Helga Peham: Leopold II. Herrscher mit weiser Hand. (Vienna 1987)

[mildred_of_midgard]

selenak: Preface by Adam Wandruszka: Leopold is the coolest! I don't know why more people aren't stanning him. Smartest and most modern Habsburg ruler ever. Now I can't complain about the lack of attention my own biography of Leopold has received - I got lots of attention - but I'm so glad Helga Peham joins the cause of Leopold appreciation! May her book about our Leopold - he really writes "our" Leopold - also become successful and further the cause. Leopold Forever!

Main book: solid biography with some double standard tendencies, but not many, and nothing in a big 19th century Fritz stan or Nancy Goldstone category. It does its job of presenting Leopold as very competent indeed, though I'm afraid I'm still not a fan, and I do have a suspicion as to why there are way more Joseph and MT biographies than there are Leopold ones, and no, it's not that he only got to rule the Empire for two years. (There are more Italian books about him as Grand Duke of Tuscany than there are German ones, though.) But in order.


Leopold: born as the ninth kid of MT and FS in 1747. MT worked till shortly before labor, as was her want. This was when Austria was trying to get buddies with Russia, so Leopold was named Peter Leopold, Peter after Elizaveta's Dad, and Elizaveta herself was made his godmother. In Italy, he's still called Pietro Leopoldo for that reason, but the family only used "Leopold" when referring or addressing him. Like all his siblings, he got a tight teaching schedule and started out close with his next oldest brother, Karl. Karl alas died as a teen, and since Joseph was six years older and the next brother, Ferdinand, seven years or so younger, Leopold was never really close to a brother again. (Joseph thought he was close to Leopold. Leopold did not return the feeling.) He also had massive middle child syndrome. While most of his secret writings are about how Joseph sucks, there is some page time devoted to how everyone else sucks as well, including the sister he was closest to as an adult, Maria Christina (Mimi), and he's constantly frustrated that his mother doesn't appreciate him enough. Much as our author stans his competence, she does say with laudable openness in her opinion Leopold has a big case of sibling jealousy.

Now MT is to blame for some of her kids' jealousies in that she had clear favourites, and Leopold wasn't wrong about being the most competent ruler among her children. Certainly some, though not all, of his criticism of Joseph in particular was well founded. But when trying to decide why I feel very different about Leopold's "Joseph sucks, Mom sucks, Mimi sucks, everyone sucks but me!" than I do about Heinrich's life long "Fritz sucks!" complex, which he wasn't shy of voicing, either, I think the difference is that with Heinrich, a) Fritz gave him good cause for resentment over the decades, starting with the Marwitz affair and building up to the AW heartbreak, with a steady accompagnment of Fritz condemning him to a life on the leash and unable to use the gifts he had except in the 7 Years War and in the negotiations with Russia, whereas Leopold's big reasons for Joseph resentment were insistence of using FS' money for the war debts and the tactless criticism of his children late in Joseph's life, whlie Leopold had a rich fulfillled life as Grand Duke of Tuscany, able to do all those things Joseph could only dream of doing while Mom lived, and b) we have plenty of examples of Heinrich feeling positive about non-Fritz siblings (and, well, other people) . With Leopold, we have two letters to one of his mistresses as an example of his having a positive relationship with someone outside the family. While according to outsiders, his marriage was a good one, too, the biography doesn't quote any letters between him and wife (probably because they usually lived together) to make me warm up to that relationship. And while there are quotes from his letters to Maria Christina from the time they were allies (i.e. the decade of Joseph's rule and later), these are mostly either Joseph critique or policy matters, they don't give me the impression of Leopold caring about Mimi as a person, especially keeping in mind the quote about her from one of his "everyone sucks but me" writings. There's nothing comparable to Heinrich's relationships with AW and Ferdinand, is what I'm saying, over even his up and down stormy relationship wiht Amalie. Now I could have warmed up to Leopold the devoted Dad, because this biographer and, come to that, Beales the Joseph biographer, assume he was, but I'm told so in a tell, not show manner, without stories to illustrate him as a father.

