690. A Murderous Affair: Death at Mayerling (Part 2)

17:24Tom Holland:I always thought this was unusual behavior, but a whole host of members of royal families throughout the late 19th century were doing it.

17:31Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah. So it had obviously become a kind of royal craze. It was, exactly. George V and his brother went off to Japan, I think, and got dragons tattooed on their arms or something. Incredible. Anyway, they gathered in Sisi's apartment that night, and Rudolf very thoughtfully had laid the table with presents. He got her a book of letters by Heine, who was her favourite German writer, and a packet of 11 original Heine letters that he had sent to a relative in Paris.

18:01Tom Holland:That is thoughtful, Dominic, because there's nothing more thoughtful than giving someone a letter written by someone they particularly admire. Can you think of an example of this, Tom? anyone who does that i think is beneath the show of cynical cruelty or whatever it is yeah um a cherubic lovable is there anything you want to share with the listeners yeah because you bought me a letter written by nelson there you go thank you one of my most treasured possessions that

18:28Dominic Sandbrook:comparison with crown prince rudolph that has dogged me all my life yet more ammunition to the people who say is he the reincarnation of crown prince rudolph because the parallels are uncanny Yeah, they are. I would work on an encyclopedia if my father ordered me to. And he's been working on his Austro-Hungarian encyclopedia. So he's got copies of that wrapped up. I mean, you write history books that are like encyclopedias. Correct. Yeah, thank you. I was fishing for that. And there are presents all around. So Franz Joseph and Cece have got presents for Rudolf and Stefanie's daughter, Elizabeth.

19:02Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, it's often forgotten in this story that he has a daughter. I think she's about five or six. And they've got her kind of toy garden furniture made in Corfu. Can I just ask, he's got a lovely present for his mother. Yeah.

19:15Tom Holland:Has he got anything for his father?

19:16Dominic Sandbrook:No mention. No mention of that. It's not his father's birthday, though, to be fair. That's true. Also, what do you give the man who owns Central Europe? A uniform. Yeah. You give him Venice back or something. That's what he'd like. Yeah. So this sounds lovely, but Rudolf spends the festive season brooding darkly. his hatred of the Kaiser has now reached absolute fever. Basically, since the Kaiser went back to Berlin, Berlin newspapers have just been mercilessly mocking the Austrian army. And this has driven Rudolf mad. And Rudolf has written to his mate, Maurice Sepps, the kind of newspaper editor.

19:55Dominic Sandbrook:And he says, I can give you information about that when we went hunting in Styria with Kaiser Wilhelm, a prostitute stole Wilhelm's cufflinks

20:06Tom Holland:do you know who this unexpectedly reminds me of is Harold Wilson in 1974 releasing mad stories to the press

20:16Dominic Sandbrook:yes I can see that actually clearly made up do you think this is made up I think the Kaiser is precisely the kind of man who might have his cufflinks stolen by a lady of the night no? yeah I suppose he'd be an unpopular customer he wouldn't be a great tipper and in revenge his uh escorts would steal items of his personal apparel hoping to blackmail him later anyway rudolph sends this in this letter and says i want you to hold on to this if the berlin press continues slagging me off you can you can print it and then a couple of days later he writes again to this editor and he says i feel the storm clouds are gathering over austria in international politics there is a temporary quiet the dangers threatening us from serbia wow that's a little preview what's coming are postponed for the moment but this uncanny stillness gives me the impression of calm before the storm it can't go on like this that's my consolation and this editor writes back and says you know you're not you're not feeling good that's a shame um i think you're brilliant the future is yours you never tire unlike so many other people and And it's because our crown prince never tires that we still believe in a great, glorious, free and prosperous Austria.

21:30Dominic Sandbrook:So basically sucking up to Rudolf to try to modify him. The very end of the year, Rudolf and Stephanie, his wife, they go to a place now called Opatia, but at the time called Abazia, which was on the Adriatic. It's on the Croatian coast. It was the Cannes or the Saint-Tropez of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. So palm trees, hotels, sort of tea lounges, all of this. Rudolf doesn't like it. He finds it very boring. He comes back early to Vienna. It's not very gothic, is it? No, it's not very gothic. It's very dull as far as he's concerned. And he also, he finds his wife very dull. He comes back to Vienna.

22:05Dominic Sandbrook:He finds, as usual, there will be meetings of the army command without him, which he's very annoyed by. They didn't invite him because they thought he was on holiday. Then they're into the carnival season. Now, because the Austrian court are still mourning the death of Kaiser's father the previous summer, court sort of regulations forbid them from going to balls. So what that means is they have to just give a series of dinners for visiting dignitaries, royalty, aristocracy and so on. Rudolf again finds this very boring. But the one consolation is that he can resume his affair with Mary Vetsera.

22:37Dominic Sandbrook:And the key date here is the 13th of January. And we know this from Mary's letter the next day to her old governess. She said, I must make a confession. I was with him yesterday evening from seven till nine. We both lost our heads. Now we belong to each other, body and soul. On Saturday, I hope to get away from a ball and then I will rush back to him. So we belong to each other, body and soul. We lost our heads. We all know what happened between seven and nine that evening. And that same day, she went to the most expensive jewelry shop in Vienna and she ordered a gold cigarette case inscribed with the date of their tryst the night before the 13th.

23:14of January, and she wants to give it to the crown prince to remember the occasion. And my guess is that it was probably around now that he floated seriously the idea that he had mentioned a few weeks earlier, which she'd mentioned to her governess. The idea that one day they will be discovered, that we will go to a happy place that nobody knows, and then we will enter death together. And this is not the first time that Rudolf has mentioned this to a woman, because we know that he had mentioned it to his regular mistress, Mitzi Caspar, before Christmas, and she had laughed at him and thought it was a joke.

23:54Tom Holland:I thought that there were inversions I've read of this. She goes to the police and tells them, and the police refuse to listen to her because she's just a prostitute. Is that not true?

24:04Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah. I don't know how true that is. So I've seen that online, and I've seen that repeated in general histories, but I'm not convinced how true that. I mean, It may be true. Maybe listeners who, particularly Austrian listeners who might have read German language versions of this, may be more familiar with it. But in, for example, Frederick Morton's book, which is kind of day by day, there's no mention of this. Just mentions her laughing at him. There's a slight disconnect, actually, between laughing at somebody because you think they're joking. Yeah, and then going to the police. And then going to the police.

