Chapter XIV

Royalty in Exile

Of all the sovereigns of Europe, Maximilian of Baden had been the most loyal champion of King Francis’s cause. Neither Garibaldi’s triumphant progress, nor Victor Emanuel’s victories, nor the unanimous shouts of six million people for “Italia una” could reconcile him to the new state of affairs. He had been ill for a long time, and in the Autumn of 1863 his physicians recommended a sojourn in the south. So strong was his feeling, however, against the new ruler of Italy, that rather than pass through any part of his dominions, he travelled by way of Switzerland to Marseilles, and there boarded a vessel that would land him in papal territory.

The voyage was terribly rough and the King suffered so acutely with seasickness that it brought on an attack of his old complaint. Fearful of the consequences of continuing the voyage, his physician declared he must be taken ashore at all costs; but the sea was too high to permit of the vessel’s landing, so the suffering monarch had to be lowered into an open boat on a mattress and rowed ashore by two sailors. Fortunately, they succeeded in reaching land safely near San Stefano, where they were met by the French consul, and King Max, more dead than alive, was cared for so attentively that he was able to continue his journey to Civita Vecchia by carriage the next morning, arriving in Rome the following day. Here he took up his residence in the Villa Mattei, and his health began to improve at once.

Maria Sophia was overjoyed to see her cousin again. She herself was far from well, and had been urged by her physicians to leave Rome; but Max, to whom she was devoted, begged her to remain, and she yielded to his wishes. In December, however, her condition became so alarming that Francis was forced to leave with her at once for Venice, a change of air being absolutely necessary if her life was to be preserved. The ex-King realized at last that it was out of the question for his wife to live in Rome, and henceforth they spent only the winter months there. In the purer air of Venice she soon began to gain strength and was able once more to enjoy her favorite recreations. The relations between Maria Sophia and her husband had much improved, and while he had no sympathy with her tastes, nor was able to join her in her rides, he no longer opposed her in the indulgence of them.

Meanwhile the Schleswig-Holstein affair had become a burning question in Germany. King Frederick the Seventh of Denmark had died, and in the latter part of November news was received in Munich of Prussia’s protest against his successor, the Duke of Augustenburg. Public feeling ran high, and the issue of events was anxiously awaited. Under these circumstances the people of Bavaria felt the need of their sovereign’s presence among them and King Max was obliged to leave Rome. Although so much improved in health that his physicians held out hope of a permanent cure, he was still too ill to travel. He suffered a relapse soon after reaching home, and died three months later, deeply mourned both by his subjects and his family.

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In the Autumn of 1867 an epidemic of cholera broke out in Italy. The dowager Queen insisted on remaining in her Albanian villa, though all her children had hastily left the country. Deserted by her family and her court, the widow of Ferdinand the Second fell a victim to the scourge. Even the servants had fled, and the only person with her at her death was an old Neapolitan nobleman who had been a friend of her husband’s. Although Maria Theresa’s star had long since set, he remained faithful to the last, tending and caring for her while she lay ill, and accompanying her body—the only mourner—to its last resting-place in the neighboring churchyard.

The relations between Francis and Maria Sophia had never been actually unpleasant; but after the death of the Queen dowager, they became more attached to each other. Together they made frequent visits to their various relatives or entertained them in Rome during the Winters. The Empress Elizabeth especially was a frequent visitor. These two sisters, as unlike in character as in their circumstances, had never lost any of their sisterly affection for each other. Maria Sophia was with the Empress in Hungary when her youngest daughter, Marie Valerie, was born in 1868, and had shared her joy in that happy event. With it, however, was a feeling of sadness for herself, childless and, in a way, homeless. Children of her own would have given life a new aspect to her, and she felt she would have been a different woman. But it was not her way to indulge in vain regrets. She had long been indifferent toward the world; her only interest now was in her dogs and horses, and she would spend whole days in the saddle, riding the wildest and most ungovernable animals. Once, on one of these rides, she met with an accident, from the effects of which she was long in recovering, and her husband’s quiet devotion during this time furnished a proof of his affection for her that drew them still closer together.

