All language subtitles for BBC Vienna Empire Dynasty And Dream 2

For two centuries, Vienna was
the frontier between East and West.

It was the capital of the Habsburgs,

Archdukes of Austria
and Holy Roman Emperors.

They were the
champions of Catholicism,

the guardians of
European Christendom

against Islamic conquest.

In 1683, catastrophe had
loomed when the Ottoman Turks

laid siege to Vienna.

With the city in peril,
a pan-European army

rushed to the rescue,

unleashing the largest
cavalry charge in history.

The city was saved.

In the camp
of the defeated Ottomans,

they found a
treasure trove of spoils.

They found gold and diamonds,
they found ostriches and camels.

And they found
300 abandoned cannons.

And with those cannons
melted down they built this,

the Pummerin, the Boomer.

The victory ushered in a new age.

Power and prestige were given
visceral and visual form,

recast into art,
music and architecture.

The bell was so big

it almost destroyed the Tower
of St Stephen's Cathedral,

where it still hangs.

But when the Viennese

heard it ring, heard it boom,
they heard the sound of victory.

PUMMERIN RINGS

This is the story
of Vienna triumphant.

The house of Habsburg
in its golden age.

The emperors now
surged east and west,

dreaming of European supremacy.

Wealth and power awoke Vienna,
artists projected Habsburg majesty.

The fortress city
became a cosmopolitan capital.

Vienna was reborn a city
of palaces, peoples and ideas.

A beacon of the arts,
a capital of music,

and a laboratory of enlightened
and despotic ideologies.

I'll see how Vienna would inspire
the incandescent genius of Mozart,

survive the depredations
of Napoleon Bonaparte,

and become the cultural and
diplomatic capital of the world.

Vienna, Imperial City, dynastic
city, city of art and music.

City of ideas. This is the crucible
and the crossroads of the great

struggles of history.

Protestantism versus Catholicism,
Islam versus Christendom,

democracy and tolerance versus
nationalism and intolerance.

This is the story of the city where
the modern world was invented,

and poisoned.

Vienna. The capital of
annihilation and civilisation.

The victory over the Ottoman Turks
left Vienna euphoric.

The reigning Habsburg
Holy Roman Emperor was Leopold I,

and he now vowed to
transform his capital

into the world's greatest city.

For Vienna and for the house of
Habsburg, it was a new beginning,

a new era.

The empire was striking back.

Emperor Leopold offered fame
and fortune to the knights

who'd saved Vienna.

One of them was an unlikely
Viennese hero, adopted by the city,

but who achieved such glory

that he would build the city's
most magnificent palaces.

He would outshine three emperors,

become the greatest
Habsburg warlord in history,

and make Vienna the capital
of a European superpower.

This was Eugene, Prince of Savoy.

His story became
inseparable from Vienna,

but he arrived as a
penniless refugee from France

when the city was
under Ottoman siege.

Prince Eugene grew up at the
Court of Louis XIV, the Sun King,

sworn enemy of the
house of Habsburg.

His mother, an ex-mistress
of the King himself,

was a promiscuous intriguer
who is ultimately implicated in

The Case Of The Poisons and
had to flee Paris in disgrace.

Escaping execution
for the murder plot,

his mother was vilified by
Louis XIV, who ridiculed Eugene

for his looks, his homosexuality,
and his diminutive stature.

He wanted to be a soldier.

"No," said Louis XIV,

"you're only good enough to be
a little vicar in the church."

But Eugene defied the Sun King.

He ran away to Austria.

He offered his service,
his life, his very blood,

to the house of Austria,
and Leopold accepted.

He then joined the army that was
rushing to relieve besieged Vienna.

And outside these
gates he made his name

in the battle that saved the city.

Eugene joined
Emperor Leopold's counteroffensive,

he became a commander,
renowned for ruthless discipline

and brilliant ingenuity.

During the campaigns against
the Ottomans he rose to fame,

becoming the hero of Vienna.

At 22, he was a Major General.

At 24, he helped
take Hungary and Budapest.