24:35Dominic Sandbrook:Is it a better story if they go to the police? She goes to the police? Maybe it is a better story. What we do know for certain is that Mary didn't laugh. Mary is not a joker in that way. And she takes her relationship with the crown prince incredibly seriously. She sees it in these very overwrought terms. But of course, this is, again, what we don't know. We don't know what they said to each other. We cannot know how much she was coerced. You know, he's 30. He's the crown prince. She's a massive goth, though, isn't she? I mean, you said. She's a massive goth, of course. But how much she enters into this pact, you know, voluntarily.

25:12Difficult to say. Anyway, Rudolf's friends and acquaintances suspect absolutely nothing. That month, he seems calm. He seems untroubled. He seems polite. He goes repeatedly to operettas or to the opera.

25:24Dominic Sandbrook:On the 23rd of January, for example, he goes to see a comedy called The Dandes of Vienna, and he's cheered by the audience. He's working on his encyclopedia. He writes an article, one of his many anonymous articles from a monarchist periodical, in which he basically says people should stop going on about Germany and how brilliant Germany is. People should put their faith in Austria, ancient, united, and undivided. And, of course, being a Habsburg, he does a lot of hunting. So he's not quite in his cousin Franz Ferdinand's league. So Franz Ferdinand is kind of younger cousin and protégé and sort of a world-class butcher of birds.

26:03Dominic Sandbrook:But Rudolf still, you know, he sees an eagle. He likes to shoot it. So he shot three eagles on the 20th, three more on the 21st, and five deer on the 23rd of January. On the 24th of January, so Thursday the 24th, he now has less than a week to live, by the way. Bratfish drove him to meet Mary by the Prater Park. Again, it was very cold, very deserted, no one there. And they fixed a date at this meeting. They said, let's go to the Myling Hunting Lodge on Monday. Because he said, I'm going there anyway with some friends to do some more hunting. And that evening, the evening of Thursday the 24th, he went to the court opera and he sat beside his father in the imperial box.

26:45Dominic Sandbrook:They were spotted deep in a very serious conversation, but nobody knows or will ever know what was said. On Friday the 25th, he has five days to live. He goes hunting again on the banks of the Danube. He shot 26 ducks. Seems like a lot, actually. Then he went back to town. He went to Hodeck's taxidermist shop on the Maria Hilferstrasse, where they'd been stuffing his eagles for him. God. I mean, the whole empty fairgrounds.

27:18Tom Holland:Yeah. Stuff the taxidermist.

27:20Dominic Sandbrook:It's brilliant. It's got it all. I was thinking about this. I think this would be a brilliant Alfred Hitchcock film. David Lynch would enjoy it as well. Yeah, there are lots of directors who would do really, really good different versions of this. Christopher Nolan would cast Cillian Murphy, surely, as Crown Prince Rudolph. A young Cillian Murphy. Yeah, and Michael Caine as his father. Yeah, I was about to say Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy's the coachman, surely. Yes. Tom Hardy is Bradfish. Surely, everyone wants to see that. That would be the spinoff series. Bradfish. Yeah, he's solving crimes. He's solving crimes.

27:58Dominic Sandbrook:with Freud. Fantastic. All right. So he's gone to the taxidermist shop. Then he goes to a painter's studio. I've put the painter in just so I can say his name. His name is Tadeusz Adjukowicz. And he is a Pole, I think, given his name. And he's painting Rudolf on horseback, showing him as an infantry general. And then he goes to the palace for dinner. Does the painting, the portrait of Rudolf, start to weep tears? Surely. Yeah, definitely. Of blood. So Saturday, the 26th, he has four days to live, the same routine. And as if to punish him, the fates are mocking him because that evening there's a court dinner to celebrate, of all things, Kaiserville on the second's birthday.

28:42Dominic Sandbrook:So Rudolf has to dress up in his uniform as an honorary colonel of the 2nd Brandenburg Ulan Regiment. And this must be a terrible thing for him because he regards the Kaiser as the worst man in history, a dreadful bounder. but he has to sort of smile and make small talk about how brilliant the Kaiser is. The next day, Sunday the 27th, there are now three days to go. Same routine, hunting, taxi, derby shop, portrait. And then he rushes back to the Hofburg and he changes into civilian clothes and Bratfish drives him to the back entrance, the tradesman's entrance of the Grand Hotel. And there he goes upstairs, up the back stairs to Countess Larisius' suite.

29:23So she's come back from Bohemia. She's the go-between once again with Mary. Then he goes back into the coach. They go off to the Prater, the deserted park. Mary is waiting there in a coach of her own. Again, a hurried meeting with Mary to finalize the plans for tomorrow.

29:39Dominic Sandbrook:And then back to the palace. Another quick change into another German uniform because he has to go to another reception for the Kaiser's birthday. Oh, God. No wonder he shoots himself. imagine the almost hated enemy having to dress up in uniforms and go to it's like a nightmare right or a Greek punishment it's like Sisyphus had it easy yeah so he has to go to a reception at the German embassy for the Kaiser's birthday now at this reception is his father and also his wife Crown Princess Stephanie she's looking very elegant and his lover Mary Vetserra

30:22Tom Holland:So they're all there. Is their relationship now common knowledge? Does Stephanie know? Do we think? I don't know. We just don't know. So there is a moment, suppose it is a moment, I think this is made up actually,

30:35Dominic Sandbrook:where Stephanie and Mary came face to face and there was apparently a little pause before Mary curtsied just too, she waited just too long, like a little gesture of disrespect to Rudolph's wife. Well, that's what people said afterwards, but I suspect at the time. Yeah, so it sounds retrospective. It's retrospective, yeah, exactly. Now, Rudolf is very pale and quiet at this reception, partly because he hates the Kaiser, but also maybe for other reasons. At one point, he was making small talk with a sculptor called Victor Tilgner and later claimed, again, this may be retrospective, that at one point, Rudolf gave a kind of shiver or shudder and said to him, this whole uniform is distasteful to me, unbearably heavy, and that that was the only hint of something.

31:20Dominic Sandbrook:But of course that could be just a banal thing It could be he hates German uniforms I mean it really could be heavy He could indeed I imagine there were a lot of medals Surely And epaulettes Yeah Weighing his shoulders down He doesn't stay long at this reception though By midnight he's gone And he doesn't go back to the palace He goes to the apartment of his mistress Mitzi Kaspar And they drink champagne laced with cognac Our favourite drink Our favourite tipple Our favourite drink Exactly We'll be drinking that at the Restitutory Christmas party and uh rudolph says to mitzi tomorrow morning i'm leaving to go hunting forever and mitzi kind of laughs at him she doesn't go to the police she laughs and she said she thinks to herself this is the kind of mad thing that rudolph says all the time because he's a bit of a goth he's always saying morbid things like this three o 'clock in the morning he leaves her apartment to go back to the imperial palace the hofburg and there's an old little gesture as he leaves he makes the sign of the cross on her forehead, even though he doesn't believe in God.

