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Shortly after his return from the trip he had taken with his wife, he wrote to Sophie:

For the first time, Elisabeth was able to get her way. The trip was a complete success and brought the couple closer again. Both deeply enjoyed the beauty of the mountains—one of the few things Franz Joseph and Elisabeth had in common. Wherever they went, the young couple aroused admiration for the simple and natural way they appeared in the rural landscape: the Emperor in lederhosen and the traditional hat with a chamois tuft, the Empress wearing a tight-fitting loden suit and sturdy mountain-climbing boots, a loden hat on her head. There was no court ceremonial here, and even the Emperor, who was so formal and stilted in Vienna, behaved casually and showed that he had preserved a certain
measure
of spontaneity and joie de vivre.

The two made an excursion on foot into the mountains. Elisabeth, who was an experienced mountain climber but was still weak from her last confinement, rested at the site of today’s Glocknerhaus after a three-hour hike and enjoyed the view of the peak of the Grossglockner. This place was given the name Elisabethruhe—Elisabeth’s rest. Franz Joseph went on as far as the Pasterze glacier.

From that time on, shared trips provided happy occasions for Elisabeth to be alone with her husband and to strengthen her influence.

But even if Sisi had won a battle, the war with her mother-in-law, which went on for decades, consumed a great deal of energy—all the more so as the Archduchess could always count on support from the court, unlike the young Empress.

Sophie never managed to train Elisabeth according to her precepts. The long, embittered struggle, however, deprived the monarchy and the
imperial
family of a highly promising, talented personality by driving Elisabeth into isolation.

Countess Marie Festetics—who, granted, could judge the situation only on the basis of the Empress’s stories—wrote about the Archduchess: “Her ambition always made her come between the two married people—always forcing a decision between mother and wife, and it is only by God’s grace that an open break did not occur. She wanted to break the influence of the Empress over the Emperor. That was a dangerous gamble. The
Emperor 
loves the Empress…. The Empress has nothing but her rights and her noblesse to aid her.”
⁷

*

The Peace of Paris, signed in the spring of 1856, ended the Crimean War and brought a radical change in the system of European nations: Russia lost her dominant position to the France of Napoleon III. The earlier close friendship between Russia and Austria had turned into enmity, to Prussia’s advantage. These effects were unfortunate for Austria. But another factor, little considered until that time, made itself painfully felt: The seedbed of the Italian unification movement, Piedmont, had furnished France with 15,000 soldiers during the Crimean War and thereby won Napoleon III as protector of the Irredentist movement. The Austrian provinces of
Lombardy
and Venetia were more threatened than ever, as were the Central Italian states of Tuscany and Modena, which were ruled by Habsburgs and stood under Austrian military protection. The Italian unification
movement
saw Austrian rule in Italy as the greatest obstacle to the achievement of its goals.

Franz Joseph continued to reject any attempt to relinquish the Italian provinces through advantageous treaties or sale—though opinion was unanimous that they could not be maintained. In 1854, Ernst II of Coburg also tried to urge these ideas propounded by Napoleon III on the young Emperor, for “it was not to be expected that Italy would ever be pacified.” Prince Ernst: “The Emperor seemed to become very disturbed at this report and most decisively rejected any thought of ceding Italian territories.”
⁸
And four years later, the Swiss envoy reported to Bern “that the Emperor would sacrifice his last man and his last thaler to defend Venetia.”
⁹
War over Italy thus became inevitable sooner or later.

For the present, the Emperor hoped that he would be able to hold on to the insurgent provinces by strong military power. To demonstrate imperial sovereignty, the Emperor and Empress traveled to Northern Italy in the winter of 1856–1857, living for four months in the old royal palaces of Milan and Venice and there displaying the full magnificence of the court and the military.

On this occasion, too, there were quarrels within the imperial family. Elisabeth was unwilling to leave her children for such a long period. Against the Archduchess’s strong opposition, she succeeded to the extent that the older daughter, Sophie, who was two years old, accompanied her parents to Italy. Elisabeth justified her wish by declaring that the Northern Italian air would be good for the delicate child in the winter months. The Italian newspapers, however, conjectured that the child had been brought
along primarily as a safeguard against assassination attempts.
¹⁰
Archduchess Sophie, for her part, complained of the dangers of the journey for the child; she was not entirely wrong.

The trip started by rail from Vienna to Leibach. There, the thirty-seven coaches that had been brought along were unloaded, and the journey continued by post-horse and ship.

In Italy, Sisi could not possibly stay away from politics. Until this time, during all her trips to the provinces—to Bohemia, Styria, Carinthia, and of course Salzburg, which was crisscrossed during the weeks in Bad Ischl—Sisi encountered a populace that received its imperial rulers, if not with enthusiasm, at least amiably. But now she was met by contempt, even hatred.

The Italian people, suffering under the Austrian military administration, longed for the nationalist Italy advocated by Cavour and Garibaldi. There had been attempts at putsches, executions. The taxes the once rich lands had to pay to Austria were oppressive (although by this time the military occupation of the country cost far more than could be raised by taxes—even from the onetime richest province, Lombardy). The Emperor and Empress were made to feel all these dissatisfactions. The Austrian military authorities carefully arranged the receptions. The imperial couple
invariably
appeared with a large military retinue, intended as a demonstration of power. But the Italians regarded these entourages as hostile
provocations.
The military authorities were in a state of full alert; the Emperor’s and Empress’s visit practically invited assassination attempts. But as always in such situations, the young Emperor showed great courage, as did the Empress. Behaving irreproachably, she overlooked acts of sabotage and hostility among the populace.