At 29, he was a Field Marshal,

and such was his success and his
share of the spoils of the Ottomans,

that he was able to build this,
the Winter Palace,

his residence right
in the centre of Vienna.

Eugene's Palace shows off the
baroque taste for symbolism,

muscle-ripped statues
project his power and virility.

In 1697, Eugene, aged 33,

was given command of
the Imperial Army.

He would face his greatest test.

In the 14 years since
the Ottomans had been repelled

from the walls of Vienna, Leopold
had seized vast swathes of land.

Now, the Turkish sultans desperately
needed to stem their losses and

launched a final, brutal,
all-or-nothing assault.

100,000 men marched on Vienna.

Eugene had been ordered by Emperor
Leopold to go on the defensive,

but he defied those orders.

When he heard that the Ottoman army
was crossing the river Tisa

in strength, he force-marched
his army to the place

and then fell upon them,
taking them completely by surprise.

And as you can see
from this painting,

he annihilated the Ottoman troops.

They are being slaughtered
as they ran into the river.

Defeat at Zenta
forever ended the Ottoman hopes

of holding back
the Viennese advance.

Eugene had almost single-handedly

made the Austrian Habsburgs
a great European power,

and to make his success palpable,
he turned his victories into art.

He became Vienna's greatest patron,
its greatest connoisseur.

Habsburg expansion
seemed unstoppable.

It even harked back to the glories
of the 16th century

when Emperor Charles V had ruled
over a vast Habsburg empire

stretching from the
Americas to the Balkans.

Vienna thrived on the
trade between East and West.

But to maintain
this overstretched empire,

Charles V had divided his lands
between two branches of the family.

One ruled Austria, one ruled Spain.

For decades, the two branches of the
Habsburg family had intermarried.

Nieces married uncles,
first cousins married each other.

The idea was to keep
the sprawling Habsburg lands

within the same family.

But it was ironic
that the very policy

that was meant to strengthen
the house of Habsburg

actually destroyed
the Spanish branch.

The last Spanish Habsburg
was King Charles II.

He was the gruesome living
aberration of what was, in effect,

generations of royal incest.

He struggled to walk,
to talk, and he was infertile.

With no heir, he lay dying in 1700.

And in Vienna, Emperor Leopold
wanted his own younger son,

Charles of Austria,
to succeed in Spain.

But he had a rival.

There were two candidates
for the Spanish throne.

One was Charles of Austria,

and the other was the
grandson of Louis XIV,

the French candidate.

But when Charles II died,
he left Spain to the French.

The outraged Austrian Habsburgs
denounced the will as fake

and in 1701, declared war.

Emperor Leopold faced the superpower
of the early 18th century.

France fought the Austrians back.

There was a very real danger
that Europe would find itself

under the domination
of Louis XIV and France.

Only the alliance of Austria
and Britain would stop him.

The French had the
biggest and best armies,

but the Austrians had Prince Eugene.

Now, a French army marched south
to attack and capture Vienna -

the capital was in peril.

Eugene's armies
marched to protect Vienna,

but he was vastly outnumbered.

He needed reinforcements, and
fortunately, the British commander,

the brilliant Duke of Marlborough,
came to the rescue.

Marlborough was every
inch Eugene's equal,

and a like-minded disciplinarian
and superb strategist.

He outmanoeuvred the French and
marched unopposed across Europe.

John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough,
came to his aid.

When the two rendezvoused
near the village of Blenheim,

it inaugurated one of
the great partnerships

in all of military history.

Eugene and Marlborough
instantly became friends.

"I really love Prince Eugene,"
Marlborough told his wife.

And when the battle came the next
day, the Battle of Blenheim,

they routed the French

and forever shattered the
invincibility of the Sun King.

When Leopold died in 1705,
the war over Spain was unresolved.

His oldest son, Joseph,
inherited Austria,

and Eugene's victory at Blenheim
now meant his younger son, Charles,

could march towards Madrid.

Charles was a dim
and unimpressive leader,

but he was determined
to rule Spain as king.

But when his brother,
Joseph I, died unexpectedly,

he was recalled to Vienna
to be Holy Roman Emperor.