32:23He's told her he doesn't believe in God.

32:24Tom Holland:We talked about this yesterday, about whether he would have viewed suicide as a sin, but clearly not. So he goes back to the Imperial Palace. He has a couple of hours sleep and he's up by seven o 'clock in the morning. He goes through his paperwork. He has meetings with officials. At 11 o 'clock outside his office, the clock of St. Michael's, which is the chapel next door sounds the hour and rudolph calls in his adjutants and he says cancel my appointments please for the rest of the morning i'm going shooting now i'll be back tomorrow five o 'clock i'm going to have dinner with the emperor as agreed and on his way out of the palace he stops briefly at his wife's apartment he says goodbye to stephanie and to their daughter elizabeth and he repeats this message i'll be back tomorrow for dinner so by half eleven he's on his way and Rudolph has left the palace.

33:11Now, meanwhile, Mary Vetsera and Countess Lares have already left the Vetsera family mansion, which is on the Salesiana Gasse in Vienna. They told Mary's mother they were going shopping, which they've said so many times at 10.30. But once they got into the cab, they changed the address. They went to the Hofburg Palace, back entrance again. Once again, Rudolph's coachman mr bratfish played by tom hardy is waiting and he takes them out of the city so the carriage rolls out of the city and they go into the vienna woods and they stop beside an inn called the red barn the ruter stadl which is closed for the winter again a very gothic scene

33:53Tom Holland:this abandoned inn people always being murdered in red barns aren't they they yeah right good spot So they wait for 20 minutes in the cold by this inn. And then they see a man in a fur-collared coat coming through the woods towards them. And this is Crown Prince Rudolph. It's such a great film. It is. Isn't it? It'd be amazing.

34:14Dominic Sandbrook:Of course. He's coming through the mist or whatever. He comes through the trees and he gets into their carriage. His own carriage that brought him out of the city is now going back to the city, being tailed, as always, by the police. So the police always followed him. So they've shaken off the police now. Now he's shaken off the police. So he and Mary and Bratfish drive on together towards his hunting lodge at Meierling, which is about 20 miles southeast of Vienna. And they arrive round about sunset. So that's about five o 'clock. Of course they do. Of course. It's the ravens flock around the gatehouse.

34:55It's a really cold, dark evening. The servants have lit the fires in the hunting lodge. Here they will be alone, well, alone except for all the servants, until the next day. But back in the city, Countess Larish, who has engineered all this, has this flash of revelation. And we absolutely don't know why. Is it something that Mary said before she left? Is it something that Rudolf said in the last few days that has been, you know, preying on her mind? Or who knows? But at lunchtime, once she'd seen Mary off, she went back to the Vetsera mansion and she asked to see Mary's mother. And she said, I've lost your daughter.

35:37I don't know where she is. I'm worried about her. And that afternoon, one of Mary's uncles, Alexander Baltazzi, went to see the police commissioner of Vienna. And he said, we've lost Mary. We've lost the 17-year-old Baroness. Can you help us find her? And eventually he said to the police commissioner, look, we think she's gone off with Crown Prince Rudolf. and the commissioner said well come on i mean she's gone off the crown prince rudolph we're

36:01Dominic Sandbrook:hardly gonna like launch a massive police investigation for one thing we are constitutionally barred from investigating the imperial family but for another what are you so stressed about the crown prince has loads of affairs clearly mary vetsera is one of his mistresses she's 17 years old she knows what she's doing you know she's quite racy she's matured beyond her years these things happen what are you worried about yeah what's the worst that could happen what's the worst that could happen well we will find out the answer to that question after the break this episode is brought to you by Accenture when your advertising operations fall out of sync campaigns slow down insights get buried and opportunities get missed and that is why Spotify

36:54Tom Holland:and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation, analytics and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business.

37:07Dominic Sandbrook:The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most.

37:16Tom Holland:To learn more, check out Accenture.com slash Spotify.

37:24Dominic Sandbrook:Hello, everybody. We have absolutely sensational, spectacular, stupendous news about a forthcoming Rest is History live show.

37:33Tom Holland:We do, Dominic. Now, sometimes there are complaints that people in Britain don't know enough about the British Empire, that they don't study it in sufficient depth. So we are stepping in to make up for that. And we are going to be telling the story of the ultimate Victorian imperial adventure. and that Dominic is the Abyssinian expedition of 1868 and it's well I don't say it's brilliant

37:57Dominic Sandbrook:but it's mad isn't it it is mad to give people a bit of context it's an amazing story the emperor of Abyssinia to Wadros II he was ignored by Queen Victoria who didn't answer his letters so he took some British hostages and then the British sent an expedition to Abyssinia to attack his capital at Magdala his kind of mountain citadel it's an amazing amazing story a bonkers story and precisely the kind of thing that we enjoy on The Rest is History.

38:24Tom Holland:Yes, and that I think the entire country could profit from hearing about. So that is what we're going to be doing. It is, I think, a very Flashman kind of a story. So anyone who enjoys Flashman will enjoy this. And we are going to be doing it at the South Bank Centre in London on the 4th of September. We do have a few tickets for that. We're also doing it on the 5th of September, not to boast, but that one is already sold out. So if you want to come, book your tickets for the 4th of September and you can get them at therestishistory.com.

39:00Tom Holland:Hello everyone and welcome back to The Rest is History where it is the early morning of Tuesday on the 29th of January 1889 and we are in the Meierling hunting lodge some 20 odd miles outside Vienna, where two friends of Grand Prince Rudolf, Count Josef Hoyos, and Prince Philip of Coburg have arrived for a day's sport. They're going to go out and murder birds. And Dominic, what happens as they approach the hunting lodge? Well, a very sort of gothic or fairy tale scene. They approach the house and it's completely still and silent. And they see that the curtains on the bedroom windows of Rudolph's ground floor apartment are closed.

39:49But the servants are up. The servants admit them. And in the billiard room, Crown Prince Rudolph is waiting. So alive and well. He's alive and well.