She had good reason to be afraid. In Trieste, a huge imperial crown, made of crystal, shattered on the ship. No one believed that it was an unfortunate accident; everyone believed it to be sabotage. But happy as the young Empress was to cancel official receptions in Vienna, in Northern Italy she carried out her schedule all the more rigidly, leaving her husband’s side at most for purely military inspections.

In Venice, where the Emperor’s ship, escorted by six powerful men-
of-war,
lay at anchor, the military reception was splendid, but when the imperial couple with little Sophie crossed the broad St. Mark’s Place on their way to San Marco, not a single “
Evviva
” went up from the large crowd gathered there. Only the Austrian soldiers cried out “Hail” and “Hurrah.” The Italians demonstrated by remaining silent. The English consul reported to London, “The only emotion shown by the people was
merely curiosity to see the Empress, whose reputation of being
wonderfully
beautiful had, of course, arrived here as well.”
¹¹

The majority of the Italian nobility stayed away from the imperial receptions. Those who attended in spite of the boycott were reviled in the streets. During the festivities at the Teatro Fenice, the boxes of the most eminent families remained empty. In the course of the imperial stay in Venice, however, the mood brightened, especially when the Emperor removed one of the greatest vexations to the Italian nobility by rescinding the confiscation of the property of political refugees and granting amnesty to political prisoners.

Franz Joseph did not neglect to praise the services of his young wife. From Venice he wrote to Archduchess Sophie, “The populace was very correct, without exhibiting any special enthusiasm. Since then, the mood has brightened very much for various reasons, especially the good
impression
made by Sisi.”
¹²
In Vienna, the Emperor’s statement that Sisi’s beauty “conquered Italy better than his soldiers and cannons had been able to do” soon made the rounds.
¹³

In the other cities, the receptions were no more cordial—not in Vicenza; not in Verona, where the Austrian troops were headquartered; not in Brescia; and not in Milan. In the last city, the officials even tried to pay those who lived in the country to come to the city and line up to welcome the Emperor and Empress. The nobility of Lombardy maintained its iron resolve. The imperial receptions were attended by only about a fifth of those who had been invited. At the gala performance at La Scala, servants sat in the boxes instead of their aristocratic employers—an enormous insult.

The Emperor relaxed from the strain of these constant affronts by going on long troop inspections. His interest centered, not on the treasures of Venice and Milan, but on the fortifications, arsenals, barracks, men-of-war, and battle sites. Only too frequently the young Empress, who was once again ailing, was compelled to accompany him.

Field Marshal Radetzky—who was, by then, ninety years old—could hardly be said to have firm control over the regiment in Northern Italy. Since the Emperor found him “terribly changed and reverting to
childhood,
”
¹⁴
Franz Joseph decided to pension him with full honors and to introduce separate military and civilian administrations in the Italian
provinces.
Archduke Ferdinand Max, the Emperor’s younger brother,
twenty-four
years old, was assigned the difficult task of going to Milan as civilian governor. Franz Joseph to his mother: “Our Lord will help, and time along with Max’s tact will do much.”
¹⁵

Unfortunately, since we have none of Sisi’s letters from this period, we do not know whether she commented on political questions during this first visit to Italy. All we know is that her opinion on the Italian question was less optimistic than her husband’s. This information comes from her brother Karl Theodor, who visited her in Venice and took back to Bavaria a very negative vision of Austria’s position in these provinces.
¹⁶

*

Only a few weeks after their return from Italy, the imperial couple visited another unquiet province—Hungary. Relations between Vienna and Budapest were tense. Minister of the Interior Alexander Bach
conceived
the ambitious plan of turning all of Austria into a unified, centrally ruled realm and to bring refractory Hungary “into line.” The old
Hungarian
constitution had been abolished. The revolutionaries of 1848 had emigrated, their goods had been confiscated. The Viennese court, represented by Archduchess Sophie as well as by the military
governor
of Hungary, Archduke Albrecht, harbored extremely anti-Hungarian sentiments.

The young Empress was Hungary’s hope. It was known that, influenced by Count Mailath, she cared about Hungarian history, with a special interest in the liberation movements. The political relaxations on the occasion of the imperial wedding had made a favorable impression.
Elisabeth’s
opposition to Archduchess Sophie was sufficiently well known. The Hungarians now hoped that these circumstances could be exploited to their advantage.

The journey proceeded by ship down the Danube from Vienna by way of Pressburg to Budapest. This time, Sisi had insisted on taking both children along, again against her mother-in-law’s protests. According to Franz Joseph, before the departure, little Sophie had come down with a fever and a slight case of diarrhea. The doctors had assured the parents that these symptoms were related to teething.
¹⁷

The receptions, the military parades, the first court ball held in the castle at Budapest after many years—all these were carried out with the usual display of splendor, but they were handicapped by rather moderate
enthusiasm
among the Hungarians. All those who attended agreed only on the beauty of Elisabeth, not yet twenty years old. Nor was it difficult to recognize how susceptible she was to the magnates’ compliments. The Hungarian nobles in their diamond-studded costumes and their
extraordinarily
self-confident, proud bearing were so strikingly different from the Viennese aristocracy, almost opposites, that from the first moment the young Empress developed a liking for Hungary. At the court ball, she
enthusiastically watched the Hungarian dances, which she had never seen before, and then she danced a quadrille herself—first with Archduke Wilhelm and then with Count Nikolaus Esterházy, who would
subsequently
become her favorite companion at the hunt. The Hungarians’ appreciation of the young Empress was returned. From this time on, the Hungarians ascribed any political relaxations to the Empress’s favorable influence, just as they laid every harassment at Archduchess Sophie’s door.