CHAPTER EIGHT

THE HABSBURG CONNECTION

Austriae est imperare orbi universo (Motto of the Habsburg Emperor Frederick III)

The problem of Rennes-le-Château is to try to find a way through the tangled threads which seem to connect the village and its mysterious treasure with the Jews of the Old Testament, Romans, Visigoths, Albigensians, Templars, Alchemists, Rosicrucians and those who came after. The clues, however, never seem to lead to answers — only to other clues. The light at the end of the tunnel is not an exit; it shines on the entrances to a hundred more tunnels, each longer and more tortuous than that from which the explorers have just emerged.

Victor Hugo's strange story of Ratbert and the tragedy of Fabrice, Isora and the hidden treasure points vaguely in the direction of the ancient House of Habsburg. Here is a noble old European family, powerful and ancient enough to have been involved in some of the earliest treasure episodes, but tired, fragile and moving into its twilight by the time Bérenger Saunière came on the scene.

There are particular aspects of the Habsburg connection which may be significant in unravelling the mystery of Rennes: their early connection with the Visigoths, the death of Crown Prince Rudolf at Mayerling and the mysterious end of Johann Salvator.

The very earliest Habsburgs are difficult to trace accurately — not because there is a paucity of genealogical evidence, but because there is a flood of legend. Court historians and reward-motivated royal genealogists had tried on and off for six centuries to connect the Habsburgs with Julius Caesar and back, beyond him, to the Trojan Prince Aeneas. Others attempted to link the Habsburgs with the Carolingians, or the more legitimate Merovingians, and so, following the old Frankish legends, back to the Trojans again, albeit by an alternative route.

It may well be, Frankish and Roman legends apart, that the first historically reliable Habsburg was a certain Guntram who flourished in the middle of the tenth century. This Guntram had a grandson who died round about 1040. His name, like others of the period, has been subjected to the vagaries of non-formalized spelling and has suffered again in translation. One acceptable spelling is Radbot and this is close to the name Ratbert which Victor Hugo uses to identify the villain who destroyed Fabrice and his granddaughter.

If the treasure of Rennes-le-Château does involve Carolingians and Merovingians, together with Victor Hugo's legend of Fabrice's hidden

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treasure, then Radbot/Ratbert may be one of the links connecting Rennes with the Habsburgs, or, at least, opening up a Habsburg dimension to the curious events centred upon Rennes.

There is some local hearsay evidence to suggest that Bérenger Saunière found a treasure which had immense symbolic value. This is not incompatible with its having passed from Palestine to Rome and having been known to pious Albigensians and crusading Templars. A religious relic of extreme age and unquestioned authenticity would be priceless — provided the finder could reach a market. Two obvious potential buyers spring to mind: the Vatican and the Holy Roman Empire. For Saunière, the former was ruled out because he worked for it. A serving priest could hardly ask the Pope to pay for a holy relic found in or near a Catholic church. It would be like a jeweller's assistant finding a diamond ring which had been hidden under the floorboards of his employer's shop and then asking the proprietor to pay for it!

So if what Saunière had found included a relic he was left with one customer only — the Archducal Dynasty who had been Holy Roman Emperors for more than five centuries. The punctilious Franz Josef would be unlikely to wish to be seen entertaining a mercenary priest who had obtained a sacred relic by dubious means. Yet, on more than one occasion, the Emperor does not seem to have been completely averse to putting political or dynastic expediency before the letter of that moral law to which he was ostensibly a dedicated subscriber. It would have been in keeping with Franz Josef's attitude to get what he wanted by using a junior member of the dynasty as his confidential agent. His nephew, Johann Salvator, could have been involved in this way.

Younger members of the dynasty were certainly not afraid of involvement in risky adventures if it seemed that the light at the end of the tunnel justified taking a chance with the intervening shadows. Maximilian's tragic flirtation with Mexico serves as an example. Egged on by the wily and unreliable Napoleon III (with him as a friend, who needed enemies?), the hapless Maximilian enjoyed a brief titular rule as Emperor of Mexico and finished up facing a firing squad on a hill just outside Queretaro.