39:59Dominic Sandbrook:And he seems in good form. Or is he well? Well, he's not well. He's got gonorrhea and he's off his face on morphine and champagne. But apart from that, and he looks really haggard and gaunt and looks like a man who's conceived a murder-suicide pact. But apart from that, he looks like he's in brilliant form. And has he got a kind of little snuffle? Possibly, yes. He's got a bit of a cold, he says. He's got a silk scarf tied very tightly around his neck. He says, I've got a cold, and I probably won't come hunting with you, lads, after all. So you go ahead. I'll sit it out. They have a cup of coffee, and then Hoyos and Koba go out to do some hunting.

40:32and they return at lunchtime and rudolph is waiting for them and he's still in good form the prince of coburg is going back to vienna straight away the afternoon and rudolph says well because of this cold i'm not going to head back when i thought dinner with my father so please you know pass on my message and he also says to his valet who's called lost check he says can you send a telegram to my wife please crown princess stephanie telegram reads please tell papa that i ask his pardon for not appearing at dinner but because of a heavy cold i wish to avoid the journey this afternoon so the prince of coburg goes off the telegram is sent count hoyos goes shooting on his own so that's i think that's a slightly joyless thing to do frankly anyway he goes hunting on his own he goes and shoots loads of birds and then he comes back to spend the evening with rudolph to have dinner with rudolph and they have um it's very rest his history Christmas party actually they have pate de foie gras they have venison they have roast beef red wine and then they they have a sort of leisurely smoke and they talk about the latest army legislation which has been held up in the parliament in Budapest because of wrangling with the Hungarians and Rudolf is clearly in quite good form he's coming up with some great banter

41:50Dominic Sandbrook:He says, it's much easier to deal with gun dogs than with Hungarian politicians. And Hoyas thinks this is absolutely hilarious. And says afterwards, he turned on me the whole beguiling forces personality. So actually, I mean, the mad thing is that Rudolf hates the Kaiser because this is the kind of banter the Kaiser would very much enjoy. Yeah, it is. I don't think his mother would approve. No. Since he loves Hungarian. Exactly. Anyway, at nine o 'clock, Hoyos says, right, I'm turning in now. Hoyos is going to spend the night in guest quarters in a converted farm cottage, which is about 500 meters from the main house.

42:28And as soon as Hoyos has gone down the path, the door of Rudolf's bedroom opens, and out comes Mary Wetzel. And she has been hiding in Rudolf's bedroom all this time. And because she's been hiding in the bedroom, and they've been afraid to send in food to her because Hoyos would notice. So she's starving. So Lostczek, the valet, brings her cold venison

42:55Dominic Sandbrook:and he lights a fire in the billiard room. He brings champagne from the cellar and he calls for bratfish, the coachman. He's still hanging around. Aliyah in the chat points out that bratfish means grilled fish. So I think that's a terrible surname, frankly. He's called grilled fish. That's his name. I think we've established it's a ludicrous name. So Bratfish sits on the stool in the corner of the billiard room and he sings and whistles songs of old Vienna while they're eating their dinner, Marion and Rudolph. That sounds incredibly annoying. Right. Can't you make him shut up? Some bloke called Mr.

43:32Dominic Sandbrook:Grilled Fish turns up and whistles at you. It's the last thing you want. Yeah. Especially on your last night. Spoiler.

43:40Tom Holland:How did you want to spend the last hours? No wonder they shot themselves. Right. So they sit up very late. Lostczek, the manservant, he turns in at two o 'clock. But he doesn't sleep for very long because at half past six, he's woken by footsteps.

43:57Dominic Sandbrook:He looks up, and this would really freak you out. He looks up, and standing over him is the sepulchral figure of Crown Prince Rudolf in a dressing gown and a silk scarf looking very pale. So, Rudolf, standing over Losschek, says, I want you to call me for breakfast in an hour. And he also says, tell Bratfish to have the horses ready. And then he walks back to his bedroom, a bizarre detail, this whistling one of Bratfish's tunes. So, he walks back and he closes the door behind him. Now, Losschek at this point, he gets dressed. He's about three hours sleep or something. Gets dressed and he goes to tell the kitchen staff, get up, come on, sort yourselves out, start getting breakfast ready and at 7 30 as instructed he knocks on the crown prince's door and this is the scene with which we opened the first episode this tremendous scene lost check knocks and he knocks again he keeps knocking he calls your imperial highness he runs upstairs and then there's a spiral staircase at the back that goes down to a back door of rudolph's apartment he knocks on the back door again their reply lost check is becoming quite anxious now because rudolph as a famously light sleeper and the dogs started barking.

45:11So it's a slightly chaotic scene. The hunting dogs are all barking because of the knocking. Loschek has gone into a massive panic. He comes back to the front door. He gets a log from the fire and starts hammering on the door with this log. Bratfish, the coachman, joins him.

45:26Dominic Sandbrook:Count Hoyos has come up from his cottage to find out what's going on. And then, as if that's not enough, the Prince of Coburg had gone back to Vienna. He now turns up as well because he's come back to do some more hunting. They're all completely shocked and confounded by the scene. And they say to Lozicek, okay, break down the door. And this is the point. He's now sobbing with worry. And this is the point when he says to them, I have something to tell you. Baroness Mary Vetsera has been staying with the crown prince. And then this is the point when Hoyas and Koba go into the billiard room and they have this little conference.

46:01And eventually they come out and they basically say, well, even so, fine. Okay. We're men of the world. break down the door and losite hacks at the door he hacks at the panels as you described in that reading that you did for the first episode the hole becomes this kind of gash and he's able to look through and he drops the axe in horror inside it's total darkness he can see the air is very heavy with smoke but he can see two people lying on or near it's really not clear from the descriptions, the bed. One of them is Mary. She's stretched out on the bed. Her hands are clasping a rose and there's blood on the sheets around her head.

46:43And the other is Crown Prince Rudolph. He is kind of slumped against or leaning on a bedside table in front of a mirror and there is blood trickling from his mouth. And it is absolutely obvious that they are both dead. and for a moment the men outside are paralyzed with horror and nobody dares to go in and eventually Hoyos says okay bratfish i need you to drive me to baden station which is the nearest railway station they get to baden station and he has to go into the station master and say something terrible has happened at crown prince rudolph's hunting lodge i must get to vienna instantly and the station master agrees to stop the express train from trieste and Hoyos climbs on board so at 9 50 he is in vienna and within about 25 minutes he has reached the hofburg the imperial palace and here he completely loses his nerve he doesn't know how he can possibly break this news to the emperor so he goes to find cc's chamberlain who is called baron nopstia and they say well we will tell the empress and then she can tell the emperor so cc elizabeth she got up early that morning she got up at 6 30 she always did her days always began with this long bath and then a massage then her hair famously longest there was a special maid to comb her hair yeah for two or three hours learning greek all of that yeah then she would have a herbal tea and she would do some exercises in her private gym.