Now that France had been humbled,

the British were afraid
that Spain and Austria

would be united under
one Habsburg emperor.

And so they betrayed
the Austrians and made peace.

Poor Charles had to give up
forever his Spanish dream.

When Charles realised he
was never going back to Spain,

he decided to
recreate Spain in Vienna.

He imported Spanish dress,
Spanish court rituals, and this,

his pride and joy,
the Spanish Riding School.

And I'm sitting right
in Charles' Imperial Box.

Charles finally agreed peace.

He exchanged his claim to the
Spanish throne for parts of Italy

and the Low Countries.

At last, Vienna
could take centre stage

as the sole Habsburg capital
of a much-expanded empire

enjoying an economic boom.

Now a multinational empire
of Hungarians, Italians,

Bohemians and Austrians,

the monarchy and the nobility
celebrated their prestige

and Vienna's status

as THE imperial city by building
palaces, churches, and monuments.

Every aristocrat
worthy of their name

had to build a palace in Vienna.

400 new summer residences were
constructed in the next 50 years.

'But of all those palaces,
none rivalled Eugene's.'

This is the Belvedere Palace.

One of the glories
of 18th-century Vienna.

Everything here is designed
to project, to trumpet,

the victories of Eugene
over his two great enemies.

On one hand, the Ottoman sultans,

and on the other hand,
Louis XIV of France,

the Sun King, who had humiliated
and disdained him as a young man.

Eugene's Summer Palace projects
his victories and his personality.

The roofs resemble
conquered Ottoman tents,

the gardens are meant to
outdo the glory of Versailles.

Inside, his ceilings show
him as the god Apollo,

the symbol of artistic patronage.

Signs and spoils of his
victories are everywhere.

Still concealed in a small room
of Eugene's Palace is a statue

that reveals the great general's
confidence in his own grandeur.

Rather than use symbolism,

he commissioned his own
image as supreme warlord.

He is clothed in the
lion pelt of Hercules,

he stamps down on a defeated Turk.

The symbol for eternal
legacy shines upon him.

This statue couldn't be
exhibited during his lifetime -

only emperors could
enjoy that sort of adulation.

Eugene had been military commander,
and effectively chief minister,

of the Habsburg
monarchy for 30 years,

and was now serving
his third emperor.

But Charles VI was jealous
of his famous paladin,

and secretly undermined him.

He sent Eugene on foolish campaigns
that bankrupted the Treasury.

He was still fighting into his 70s.

When Eugene returned
exhausted to Vienna,

he caught pneumonia and died.

His achievements had
driven the imperial family

to the zenith of their power.

Now the future of the dynasty,
and the city of Vienna,

would be defined by holding
together this vast empire.

Charles VI was haunted
by the loss of Spain.

He stamped the Habsburg's God-given
right to rule on his city, Vienna,

using the sensuous magnificence
of baroque architecture.

Vienna rang to the majestic
compositions of his court composers.

This was truly a city
of art, music and masses.

Yet all this was worthless if
Charles could not produce an heir.

I'm in the sumptuous library
of the Emperor Charles VI,

in the Hofburg Palace,

and this was the Habsburg monarch

whose life was dominated
by his quest and need

for a male heir.

He chose his wife for her beauty,
fecundity and health.

Elizabeth of Brunswick was her name.

She dazzled everyone
with her gorgeousness.

But, as children came,
the male ones died.

And only the daughters survived.

Charles was desperate.

First of all, he painted their
apartments with erotic paintings

of nubile girls and boys,
then he consulted his quack doctors.

First they proposed alcohol.

She was given more and more booze
until she was an alcoholic,

then they proposed food.

She was almost force-fed
until she became obesely fat.

But still, the result
was the same - no male heir,

just the two daughters.

Charles's only option was to
declare his daughter the heir.

There'd never been
a female archduchess,

'and Charles knew his nobility
and the kings of Europe

'may not accept his choice.'

He desperately tried
to get their agreement,

and created a series of new laws
known as the Pragmatic Sanction.

It was only half complete when,
in 1740, he went hunting,

gorged on mushrooms and died.

