THE EMPEROR OF AUSTRIA IN VENICE.
THERE must be some great quality in the present Emperor 1 of Austria, if it be only tenacity of a rather unusual kind. He has been the most luckless man in Europe, so luck- less that the Hanoverian Minister who wrote" For Sceptre and Crown " hints that he half believes himself to be the evil destiny of his Empire, yet no man has ever been less humiliated by his lucklessness. Called to the throne while still a boy to save a House that seemed about to perish in the storm of 1848, he has three times been engaged in great campaigns, and three times disastrously defeated. His war with Hungary ended in a supplication to the Czar to pour in Russian troops, to do the work to which the native King had proved himself unequal. The work was done, and done completely, but the mode of doing it, the appeal to foreign bayonets to put down a domestic trouble, discredited the Imperial House more than the Hungarian revolt had done. His war with Napoleon ended in the bloody rout of Magenta, the cession of Lombardy to Pied- mont, the expulsion of all the Italian branches of his House from the Peninsula, and the formation of a free and united Italy, the power which the House of Hapsburg least desired to exist. His war with the Hohenzollerns ended in his open ex- pulsion from Germany—where his family had been first for four centuries—in the cession of his last Italian province, in the restoration of all her liberties to Hungary, and in the sur- render of his own carefully cherished power. Twenty-six years of sovereignty, twelve of autocratic power, have left Francis Joseph still in the prime of life, but with a third of the terri- tories of his House stripped away, with the hereditary leader- ship of Germany transferred to his hereditary foe, with the last hope of regaining the throne of the Western Empire shattered, and with his own claim of Divine Right to rule laid compulsorily aside. Any one of his defeats would have dis- credited a reign. Any one of his losses would have marked an era in the annals of his dynasty. Any one of his humilia-
tions, his supplication to Russia, his defeat in Napoleon's tent in 1860, his signature to the treaty which made him no German, would have impaired the reputation of a Charles V. And yet this week the Emperor of Austria glides into Venice a guest of Victor Emanuel, and one of the greatest monarchs of the world, and no man looks on him as less, or thinks of him as the failure of his House, or offers him that pity of the historian which marks an irreversible descent. Even in Italy this is no discrowned Bourbon, no beaten Guelph, no oak-down Napoleon, but a Monarch of the first class, whose whispers to his host may affect Europe, to whom a cause as wide as that of the Papacy may look hope- fully for succour, who stands among Kings at least the equal of any man he may encounter in the list. It is a triumph for a nation that he is its guest; an event even for Venice, where events have been innumerable, that she gives him a reception; a subject of speculation for the proudest statesmen that he and the King of Italy can chat together in private over the future of the Papacy, and the designs of Bismarck, and the reversion of the hundred heritages of the still Sick Man. Italy resounds with acclamations because the Hapsburg drinks a health to her prosperity. No ruling man in yesterday's history, save Napoleon III., has lost so much, no one has suffered so deeply, no one would seem to have been so persecuted by fortune, and no one in Europe holds a prouder place with a more impassive calm.
The position of the Emperor of Austria, so high after all his defeats, and all his failures, and all his concessions, is the more noteworthy, because it has not been justified, before the world at least, by any exceptional grandeur of intellect or any un- usual loftiness of morale. No historian could call Francis Joseph a great soldier, a great statesman, or a great sovereign, without writing a volume to prove his words, which when he had written it would still be doubted ; and no moralist will ever place the prefix " good" before Francis Joseph's name. He never won a battle. He never retrieved a rout. He never framed a Code. He never devised a policy. He never discerned a counsellor of the Bismarck or even of the Metternich class. He governed Hungary while still a lad most cruelly. He tortured Italy with taxation imposed for torture. He conceded nothing till he was compelled. He repaid Russia for her services with an ingratitude which the Romanoffs will never forget. He pardoned the desertion and the executionef the Arch- duke Maximilian, received his betrayer as an honoured guest, and negotiated with Juarez. He abandoned the Papacy, while still convinced, as the world supposes, that the Papacy is divine. And yet he stands there in Venice the honoured guest of the insurgents who spurned his rule, unscorned by a world so ready to heap scorn on the unsuccessful. What is the secret of it all,— of the tolerance the world retains, as it were, for this man alone, of the grandeur which adheres to a crown so often trodden in the dust ?