48:18Then at 10 o 'clock had started a Greek lesson with Monsieur Rousophilos, and they were reading the Iliad together. And at 10.45, there was a knock on the door, and the lady-in-waiting said, Baron Knopster and Count Hoyos want to see you urgently. And Elizabeth was furious. You don't interfere with my Greek lessons. But then Baron Knopster came in. She saw the look on his face, and she realized something was terribly wrong now her husband franz joseph had been up even longer well he always gets up early doesn't he because he's got an empire to run right he got up at four o 'clock in the morning from his iron military bed and he'd been washed by his footman he'd had breakfast at 4 20 and then he got straight into his paperwork and had his first meetings at five o 'clock in the morning and a lot of this had been about the budapest parliament and the army bill as frederick morton said, that morning, Franz Joseph did what his ancestors had done before him.

49:14He ruled and overruled with utter confidence, with axiomatic competence, and without the slightest inspiration. Just before 11 o 'clock, he set off to go to see his wife in her apartment. Franz Joseph was looking forward to this because he knew that his wife actually had a prearranged meeting with his confidante katerina schrat the actress katerina schrat was going to do a drama recital for his

49:41Dominic Sandbrook:wife and this was this is brilliant for him because he'll see his two favorite people at once and you know their little menage at war they he loves all that but he gets there and he finds baron knopster blocking the door to his wife's apartment baron knopster's face is streaked with tears and through the door Franz Joseph can hear his wife sobbing and sobbing. So in the next few hours the news that something terrible has happened races around the city. Crown Prince Rudolf's wife Stephanie is having a singing lesson and that's interrupted and she is told and soon after that all the operas, the theatres, the cabarets, the music halls are told to cancel their evening programs with no explanation.

50:22And by mid-afternoon there's a crowd outside the hofberg people know something has happened there are people talking about crown prince rudolph but no one knows exactly what it is and it's actually not until the following morning that the news is confirmed it's broken by the wiener tagblatt our crown prince is dead says this huge headline it's reproduced there's an image of it in frederick morton's book a nervous splendor but what there aren't there are no details of how he died so the assumption that most people make is he has had a stroke or a heart attack, you know, a freak accident or something.

50:58Who knows?

50:59Dominic Sandbrook:Throttled by the Kaiser. Yeah, exactly. He's died of apoplexy after the Kaiser has been rude about an Austrian army belt or something of that kind, surely. A bit of the obvious explanation, wouldn't it? But not as the following evening, the Wiener Tagblatt prints the headline, The Most Horrible Truth. and it says crown prince rudolph was killed by a gunshot and he fired the pistol himself i mean i

51:25Tom Holland:can't imagine in a because it's still a very devoutly catholic of course city and country yeah i mean the impact must be devastating exactly i mean this is we said it's the royal scandal to end all royal scandals i mean let's try to imagine i mean it's not even prince harry it would be implausibly your fellow Aston Villa supporter, Prince William. Prince William. Yeah. Carrying on with a 17-year-old and having a murder-suicide pact at a hunting lodge in Staines. I think it's much worse than that because suicide is no longer framed as a sin. No, it's true. Yeah. You know, it's treated with sympathy and kind of understanding now.

52:11Tom Holland:But back then, it was a sin. I mean, it endangers your mortal soul. And the Habsburgs, it's important to their legitimacy that they are Catholic.

52:20Dominic Sandbrook:Completely. They're the guardians of Catholicism. Yeah. You know, they are the absolute, his apostolic majesty, Franz Joseph. You know, it's so important for them as kings of Hungary and as emperors of Austria. Absolutely. So let's actually focus on the imperial family for a second. By the way, one small detail, actually, which I forgot to mention. Mary Vetsera's name has never been mentioned in any of those newspaper reports at all. And we'll come back to her role in the story in a second. So Franz Josef spent the first afternoon trying to console his wife, along with Katerina Schrat. And then being Franz Josef, he went back to work.

52:56And he worked late that night. And he rang by 10 o 'clock that night on the day he heard the news about his son. He was still ringing the Hungarian prime minister to talk about the army bill. the next day he got up at four o 'clock as usual to start work but at dawn he had a visitor the imperial doctor professor herman widerhofer who had been to myling to and he was the first person who basically went into the room to inspect the bodies and professor widerhofer says i have you know some pretty bad news it is clear that the crown prince died by his own hand a gunshot wound to the head but what is worse there is no doubt that he killed mary vetsera with the same gun two hours earlier so actually this is so interesting he had killed mary vetsera before he appeared at the manservant's bedside to say get my breakfast ready to ask for breakfast yeah

53:49Tom Holland:so what do you think was going on there don't know did he ever plan to eat the breakfast change his mind impossible to say strange i mean everything about this is strange let's not deny that no but there's um this the worst of it i think for franz joseph is the is what vido hofer then says the crown prince has left a number of letters so he's left a letter to his mother cc this is the only letter that was written at the scene of the crime the other letters were written beforehand he wrote to his mother i have no right to go on living i have killed and he asks that he and mary are buried together at the nearby abbey of heiligenkreutz holy cross he wrote a letter to his sister valerie beforehand he said i advise you you know i'm going now i advise you when our father dies leave austria for what will happen then in austria is unforeseeable this is again his kind of existential apocalyptic dread about the geopolitical outlook for his country and a Shrewd analysis.

54:48Yeah, I guess so. He wrote a letter to Stephanie, his wife. Dear Stephanie, you are now rid of my presence and annoyance. Be happy in your own way. Take care of the poor little one. She is all that is left of me. He wrote a letter to Losschek, his valet. Thank you for all the years of service. He also wrote letters to his friend, Baron Moritz Hirsch, and to his mistress, Mitzi Kaspar. But the contents of those letters is unknown, has never been released. and for his father the emperor there was no letter at all nothing oh dear and that is the moment when the the doctor says that to franz joseph that's the moment when franz joseph loses his composure and he breaks down in tears and he collapses and falls to the ground and you can absolutely understand why for a for a father that would be of course of course devastating that would be almost the worst blow of all, I think.

55:43Tom Holland:Such kind of posthumous cruelty as well, isn't it? Yeah. So eventually he composes himself and he says, where is my son? And Dr. Wiedehofer said, well, we've brought the body back to the palace as you ordered. We've dressed him in uniform. We've bandaged his head and we put him in bed. And French Joseph went to his son's bedroom and he stood by his son's body for 15 minutes in silence and a vigil for a brother officer as per the army regulations. Always the way with him. And then he said to his aides, well, we have two priorities now. Number one, my son must have a Catholic burial. The Habsburgs have Catholic burials, Catholic funerals, even though he is both a murderer and a suicide.