He was succeeded by his daughter,
Maria Theresa, aged just 23.

Austria's nobles knew her only
as a card-playing, dancing,

and rather beautiful young woman.

She was completely unprepared
for the appalling crisis

that would befall her monarchy,
her empire and herself.

But what no-one knew
was that she had a will of steel.

Her reign would dazzle Vienna.

Maria Theresa's first duty
was in the Imperial Crypt.

This is where Maria Theresa came
to bury her father, Charles VI.

It's the Kaisergruft, the imperial
crypt of the Habsburg dynasty.

And on his sarcophagus here,
right behind me,

you can see among all its elaborate
decoration, his various crowns,

as the Archduchy of Austria,
the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary,

and the Holy Roman Empire.

These were the crowns
she would have to fight for.

If she was to succeed,
this is what she had to keep.

Maria Theresa
faced an uphill battle -

her father's mismanagement
had weakened the Empire.

Vienna was now an artistic,
palatial, imperial capital

thanks to the wealth of its empire.

But the muddled succession
offered an ideal opportunity

for rivals to seize
Austria's richest provinces.

The vultures began to mass
on the Empire's borders.

And luckily for Maria Theresa,

the first raider was the most
brilliant -

Frederick the Great,
the newly-crowned King of Prussia.

He was the military and
political genius of his age,

with a superb army
and a full treasury.

He unleashed war, capturing Maria
Theresa's richest province, Silesia.

Next into the fray came the heir
of a medieval Habsburg rival,

Charles Albert of Bavaria.

Austria's armies
were surrounded and routed

when Spain and France
also declared war.

The Bavarians marched onwards,
capturing Prague

and crowning Charles Albert
King of Bohemia.

In 1742, Charles Albert
went further.

He was elected the first
non-Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor

in three centuries.

The extinction of Maria Theresa
and the Habsburgs seemed inevitable.

Her armies were in retreat, her
geriatric advisers were in panic,

she'd lost two of
her father's crowns,

and her enemies were
preparing to march on Vienna.

The story of what happens next

is preserved in a
series of paintings

in Vienna's Hungarian embassy.

She rushed to Hungary
and there she showed herself

not only the wilful politician,

but also the consummate actress.

Wearing mourning
black for her father,

she charmed the Hungarian nobles.

She appealed to them, she said,
"My son, my baby son,"

who she showed them,
the future Joseph II,

"My son, the monarchy, the crown

"and the Kingdom of Hungary
itself are in peril. Help me."

And they did.

The Hungarians enthusiastically
crowned Maria Theresa

queen of Hungary.

But what she really
needed was the troops.

And they provided that too.

There's her army.
She'd save the monarchy.

Funded by a war chest from
the old ally, Great Britain,

Maria Theresa turned
the tide of the war.

Charles Albert retreated,
Frederick the Great betrayed him

and, alone, the Bavarian
fell ill and died in 1745.

She'd lost Silesia,
but she'd survived.

She made peace to secure her borders

and in return, the
apologetic German electors

crowned Maria Theresa's
husband, Francis,

as the new Holy Roman Emperor.

She regained Bohemia, she ruled
supreme in Hungary, and at last,

she was an empress too.

'This library holds a secret.

'It's the former throne room
of the Favorita Palace.'

Between these bookcases

sat the thrones of Maria Theresa
and her husband, Francis.

There was never any doubt
that she was in charge.

He was a feckless politician,
an incompetent military commander.

He was good only at
making money and chasing actresses.

She, on the other hand,
was a consummate stateswoman.

She knew exactly who to appoint,
she chose excellent courtiers,

and politicians, and generals.

The Empress Queen reformed
Austria's sprawling government.

This palace even became a
school for a new civil service,

sometimes even chosen for merit,
not high birth.

She centralised control of the army

and reorganised
the imperial finances.

She managed, within a few years,

to balance the budgets
of the Habsburg monarchy

for the first time in its history.

Seeing herself as the mother
to a reborn Habsburg Vienna,

Maria Theresa wanted rid of the
formal, rigid past of her childhood.

Now she commissioned a magnificent
new palace, the Schonbrunn.