Which leaves me with Leopold as something of a cold fish, and nothing to truly offset all the negativity. Again, it's not that he's not right when, say, responding to Joseph's offer to make him fellow regent in Joseph's last year of life by telling Maria Christina no way is he going to do that, because then he'll be held co-responsible for the mess the Empire is in and Joseph's failed reforms. Whereas when he swoops in after Joseph's death, he has a fresh start and a clean slate and can do a proper salvage operation. This is the right, the smart thing to do from a ruler pov. But at the same time, there is something chillling here when you read it with not an ounze of compassion for dying Joseph voiced (and of course Leopold carefully doesn't arrive in Vienna until Joseph is already dead, pretending sickness in order not to get there earlier). Or: he's correct in dragging his feet with Marie Antoinette, and "I may have a sister but Austria does not" is true, plus as his son Franz will find out when Austrian and Prussian armies do team up to invade France, everyone is in for a nasty surprise when it comes to revolutionary French armies. Plus Leopold and Marie Antoinette hadn't seen each other after her early childhood since he left Austria to rule Tuscany in the later 1760s. As opposed to Joseph, he never saw her as an adult. Of course there's no real human relationship there. But then you imagine the increasingly isolated woman in France who has only a short time to live and desperately needs help, and well, it's chilling. Leopold in general had no time for all the French emigrés who thought that hey, their Queen's brother's territory surely was an ideal sanctuary and regrouping and reconquering spot. They were anathema to him politically in their backwardsness; he still was a constitutionalist, after all, and the last thing he thought was desirable was bringing back the French monarch as it has been. So he was as distant and as unkind to them as he could be.

Again, here we have a difference to Heinrich who also remained a constitutionalist and was more in sympathy politically with the French Revolution than with the French emigrés - but who was personally kind and generous and offered his help to all the emigrés he came across, not just those who were hot counts, despite having far less money and power than Leopold did.

Now, as a ruler, Leopold undoubtedly kicked ass. He took over a backwards duchy which, as a reminder, had been run down by Cosimo the ultra bigot for fifty plus years, and Gian Gastone had changed the worst laws but had done notihng constructive to rebuild Tuscany while spending his rule in bed. And FS had only spent three months in Tuscany when taking it over and had mainly seen it as a personal revenue. Whereas Leopold moved there with his wife, and four visits to Vienna in the subsequent years not withstanding, remained there, being a model Duke. He got the economy going again, started a modern education program which also ended the church monopoly but not as radically (and church-infuriating) as Joseph did it back home, and had a modern constitution written for Tuscany, though he never implemented it. For this, our biographer blames Joseph, saying that since Joseph intended for Tuscany to join the Empire once either he or Leopold died, there was no point, and that as soon as Joseph was dead, Leopold immediately reestablished secundogeniture for Tuscany, makng his oldest son, future Emperor Franz, swear off his rights to Tuscany and appointing his second son, Ferdinand, as the next Duke... but he still didn't introduce the consitution into practice then. Also, while Leopold had abolished the death penalty in Tuscany early on, he reintroduced it as Emperor because there was a Tuscany uprising during his two years of Imperial rule, which he could not understand - hadn't he been a model Duke? And now they were turning against him?

Both Hungary and Belgium had been on the brink of revolt when Joseph died, and Leopold managed to calm everyone down, though that entailed handing privileges back to the Hungarian and Belgian nobility at the expense of the farmers, who were less than happy. Still, as the biographer said, it probably saved the monarchy at this point, and if he'd lived, he'd gotten around to improving the lives of the peasants, too. In Tuscany, he had made a gigantic improvement compared to most of the rest of Italy when making it law that mental illnesses are to be treated as illnesses, not demonic possessions, and by dismantling what had remained of the Inquisition since the Cosimo days for good. In the Empire, he steered a good middle way between soothing ruffled clerical feathers by reinstating school prayer and some church privileges but keeping such Josephinian reforms as the fact priests who taught at schools and universities had to qualify on an academic (non clerical level) first. He generally seems to have been on a good way to keep as much progress as was possible at the time and win over some of the forces of reaction (nobility, parts of the church) so they weren't such staunch obstacles anymore but more willing to work with him. But alas, death was waiting.


And now we're getting to a bit of double standard, which goes thusly:

Leopold, in his big anti Joseph rant: Joseph is into prostitutes and other lowly women, I just know it. Ugh.

Biographer: This big rant is as interesting in what it says about Leopold in what it says about Joseph, but he probably was mostly right.

Later:

Biographer: re: Leopold's private life: All his life, there was much gossip and people claimed he shagged everything that moved. That was clearly slander! One should not rely on hostile sources when it comes to people's sex lives.

Also:

Biographer: Leopold hated Joseph's despotism. He himself believed in the limitation of royal power and in a firm constitution, instead of one guy dictating from above what's good for everyone.

