname for it because he was the sponsor. It was called the Crown Prince World Work, the Kron Prince Verk and he does this. So he is doing his encyclopedia and he also writes anonymous articles for liberal newspapers and he will send them in via servants, you know, and they will always be printed by his friends in the sort of in the liberal press and they usually either argue for reform of the empire or slacking off the Germans. So when he turns 30 he feels very miserable. He thinks my life's been wasted, wasted. And he writes to his mate Morris Seps, do you want to read it?

Sponsor/Advertiser Voice

And you're.

Dominic Sandbrook

Don't forget he's not a teenager at this point, so it's not a broken voice.

Tom Holland

The age of 30 marks the dividing point in life and one that isn't very pleasant. Much time has passed, spent more or less usefully but devoid of real action and success. We live in a slow rotten time. Who knows how long this will continue. Every passing year makes me older, less keen, less fit. So unlike his mother. He's not keeping up with the gym.

Dominic Sandbrook

He's not, I think he's, to use the expression that surely his friend the Prince of Wales would have used. He feels very seedy and he spends a lot of his time retreating. He's got a new bolt hole hole, a hunting lodge in the Vienna woods called Myeling and he will go there with his aristocratic mates. They go shooting in the daytime and then the evening they drink champagne laced with cognac and morphine in his case and they sort of set the world to rights and abuse the Kaiser.

Tom Holland

I wonder what champagne and lace with cognac and morphine would be like.

Dominic Sandbrook

I think it sounds tremendous actually.

Tom Holland

That sounds quite fun, doesn't it?

Dominic Sandbrook

At the next rest is history scheduling meeting.

Mary Beard or Josephine Quinn

We could have that.

Dominic Sandbrook

We should order champagne. Ladies, place the cognac.

Tom Holland

You could find a Hunting lodge. Get in a bit of hunting, get out the morphine and the cognac. Yeah.

Dominic Sandbrook

You can't see this, Tom, but Aaliyah is in recording with me and she's absolutely crying with laughter at the thought of this hunting lodge and the champagne and cognac. You can take the girl out of Germany, but you can't take Germany out the girl. So this is the moment, just after his 30th birthday, when Crown Prince Rudolph meets the woman who will, I was about to say, change his life. This will change both their lives in quite a dramatic way. And this is Mary Vetsera. So who is she? So the Vetseras are a recently ennobled family. They're kind of parvenus. Her father was a diplomat who was a noble by Franz Josef. Her mother came from a Greek financial family from Constantinople called the Baltatsis. And the Baltatsis are relentless social climbers. So her uncles are always sort of hanging around at the racecourse in sort of excessively shiny silk top hats or something. And they're always trying to get invitations to court via Katarina Schratt, Franz Josef's kind of muse. And Franz Josef actually said to her, stay away from those Baltazzi brothers. They are. Their reputation is not entirely correct. So she was born Marie, but she called herself Mary because unusually in world history, it was seen as cool to have an English style name. So that's very nice. And her mother was very ambitious for her and she went to a convent school for noblemen's daughters. Her father had died in 1887, so when she was. That was the year she turned 16. Now, at this point, when her father died, she already had quite a racy reputation. I have to say, if you, if you Google her, I don't want to sound ungallant, but she doesn't leap out of the photograph as a great beauty. However, she's a great party girl. So she's a girl who will. If you have a party in Vienna, she will come dressed as a sexy

Tom Holland

chambermaid, kind of French maid, that kind of thing.

Dominic Sandbrook

Exactly. And she's a massive social climate like her mother was. So the Duke of Braganza set his Capita, but she said, not interested, not good enough. And the reason is she has set her sights on Crown Prince Rudolph. Now her family has formed because her mother had tried to seduce Rudolph, I think to no effect 10 years earlier. But now Mary wants to have a go and she is absolutely infatuated with him. So she told her maid, he is mine. He may not even know I exist, but he is mine. I feel it in my heart. So it's a very sort of teenage infatuation. Anyway, in the summer of 1888, she went off to England and she comes back From England, she's 17 years old and she's absolutely determined, I'm gonna meet Rudolph and I'm gonna have my way with him. She goes to all the fashionable race meetings. She's very stylish. The Viennese papers say she's one of the sort of best dressed girls of the season. She wrote to her governess, I cannot live without having seen or spoken to him. And as luck would have it, she's about, you know, she's about to see him because one afternoon she's in the tea pavilion at the races when Rudolph walks in with the future Edward vii, the Prince of Wales. We've already described tried him instruction in sexual matters but found there was nothing that Rudolph didn't know. Now, Edward Bertie, as he was called, slightly confusingly, recognized her from England and he sort of stopped to say hello and he introduced Rudolph.

