And the elephant? It is well known that Maximilian II did have an elephant brought to Vienna from the Iberian peninsula, and that a famous inn on the Graben (one of the celebrated streets that form the ancient centre of the city) took its name from i. The inn survived for almost three centuries and was then unfortunately demolished. There is nothing to prevent one from imagining, therefore, that the pachyderm found a home, as the chimney-sweep reports, in the place that Maximilian had chosen for his precious seraglio.
Eugene of Savoy
First of all, the Agha’s little slip of paper. In the documents of Eugene’s military campaigns is a copy of a report to Charles (Feldzüge des Prinzen Eugen von Savoyen. Nach den Feld-Acten u. anderen authentischen Quellen hrsg. von der Abtheilung für Kriegsgeschichte des k.k. Kriegs-Archives, Vienna 1876–1892, vol. XIII, Suppl. p. 14, chap. 7, Vienna 11th April 1711):
Finally on 7th afternoon the Turkish Agha arrived, to whom I granted audience on 9th. I attach for Your Majesty a copy of the written message that he delivered to me.
What about the original of the message? There is no trace of it in the documents, as the reader who has read the historical appendices to Imprimatur and Secretum will perhaps have already guessed: certain operations are always carried out in the same way, whether it concerns covering up a pope’s misdeeds, forging a king’s will, or endeavouring to conceal a plot to harm an emperor.
What is this message from the Agha and why on earth should Eugene have sent it to Charles? It was to Joseph I that he should have been reporting, unless it was a question that Joseph must not hear of but which Charles already knew about.
The machinations of Atto Melani. Abbot Melani had very cleverly devised the trap of the forged letter from Eugene of Savoy, and he came close to achieving his aim. It was true, as Atto himself recounted, that an apocryphal letter, which attributed to Eugene the project of betraying the Empire, was delivered to Philip V of Spain, who then sent it on to the Sun King and to Torcy, who finally prevented it from going any further, as Atto complained to the chimney-sweep. It was not until May 1711 (about a month after the events described by the chimney-sweep) that Eugene, having arrived in Tournai, in Flanders, was informed of the existence of the letter, but he succeeded in proving his innocence. The whole affair can be read about in Eugene’s correspondence held in the State Archive of Vienna or reproduced in the documents of Eugene’s military campaigns: in particular, the letter in which Count Bergeyck wrote to Eugene that he had received a mandate from Philip I to ask him if the letter was authentic and, if so, to negotiate with him (State Archive of Vienna, Kriegsakten 262, 22.3.1711; Kriegsakten 263, 3.5.1711); Eugene’s indignant reply (State Archive of Vienna, Grosse Korrespondenz 93 a, 18.5.1711), and the letters to the Queen Mother and Regent Eleonore Magdalene Therese and to Charles (Feldzüge des Prinzen Eugens XIII, Suppl., pp. 32–3, 13 and 17.5.1711) and to Sinzendorf (State Archive of Vienna, Grosse Korrespondenz 73 a, 18.5.1711), in which Eugene sent a copy of Bergeyck’s letter and expressed all his dismay; and finally the answers from the Regent, from Charles and from Sinzendorf, who recognise that he is not in any way implicated (State Archive of Vienna, Grosse Korrespondenz 90 b, 3.6.1711; 31.7.1711; Grosse Korrespondenz 145, 21.5.1711).
Atto’s analysis of the relations between Eugene, Joseph and Charles reflects the historic reality with surprising accuracy. For example, it is true, as Atto claims, that Eugene managed to have more influence at Charles’s court than at that of the unfortunate Joseph. Eugene would, in fact, manage to persuade Charles to continue the War of the Spanish Succession all alone, when the allies had already made peace with France. Then, not content with this, he would proceed to the war on the Turkish front.
But above all, the jealousy Eugene felt towards Joseph as recounted by Atto Melani is far from unfounded. It is historically authenticated that Eugene was excluded from the Battle of Landau of 1702 so that the stage would be left free for Joseph, as Onno Klop reports (Der Fall des Hauses Stuart, vol.11, Vienna 1885, p. 196). Furthermore, it is true that Joseph did not allow Eugene to go and fight the French in Spain, where Eugene had hopes of achieving great things, as Onno Klopp recounts (Der Fall op. cit., t. XXIV p. 12 ff.).