56:26And then secondly, he said, all mention of this girl must be suppressed. Her presence at the scene, her body, even her name must be deleted from the public record. Now, what made this difficult is that the Habsburgs themselves have told the Vetsera family what happened to Mary. Sisi herself broke the news to Mary's mother. Now, at the time, the imperial staff said to Mary's mother, Baroness Elen Vetsera, they said, you have to get out of Vienna. The press will be hounding you. There'll be crowds baying for your blood. People will blame your daughter for this and you have to get out. And she got on a train to Italy, but then she changed her mind halfway and she came back to the city and she found that the city police had cordoned off her townhouse her mansion because the crowds outside she was in a terrible state she wanted to go into the house and eventually the Austrian prime minister count taffer turned up he was very i think we described in the last episode he's very suave kind of top hat cigar and he sort of said my dear my dear lady what a terrible business this is for you i really do think you should get out of the city and you should keep a very low profile it's now clear by the way that this was a genuine suicide pact because mary's mother is now given a letter by mary forgive me for what i've done i could not resist love in agreement with him i wish to be buried by his side of the alland churchyard it's actually a slightly different place from the highly concreed sabby but there you go i'm happier in death than i was in life i mean imagine what that must be like for a mother to read from her daughter.

58:04Of course, there is a big issue here for the families now. If Mary and Rudolf are suicides, they cannot be buried in consecrated ground. The emperor, however, gets in touch with Heiligenkreutz Abbey and his staff do anyway, and they say, basically, we want you to find room for Mary Vetsera's body. No questions asked, you must find her a plot and that same day thursday the 31st of january two of her uncles the baltazzi brothers went to myling they identified her body a doctor washed the blood off her body and they dressed it in coat and hats in a sort of veil a boa shoes you remember she's very fashionable and then an absolutely bizarre scene mary's uncles propped her up and walked her out of the hunting lodge as if she was alive and put her in the carriage and sat either side of her.

58:59Dominic Sandbrook:So if anybody's seen the film Weekend at Bernie's, that's what this is. And they even stuck a broomstick up the back of her dress so that it would keep her upright.

59:09Tom Holland:Because there are all kinds of stories where Sherlock Holmes turns up and solves the case, aren't there? I don't think he'd have been fooled by that. No, he wouldn't. I mean, this is so Sherlock Holmes, isn't it?

59:19Dominic Sandbrook:It's sort of scandal in Bohemia. Yeah. You know, all of that. so the carriage rolled through the night to Heiligenkreutz Abbey which is about three miles away there are loads of police waiting and only the next morning when the rain stopped a little bit they buried Mary and then the police sent a coded telegram to Vienna just with the all finished and that was the end in every way of Mary Wetzera there was one mention of her in an illustrated paper published in Graz, which said, quite erroneously, Mary Vetsera died in Venice and has been buried in Bohemia. But otherwise, to quote Frederick Morton, her name never appeared again in any book, magazine or newspaper published in Austria-Hungary.

1:00:06No printed mention was ever made of her death or even her life. It was as though nobody remembered that she had walked the earth.

1:00:13Tom Holland:so that is a contrast with diana in the 90s yeah because nobody was going to leave the details of that alone and in fact they came up with all kinds of linked conspiracies to explain it but i'm wondering what about the foreign press well come on to that just a sec but you're absolutely right of course the foreign press does print it and a problem for the austro-hungarian monarchy is there's an extremely large country to their north that prints everything in german so people can read it and it's very easy for people to travel between germany and austria hungary with german newspapers so they're fooling nobody i mean people everybody knows about it you know they don't fool anybody meanwhile what about crown prince rudolph well they held an autopsy the same day the 31st and the autopsy concluded that on studying rudolph's brain it was clear he was suffering from abnormal mental conditions and was in a state of mental confusion and the catholic church said, oh, well, in that case, he's not really a suicide, is he?

1:01:15Or even a murderer. He was a poor fellow. What a terrible shame. He can be buried on the Capuchin crypt in Vienna alongside his ancestors. And this apparently was quite common. Vienna coroners or whatever were well known for fudging reports on suicides to allow people to be buried according to the the rights of the church.

1:01:38Tom Holland:I think, though, it's very unusual for a case that is this high profile. So the papal nuncio in Vienna. Yeah. And he says it's probably the first time that a papal nuncio had ever been obliged to attend the funeral of a murderer and a suicide. Yeah, that's right. So he's not happy about it at all. And the papal nuncio actually then went to the hunting lodge and asked a load of questions, kept kind of looking into it. So he could team up with Bratfish. Exactly. Set up an agency if the papal nuns hearing doesn't work out. Brilliant. So anyway, Rudolf lies in state for three days, various places in the Hofburg.

1:02:16And finally, in the Hofburg Chapel, the Hofburg Capella. And there was a huge public crush. All thousands upon thousands of people, especially women, dressed in black. So many that people were injured or fainted in the crowd. Ambulances had to be called. And it ended with thousands of people being turned away. And then the funeral took place on Tuesday, the 5th of February in the Capuchin Church in the Capuchin Crypt, which you can visit. I mean, you can see Crown Prince Rudolf's tomb. I went to see it last summer. Of course, this is not the last, you know, very high profile funeral there's going to be in Vienna.

1:02:54And not for the last time. Franz Josef specifically asks foreign dignitaries not to come.

1:02:59Dominic Sandbrook:And in a preview of what will happen in 1914, the worst person, the last person that you would ever want at a somber family occasion the kaiser says no no i'm coming anyway and franz joseph has to send him a special message you may judge how deeply crushed my family is if we have to address this request even to you even to you even to you if you'd suffered a terrible tragedy and then kaiser wilhelm ii announced that he was going to turn up i mean that would be the That would be the worst. So the funeral was another incredibly sort of Viennese occasion. The ritual would be that the chamberlain would knock on the door of the Capuchin crypt.

1:03:43And the voice would say, who is it? And he'd say, his most serene imperial and royal highness, the Archduke crown, Prince Rudolf of Habsburg. And the voice would say, we know him not. And they'd repeat this. And then eventually, when the voice said, who is there? The chamberlain would say, your brother Rudolf, a poor sinner. and then at last they would open the door and let him in. And then right at the end, very memorable moment when they carried the body down to the crypt, Franz Joseph the Emperor, that's the one moment in public, one of the only moments in his entire life, probably the only moment, when he lost control of his public dignity and he burst out crying and he broke down and he was kissing the casket and sobbing.

