Veritas (Atto Melani) (113 page)

The mythology that surrounds the Place with No Name, it should be noted, was not invented by the authors. Accounts of the ghosts at Neugebäude and Rudolph II’s alchemic experiments as
narrated by Simonis regularly emerge in the Viennese newspapers: see the
Neues Wiener Tagblatt
of 4th April 1940, p. 6 (“Ein Besuch in Wiens Gespensterschloß”, which is
to say, “A visit to Vienna’s castle of ghosts”); and the
Volkszeitung
of 28th January 1940, p. 7 as well as the
Neue Freie Presse
of 7th September 1937, p. 6.
Cases of ghosts that terrorised the
Nachtwärter
(night sentinels), soldiers guarding Neugebäude when the castle was a military store were reported until at least the nineteenth
century. Up to the 1930s the inhabitants of the plain around Simmering avoided Neugebäude for fear of unpleasant encounters.

And the elephant? It is well known that Maximilian II did have an elephant brought to Vienna from the Iberian peninsula, and that a famous inn on the Graben (one of the celebrated streets that
form the ancient centre of the city) took its name from i. The inn survived for almost three centuries and was then unfortunately demolished. There is nothing to prevent one from imagining,
therefore, that the pachyderm found a home, as the chimney-sweep reports, in the place that Maximilian had chosen for his precious seraglio.

Eugene of Savoy

First of all, the Agha’s little slip of paper. In the documents of Eugene’s military campaigns is a copy of a report to Charles (
Feldzüge des Prinzen Eugen
von Savoyen. Nach den Feld-Acten u. anderen authentischen Quellen hrsg. von der Abtheilung für Kriegsgeschichte des k.k. Kriegs-Archives
, Vienna 1876–1892, vol. XIII, Suppl. p. 14,
chap. 7, Vienna 11th April 1711):

What about the original of the message? There is no trace of it in the documents, as the reader who has read the historical appendices to
Imprimatur
and
Secretum
will perhaps have already guessed: certain operations are always carried out in the same way, whether it concerns covering up a pope’s misdeeds, forging a king’s will,
or endeavouring to conceal a plot to harm an emperor.

What is this message from the Agha and why on earth should Eugene have sent it to Charles? It was to Joseph I that he should have been reporting, unless it was a question that Joseph must not
hear of but which Charles already knew about.

The machinations of Atto Melani. Abbot Melani had very cleverly devised the trap of the forged letter from Eugene of Savoy, and he came close to achieving his aim. It was true, as Atto himself
recounted, that an apocryphal letter, which attributed to Eugene the project of betraying the Empire, was delivered to Philip V of Spain, who then sent it on to the Sun King and to Torcy, who
finally prevented it from going any further, as Atto complained to the chimney-sweep. It was not until May 1711 (about a month after the events described by the chimney-sweep) that Eugene, having
arrived in Tournai, in Flanders, was informed of the existence of the letter, but he succeeded in proving his innocence. The whole affair can be read about in Eugene’s correspondence held in
the State Archive of Vienna or reproduced in the documents of Eugene’s military campaigns: in particular, the letter in which Count Bergeyck wrote to Eugene that he had received a mandate
from Philip I to ask him if the letter was authentic and, if so, to negotiate with him (State Archive of Vienna, Kriegsakten 262, 22.3.1711; Kriegsakten 263, 3.5.1711); Eugene’s indignant
reply (State Archive of Vienna, Grosse Korrespondenz 93 a, 18.5.1711), and the letters to the Queen Mother and Regent Eleonore Magdalene Therese and to Charles (
Feldzüge des Prinzen
Eugens
XIII, Suppl., pp. 32–3, 13 and 17.5.1711) and to Sinzendorf (State Archive of Vienna, Grosse Korrespondenz 73 a, 18.5.1711), in which Eugene sent a copy of Bergeyck’s letter
and expressed all his dismay; and finally the answers from the Regent, from Charles and from Sinzendorf, who recognise that he is not in any way implicated (State Archive of Vienna, Grosse
Korrespondenz 90 b, 3.6.1711; 31.7.1711; Grosse Korrespondenz 145, 21.5.1711).

Atto’s analysis of the relations between Eugene, Joseph and Charles reflects the historic reality with surprising accuracy. For example, it is true, as Atto claims, that Eugene managed to
have more influence at Charles’s court than at that of the unfortunate Joseph. Eugene would, in fact, manage to persuade Charles to continue the War of the Spanish Succession all alone, when
the allies had already made peace with France. Then, not content with this, he would proceed to the war on the Turkish front.

But above all, the jealousy Eugene felt towards Joseph as recounted by Atto Melani is far from unfounded. It is historically authenticated that Eugene was excluded from the Battle of Landau of
1702 so that the stage would be left free for Joseph, as Onno Klop reports (
Der Fall des Hauses Stuart
, vol.11, Vienna 1885, p. 196). Furthermore, it is true that Joseph did not allow
Eugene to go and fight the French in Spain, where Eugene had hopes of achieving great things, as Onno Klopp recounts (
Der Fall op. cit.
, t. XXIV p. 12 ff.).

Atto Melani’s reflections on the personality of Eugene of Savoy are also perfectly in keeping with the reality of the historical documents. It is not surprising that official
historiography devotes little attention to the murkier side of the great
condottiere
. In all the thousands of books and articles (over 1,800 have been counted) that have been published
over the last three centuries celebrating Eugene, hardly any reference is to be found to his private life. The reason is very simple. Eugene left no personal papers: only letters of war, diplomacy
and politics. Nor can any private correspondence worthy of the name be found in the archives of the numerous personalities who corresponded with him. There does not seem to have been any personal
or intimate side to his existence: all we see is his granite-like exterior as a soldier, diplomat and statesman. An almost inhuman heroic figure, who has no room for feelings, weaknesses or
doubts.