Before his death, Maximilian wrote a last letter to Franz Josef asking the Emperor to “remember kindly” the Belgian and Austrian soldiers who had served faithfully during the Mexican fiasco. One by one they struggled across the world and presented themselves at the Hofburg. Among these returning veterans three very strange characters presented themselves. They gave their names as the Archpriest Roccatani, Don José Maroto and Antonio de la Rosa (could there be any possible connection with the Rosicrucians?) and asked for an audience with the Emperor himself. They claimed to have a priceless secret for his ears alone: transmutation. They also claimed to be devoted servants of the Habsburgs, whom they said they regarded as the last bastion of legitimacy and the ultimate stronghold of true religion. The audience probably went well because this was more or less the way Franz Josef thought of the Habsburgs! Their offer was to transmute silver into gold, and the three itinerant philosophers asked for an initial stake of five million gulden in pure silver from the imperial mint. Despite the keen surveillance of a professor of chemistry appointed by the Emperor to keep an eye on things, over 90,000 gulden were unaccounted for when the experiment was terminated. Is it just another odd coincidence which links the Habsburgs with alchemy and Rennes-le-Château? Maximilian had not been afraid of adventure — neither had Johann Salvator.

Johann was a descendant of that cadet branch of the Habsburg family who became Grand Dukes of Tuscany. These Tuscan rulers were almost autonomous under the wider Habsburg aegis. Some perceptive historians have described them as Latinized Habsburgs. They were informal, imaginative and happy — everything that Franz Josef was not. Leopold II, who was Johann's father, was forced to leave Tuscany in 1859 after the Emperor's defeat at Solferino. His eldest son, Ferdinand, reluctantly renounced his claim to Tuscany, but was allowed to retain his title for life. Ferdinand's younger brother Karl was an expert locksmith. The next brother Ludwig was an intelligent eccentric: a brilliant linguist who dressed like the peasants and kept (so rumour suggested) a crew of beautiful girls on his boat by disguising them as boys. Johann, the youngest brother, was in fact seventeen years younger than Ferdinand. His mother was Maria Antonia, daughter of Francis I, King of the Two Sicilies. She was a strong-willed woman and a devout Catholic who seems to have written off Ferdinand and Karl as nonentities; her disapproval of Ludwig was monolithic. All her hopes for the future were, therefore, centred on Johann, and this must have affected his psychological development significantly. He was undoubtedly a very able man, but impatient and eager for opportunities to exercise real power. They never came.

Johann's Christianity wavered until he was on the verge of becoming a freethinker. Maria Antonia was desperately anxious about this, but he wrote to reassure her, “I can say that I am not a bad Christian”.

He had architectural talent, and his work on the improvements and restoration of Schloss Orth was impressive.

He passed military and naval examinations like an Olympic athlete, taking hurdles en route to a gold medal. It was part of his determination to show the older generation of Habsburgs that he was a man to be reckoned with. Franz Josef and Archduke Albrecht grudgingly recognised Johann's ability, but steadfastly refused to give him power or to listen seriously to his ideas.

Unharnessed talent runs wild if frustrated. Dillinger and Capone might have been great leaders if society had had a niche for them. Johann wrote indiscreetly, and his work was traced — his promotion was blocked indefinitely. Conservative circles next to the Emperor regarded him as “unreliable”.

Shortly after the death of Crown Prince Rudolf at the Mayerling hunting lodge, Johann renounced his title and studied for a master's certificate in the merchant navy. He acquired his certificate and sailed for South America in the Saint Margaret on March 26th, 1890. His faithful mistress, Milli Stubel, joined him at Buenos Aires, and they set off together on July 12th to round Cape Horn in the Saint Margaret. It was a dangerous route, the weather was appalling and Johann had little experience of the sea. There is no reliable evidence that they were ever seen again but rumours circulated for years that he was in India, Japan or South America. He was not officially presumed dead until 1911.