Atto Melani’s reflections on the personality of Eugene of Savoy are also perfectly in keeping with the reality of the historical documents. It is not surprising that official historiography devotes little attention to the murkier side of the great condottiere. In all the thousands of books and articles (over 1,800 have been counted) that have been published over the last three centuries celebrating Eugene, hardly any reference is to be found to his private life. The reason is very simple. Eugene left no personal papers: only letters of war, diplomacy and politics. Nor can any private correspondence worthy of the name be found in the archives of the numerous personalities who corresponded with him. There does not seem to have been any personal or intimate side to his existence: all we see is his granite-like exterior as a soldier, diplomat and statesman. An almost inhuman heroic figure, who has no room for feelings, weaknesses or doubts.
As for women, none seem to have left any mark on this bellicose monolith. Eugene, one of the richest and most celebrated (and hence one of the most eligible) men of the age, never married. A few women have been associated with his name, above all Countess Eleonore Batthyany, his “official lover” from 1715 onwards. But even in what remains of his correspondence with her, no trace can be found of an intimate relationship in the real sense of the word. Perhaps the female sex was more useful than congenial to Eugene: it seems to be historically proven that the condottiere, as the chimney-sweep writes in December 1720, set up Countess Pálffy, Joseph’s very young lover, in Porta Coeli Street (and so close to his own palace) so that he could watch over her and exploit her more easily (Max Braubach, Prinz Eugen von Savoyen, Vienna 1964, vol.3 pp. 21–2). The Viennese postman Johann Jordan, in his Schatz /Schutz / und Schantz Deß Ertz-Herzogthumbs Oesterreich, a carefully compiled street guide printed in 1701, reports on page 107 that a certain Agnes Sidonia Countess Pálffy, an old relative of Joseph’s lover, lived in the Strassoldo House in Himmelpfortgasse, the building owned by von Strassoldo, the directress of the convent’s novitiate (cf. Alfons Žák, Das Frauenkloster Himmelpforte in Wien, Vienna, 1906). A few years before Marianna arrived, therefore, the Strassoldo House had already been occupied by another woman from the Pálffy family.
There is no doubt that Eugene’s early years in France were unruly, unconducive to education and even dissolute. As the English historian Nicholas Henderson writes: “There can be no doubt of the existence of shadows in Eugen’s early boyhood. He belonged to a small, effeminate set that included such unabashed perverts as the young Abbé de Choisy, who was invariably dressed as a girl, except when he wore the lavish ear-rings and make-up of a mature woman.” (N. Henderson, Prince Eugen of Savoy, London 1964, p. 21). It was in those days, according to some letters of Louis XIV’s sister-in-law, Elizabeth of the Palatinate Countess of Orléans, that the homosexual adventures referred to by Atto Melani took place. Elizabeth had known Eugene personally from the days when he was still living in Paris. She recounts to her aunt, Princess Sophia of Hanover, that Eugene’s nickname was Madame Simone, as Abbot Melani recounts, or Madame l’Ancienne; that in his relations with his contemporaries the young Savoy “played the part of the woman”; that in his sexual revels he coupled with the Prince of Turenne; that the two were considered “two vulgar whores”; that Eugene would not have put himself out for a woman, preferring “a couple of fine page-boys”; that the ecclesiastic benefice he had sought was refused because of his “depravity”; that it was only in Germany that he may have forgotten “the art” he had learned in Paris.
Eugene’s most important biographer, Max Braubach, in his monumental five-volume account of the life and works of the great soldier, did not give much space to Elizabeth’s letters and their implications. Another historian, Helmut Oehler, reports her pungent remarks, but attributes them solely to Elizabeth’s pers
onal resentment against Eugene: at the time they were written (1708–10), the Italian military commander was opposing the peace between the European powers and France, a peace that Elizabeth – given the dramatic situation in which Louis XIV found himself – hoped for ardently. In fact, this is not exactly true: Elizabeth wrote openly about Eugene’s homosexuality even years after the war had ended.
However, it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that it is Oehler who allows himself to get carried away; when he has to talk of another critic of Eugene, the Dutch Count Mérode-Westerloo, who left some vitriolic jottings on the condottiere, he changes register very markedly, defining Mérode-Westerloo a “know-all”, “charlatan”, “salon gossip”, “parasite”, and a “reprehensible individual” who “led a useless life”, and whose memoirs are little more than an instance of “senile dementia”. Finally Oehler explains that he deliberately ignored some passages by the Dutch diplomat because passing on Mérode-Westerloo’s “idiotic prattlings” is a “disgusting” task.
