THE QUEEN WAS ASSASSINATED

Káli-Rozmis Barbara  2015.08.20. 19:26

THE QUEEN WAS ASSASSINATED

 

10 September 1898 

I am standing in front of the Hotel Beau-Rivage in Geneva, not far from the place where Empress Elisabeth of Austria and Queen of Hungary was assassinated a few hours ago. The news spread like wildfire on the streets of the Swiss town. Hundreds of people are in front of the hotel, and the number of the crowd has been growing. Their faces reflect anxiety, fear and shock as they are gathering to express solidarity and sympathy with the woman who has just been murdered and her family and country. Everything is silent.

 

The tragedy happened a few minutes after half past one p.m., shortly before Queen Elisabeth came out of the gates of the Hotel Beau-Rivage accompanied by her Hungarian maid of honour, Countess Irma Sztáray. The two ladies were heading towards the Mont Blanc Quay to catch the Paddle steamer Genève which was due to departure at twenty to two. In accordance with the Queen’s request, the staff had already left the hotel in the morning and travelled by train to Montreux, where her Majesty and her maid intended to go by the steamship.

 

According to the Queen’s maid of honour, Irma Sztáray, they were only a hundred metre far from the harbour, when an unknown man was walking towards them quickly. They moved aside, but then the man raised his right fist and measured a powerful punch to the Queen’s chest. Elisabeth collapsed due to the shock hitting her head against the pavement, but her tightly braided hair soothed the drop. The passers-by helped her up without getting to know her identity. The flushed lady reassured everyone that she was fine, and hurried up towards the ship accompanied by her maid of honour.

 

The Queen was convinced that the man only wanted to rob her watch, and was unaware of the stub. She fainted only on the board a few minutes after the departure. The passengers claimed that there was oppressive heat in the cabins that was why Elisabeth was taken to the deck, where she was laid onto a bench. She revived for a few minutes and asked her maid in Hungarian what had happened, and then she fainted again. She did not regain her consciousness anymore.

 

Irma Sztáray untied the Queen’s corset in the presence of a nurse to help her breath. It was only then she saw a small triangular scar and dried blood drops over the left breast. So far she had believed that her mistress had lost her consciousness due to being scared. Now it became obvious to her that the Queen was assassinated. When she told the captain that the unconscious lady is the Empress of Austria, the boat was immediately turned back towards the harbour. On arrival the wounded Queen was taken back to the Hotel Beau Rivage.

 

According to the medical opinion Elisabeth could walk towards and board the ship on her own feet because the bleeding of the narrow opened wound did not start immediately and the blood was seeping slowly through the pericardium, so she was unaware of the stab. This was also the reason for the slowly stopped cardiac. The Queen fell into a coma a few minutes to two o’clock and she passed away at twenty to three. She did not suffer much.

 

The 25-year-old Italian attacker, Luigi Lucheni, who was informed by the morning paper that the Empress of Austria was staying in the city pseudonym, fled down the Alps Street, where an electrician worker, Luis Chammartin caught him. Gendarmes took the attacker to the Paquis Police Station. He is interrogated at this very moment.

 

Luigi Lucheni confessed immediately. No news has arrived about his reasons for the murder yet, but the witnesses said the young man was very pleased when he was marched off. The murder weapon, an ordinary sharpened rasp, has also been found. The 10 cm long object was probably dropped by the attacker during the getaway in the Alps Street. The assassinated Queen was 61 years old.

 

 

She died as she wished: far from all she loved, quickly, without suffering. She foretold her death in advance when saying that her soul would leave through a little gap of her heart.

 

 

The photo was taken by a paparazzi the day before her death. Sisi had not allowed to have a photo taken or a picture painted of her since her early thirties that is why there are only a few pictures of her, where her face is not visible. She hid her face behind her fan or her parasol whenever she met strangers or noticed that a paparazzi want to capture her by his camera. All the paintings or photos of the older Elisabeth are fake, which were made by making her look older.

 

Luigi Lucheni after serving 12 years in prison was found hanged in his cell by his belt on 19 October 1910, an apparent suicide. He said in prison: 

 

 

“I am an anarchist by conviction... I came to Geneva to kill a sovereign, with object of giving an example to those who suffer and those who do nothing to improve their social position; it did not matter to me who the sovereign was whom I should kill...It was not a woman I struck, but an Empress; it was a crown that I had in view.” /Luigi Lucheni/

 

/De Burgh, Edward Morgan Alborough, Elizabeth, empress of Austria: a memoir, J.B. Lippencott Co., 1899, p.326-7/

 

Index:

Niederhauser Emil: Merénylet Erzsébet királyné ellen

Brigitte Hamann: Erzsébet királyné

 

EMPRESS ELISABETH ON FACEBOOK:

See more photos, PLEASE, CLICK:

https://www.facebook.com/azigazisisi

 

 

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