The possibility of Johann Salvator's involvement in the Rennes affair hinges on a question of dates. When, exactly, did Bérenger Saunière find his treasure? Or did he find it in instalments? Suppose that the relic, if it existed, turned up earlier than the other valuables. Suppose Saunière makes discreet enquiries in the Hofburg some time between 1886 and 1888, and is told that Johann will see him. The relic, treasure, secret or whatever it is, passes to Johann in return for the promise of regular cash payments to Saunière. There is some evidence that bank accounts for Saunière and for Salvator were opened in the same Austrian bank on the same day and that money was transferred periodically from Johann's account to Bérenger's.

Johann was an ambitious and frustrated young man, as was his cousin, Rudolf the Crown Prince. Such men are likely to get together. Suppose that they did, and suppose also that whatever it was that Saunière had brought to Johann might have had some political value. If it was the same thing that Poussin wrote of to Fouquet, kings would have given much to possess it. Kings were notoriously fond of power. It is possible that what was found at Rennes was a power source: an artefact, a relic, a focus, a psychological or sociological rallying point. Its precise nature is unimportant at this stage of the argument. Armed with this power source, the two frustrated young Habsburg princes might have been tempted to try to stage a coup. They could have been so desperate and so deluded that they were eager to grasp at any straw: transmutation, divination, the elixir of life, or the support of some ubiquitous secret society — real or imagined. Each man was a tragic mixture of Hamlet and Macbeth.

Rudolf, born in 1858, was six years younger than Johann. His mother Elisabeth, was beautiful, independent, sensitive and intelligent. She had been at war with her mother-in-law for years and was not in love with Franz Josef. She sorted out her problems by taking long tours away from the Hofburg. She was, perhaps, the one person who could have helped and understood Rudolf, but the long trips abroad which she needed for her own psychological defence meant that she was not often there when he needed a confidant. Because her mother-in-law had wrecked Elisabeth's relationship with Franz Josef, she kept well away from Rudolf after his disastrous marriage.

Rudolf was a delicate, nervous boy and needed perceptive, sympathetic handling. His first tutor was the old-fashioned Count Gondrecourt who gave him military drill in the snow to “toughen” him; he once locked him in the zoo, shouting that a wild boar was loose, to “strengthen his nerves”. The best thing Elisabeth ever did for Rudolf was to tell Franz Josef that either Gondrecourt went or she did.

Rudolf's next tutor was Count Joseph Latour von Thurnberg. Latour was ideal for Rudolf, and in later life they became firm friends, but even Latour was not really close to the unhappy, frustrated, idealistic, young, liberal heir to the old, traditional, conservative, Catholic monarchy.

Like Johann, Rudolf wrote indiscreetly, and made friends who were persona non grata to the Austrian hierarchy. One of the most notable of those was Moritz Szeps, the gifted editor of the liberal Neues Wiener Tagblatt, who came to the prince's apartment by a backstairs route to avoid the guards posted by Rudolf's suspicious uncle Albrecht.

Rudolf was quick-tempered and careless, unless the apparent carelessness was a cloak for a deeper and more sinister deliberation. In the late 1880's, Rudolf almost shot Franz Josef “accidentally” during a hunting expedition. The prince was ordered off the field for the rest of the day, but apart from that the Emperor took no action.

There were persistent rumours that Rudolf and Johann were planning a coup, and that on its successful completion they would divide the Austro-Hungarian Empire between them.

It was at the end of 1888 that Maria Vetsera came into Rudolf's orbit. She was an attractive eighteen-year-old minor countess whose mother Hélène, was a social climber. Countess Marie Larisch was instrumental in arranging the prince's assignations with Maria. Larisch was as discontented and frustrated as Rudolf himself. They were the same age, and it seemed at one time that they might marry, but Larisch, although physically attractive and energetic, was strangely devious and sinister. Her motives in “helping” Rudolf and Maria to get together may have been far from benign.