She personally oversaw
its construction

and the fitting of
almost 1,500 rooms.

In 1746, she moved in
here with her family.

This is the great gallery
of the Schonbrunn Palace.

And as you can see, the decoration
is open, gilded, playful, humane.

No longer the Catholic
oppression of earlier decades.

And that's because we're now
in the age of the playful Rococo.

After the formal
symbolism of Baroque,

Rococo celebrated character,
joy, emotion, eroticism.

When you look up at this
painting, the centrepiece,

amidst all the territories,
principalities and duchies

of the Habsburg monarchy
is a golden carriage.

And in it is Maria Theresa

and her husband,
the Holy Roman Emperor, Francis.

Because, unusually,
this was a happy marriage.

This was a love match.

But it had a price.

Because Francis was openly
and notoriously unfaithful

with virtually every Italian singer,
courtesan, prostitute in town.

And this caused
Maria Theresa much pain.

She founded a chastity
commission to hunt down immorality.

Italian sopranos were thrown out of
the city, prostitutes were arrested,

and 3,000 of them were loaded
on to barges and sent off

to populate new towns in the east.

'Because despite her
anger, Maria Theresa knew'

they would provide
the ideal, fertile settlers.

And there you have it all over.

That's Maria Theresa,
the prim, the pious pragmatist.

A new intellectual movement
was gaining force in Vienna.

This was the age
of the Enlightenment.

Reason was replacing tradition
as the basis for authority.

This sat uncomfortably
with the Empress queen

who never forgot
her zealous childhood.

She was both modern and medieval.

On one hand she made attempts
to expel Jews and Protestants,

on the other she introduced
a form of universal education.

Above all,
Maria Theresa was practical.

Despite being conservative,
she permitted gradual reform.

There was just one thing
she couldn't let go.

Revenge.

Maria Theresa never
gave up the dream

of getting back
her province, Silesia,

stolen from her by that
amoral arch-predator of genius,

Frederick The Great of Prussia.

But in 1756, she realised
that she needed help to do so,

and that meant allying Austria
with the ancestral enemy, France.

This diplomatic revolution
so alarmed Britain

that she allied
herself with Prussia.

Russia joined Austria.

This became the Seven Years' War.

Fought across the world
from America to India,

the world's first global conflict.

In Europe, Maria Theresa's army

defeated a Prussian
invasion of Bohemia,

and to celebrate that victory,
they hastily built this monument,

the Gloriette.

Yet the ponderous Austrian, French
and Russian generals floundered.

They were no match for the
genius of Frederick the Great.

By 1763, Maria Theresa had to admit
that Silesia was lost forever.

And this grand victory monument

became something
of an embarrassment.

She used it for family picnics.

Maria Theresa had failed to restore
Austrian dominance in Europe,

but she did ensure there was
no problem with the succession.

She and Francis were
blessed with 16 children.

In her characteristic fashion,

Maria Theresa had a
practical use for them, too.

To secure the
Franco-Austrian alliance,

she arranged for her 14-year-old
daughter, Marie Antoinette,

to marry Louis, the French Dauphin.

From the very start,

the marriage of Marie Antoinette
and Louis XVI of France

was a mismatch.

She was not only young, but also
foolish, unwise and tactless.

For seven years,
the couple remained awkward,

failing to consummate the union.

Marie Antoinette's big brother,
Joseph II, hurried to Paris.

This unlikely sex therapist
interviewed both husband and wife.

And what he discovered
was that the problem

was a mixture of sexual
incompetence, youthful clumsiness,

premature ejaculation
and physical abnormality.

He advised instant
circumcision of the King.

The problem was solved.

Consummation and a large
family of children followed.

Despite matters
easing in the bedchamber,

Marie Antoinette's behaviour
continued to outrage the French.

She was seen as profligate, silly,
promiscuous, and pro-Austrian.

Maria Theresa's old age
was ruined by her worry

about her daughter
Marie Antoinette's

disastrously scandalous behaviour.

"You've thrown yourself
into a life of pleasure

"and preposterous display,"

she wrote to her.