Tom Holland

Hello, my dear.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah, very much looking very pretty, if

Tom Holland

I may say so.

Dominic Sandbrook

It's a fine filly. Exactly. And he introduced Rudolph, have you met my good friend the Crown Prince? But Rudolph just bowed and he didn't say anything to her. He obviously wasn't that taken with.

Tom Holland

Or is he playing hard to get?

Dominic Sandbrook

Well, we don't know. A few days later their paths crossed again at the Court Theatre. But Rudolph didn't again didn't really interact with her at all. And the reason for that is he's got these royal guests. So first of all he's had the Prince of Wales and they had a brilliant time. They went to the races, as we've just heard. They go to the Hotel Sacher and have Sacher Torte and they laughing and having a great time, having champagne shortly with cognac and morphine with actually Rudolf's great. Another Jewish friend of his, his banker Baron Moritz Hirsch. So this I think reflects very well both on Crown Prince Rudolph and on the Prince of Wales. In this very feverish political environment, they're publicly associating with well known kind of Jewish figures. And Rudolf said to Stephanie, his wife, oh, this is brilliant. He's indefatigable. Nothing seems to tire the old boy. So they were having a great time. But Rudolf knows that as soon as the Prince of Wales goes, things will take a turn for the worse. Because the worst person in the world in his mind is about to arrive in Vienna. And that is the Kaiser. And of course the timing is really bad because there's been all this hullabaloo about Schonerer and the pan Germans. And Rudolf and his. Indeed his father and the court in general are worried that when the Kaiser arrives in Vienna, all the pan Germans will come out on the streets, they'll hear demonstrations, shouting how brilliant the Kaiser is. Is. And that's not good. And Rudolf actually said to Stephanie, his wife, the splendid line left to me, I would invite Wilhelm only to get rid of him in some elegant hunting accident, which would have been an amusing way to get rid of the Kaiser. Anyway, the Kaiser arrived in Vienna on the 3rd of October, and I'm very, very sorry to report that he let himself, Germany and the podcast down immediately. They brought the court Opera Orchestra to the palace to the Hofburg to play selections from Wagner in his honour. And the Kaiser disgraced himself by a quote, he talked and laughed noisily during the performance. So bad behaviour from him. For the next few days, he does nothing but tell the Austrians. You know, he's just such a terrible guest. He's constantly saying to the Austrians, this is wrong. You should do this. You're not doing this properly. He's terrible at that. He says, you're too lax with your newspapers, you're too soft on the Slavs. He says at one point, if you were ever to give the Slavs more political rights and move towards a more federal structure, we'd probably have to drop you as an ally. You know, he's got a sort of Donald Trump approach to diplomacy. And then he goes to a palace reception and he really disgraces himself by attacking the Austrian army. He says, you've ordered the wrong ammunition for your. Your Mannlicher Repeater rifles. You made a schoolboy error. What kind of. Who's the Inspector General of your army? What a muppet he must be.

Tom Holland

And who is it, Dominic?

Dominic Sandbrook

Crown Prince Rudolph?

Tom Holland

Oh, no.

Dominic Sandbrook

Standing right next to him.

Tom Holland

Is he amused by this?

Dominic Sandbrook

No. He bowed, clicked his heels and left, as did his mother. So the Russian ambassador who was there said it was absolutely excruciating, but obviously par for the course with the Kaiser. Now, it's about this point in time where, perhaps unsurprisingly, people start to notice a marked change in Rudolph's demeanor. So his wife Stephanie wrote later, I could not fail to notice an alarming change in him. It was not only that he was more restless and distraught than ever before. In addition, he had become prone to outbursts of fierce anger on the most trifling occasions, he was often quite unrecognizable. And it's this time as well that Rudolph writes a letter to his friend Morris Seps, the newspaper editor, and he says, you know, I'm very. He's very apocalyptic in his letters. He says, I'd like to see a war, actually. Actually, I think we need a war with Russia. War must come soon, a great time when we should be happy, because after its glorious end, we could build the foundations of a great and beautiful Austria. So the storm clouds in his mind are blacker than ever. And then here's a key moment in the story. Mid October, another of his cousins, Countess Marie Larish, comes to see him. And she is the same age as Rudolph, she's third. She's a relative of his mother. She's a sort of social butterfly, Viennese social butterfly. She has appointed herself Mary Vetzera's mentor.

Tom Holland

What does that mean? Basically her bored or.

Dominic Sandbrook

Yeah, a little bit like the. Who's the Madame de Mertuil, is it in Dangerous Liaisons. The sort of Glenn Close figure who grooms younger women.

