Page 124 - QDG Volume 9 No. 5

122 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards
The QDG Heritage Trust
Franz Josef, Emperor of Austria
to the gunwales with artefacts. The Stadt
1830 – 1916
Museum had already printed the signage
Colonel in Chief, 1st Kings Dragoon
and after five days we established an
Guards (KDG) 1898 – 1915
excellent exhibition in three large rooms.
The centre piece was the Emperor
In the summer of 2014, The Heritage
Trust, at the request of Magister Markus
Habsburg-Lothringen, put on an exhibi-
tion at the Stadt Museum in Bad Ischl,
Austria. The aim was to highlight the
connection between the regiment and
the Habsburgs and thence with Austria,
showing that we were friends before the
two world wars and, indeed, after them.
Markus had a specific interest. His
unofficial title is His Imperial and Royal
Highness, the Austrian
Archduke Mag. Markus
Salvator Habsburg-Lo-
thringen. He is one of the
great-grandchildren of
Emperor Franz Joseph and
Empress Elizabeth, called
Sisi, being the grandson of
their youngest daughter,
Marie Valerie.
His Imperial and Royal
Highness lives in the
Summer Palace of the
Habsburgs, the Kaiservilla,
in the spa town of Bad Ischl,
east of Salzburg. The town is
set amongst the magnificent
scenery of the alpine moun-
tains and lakes and is rich
in both history and culture.
Franz Joseph described it as ‘heaven on
earth’ for him and his family, a wonderful
spot from which he could contemplate
the many challenges facing the domin-
ions over which his word held sway.
The museum team arrived in Bad Ischl
with QDG Richard Robert’s Volvo loaded
mounted as though he was reviewing
the troops.
Franz Josef had an extraordinary life
which was filled with dreadful events and
personal tragedies. Despite these, Queen
Victoria described him as ‘very quiet,
simple and unaffected, not talkative, but
very dignified.’
He only just survived an assassination
attempt in 1853 during which he was
stabbed repeatedly, almost dying. As a
result, his mother organ-
ised for him to be married
with all haste to Eliza-
beth, Princess of Bavaria, a
Franz Josef
had an
extraordinary
life which
was filled
with dreadful
events and
personal
tragedies
beautiful socialite who was
probably not suited to her
new role as Empress of the
Austro-Hungarian empire.
The royal couple suffered
the trauma of losing their
first child, Sophie, who
died of scarlet fever aged
just two. They received
another blow when Franz
Josef’s brother, Maximilian,
who was briefly Emperor of
Mexico, was executed. Then
there was the mysterious
death of “Mad” King Ludwig
of Bavaria (one of Sisi’s very
few close personal friends). But worst of
all was the horror of the suicide in January
1889 of their only son, Rudolf, who is the
subject of a large melancholy portrait in a
room specifically dedicated to him in the
Kaiservilla. The Emperor’s beloved wife,
Sisi was herself assassinated in Geneva
The main room at the Bad Ischl exhibition, 2014
Upon cleaning the portrait in 2021, we
discovered that the painting preceded
the Emperor’s appointment as Colonel in
Chief and he had originally been wearing
the uniform of the Austrian Imperial army
which was then painted over!
in 1898. And then, of course, there was
the assassination of his nephew Franz
Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, which led
to the First World War.
Queen Victoria was the antithesis
of this quiet, slightly naïve, man. She
wanted to involve herself in the matters
of state as much as she was allowed. One
aspect of this was her approach to foreign
policy in Europe. She had both family
and personal connections with the four
empires in Europe (making her known as
the grandmother of Europe) and she was
exceedingly proud that she was one of
those who was not only a monarch but
also an empress. There were twenty kings
in Europe, but only four were emperors,
being those of France, Germany, Austria
and Russia. There were no state visits in
those days and all her meetings with the
The Emperor, mounted