Other nationalities would not starve while Hungarian barons feasted. Vienna's central control would apply to military and some financial matters. Outside of these, the Crown would respect and enforce the autonomy (cultural or otherwise) of Bohemia, Croatia, Slovenia, Galicia, Transylvania, Illyria, Dalmatia, and-neither last nor first-Hungary. To all such domains the Emperor of Austria would serve as equitable King. He would give his Slavic subjects the parity which had long been their due.
Of course none of the Meissl & Schadn habitues had ever heard of an article an obscure Bolshevik had compiled in Vienna the year before. Had they read Stalin's "Marxism and the National Question," they would have been astonished by its structural resemblance to Franz Ferdinand's scheme. At any rate, most of the sub-Excellencies at Meissl & Schadn admitted that the post-accession plan made sense; perhaps urgent, one-minute-before-midnight sense. And just because it made sense it would make trouble.
Hungary's bearded, formidable Prime Minister Tisza no doubt anticipated Franz Ferdinand's intentions. He was not the man to put up with them. The Meissl & Schadn consensus believed that Tisza might not hesitate to mobilize the Hungarian militia against the new Emperor. He had practically said so. "If Franz Ferdinand wants to use the army against me," Tisza had been quoted even before the present crisis in the old Emperor's health, "I will have the last word." And this is what the Crown Prince had said loudly, to the head of his Military Chancellery shortly after the Emperor had fallen ilclass="underline" "Twenty-four hours after I am in, Tisza will be out."
The Meissl & Schadn crowd had even gotten word on who was to put Tisza out. The car of Joseph von Kristoffy, a former Hungarian Minister of the Interior, could be found more often in Vienna than in Budapest these days-usually at a side entrance of the Castle Belvedere. He was Franz Ferdinand's choice for Premier of Hungary. By that same entrance, just as often stood the automobile of General Karl von Terstyanski, the Crown Prince's favorite to succeed General Conrad as Chief of Staff. He was already commander of the Budapest garrison. His assignment: to make Tisza reliquish his office, if necessary by force.
Tisza, however, had an iron grip. It seemed inevitable that after Franz Joseph's death the implacable new sovereign would collide with the immovable Hungarian. Would the monarchy become a battlefield? Through what constitutional juggling or political stratagem could one contrive a compromise? Or did the problem no longer permit a peaceful option? The sub-Excellencies at Meissl & Schadn sighed. To bring their parleys to a Viennese conclusion they liked to order Linzer torte, another specialite de la maison. But when they walked out of the restaurant into the May evening, it was not the taste of the torte that lingered. It was the sigh.
***
The All-Highest illness weighed on the city. Pacers in the corridors of power failed to enjoy a fine spring. So did Vienna's lesser folk. They couldn't afford to probe the Empire's future over bone china and Bohemian crystal. Instead, they gathered on plain benches of the vineyard inns in the Vienna Woods. The moon dappled the beech leaves, the wine gladdened the tongue, but the idyll was laced with apprehension. People stared into their goblets. They shook their heads over the latest medical bulletins from the Palace. Those doctors had become so terse. It wasn't right that the kindly, ageless legend of Franz Joseph should terminate in "severe pulmonary complications." The phrase seemed too blunt and newfangledsomething like the frown on Franz Ferdinand's portraits.
The plain people on the plain benches knew hardly anything pleasant about their future ruler. His long absences from the capital implied little fondness for Vienna. His official stare revealed nothing. And so the people tried to fill that sullen void. They talked about an article series featured in the tabloid Illustrirtes Wiener Extrablatt just then. Its subject, though dating back almost twenty years, was timely. It concerned another Habsburg sickbed; Franz Ferdinand himself had lain in that one, in 1895, when tuberculosis had been eroding his lungs.
Then, too, the bulletins had grown terse. But the Archduke's fierce will had prevailed not only over the disease but over its exploitation by his enemies at Court. Quickly and quite publicly the camarilla had written him off as successor. Ceremonials and privileges of an heir apparent had been transferred to Franz Ferdinand's younger and much flightier brother, the Archduke Otto. Until then Otto had been famous chiefly for the champagne-happy night during which he had strolled through the Sacher Hotel lobby naked except for the badge of the Order of the Golden Fleece hanging from his neck. That had not kept the Emperor's First Lord Chamberlain from asking Otto to inaugurate theaters, open bridges, visit new hospitals. From 1894 to 1895 the Court Gazette had treated Otto as the de facto Crown Prince. And even after Franz Ferdinand had regained enough fitness for a longer journey, he had not been included in the great state visit of 1896. Archduke Otto had accompanied Emperor Franz Joseph to St. Petersburg for a meeting with the Tsar.
Of course the Illustrirtes Wiener Extrablatt could only hint at the high-altitude malice of those years. But now, in late April of 1914, the stories around it ran as vintage gossip through Vienna's inns: Perhaps the bitterness of his young, sick years had put the scowl on Franz Ferdinand's face? Perhaps the aggravations of his morganatic marriage had deepened it? In the inns, people wondered, conjectured, drank. For a while they felt a bit better. How good to merge Franz Ferdinand tales into Habsburg legendry, to fit him into a traditional scheme! Encouraged, the vineyard drinkers sang a song written just a few months earlier. It came from the pen of a municipal bureaucrat yet it had grown to be the rage all over Europe; it had even spread to England and America. The whole world was hymning something fragile and sweet:
Actually "Wien, Wien" was just the latest and by far the most famous example of the genre Wiener Lieder. Over a hundred WienerLieder had been composed in the last eighty years. All were songs of lyric wistfulness. They sighed of a love not for a woman or a man but for Vienna; for that rainbow of a town fraying away exquisitely between vineyard and Danube; for streets in which the girls were beautiful because the houses were old; for a world whose doom was its enchantment.
In April 1914 the people on the wooden benches sang "Wien, Wien," to serenade their sick, dear Emperor. Actually he had become dear only after he had become ancient. But he had been ancient for so long, he seemed to have been dear forever. For generations those silver sideburns had generated fond stories, wonderful rumors, reverent speculations. Austrian patriotism centered on this ikon of infinite anecdotes and wrinkles. Still, the day must come when six horses draped in black would bear him away; when the most unsentimental of Archdukes would roar up in his motorcar to take possession of the Imperial Palace. What then?