In the end it was only to be expected that the partisan historiography should have triumphed in Eugene’s case: a military hero can have no stain, least of all that of sexual inversion. The artificially created figure of the upright, irreproachable soldier triumphed – it is hardly a surprising – during the years of the Nazi regime; see, for example, the biography of Eugene by Viktor Bibl: Prinz Eugen. Ein Heldenleben, Vienna-Leipzig 1941, complete with a dedication to the army of the Third Reich.
The first of Elizabeth’s letters to accuse Eugene of homosexuality is reported in Wilhelm Ludwig Holland (ed.), Briefe der Herzogin Elisabeth Charlotte von Orléans, Stuttgart 1867, in Bibliothek des Litterarischen [sic] Vereins in Stuttgart, Band CXLIV, p. 316:
To Madame Louise, Countess of the Palatinate – Frankfurt
St Clou, 30 October 1720
[. . .] I would not have recognised Prince Eugene in the portrait to be found here: he has a short wide nose, but in the engraving it is long and pointed. His nose is so turned up that his mouth was always open, and you could see his two upper central teeth entirely. I know him well, I often tormented him when he was a child. At the time they said that he would soon take vows, and he was dressed as an abbé. I assured him that he would not remain so, which turned out to be the case. When he abandoned the habit, the young people called him “Madame Simone” or “Madame l’Ancienne”, and it was said he played the part of the lady with them. So you see, dear Louise, that I know Prince Eugene well; I knew all his family, his father, his mother, brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts, he is not at all unknown to me, in short: it is impossible that he has a long pointed nose.
Another passage (letter from Elizabeth to her aunt on 9th June 1708) in Helmut Oehler, Prinz Eugen im Urteil Europas, Munich 1944, p. 108:
Prince Eugene is too sensible not to admire Your Highness. But since Your Highness wishes to know the real reason why Prince Eugene was called Madame Simone and Madame l’Ancienne, just as Prince Turenne was, it is because the two of them were called, if I may be allowed the term, two vulgar whores and it is said that they were so accustomed, and at every moment gave themselves à tout venant beau and played the role of the ladies; Prince Eugene may have unlearned this art in Germany.
From another letter in 1710 (Oehler, Prinz Eugen op. cit., p. 109):
Eugene does not put himself out for women, a couple of fine pageboys would suit him better.
From another letter in 1712 (Oehler, ibid.):
[. . .] If value and judgement make a hero, Prince Eugene is certainly one; however, other virtues are also required, whether one has them or not. When he was Madame Simone and Madame l’Ancienne, everyone looked on him as a petite salope, he also ardently desired a benefice of 2,000 talleri, which was refused because of his débauche. For this reason he went to the imperial court, where he made his fortune.
The other accounts that Atto gives of homosexuality at the court of France are all authentic too, as can be verified in Didier Godard, Le goût de Monsieur – L’homosexualité masculine au XVIIe siècle (Paris 2002), and in Claude Pasteur, Le beau vice, ou les homosexuels à la cour de France (Paris 1999).
The description of Eugene’s palace in Porta Coeli Street (today’s Himmelpfortgasse, where the Prince’s former residence now hosts the Austrian finance ministry) is also entirely accurate, including the position of the future library on the first floor: it was in those rooms that the Prince’s rich collection of books was started, which later became part of the imperial library and subsequently the National Library of Vienna.
Joseph the Victorious
The descriptions of the sieges of Landau led by Joseph and all the details relating to it, including the story of the coins that the French commander Melac ordered to be made from his silverware, are confirmed by G. Heuser, Die Belagerungen von Landau, Landau (2 vols.) 1894–96.
The procession that forced Penicek’s cart to slow down on the afternoon of the fourth day really happened. A leaflet on the death of Joseph I (Umständliche Beschreibung von Weyland Ihrer Mayestät / JOSEPH / Dieses Namens des Ersten / Römischen Kayser / Auch zu Ungarn und Böheim Könih / u. Erz-Herzogen zu Oesterreich / u. u. Glorwürdigsten Angedenckens Ausgestandener Kranckheit / Höchst-seeligstem Ableiben / Und dann erfolgter Prächtigsten Leich-Begängnuß / zusammengetragen / und verlegt durch Johann Baptist Schönwetter, Vienna 1711, p. 6) provides the list of orders and confraternities that took part in the Forty Hours prayer. On 12th April, at that hour, shortly after five p.m., the Oratorian brothers were swarming towards St Stephen’s, along with the confraternity of the Immaculate Conception and the corporation of knife-makers; their turn for prayers was from six to seven p.m.