As for women, none seem to have left any mark on this bellicose monolith. Eugene, one of the richest and most celebrated (and hence one of the most eligible) men of the age, never married. A few
women have been associated with his name, above all Countess Eleonore Batthyany, his “official lover” from 1715 onwards. But even in what remains of his correspondence with her, no
trace can be found of an intimate relationship in the real sense of the word. Perhaps the female sex was more useful than congenial to Eugene: it seems to be historically proven that the
condottiere
, as the chimney-sweep writes in December 1720, set up Countess Pálffy, Joseph’s very young lover, in Porta Coeli Street (and so close to his own palace) so that he
could watch over her and exploit her more easily (Max Braubach,
Prinz Eugen von Savoyen
, Vienna 1964, vol.3 pp. 21–2). The Viennese postman Johann Jordan, in his
Schatz /Schutz /
und Schantz Deß Ertz-Herzogthumbs Oesterreich
, a carefully compiled street guide printed in 1701, reports on page 107 that a certain Agnes Sidonia Countess Pálffy, an old relative
of Joseph’s lover, lived in the Strassoldo House in Himmelpfortgasse, the building owned by von Strassoldo, the directress of the convent’s novitiate (cf. Alfons Žák,
Das Frauenkloster Himmelpforte in Wien
, Vienna, 1906). A few years before Marianna arrived, therefore, the Strassoldo House had already been occupied by another woman from the
Pálffy family.

There is no doubt that Eugene’s early years in France were unruly, unconducive to education and even dissolute. As the English historian Nicholas Henderson writes: “There can be no
doubt of the existence of shadows in Eugen’s early boyhood. He belonged to a small, effeminate set that included such unabashed perverts as the young Abbé de Choisy, who was invariably
dressed as a girl, except when he wore the lavish ear-rings and make-up of a mature woman.” (N. Henderson,
Prince Eugen of Savoy
, London 1964, p. 21). It was in those days, according
to some letters of Louis XIV’s sister-in-law, Elizabeth of the Palatinate Countess of Orléans, that the homosexual adventures referred to by Atto Melani took place. Elizabeth had known
Eugene personally from the days when he was still living in Paris. She recounts to her aunt, Princess Sophia of Hanover, that Eugene’s nickname was Madame Simone, as Abbot Melani recounts, or
Madame l’Ancienne; that in his relations with his contemporaries the young Savoy “played the part of the woman”; that in his sexual revels he coupled with the Prince of Turenne;
that the two were considered “two vulgar whores”; that Eugene would not have put himself out for a woman, preferring “a couple of fine page-boys”; that the ecclesiastic
benefice he had sought was refused because of his “depravity”; that it was only in Germany that he may have forgotten “the art” he had learned in Paris.

Eugene’s most important biographer, Max Braubach, in his monumental five-volume account of the life and works of the great soldier, did not give much space to Elizabeth’s letters and
their implications. Another historian, Helmut Oehler, reports her pungent remarks, but attributes them solely to Elizabeth’s personal resentment against Eugene: at the time they were written
(1708–10), the Italian military commander was opposing the peace between the European powers and France, a peace that Elizabeth – given the dramatic situation in which Louis XIV found
himself – hoped for ardently. In fact, this is not exactly true: Elizabeth wrote openly about Eugene’s homosexuality even years after the war had ended.

However, it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that it is Oehler who allows himself to get carried away; when he has to talk of another critic of Eugene, the Dutch Count
Mérode-Westerloo, who left some vitriolic jottings on the
condottiere
, he changes register very markedly, defining Mérode-Westerloo a “know-all”,
“charlatan”, “salon gossip”, “parasite”, and a “reprehensible individual” who “led a useless life”, and whose memoirs are little more
than an instance of “senile dementia”. Finally Oehler explains that he deliberately ignored some passages by the Dutch diplomat because passing on Mérode-Westerloo’s
“idiotic prattlings” is a “disgusting” task.

In the end it was only to be expected that the partisan historiography should have triumphed in Eugene’s case: a military hero can have no stain, least of all that of sexual inversion. The
artificially created figure of the upright, irreproachable soldier triumphed – it is hardly a surprising – during the years of the Nazi regime; see, for example, the biography of Eugene
by Viktor Bibl:
Prinz Eugen. Ein Heldenleben
, Vienna-Leipzig 1941, complete with a dedication to the army of the Third Reich.

The first of Elizabeth’s letters to accuse Eugene of homosexuality is reported in Wilhelm Ludwig Holland (ed.),
Briefe der Herzogin Elisabeth Charlotte von Orléans
,
Stuttgart 1867, in
Bibliothek des Litterarischen
[sic]
Vereins in Stuttgart
, Band CXLIV, p. 316:

Another passage (letter from Elizabeth to her aunt on 9th June 1708) in Helmut Oehler,
Prinz Eugen im Urteil Europas
, Munich 1944, p. 108:

From another letter in 1710 (Oehler,
Prinz Eugen op. cit.
, p. 109):

From another letter in 1712 (Oehler,
ibid
.):

The other accounts that Atto gives of homosexuality at the court of France are all authentic too, as can be verified in Didier Godard,
Le goût de Monsieur –
L’homosexualité masculine au XVIIe siècle
(Paris 2002), and in Claude Pasteur,
Le beau vice, ou les homosexuels à la cour de France
(Paris 1999).