Maria herself was rather an odd girl with wildly extravagant romantic ideas and strange illusions about the juxtaposition of love and death. Her imagination ran down deep, dark tunnels where romantic ecstasy and morbidity formed the stalagmites and stalactites waiting to trip or impale it. If there was a sound political reason for killing Rudolf, Maria Vetsera unwittingly provided the ideal cover story. There can be little doubt that Count Taafe's secret police and Archduke Albrecht's guards were well aware of Rudolf's involvement with Vetsera and of her character.

Amid a chaos of conflicting reports, the elements of the Mayerling tragedy emerge like the outline of a gaunt ship disguised by swirling mists. Rudolf and Maria were at Mayerling together. In the early hours of Wednesday, January 30th, 1889, they died together in the bedroom of the prince's hunting lodge. The official attempts to mask the story of the lovers' suicide pact were so grotesquely clumsy that it is almost possible to believe that they were never intended to mask it. Modem politicians often use a supposed “leak” to ensure that information intended for publication is not only made known but attracts attention. Let a government spend millions on free road-safety pamphlets and subsidized highway codes: few people will read them or act on their advice. Let it be whispered that a controversial new speed limit or parking restriction may be introduced during the next parliamentary session, and every motorist will lobby his MP in fury. Human curiosity is such that we are most interested in things which we believe others may not want us to know.

The Austrian government of 1889 could have been sufficiently subtle and astute to use that psychological approach. Perhaps the “cover-up” of the prince's “suicide with Maria” was intended to be blown so that attention would focus on his liaison with the young countess. Was Rudolf really killed because he and Johann had been plotting against the establishment with the aid of something which Saunière had made available to them?

The sinister and unreliable Countess Larisch enters the story once more. She claimed in her memoirs that Rudolf had entrusted her with the custody of a locked steel box which was to be given to no one unless he used the password R.I.O.U. On the day of his funeral, she was given a message which included that password. Later in the evening, as arranged in the message, she met a heavily cloaked Johann Salvator who took the box, telling her that it contained evidence so damning to Rudolf and himself that if Franz Josef had seen it both young men would have been court martialled and shot.

Years later, the sister of Milli Stubel (Johann's mistress), sold her memoirs to a Viennese paper and confirmed the story of the steel box, adding that it contained a number of documents in code. She maintained that Johann had given it to Milli for safe custody. The question is: did it go down with the Saint Margaret off Cape Horn in 1890? The coded documents in that box may have held clues to the mystery of Rennes-le-Château as well as to the intrigues of the young Habsburg princes. Do those clues now lie somewhere on the bed of the South Atlantic?

How, then, can we summarize the Habsburg connection in the affair of Rennes-le-Château? Firstly, some Habsburg genealogists have claimed links with the Merovingian and Carolingian kings. Secondly, Radbot, an early Habsburg, may have been the same person as Victor Hugo's Ratbert, despite the date problem. Thirdly, if Saunière wanted to sell a religious relic, the Habsburgs were still Holy Roman Emperors in all but name. Fourthly, if it were not merely a religious relic but a supposed power source, or even a combination of the two, Saunière might still have considered that the Habsburgs were the best prospective customers. After all, they had entertained Roccatani, Maroto and de la Rosa after the Mexican tragedy. Fifthly, if there is any truth in the suggestion that Saunière dealt with Johann, it seems very odd that both he and Rudolf should die shortly afterwards and in suspicious circumstances. The Saint Margaret could have gone down in a storm; she could just as well have been sabotaged. Rudolf might have shot Maria, then himself; they could also have been shot by the Austrian secret police and their bodies suitably arranged.

Saunière's watchtower has a strategic view of the mountains and a sturdy steel door. It would be as good a stronghold as any for a man who suspected that Franz Josef's agents might come looking for him.