1:04:25The one moment when you see the man, You know, the grieving father behind the facade of the sort of the imperial walrus. Yeah. So if we widen the picture out a bit, at one level, it's only a royal scandal. But the great sort of Austrian music critic, the most forbidding critic in Vienna of the day was a guy called Edouard Hanslick. And he wrote afterwards, he said, I've lived through the saddest catastrophes in Vienna. I've lived through revolutions, the loss of land, murderous devastations by flood and fire. but nothing of all this is comparable to the horror of January the 30th. The disconsolate, desperate turbulence which ripped through the entire population is indescribable.

1:05:06And we know from, I mean, you mentioned Diana a few times,

1:05:09Dominic Sandbrook:how these sort of personal tragedies can often cut through with the great mass of the population in a way that geopolitical things don't.

1:05:19Tom Holland:Yeah. I mean, you said that Diana's world wasn't gothic, it was Hello magazine and everything. And so it seemed expressive of a kind of age of celebrity that was running out of control. But presumably in the Viennese context, there are all kinds of cultural swirls that find echoes in this case. And also there is the sense that the crown prince is gone. The emperor doesn't have another direct male heir, and it must have symbolized for people at the time in the empire an anxiety that indeed the storm clouds are gathering don't you think yes i think exactly both those things i think first of all it's a huge shock for the dynasty because as you say he doesn't have another son so they're going to have to search elsewhere in the family tree for an heir of course the man that they um find turns out to be a great friend of the rest is history but a slightly ill-fated figure in his own right although the bird population of central europe might not agree and i think you're dead right the cultural atmosphere of van der schieck of vienna the sense of neurosis the sense of introspection of of cultural anxiety also cultural excitement of course um this seems reflective of that world and also the german speaking world more generally because wagner is i mean he you know the libra stod the idea of of love and death yeah and and two lovers who are united in death yeah tristan is older yeah exactly i mean it's it's probably the most celebrated work of music that has been produced in the late 19th century and and we you know we've seen how how much a part it is of the kind of cultural furniture of people of this age it must just be overwhelming completely and precisely because it's so overwhelming that's why you get the conspiracy theorists so we talked about this with the kennedy assassination with lots of things what appears to be a freak event if it's seen by the public as cataclysmic and of seismic importance people will often refuse to accept they don't like chance luck you know uh personal quirks in history great events must have great causes and so people look for conspiracy theories that are related to the political anxieties of the day so people say i mean first of all there are the sort of more harm drum conspiracy theories mary murdered rudolph uh or her relatives murdered rudolph perhaps because they found out he'd given her gonorrhea and they wanted to punish him for it what about stephanie yeah there are theories that grand princess stephanie did it because she was jealous of course uh the freemasons the jesuits the jews bismarck did it not the kaiser the kaiser no there are theories that the Kaiser did it.

1:08:09But the most common, and this obviously reflects the political atmosphere of the day, that, I mean, this is such a weird theory. He either killed himself or was murdered because he was about to be exposed as having plotted to seize the throne of Hungary from his father and break away from his father and set up a secessionist Hungarian kingdom.

1:08:34Tom Holland:Well, I guess that's expressive of what is clearly a deep sense of tension between father and son. But also between the two halves of the empire. Yeah. And the emperor is obsessing about this even on the day of his son's suicide. Right. Isn't there a theory that was proposed by Emperor Zeta, who was the last empress, that it was the French and that it had been organized by Clemenceau, which I think is generally not regarded as plausible? Why did Clemenceau do it? Remind me why Clemenceau wanted to kill Grand Prince Rudolph? Well, he wasn't even in Parliament at this time. I think she made it up, but she lived to a ripe old age.

1:09:14Tom Holland:I think she died in the 70s or something. She did, yeah. Maybe in the 80s. And she kept repeating this. I have to admit, I showed Herculean self-control by not falling down lots of rabbit holes online. Because there's so much stuff online about this by people. Because people love Cece and they love Grand Prince Rudolph. So if you go to the Capuchin crypt, they have tombs of all the Habsburgs.

1:09:34Dominic Sandbrook:And some of these are like massive figures. I don't know, Maria Theresa or something. But Crown Prince Rudolf's tomb has more flowers, has a lot of flowers. You know, given that he never wielded power, and actually, in the grand scheme of things, you could argue was not a terribly consequential person. But there's clearly something about his story that speaks to people, even today in the 21st century. It's kind of Kurt Cobain of Austria-Hungary. I mean, to talk about the political meaning of it, any historian writing about the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Habsburgs gives this a lot of welly, understandably.

1:10:07And they see it as symptomatic of this wider loss of confidence of the imperial project. It's the Titanic. Yeah. But as with the Titanic, I think a lot of this is massively overblown. So we know why Mary and Rudolf killed themselves. I mean, he's morbid.

1:10:24Dominic Sandbrook:He's got gonorrhea. Today, he would be diagnosed as having mental health issues of a very serious kind.

1:10:30Tom Holland:That does speak of something that is genuine, which is the way in which to be born into the Habsburg dynasty is to feel trapped, is to feel a prisoner. We have all these counts of both men and women almost sewing themselves into their uniforms and their clothing. So, you know, Franz Ferdinand, when he gets shot, it takes time for them to realize that the blood is welling out. We're going to hear something similar about Sisi in due course, I think. That monarchy is a kind of trap for those who find themselves enclosed within it. Very 21st century theme, right? And people often say that's about the House of Windsor, don't they?

1:11:09Tom Holland:Yeah, but the difference with the House of Windsor is that they can kind of make radio programs about it and kind of have features in newspapers talking about bad mental health. Whereas Rudolf couldn't. And the idea of any of these people really having a kind of interior emotional life is verboten. Yeah. Interesting that nobody had done this before him, though, no? What does that tell you?

1:11:31Dominic Sandbrook:Something changed in the second half of the 19th century that made this possible. I mean, it's hard to imagine a 14th century prince. No, and it's changing nowhere more than in Vienna.

1:11:43Tom Holland:Yeah, exactly. Vienna is where all these ideas of repression and neurosis and psychosis and everything are being defined at this very moment. Maybe a particular kind of introspection and a sense of yourself. I don't know. He's vibe-lording, I believe is the phrase. It's vibe-lording. Is that the phrase? Gen Z joins us on the podcast. Brilliant. So what happened next? Franz Joseph, I mean, this is very Freudian, and Frederick Morton makes this point in his book. He wants to erase every trace, every memory of this incident. And the way he does it is by literally erasing the place. So the hunting lodge at Myerling, every trace of it is expunged from the earth.