We believe the secret is that the world recognises, often unconsciously, a certain majesty both in the throne and in its present occupant ; that the Emperor has succeeded by patient dignity, by assuming his position to be immutable and above assault, in preserving it intact through all defeats and many humiliations. His Empire is still a great factor in the European system—a necessary factor, Mr. Gladstone once said— he still controls a very great army, and he still affects by every movement all the Continental States. He still, though not the fanatic he is popularly supposed to be, holds in some in- definable way an indescribable, but still very powerful position as the first lay Catholic in the world. He still, though only a " constitutional " Monarch, as constitutions go on the Continent, remains his own Premier, guides the machine, and gives to all officers in his Empire binding instructions. His prerogative has been limited, but not lowered. He still, if the circum- stances required it, could step forward beyond •the constitutional frontier as direct ruler,—could issue orders which, until his policy had failed, would be implicitly obeyed. He still carries out his own foreign policy, his own military policy, his own policy on all that dangerous group of new questions which we call the Ultramontane dispute. He is still the only man in Central Europe who at all counterbalances the Hohenzollern, and he still in all his acts, and ways, and words retains that air of calm superiority to meaner mortals which befits the Caesar of the West. He drinks to the prosperity of Italy, after declining to visit any Italian city from which a Hapsburg has been ousted either by battle or insurrection. He has made huge concessions, but always to necessity, always royally, always without higgling or pecuniary bargains. He hat suffered three defeats, and has always acted after them as if defeats or victories were but transactions in the daily business of Haps- burg life. He in his own eyes is the fixed datum, all else but modifying conditions. His aim, whatever it be—and we fear it is no loftier one than the grandeur of his House—has always been a single one, and fixity of purpose has enabled him to suffer with an unmoved calm. There has been majesty even in his failures. He surrendered Lombardy as if it were an estate, gave away Venetia as if it were an Imperial Order, resigned Hungary to herself as if he had been but her trustee. This air of serene authority, which has always been character- istic of the Hapsburgs, is said in the present instance to be the result of strict self-discipline, a piece, in fact, of statecraft, but it is never laid aside ; and if it is acting, it is acting so perfect that the idea of anything histrionic in the performance is wholly wanting. The Emperor was dragged to Hungary to be crowned, as it were, by moral chains, and must have felt himself a cap- tive to his own subjects; yet as he rode up the Hill of Corona- tion at Presburg, and with drawn sword dared the four quarters of the world to dispute his title to the throne of Hungary, his bearing was that of an heir who has at last obtained an eagerly expected inheritance, and seemed to obliterate even the recol- lection of the lifelong struggle. It is the same in Italy. There is no resentment for defeat in his pose in Venice, no menace of a future revenge, no under-current of sarcastic comment,—a great monarch is but visiting a slightly inferior neighbour, with whom it pleases him to be on the best of terms. That profound sense that etiquette is reality which induced him after Sadowa to embrace the King of Prussia, to compliment an inferior, as it were, on a great achievement, and allow that it had given him new rank, has invested the Emperor of Austria with a permanent dignity which, artificial though it may be, has served to himself, to his House, and to his Empire as a shirt of mail. It is possible to be above insult, as well as below it, and to an Emperor of Austria the act of a Napoleon, even if that act is the betrayal of his brother, is, when policy demands, but an act like another, to pass away even from memory. If Italy is lost, Austria remains, and is great ; if Germany departs, Austria still remains, and is great. Reduced to the limits of its ancient county, the House of Hapsburg would still bear itself and for years be treated by the world as a-great and a legitimate power.
It is useless as yet to speculate on the political object which may underlie the courtesy of the Emperor, for no information has appeared, and the data for guessing are very few. That the Emperor desires to conciliate his kinsman is evident, and it is reasonable to suppose therefore that his object is to obtain his assistance in some Italian affair, and as the only Italian affair at this moment of international importance is the situa- tion of the Papacy, it is probable that communications may be exchanged upon that subject. But of the character of those communications it is impossible to form an opinion, until we know whether or not the Hapsburgs have renewed the Holy Alliance. If they have, which is most improbable, for Austria and Russia can never sympathise in the East, the visit may bode ill for the freedom of the next Papal election. If they have not, which is most probable—for the Hapsburgs, whatever their freedom from fanaticism, can scarcely sympathise with the Falck laws—Victor Emanuel may derive from his great kinsman's presence new courage to resist the pressure he is feeling from Berlin. In either case the visit may be of im- portance, and in neither case will the world know its meaning during the lifetime of the Pope.
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