Self: With you so far.

Leopold, in one of the rants: And another thing, Joseph wants applause for all his "reforms" and that's why he's being "progressive" . He just wants to be told how wonderful he is!

Biographer, somewhat later: Leopold also believed in a good secret service. Within the country, that is, not abroad, i.e. spies telling him what people thought of him and his reforms. There was that time Marchese C. made fun of Leopold's many girlfriends, and before he knew it, he got orders not to stay in Florence but remain on his countryside estates, because Leopold's spies were that efficient. But that doesn't mean he was against criticism, per se!

You get the idea. But as I said, in general, it's mild case, and the biographer does not try to sell Leopold as flawless anyway.

Habsburg facts I hadn't known or had forgotten before:

On August 6th, 1753, one Chevalier Balde tries to assassinate MT. He slightly wounds the chamberlain in charge his sword and proceeds to the cabinet where MT is working with her cabinet secretary since early morning. At the noise of swords, she notices and withdraws to the cabinet of the Emperor. The chamberlain of Archduke Joseph, Marchese Poul, who has been chatting with some other nobles at a window in the Antichambre is alerted, hurries inside and overwhelms the wannabere assassin; with the help of some guards, he gets disarmed. He's declared to have acted in a bout of insanity, brought to a hospital and from there to the monastary Rein in Styria where he's nursed for his remaining life. This makes newspaper headlines, which is how we know about it, and I can't help but think it would have had a very different ending if that knd of thing had happened in FW's Berlin...

During the War of the Bavarian Succession, MT for the first time has Leopold (this is one of his four visits back home) read into some government business; she also keeps him updated to what's going on in the war. Presumably this is because despite the fact there was, in effect, no real battle in that war, there could have been, Leopold was Joseph's successor, and a scenario where he would have to take over in the event of Joseph dying was quite possible.

MT about 14-year-old Leopold to his governor Franz Thurn who takes over from the previous guy:

There must not be (...) petty arguments, nor tauntings, neither physically nor in words. If one allows tauntings, all politeness disappears and one gets ashamed to say something endearing. You need to pay attention at this point. He's quite receptive for prejudice and he has a hard time giving it up, since he has a very high opinion of himself and doesn't like to ask for advice or to follow it. Leopold does have a generous , good and compassionate heart by nature. He is eager for knowledge and wants to learn more about abstract matters. He's quite adroit at doing his tasks, but he also has a false embarassment which damages him a lot. He seeks to accomplish his goals via tricks and short cuts you must not permit him to. I wish that he should come across more liberally, more open and more secure in his expression and attitude, less rough in his voice and pronunciation, more winning in his behavior and vocabularily.

Leopold in his "everyone sucks but me!" rant, titled "stato della familiglia", about Joseph and youngest brother Max(imilian):

He loves Maximilian a lot and keeps distinguishing him, he does like him, because (Max) is completely at his disposal and does what he wants, with no expression and without ever talking back, and because (Joseph) sees that (Max) will always be a secondary human being and will never be as brilliant as to overshadow him or give him cause for jealousy, which is a vice (Joseph) keeps suffering from since he alone wants to be the one doing everything and who has all the honor.

(Our biographer points out this is massively unfair towards Max, who very much was his own man and talked back re: Joseph a lot later as Prince Elector of Cologne, and Leopold is probably doing a lot of projecting here.)

Leopold about Maria Christina in the same rant (and again, Mimi was actually the sister he was closest aligned to against Joseph): She chides everyone with great haughtiness aind indeed, despite the fact she's done some people favors, she's universally hated and feared, because she badmouths everyone and keeps telling on people to the Empress; and often she has caused injustice and disadvantages for many people. She's full of ambition and avarice, she always wants to be better served and distinguished than the rest of the family, she spends money in the name of the Empress and uses the Empress' servants as if they were her own, and she makes a big deal of how important her patronage could be to people. Outside of the family, she interferes with state business and schemes (...) If she hates someone or distrusts him, she's capable of anything!

And now have an excerpt of the big Joseph rant:

The Emperor has a lot of talent, ability and vivacity, he easily comprehends and has a good memory and has the gift of rhetoric, since he can talk well and can express himself well in writing. (...)n But he's a harsh, violent man, full of ambition, who does everything and says everything in order to be praised and to make himself known in the world. He doesn't know hat he wants and is easily bored and isn't busy at all but hates work.