1:12:29It's completely pulled down, and it is replaced with a Carmelite convent, which stands to this day. and the nuns of the convent are enjoined to offer daily prayers for the salvation of the late crown prince. He needs all the prayers he can get. He does. So the most likely heir to Franz Josef now is his younger brother, Karl Ludwig, who is in his late 50s. But Karl Ludwig's not in brilliant health, and in the late 1890s, in 1896, he went on a sort of pilgrimage to Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, and he decided to drink some water from the River Jordan.

1:13:08Dominic Sandbrook:He basically drank dirty water polluted with sewage. So do we get his dysentery returned to the show? Dysentery returned to the show and carried off Karl Ludwig and the heir became his son, Rudolf's protégé, Franz Ferdinand. So a great friend of the rest is history, but we know what became of him. And actually, this brings us to the wider issue of tragedy in the Habsburgs. So you've already alluded to this. In the decade after Rudolf's death, his mother Cece cut an ever more, ever lonelier, more melancholy figure. So she basically, she's dressed always in black in mourning for her son. She drifts around the Mediterranean.

1:13:51She's thinner than ever. She looks very sad, you know, solitary. and in autumn of 1898 she was staying at Lake Geneva and Franz Josef, her husband, was still writing to her all the time from Vienna and he would write these very sweet letters. The end of one letter he signs off. He says, sort of, farewell, my most beautiful, my best and sweetest angel. But the sad thing is she never got to read this particular letter because while it was en route, on the 10th of September 1898 she was boarding the steamer to Montreux on Lake Geneva. She just had one lady in waiting with her. And she was standing amid the crush of people when suddenly she collapsed.

1:14:31And no one could work out why she collapsed at first. As you said, she's very tightly sewn into her corset. And when finally they worked out what happened, they realized that she had been stabbed through the heart with a sharpened stiletto, a kind of improvised stiletto by an Italian anarchist called Luigi Lucchini. and he had traveled to Geneva to kill a royal because it was a favorite royal hangout. And he said afterwards he didn't care which one he killed as long as he killed one. And Sisi was the person that he killed. And when the news got back to Vienna, Franz Joseph, apparently when he heard the news, he sobbed uncontrollably.

1:15:11And then he said to one of his aides, So I am to be spared nothing in this world. Nobody knows the love we had for each other. which is a sort of bitterly ironic thing for him to say yeah so this for him was the crowning blow he still had his actress katerina schratz though their relationship had actually cooled by this point um he's very lonely he writes to katerina schratz at one point i feel endlessly sad in my hopeless loneliness his son has killed himself his wife has been murdered he's effectively on his own and he lives for another 18 years after his wife's death. It seems incredibly old at this point.

1:15:50He actually looks older than he is. So he turned 70 in 1900, but at this point he looked about 150. And people talked about him as a relic at this point. They would call him the last knight or the old gentleman or something. And he remains enormously popular, Franz Joseph, a great rallying point for his empire. And his suffering actually worked quite well as a political asset But because the papers would call him the man of sorrows, sort of a man who has lost everything, wife, son, you know, all the light has gone from his life. And yet still he dedicates himself every day, gets up at four o 'clock in the morning, his red boxes to the peoples of his empire.

1:16:31But I suppose another way of looking at it is precisely because he is such a relic. He seems like the embodiment of an antiquated institutional conservatism, an empire that seems utterly beleaguered by the modern world. and an empire that feels itself to be so embattled. And of course, that's the context in which his heir, who he doesn't get on with at all now, Franz Ferdinand, goes off to Bosnia to see some army manoeuvres in 1914. And Tom, we all know how that story was to end. We do.

1:17:01Tom Holland:Well, thank you, Dominic. A Gothic chiller, an amazing story. And we have a bonus out this week on the nephew of one of the characters in this series, and that is Baron Knopcia, Cece's Chamberlain. His nephew is also Franz Baron Knopcia, and he is one of the most remarkable figures in the entire history of paleontology. I see Dominic's face light up at the mention of that word. So, Nopcha Jr., absolutely titanic figure in the history of the study of dinosaurs. But he also hung out with bandits in Albania, became a spy in the First World War, is in the Guinness Book of Records as the first man to have hijacked a plane.

1:17:53Tom Holland:And his end has some striking. And actually, I wonder if they're entirely coincidental echoes of the Myling incident. So if you're already a member of the Rest is History Club, you already have had that. If you're not, then you can sign up at therestishistory.com. That sounds amazing. And the good news doesn't stop there. Because, Dominic, we're also doing a live show, aren't we, about the ultimate Victorian adventure, which is the Abyssinian expedition of 1868, all kicked off when the Abyssinian Emperor wrote letters to Queen Victoria and she neglected to reply and he got in a massive strop and chaos ensued.

1:18:34Tom Holland:And actually, I think that ends with him, with the Abyssinian Emperor killing himself. So a bit of a theme developing there. Yeah, it's absolutely an amazing story. It's one of the most lurid, implausible and entertaining of all 19th century imperial adventures. So I'm really looking forward to the show. It's very Flashman, isn't it?

1:18:51Dominic Sandbrook:There's a Flashman book about it, Flashman on the March.

1:18:53Tom Holland:yeah it's it's the ideal flashman story if you like flashman and even if you don't it's still brilliant anyway that is at the south bank in london on friday the 4th of september and you can get tickets once again at the rest is history.com i think you should just bookmark rest history.com and buy everything it's got to offer and dominic i have even more exciting news because we are running a summer sale and so for a limited time if you want to sign up to the rest history club listen about the dinosaurs and a host of other supplementary benefits then you will get an extra 20 off an annual membership using the code summer 26 and this is only valid until the 31st of august so hurry hurry hurry while stocks last so that is the miling incident next week we begin a six part series on another royal but this is a royal who uh lives to a ripe old age and does heroic things all her reign and it is elizabeth the first and we will be looking at the road that takes elizabeth first to the fateful decision to execute mary queen of scots and thereby inspire the launching of the Spanish Armada against her.

1:20:10Tom Holland:Francis Drake's in it, isn't he? Francis Drake is in it. Sir Philip Sidney. Sir Philip Sidney's in it. Edward Campion, the Jesuit, is in it. Lord Cecil is in it. It's just non-stop Elizabethan action. Brilliant. So if you love a Tudor, you're going to love this series. We will see you then. Bye-bye. Auf Wiedersehen.

1:20:34you