Tom Holland

Lady Melbourne.

Dominic Sandbrook

Exactly right. So Mary Vetserra has told Countess Larish that she fancies crying Prince Rudolph. And the Countess has said, I'll fix it for you, I'll sort this out. So the Countess says to Rudolph, my young friend Mary met you at the races. She didn't get a chance to express the loyalty and admiration she feels for you and she'd love to have another meeting with you. And Rudolf said, oh, didn't. Haven't I seen her in the fashion pages? And Countess Larish said, oh, yes, she's a most interesting and captivating person. There'll be a new Court Theatre opening on the Ringstrasse in a couple of days with electric lighting. Very exciting. She'll be there. You should look out for her. So on the 14th of October, Rudolph goes to the Court Theatre opening and Mary is there in the. In the vets era family box with her mother and her sister. She's very elegantly turned out, she's got diamonds in her hair and they don't speak, but Rudolph can see her watching him through her opera glasses. And then a couple of days later, he sends his elderly valet, who's called Niehammer, with a message for Countess Larish. And the day after that, Countess Larish picks up Mary Vetserra from her family house and she takes her for a coach ride to the Prater Park. It's a cold autumn day, so the park is empty, but when they get There, there's one other coach waiting silently under a chestnut tree. They park next to this other coach. Mary gets out of the coach coach into the second coach and it rolls off into the mist. And inside the second coach is Crown Prince Rudolph. And for the next hour or two they drive around this park. Rudolph's drawn the curtains and Rudolph's coachman drops her off back with Countess Larish. And then a few days later, on the 5th of November, the decisive encounter. Countess Larish says to Mary's mother, I'd like to take Mary shopping. I'd like her advice because she's such a fashionista Easter if they go out to the shops. But in fact they're picked up straight away by Rudolph's coachman. And he takes them to a back entrance of the palace, the Hofburg. And there Mary is led upstairs to Rudolph's apartment. And we let Mary tell the story herself from a letter to her old governess. She said, I looked around me. On his desk was a revolver and a skull. I picked up the skull and looked at it from all sides. Suddenly Rudolph came in and took it from me. And when I said that I wasn't afraid, he smiled.

Tom Holland

My goodness. Cliffhangers. We've got them. So next time, the mystery of Merling races towards its spectacular bloody and empire shaking conclusion. And members of the Rest Is History Club, of course, can hear that right now@therealestishistory.com and just to say fabulous news, Dominic, we are running a summer sale. So if you're not a member of the Rest Is History Club, for a limited time, you can get an extra 20% off. I mean, that's insane value, isn't it?

Dominic Sandbrook

That's giving it away. It's madness. I think it's too much.

Tom Holland

20% off an annual membership using the code summer26. And that's only valid until August 31st, so. Absolutely, absolutely not something to leave hanging.

Dominic Sandbrook

I urge people not to do this because I don't want them to have that deal. It's too good a deal.

Tom Holland

20%, Dominic. 20%.

Dominic Sandbrook

Too much.

Tom Holland

Are we doing this for nothing? Yeah.

Dominic Sandbrook

Madness. My accountant will be raging.

Tom Holland

Just incredible value there.

Dominic Sandbrook

There's even better news, isn't there? Is there not. Is there not live show news?

Tom Holland

Yeah, there is. I've forgotten about that. If you think the. The mailing incident is an amazing story, then we have an even better one coming up. And this is the ultimate Victorian adventure. The Abyssinian expedition of 1868.

Dominic Sandbrook

Incredible.

Tom Holland

By some measures a tragic story and by some measures a richly comical story. We know a comical story and we'll be trying to blend the two aspects of that. And we will be doing that live at the Southbank Centre in London on Friday 4th September. And tickets of course at the restishistory.com but for now, thank you, Dominic. Thank you everyone. And we will be back next time with the Crown Prince, Rudolph, Mary Vetsera and the shocking climax of the mailing incident.

Dominic Sandbrook

I'll feel you soon.

Tom Holland

Bye.

Dominic Sandbrook

Bye.

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Dominic Sandbrook

And I'm Josephine Quinn. At the Rest Is Fest this September, we're putting on a show that can only be described as an cream ice iconoclastic romp through the ancient world. We're talking about leaders behaving badly, emperors putting their horses in charge, cities built by asylum seekers and empires getting their comeuppance. There will be some proper myth busting, but we'll also be asking why these myths matter even when we know they're wrong. So if you love your ancient history and you're free on September 6th, get your ticket now and join us at London Southbank Centre. Tickets are on sale now. Just visit southbankcentre.co.uk that's southbankcentre.co.uk.