The name of the Caesarean Proto-Medicus Von Hertod is confirmed in the above-cited Umständliche Beschreibung, which faithfully reports every detail on the death of Joseph and on the long funeral ceremony.
For the funeral apparatus described at the beginning, everything is taken from Apparatus Funebris quem JOSEPHI I. Gloriosissim. Memoriae . . ., Vienna 1711.
The enemies of Joseph I did indeed include the Jesuits, as Atto Melani claims. The account of the expulsion of the Jesuit Wiedemann by the young emperor, as given by the chimney-sweep on the third day while looking through his collection of writings on Joseph, is authentic (cf. Eduard Winter, Frühaufklärung, East Berlin 1966, p. 177). None of the panegyrics and the gazettes mentioned by the chimney-sweep are invented: every reader familiar with the history of the periodical press will have recognised the famous Englischer Wahrsager (“The English Fortune-Teller”), the calendar whose fatal prophecy for 1711 is reported by the chimney-sweep.
The story of the sun rising with a bloody tinge is not an invention either: it is reported by Count Sigmund Friedrich Khevenhüller-Metsch, reproduced in the diary of Prince Johann Josef Khevenhüller-Metsch: Aus der Zeit Maria Theresias. Tagebuch 1742–1776, Vienna-Leipzig 1907, p. 71):
This grievous death was not only foreseen by the English Fortune-Teller in his calendar, but was also pre-announced by the Sun itself, which for some days began to rise with a blood-red colour.
This strange phenomenon is very similar to something that happened in Russia in 1936, a circumstance recalled at the beginning of the 1994 film Burned by the Sun, by the Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov, about one of the Stalinist purges.
As the chimney-sweep recounts, after foretelling the death of Joseph, the Englischer Wahrsager seems to have sold in great quantities: judging by the copies still preserved today, up until the end of the eighteenth century it enjoyed a far wider circulation than the other almanacs of the time.
The story Atto Melani narrates of the proposed kidnapping of Joseph is also true. The traitor Raueskoet made the suggestion to Louis XIV, who rejected it (cf. Charles W. Ingrao, Josef I., der “vergessene Kaiser”, Graz-Vienna-Cologne, 1982, p. 243 n.98, and Philipp Röder von Diersburg, Freiherr, Kriegs und Staatsschriften des Markgrafen Ludwig Wilhelm von Baden über den spanischen Erbfolgekrieg aus den Archiven von Karlsru
he, Wien und Paris, Karlsruhe 1850, vol. 3 p. 97).
The Censored Biography and the Secrets of Charles
Eugene’s envy, Charles’s rivalry: why has no historian ever investigated the hostility that surrounded Joseph the Victorious? Did the glory he gained in Landau cost him dear, as Atto Melani suggests to his friend the chimney-sweep?
According to Susanne and Theophil Antonicek (Drei Dokumente zu Musik und Theater unter Kaiser Joseph I in “Festschrift Othmar Wessely zum 60. Geburtstag”, Tutzing 1966, p. 11–12), when Joseph was alive a sort of underground war over music developed between the young emperor and his brother (and consequently also among their counsellors): Charles accused his brother, quite openly, of wastefulness. After Joseph’s death, the superindendent of music Scipione Publicola di Santa Croce was ordered to present the accounts of his directorship, and many of the deceased emperor’s favourites (including Santa Croce himself) were dismissed, but once the purge had been effected Charles’s regime of austerity softened rapidly, and the golden period of court music that Joseph had inaugurated continued as before.
There had always been jealousy and quarrels between the two brothers. Joseph was probaby surrounded by other hostile and secretly malevolent individuals. There should have been a historian to recount his great victories at Landau, illuminating the prestige that the young emperor achieved there, and the secret malice that it had unleashed among those present. A work of this sort would perhaps have prevented Joseph from being condemned to oblivion.
Veritas (Atto Melani) Page 80
