"The duke's response?"
"He refuses, of course."
Vienna
The news arrived from Amberg, of all ridiculous places, by way of a Jesuit mailbag, Father William Lamormaini wrote, in his report to the Father-General of the Jesuits.
The rider had galloped all the way. Archduchess Maria Anna was in Basel, residing in the embassy of the United States of Europe. Voluntarily, which made it worse, from his own perspective. Almost, he had considered withholding the information from the dying emperor. It would have been, he felt, an act of mercy.
Unfortunately, someone else had sent the same news, from the same city, directly to the imperial family. That someone being the Swede's regent, Duke Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, at the request of Dona Mencia de Mendoza, who had requested this favor through means of the radio. Dona Mencia was in Amsterdam. The courier sent by Duke Ernst handed it over to the Empress Eleonora.
That much, Lamormaini wrote to Father Vitelleschi, he knew. He also knew that the empress had taken it directly to the king of Hungary, Ferdinand-who was likely to inherit the Austrian throne at any moment, given his father's health.
So Ferdinand was here now, in Vienna!
Lamormaini's hand shook, making a blot on the paper. The king of Hungary's Spanish wife had been so impudent as to recall him, without so much as asking permission from the privy council. Bishop Leopold Wilhelm, the youngest son, had arrived from Passau, as well. They never left the dying emperor alone. Whenever Father Lamormaini went to his room, one of them was there-the empress herself, the Spanish Mariana, or one of the three children. Always, at any hour of the day or night. Not even his physicians were permitted to see him alone, much less his confessor.
The empress had the impudence to tell him that the emperor wanted them there. The woman took too much upon herself. But when Lamormaini had ordered her to leave, the emperor had taken her hand, refusing to let go of it.
Father Lamormaini was not the only person who insisted on speaking to Ferdinand II.
"He is too ill," Empress Eleonora said. "Can't you let him die in peace?"
"I don't want to pressure him, Mama," Ferdinand III said, "but there are some things that I simply have to try to persuade him to do before he dies. Things that only the Holy Roman Emperor can do. He will understand that. He has never flinched from doing what he saw as his duty. He will not expect me to flinch from doing what I see as mine."
"Can't these things wait until you succeed him?"
"I will be able to take whatever steps are needed-well, whatever needed steps are politically feasible-within the hereditary lands. With the cooperation of Leopold Wilhelm, which I have. We don't have to bother Papa about Austria or Hungary. However, Papa signed the Edict of Restitution. I will probably never be elected emperor, since the electors have not even consented to designate me as king of the Romans. I can't revoke the edict. Only Papa can revoke it."
"At least," the empress said, "take it to the privy council first."
His own impassioned opposition, Lamormaini reported to Vitelleschi, had been futile. The privy council consented to having Ferdinand III take the matter to the emperor. He himself was still not permitted to speak with the emperor privately. He hoped that the Father-General would not interpret the tone of his report as an embittered complaint. He had been excluded from the meeting at which the heir presented his wishes to the emperor and the emperor had signed. Reluctantly, he heard, very reluctantly, but he had signed. He had consented to the loss of the church lands taken by the Protestants since the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, revoking the Edict of Restitution, after all the effort that Lamormaini had made to get him to issue the edict in the first place. The heretics would shortly be dancing with glee.
But, Lamormaini wrote, the next was almost worse. Ferdinand had requested that his father revoke the 1628 grant of the Palatine electoral vote to Duke Maximilian of Bavaria. In part, at least, on the grounds that Duke Maximilian was now clearly insane. His informants told him that Ferdinand had been so ill-advised as to tell his father that, perhaps, Archduchess Maria Anna's flight from Munich might have been the result of her realizing that she was about to marry a madman. But that had been only in passing. Mainly, Ferdinand had argued that the other electors had opposed the grant in the first place, that the grant had caused the emperor considerable political difficulty when it occurred, and that this was an opportune time to redeem a mistake.
At least, Lamormaini continued as he moved to the thirty-seventh page of his report, although Ferdinand II had agreed to revoke the grant to Duke Maximilian, he had at least refused to restore the vote to the young Count Palatine Karl Ludwig. That would have given the Protestants an additional vote. Rather, he had placed it in abeyance until the young elector came to his majority, to be restored to him on condition that at that time he freely and voluntarily embraced the Catholic faith. And, at the same time, the emperor had placed the Bohemian electoral vote in abeyance, thus depriving the current so-called king of Bohemia of the right to vote in any future election to choose a successor as Holy Roman Emperor,, however unlikely such a vote might be. So he had reduced the theoretical number of electors to five, the three Catholic ecclesiastical principalities and two Protestant secular principalities.
Additionally, Father Lamormaini wrote, closing the relation with his most bitter grievance of the day, the empress and the other children had persuaded the emperor to dictate and sign a letter to his ungrateful and insubordinate daughter Archduchess Maria Anna, saying that he still loved her. He had that information directly from the emperor's private secretary, who had been called in to prepare the letter.
Only after all that was done had they permitted Father Lamormaini to confess the emperor and administer the last rites. He had been inclined to refuse absolution, on grounds that the emperor had not expressed penitence for his most recent actions and had refused to invalidate them. However, the king of Hungary had threatened that if he did not absolve the emperor, then Queen Mariana's confessor, the Spaniard Quiroga, would do so.
Rather than permit a Capuchin to have the honor of administering the emperor's last rites, Lamormaini stated, he had granted the absolution.
"That completes the arrangements for the state funeral," the Hofmeister said. "The emperor himself particularly requested the performance of the Te Deum as set to the music of Franz Josef Haydn's Austria."
Empress Eleonora inclined her head graciously. "Everyone has been most kind and helpful," she replied. "Please let our thanks be conveyed to Nuncio Carafa for all of his assistance."
"Yes," Ferdinand III said, "let our most sincere thanks be conveyed to you, and to all of the members of the Hofstaat as well. Let the plans that you have prepared be carried out." The Hofmeister bowed.
Ferdinand III continued. "Also, let a supper be prepared for the members of the family in the empress' private apartments tonight. Let the guards know that those whom I have summoned, who will appear separately, each carrying a note written in my own hand, are to be admitted after we have eaten. The Hofmeister has permission to leave our presence."
"In the midst of death," Archduke and Prince-Bishop Leopold Wilhelm said, "we are in life."
"Isn't that backwards?" his sister Cecelia Renata asked him.
"Not if I understand this evening's agenda properly," he answered. "Ferdinand and Mariana have had their heads together ever since he got back from the Hungarian border. Who is finishing the inspection for him, anyway?"