A curse for the ages
”
But you’re the most powerful man in Europe! If you don’t help
your brother, who will?
”
A curse for the ages
“But you’re the most powerful man in Europe! If you don’t help your brother, who will?”
Franz Joseph sighed. “I cannot put the empire at war for one man. I advised Maximilian against this venture, and now…”
Carlota burst into tears. “I’ve tried everyone else, even the Pope. Max will die if you don’t intervene.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? Is that all you have to say – that you’re sorry? All right then! I’ll save him somehow – without you or any other Hapsburg. We’re done with you! I hope that your family feels the pain that I do. I curse you all!”
With that, Carlota, empress of Mexico, swept from the private chamber of her brother-in-law, the emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to seek help elsewhere for her husband.
She had been born Princess Charlotte, daughter of the King of Belgium, and had fallen deeply in love with Maximilian as a girl. After their marriage they lived an idyllic life together.
When Napoleon III of France offered Maximilian the opportunity to become emperor of Mexico – in effect, his colonial viceroy in America – Charlotte urged him to accept. Even though Mexican insurgents had beaten the French army at Pueblo on May 5, 1862, the French had won most of the battles since.
She and Maximilian loved Mexico immediately and made many plans for uplifting the lot of the common people. She even changed her name to befit her new nation. But Benito Juarez steadfastly led the people against foreign rule. Carlota left for Europe to get help after the French army was withdrawn.
By then Napoleon III had abandoned his dream. He put her off repeatedly before finally refusing to see her at all. Pope Pius IX grew concerned about her mental state when she raved of wild plots to poison her.
Maximilian was executed by a firing squad in June 1867 but Carlota remained convinced he was alive.
Franz Joseph had ample reason to remember her curse. In 1889, his only son, Crown Prince Rudolph, turned his gun on himself after killing his mistress. In 1898, an anarchist in Geneva, Switzerland fatally stabbed Franz Joseph’s wife, Empress Elizabeth, in the heart.
Then on June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Franz Joseph’s nephew and designated heir, was visiting Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina with his wife when an anarchist shot them both. That quickly led to the beginning of World War I, which claimed millions of lives and saw the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before its end more than four years later. Franz Joseph himself died in 1916.
Carlota outlived them all, plunged into oblivious madness in a palace in Belgium. Retainers of her staff from Mexico loyally attended to her with all the deference due an empress as they went about their duties.
Until her death in 1927 she talked incessantly of her reunion with “dear Max, who will come any day now” to take her back to Mexico where together they would reign benignly and happily for many years to come.
