Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess. Fischer Henry William
great grand-uncle, Emperor Francis, recorded on a pane of glass overlooking the courtyard of the Vienna Hofburg his opinion of women in the brief observation: "Chaque femme varie" (Women always change).
This is true of Louise and also untrue of her. While occupying her high position at the Saxon court she was fixed in the determination to make a cuckold of her husband, though Frederick Augustus, while a pumpkin, wasn't fricasseed in snow by any means.
The process gave her palpitations, but, like Ninon, she was "so happy when she had palpitations."
As to lovers, she changed them as often as she had to, never hesitating to pepper her steady romances by playing "everybody's wife," chance permitting, as she intimates naïvely towards the close of the Diary.
Qualms of conscience she knows not, but of pride of ancestry, of insistence on royal prerogatives, she has plenty and to spare.
"My great grand-aunt, Marie Antoinette, did this"; "my good cousins d'Orleans" (three of them) "allowed themselves to be seduced"; "ma cousine de Saxe-Coburg laughs at conventionalities," – there you have the foundation of the iniquitous philosophy of the royal Lais. And for the rest – when she is queen, all will be well.
Louise's fixed idea was that, as Queen of Saxony, she had but to say the word to establish a court à la Catharine II; time and again she refers to the great Empress's male seraglio, and to the enormous sums she squandered on her favorites. If the Diarist had known that Her Majesty of Russia, when in the flesh, never suffered to be longer than twenty-four hours without a lover, Louise, no doubt, would have made the most elaborate plans to prevent, in her own case, a possible interregnum of five minutes even.
She thought she held the whip hand because a king cannot produce princes without his wife, while the wife can produce princes without the king; besides Frederick Augustus was no paragon, and he who plants horns, must not grudge to wear them.
A wanton's calculations, it will be argued, – but Louise's records show that her husband, the king-to-be, fell in with her main idea, – that he forgave the unfaithful wife, the disgraced princess, because, as Queen, her popularity would be "a great asset."
And Americans, our women of whom we are so proud, are asked to bow down to such sorry majesties!
And is there no excuse for so much baseness in high places? Our royal Diarist offers none, but her family history is a telling apology.
Be it remembered that Louise is not so much an Austrian as a Wittelsbacher of the royal house of Bavaria that gave to the world two mad kings, Louis II and Otho, the present incumbent of the throne, besides a number of eccentrics, among others Louise's aunts, the Empress Elizabeth and the Duchess d'Alencon, both dead; Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria, her cousin, was also undoubtedly insane, the result of breeding in and in, Austrian, Bourbon and Wittelsbach stock, all practically of the same parentage, in a mad mix-up, the insane Wittelsbachers predominating.
To cap the climax, Louise has eighteen or nineteen insane cousins on her mother's side!
Once upon a time Louise's prosaic and stupid great-uncle, as a young husband, felt dreadfully scandalized when his Queen, Marie Antoinette, bombarded him with spit-balls.
"What can I do with her?" he asked "Minister Sans-culotte" Dumouriez.
"I would spike the cannon, Sire," replied the courtier.
"Enclouer le canon," if performed in time, might have saved Louise, but I doubt it.
KITH AND KIN OF THE EX-CROWN PRINCESS OF SAXONY
The royal woman whose life's history is recorded in this volume was born Louise Antoinette, Daughter of the late Grand Duke Ferdinand IV of Tuscany (died January 17, 1908) and the Dowager Grand Duchess Alice, née Princess Bourbon of Parma.
Louise has four brothers, among them the present head of the Tuscany family, Joseph Ferdinand, who dropped the obsolete title of Grand Duke and is officially known as Archduke of Austria-Hungary.
He is a brigadier general, commanding the Fifth Austrian Infantry, and unmarried.
Better known is Louise's older brother, the former Archduke Leopold, who dropped his title and dignities, and, as a Swiss citizen, adopted the name of Leopold Wulfling. This Leopold is generally regarded as a black sheep.
Louise more often refers to him in the present volume than to any other member of her family.
He is now a commoner by his own, more or less enforced, abdication, as Louise is a commoner by decree of her chief-of-family, the Austrian Emperor, Francis Joseph, dated Vienna, January 27, 1903.
A month before above date the Saxon court had conferred on Louise the title of Countess Montiguoso, while, on her own part, she adopted the fanciful cognomen of Louise of Tuscany.
Of Louise's two remaining brothers, one, Archduke Peter, serves in the Austrian army as Colonel of the Thirty-second Infantry, while Archduke Henry is Master of Horse in the Sixth Bavarian Dragoons.
Only one of Louise's four sisters is married, the oldest, Anna, now Princess Johannes of Hohenlohe-Bartenstein.
The unmarried sisters are Archduchesses Margareta (31 years old), Germana (28 years old), Agnes (22 years old).
Louise's mother, née Princess Alice of Parma, is the only surviving sister of the late Duke Robert, who left twenty children, all living, and of whom eighteen or nineteen are either imbeciles or raving lunatics, the present head of the house, Duke Henry, belonging to the first category of mentally unsound.
Louise's first cousin, Prince Elias of Parma, the seventh son, is accounted sound, but Elias's sister, Zita (the twelfth child), developed maniacal tendencies since her marriage to Archduke Karl Francis Joseph, heir-presumptive to the crown of Austria-Hungary.
Louise was in the line of the Austrian succession until, upon her marriage to the Crown Prince of Saxony (1891), she officially renounced her birthrights.
Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary is Louise's grand-uncle as well as chief of the imperial family of Austria, the royal family of Hungary, the Grand-ducal family of Tuscany (now extinct as far as the title goes), and of the Estes, which is the Ducal Line of Modena, extinct in the male line. Finally he is recognized as chief by the ducal family of Parma, descendants of the Spanish Hapsburgs.
Emperor Francis Joseph rules all the Hapsburgers, Austrian, Hungarian, and those of Tuscany, of Este, of Modena and Parma, autocratically, his word being law in the family. Even titles conferred by birth can be taken away by him, as exemplified in the case of Louise and her brother Leopold.
As a member of the Austrian imperial family, the Hapsburgers, founded in 883, Louise ranked higher than her husband, the Crown Prince of the petty Kingdom of Saxony, whose claim to the royal title dates from 1806, – a gift of the Emperor Napoleon.
She married Frederick Augustus November 21, 1891, while the latter's uncle reigned as King Albert of Saxony (1873 to 1902).
Louise's father-in-law, up to then known as Prince George, succeeded his brother June 19, 1902. He was then a widower and his family consisted of:
Princess Mathilde, unmarried,
The Crown Prince Frederick Augustus, husband of Louise,
Princess Marie-Josepha, wife of Archduke Otho of Austria,
Prince Johann George, at that time married to Isabelle of Württemberg, and
Prince Max. The latter subsequently shelved his title and entered the Church July 26, 1896. He is a professor of canonical law and slated for a German bishopric.
At the time of Prince George's ascension, there was also living the late King Albert's widow, Queen Caroline, née Princess of