Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe

by Simon Winder

Enormous stretches of time, when there was no piquet and no fighting, were spent hunting. The Habsburgs were enthusiastic about some odd forms – the annual use of falcons at Schloss Laxenburg to kill herons is perhaps the oddest. Herons in flight always have an air of a spindly, poorly constructed balsawood model covered in feathers and it seems an at best tepid achievement to bring them down with a sinister, compact fist-of-fury sort of bird like a falcon. It is hard too to see the pleasure in having beaters chase dozens of deer into pools of deep water and then take them out with crossbows, or in tossing foxes in blankets before clubbing them to death (Leopold I used to enjoy this particularly, aided by his game-for-a-laugh dwarfs). Presumably these forms of the hunt were meant to show aristocratic mastery over the largest forms of life, but also not risk the Emperor with personal embarrassment. So the heron is the largest bird, but if shot in a normal way with a gun would presumably go all over the place like some exploding spindly chair and the Emperor’s hunt would appear mean rather than masterful; a proper, uncontrolled deer-hunt is simply far too dangerous and is in any event not something that can be watched by spectators, so the deer need to be brought to the Emperor; foxes are too nimble to kill in an honourable way so they need to be stunned and rolled up in a blanket. So the Emperor was obliged in everything he did to take actions which appeared masterful and y...