Maria Sophia’s joy was boundless when, on Christmas Eve, 1869, after ten years of married life, she gave birth to a daughter in Rome. Four days later, the little princess was christened, Pius the Ninth, who performed the ceremony himself, acting as godfather, and the Empress Elizabeth as godmother. She received the names Maria Christina Louisa Pia, for her two grandmothers and the Holy Father. But the happiness of the ex-King and Queen was destined to be of short duration, for their only child lived but three months. She died in the following March, and was buried in Rome.

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The withdrawal of the French troops from Rome in 1870 to take part in the war against Germany, put an end to the temporal power of the Popes. Pius the Ninth was forced to relinquish the Quirinal to the same bold conqueror who had deprived Francis and Maria Sophia of their kingdom, and thereafter they had no permanent residence in Rome. As long as the Duke and Duchess Max lived, they spent the summers in Bavaria, travelling about from place to place during the Winter. The greater part of Francis the Second’s property, some twenty million lire, had been confiscated by the new Italian Government, which offered to refund it on condition of his formally renouncing all rights to the crown he had already lost; but this he refused to do. “A man does not sell his honor,” was his unfailing reply. Eventually he was paid back his mother’s dowry; but the immense sum that King Ferdinand had settled on his eldest son at the time of his marriage to Maria Sophia was appropriated by Victor Emanuel, as were the contents of the royal palace. Many of the paintings and works of art are still shown at “Capo di Monte” in Naples, to the indignation of many of the sovereigns of Europe.

Although the climate of Rome had never agreed with Maria Sophia, both she and her husband often declared that they had never really known the terrors of exile till they were forced to leave Italy. Francis never quite gave up hope that some turn of events would pave the way for his return to his own and his father’s throne; but the heroine of Gaeta never looked backward. The pomp and show of royalty had never appealed to her, and she indulged in no vain regrets.

The lives of the Wittelsbach sisters had proved a source of grief and anxiety to their parents. Hélène, left a widow in 1867, after ten years of unhappy married life, had managed the vast estates of the Thurn and Taxis family with great ability during the minority of her eldest son, Maximilian. This prince, a most promising youth, died in 1885, at the early age of twenty-three, and the blow almost cost his despairing mother her reason, while the following year, Count Ludwig of Trani drowned himself in one of the Swiss lakes.

The youngest daughter of the ducal pair, Sophie Charlotte, had been first betrothed to Ludwig the Second of Bavaria; but the King jilted his cousin in the most heartless fashion, and she afterward married Ferdinand d’Alençon, an uncle of Louis Philippe of France. Banished from France with the rest of the house of Orleans, the Duke and Duchess spent their time travelling from place to place, and Sophie was sickly and discontented, a victim to fits of melancholia. By his death on the fourteenth of November, 1888, good Duke Max was spared the tragedy of Mayerling, where his favorite grandson and the hope of the Austrian Empire, Rudolf of Hapsburg, met with a violent and mysterious death three months later. On the twenty-fourth of January, 1890, the Duchess Ludovica was seized with an attack of influenza at her palace in Munich, which developed into pneumonia. The physicians at once pronounced her condition serious on account of her advanced age, and the absent daughters were telegraphed for. Sophie was already in Munich, as were the three sons. The next afternoon the Duchess grew so much worse that the sacrament was administered; but in spite of the evident approach of death the indomitable old lady refused to go to bed. She insisted upon remaining in the reclining chair which she had occupied from the beginning of her illness, and where she soon sank into unconsciousness, passing away quietly at four o’clock in the morning, surrounded by children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, at the age of eighty-three. The death of the Duchess Ludovica was an irreparable loss to her family. They had leaned on her in joy as in sorrow, and as long as she lived she had held them together, widely scattered as they were, with a firm and loving hand. Her children’s troubles and pleasures had been her own, and their devotion, her joy and reward.