Empress Elisabeth of Austria
Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary
1837 CE to 1898 CE
Elisabeth of Bavaria (December 24. 1837 – September 10, 1898) is Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary by marriage to Emperor Franz Joseph I.
Elisabeth was born into the royal Bavaria house of Wittelsbach.
Nicknamed Sisi, she enjoys an informal upbringing before marrying Emperor Franz Joseph I at the age of sixteen
The marriage thrusts her into the much more formal Habsburg court life, for which she is unprepared and which she finds uncongenial
Early in the marriage she is at odds with her mother-in-law, Archduchess Sophie, who takes over the rearing of Elisabeth's daughters, one of whom, Sophie, dies in infancy.
The birth of the heir apparent, Crown Prince Rudolf, improves her standing at court, but her health suffers under the strain, and she often visits Hungary for its more relaxed environment.
She comes to develop a deep kinship with Hungary, and helps to bring about the dual monarchy of Austria–Hungary in 1867.
The death of her only son and his mistress Mary Vetsera, in a murder–suicide at his hunting lodge at Mayerling in 1889 is a blow from which Elisabeth never recovers.
She withdraws from court duties and travels widely, unaccompanied by her family.
In 1890, she has a palace built on the Greek Island of Corfu that she visit often.
The palace Achilleion, featuring an elaborate mythological motif, servesas a refuge.
She is obsessively concerned with maintaining her youthful figure and beauty, which are already legendary during her life.
While traveling in Geneva in 1898, she is mortally wounded by an Italian anarchist named Luigi Lucheni.
Elisabeth is the longest serving Empress of Austria at forty-four years.
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Empress Elisabeth of Austria is assassinated in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1898.
In 1898, despite warnings of possible assassination attempts, the sixty-year-old Elisabeth had traveled incognito to Geneva.
However, someone from the Hôtel Beau-Rivage had revealed that the Empress of Austria was their guest.
At 1:35 p.m. on Saturday, September 10, Elisabeth and Countess Irma Sztáray de Sztára et Nagymihály, her lady-in-waiting, leave the hotel on the shore of Lake Geneva on foot to catch the steamship Genève for Montreux.
Since the empress despises processions, she insists that they walk without the other members of her entourage.
They are walking along the promenade when the twenty-five-year-old Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni approaches them, attempting to peer underneath the empress's parasol.
According to Sztáray, as the ship's bell announced the departure, Lucheni seemed to stumble and made a movement with his hand as if he wanted to maintain his balance.
In reality, in an act of "propaganda of the deed," he had stabbed Elisabeth with a sharpened needle file that was four inches (one hundred millimeters) long (used to file the eyes of industrial needles) that he had inserted into a wooden handle.
Lucheni had originally planned to kill the Duke of Orléans; but the Pretender to France's throne had left Geneva earlier for the Valais.
Failing to find him, the assassin had selected Elisabeth when a Geneva newspaper revealed that the elegant woman traveling under the pseudonym of "Countess of Hohenembs" was the Empress Elisabeth of Austria.
After the attack, Lucheni flees down the Rue des Alpes, where he throws the file into the entrance to No. 3.
He is caught by two cabdrivers and a sailor, then secured by a gendarme.
The weapon is found the next day by the concierge during his morning cleaning; he thought it belonged to a laborer who had moved the day before and did not notify the police of his discovery until the following day.
There was no blood on the file and the tip was broken off, which occurred when Lucheni threw it away.
The file was so dull in appearance it was speculated that it had been deliberately selected because it would be less noticeable than a shiny knife, which would have given Lucheni away as he approached.
Lucheni had planned to purchase a stiletto, but lacking the price of twelve francs he had simply sharpened an old file into a homemade dagger and cut down a piece of firewood into a handle.
Furious that the death sentence had been abolished in Geneva, he demands that he be tried according to the laws of the Canton of Lucerne, which still has the death penalty, signing the letter: “Luigi Lucheni, anarchist, and one of the most dangerous".
Since Elisabeth was famous for preferring the common man to courtiers, known for her charitable works, and considered such a blameless target, Lucheni's sanity was questioned initially.
Lucheni is declared to be sane, but is tried as a common murderer, not a political criminal.
Incarcerated for life, and denied the opportunity to make a political statement by his action, he will attempt to kill himself with the sharpened key from a tin of sardines on February 20, 1900.
Ten years later, he will hang himself with his belt in his cell on the evening of October 16, 1910, after a guard confiscates and destroys his uncompleted memoirs.