(Sidenote: Beales says that of all of Leopold's critique, this is most easily dismissed, because we have Joseph's daily schedules and more than enough paper proof that he kept them. He was a hard worker.)

He doesn't allow for resistance and is full of wild, spontaneous princples and the strongest, most violent and harsh despotism.(...) He doesn't love anyone and only thinks of himself and doesn't give audiences and doesn't receive anyone other than when walking where his servants under everyone's eyes let all the lowest, most shameful and infamous peopole to him, where everyone passing can see in front of his door every day the most dirty whores and pimps since he's drawn to that kind of low and dirty women whom he pays very well. He actually believes this scum and based on their conversation is able to go up against everyone. (...)

Due to his character and taste he enjoys talking back no matter what one says and do everything what one doesn't want him to do, and to hurt everyone in small matters, and especially the Empress, and that's why they keep arguing with each other, and he always says angry things and threatens her with going away and giving up the co-regency and similar things.

As Helga Peham says, this is as telling about Leopold as it is about Joseph. Basically, the impression I had is that if there was one life long thought in Leopold, it was "It should have been me!" - not just that he should have had Joseph's job as the successor, co-regent, Emperor, but that he should have been the most loved, not one of many siblings - and that it ate him up that it just wasn't. That he was admired for his rule of Tuscany, that his own wife and children were devoted to him doesn't appear to have helped there, nor that Mimi teamed up wit him against Joseph in the later years. He still was seething.

As mentioned earlier, one of the few examples of Leopold sounding positive about someone comes in the two preserved letters to Olivia Raimondi, who was one of his mistresses, a dancer and the daughter of a Roman servant. We know a bit more about her than the others because a) she had a son from him, Luigi, and b) Leopold wanted her to come with him to Austria after Joseph's death. In Florence, he'd given a her a palace, and a list of the entire interior still exists, so we know Leopold was very generous there. So this is Leopold, trying to persuade his mistress to come with him to Austria (despite not speaking the language):

..Come freely and without fear to Vienna, and you will never receive slights there, you will be satisfied in all the points you've made to me, and I will have the happiness and the immense satifsfaction for me to have Livia and Luigi near me, two human beings to whom I owe so much and who are so near my heart. You may be sure that with no thought at nowhere in the world I will ever cause you grief again, and believe me, that I will always be thinking of the affection, friendship and devotion I love with you with and will love you till my death, as my dear and best Livia, for whom I am and will always be in devoted love your faihtful lover, I embrace you.

So she came. Bad decision. Not only did he have local lovers as well (such a Bohemian countess), but she didn't really like Vienna. So she planned to move back, which we know from the second letter of his that still exists ("Farewell! You believe you'll find pleasure, but maybe you willl find neither the calm nor the friendship you had with me!"), but then he died. Next thing you know, a servant shows up to fetch Luigi from Livia. She will never see him again. Instead, she gets ordered by Leopold's legal son Franz to leave the country, which she eventually does. Livia gets into written contact with her son many years later when he's an adult fighting against Napoleon. 42 letters from Luigi to his mother exist, and what we know about him comes from this letters. (He had the Habsburg fondness for music and spoke French, Italian, German and Bohemian.) But alas he died of pneumonia before they could reunite in person. One of the last things he wrote to was sending her a lock of hair from himself and asking her for more of her hair, because the lock she had already sent to him wasn't enough to make a ring of. And that's the story, basically.

So, in conclusion, why there's no large Leopold fandom, selenak speculation: because, while he deserves all the accolades for his governing competence, he exudes as much human warmth and passion as a fridge. Joseph might have fucked up many of his relationships, but no one (other than Leopold) can deny he was passionate - in his attempt to create a reformed state, in his personal relationships. Yes, he and MT drove each other crazy, but they deeply cared about each other at the same time, and that makes the relationship compelling to write about. Ditto him and his few friends. Whereas Leopold had either relationships that were one sided (he/his siblings) or ones we don't have enough good material from to get invested in (him/his children and wife, and him/his mistresses) . There isn't enough of a human hook in Leopold to latch on to beyond his succesful Tuscany reforms, and while memoirists writing trashy tell alls bad mouthing everyone (or almost so) have fandoms of their own (and lots of study, see all the ink written about Wilhelmine's memoirs, say, or Liselotte's letters from Versailles) , Wilhelmine and Liselotte also have strong positive emotions along wiht the negatives in their written utterings, which you just don't get in those quotes from Leopold's secret "Everyone sucks me but me" memoranda. So there's no fannishness there, either.