"And going from pleasure to pleasure
without your husband

"will end in misery for you."

Soon, she was to be
proved only too right.

In 1765, Emperor Francis
fell ill and died.

Maria Theresa was devastated.

A note was found in her Bible that
recorded the exact length

of her marriage
down to the number of hours.

She fell into a pit of depression,

and to rule, first in her stead,
and then as co-regent,

her 24-year-old son, Joseph II,

was elected the new
Holy Roman Emperor.

Joseph was now the co-ruler
with his mother, Maria Theresa.

He was one of the most
extraordinary of the Habsburgs.

Personally, he was clumsy, awkward,
impossible, dogmatic, egotistical,

but he was also highly intelligent.

A believer in reason.
A man of the Enlightenment.

A radical zealot for reform.

A man of tolerance.

His relations with his mother
were fond, but extremely tense.

He pushed her towards
more expansion abroad,

like the partition of Poland,
and more reforms at home.

But his mother was still alive.
She was formidable.

He had to wait.

For the moment, he had
to get everything past his mum.

Joseph had an unyielding
belief in the power of reason.

He rejected emotion.

And that was partly due
to tragic failed romances.

In October 1760,
Maria Theresa held a wedding

and as you can see from this
painting,

she didn't do it by halves.

Her son, Joseph,

was married to the beautiful,
blonde, alabaster-skinned

Isabella of Parma.

It was a wedding that
seemed ideal for the family.

She was gorgeous, and Joseph
was wildly in love with her.

But things weren't all they seemed.

Soon after her marriage,

the 18-year-old
Isabella fell in love,

but she didn't fall in
love with her husband.

Awkwardly, she fell in love
with her husband's sister,

Archduchess Marie Christine.

It soon turned into a full-blown,
physical, lesbian love affair.

Joseph, the doting husband,

who was passionately in love
with his bride, was in denial.

After three years of marriage,

she caught smallpox
and died aged only 21.

Joseph was heartbroken.

He felt he could never love again.

But Maria Theresa persuaded
her son to marry a second time,

with the hope of
new lands and an heir.

The marriage was a disaster.

Joseph complained his
wife was hideously ugly.

And when she also died of smallpox,

he didn't even bother
to attend the funeral.

Joseph decided to remain single.

And he approached his sex life

with the same efficiency
as he approached government.

As a rationalist, he decided
love was simply absurd.

And as a Catholic he regarded
onanism as sinful self-abuse.

Instead, he visited his
gardener's daughter for sex

in the potting shed
at the same time every day.

Or he came here to the red-light
district to visit a brothel

like the one that stood right here.

Hidden in this restaurant
is this somewhat mysterious sign.

It says, "In 1778, Emperor Joseph II
flew through this archway."

Joseph, wearing disguise,
had visited this brothel.

He'd mistreated some of the girls,
been confronted and then recognised.

And such was his embarrassment,
or fear of his prudish old mother,

that he didn't just
walk out of here, he actually ran.

Joseph and Maria Theresa endured
15 troublesome years of co-rule.

Joseph's reforms
were long restricted

by his conservative mother.

He made vain threats
to resign and run away.

In 1780, Maria Theresa's
long reign came to an end.

She died in Joseph's arms.

The monarchy was now
solely Joseph's to command.

He redrew Vienna according
to his enlightened ideas

and with his
over-controlling nature,

devoted hours to each detail.

He crafted open spaces for his
subjects to meet and talk,

and one of them is the Prater Park,

where he designed every
walkway and food stand.

Joseph started his reign
with ferocious impatience

and radical zeal,

trying to change everything
in his vast Austrian monarchy

at the same time, in every place.

His own best friend,
the Prince de Ligne,

described him as a raging erection
that can never be satisfied.

His tragedy, said Ligne, was that
he governed too much,

and reigned too little.

But he really was the
revolutionary Emperor.

Under his mother's era
of gradual reform,

100 new edicts
were announced annually.

At the height of Joseph's reign,
that number rose to 700.

Joseph's openness to change
was music to the ears of artists

seeking to escape
traditional formality.

ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS

Ambitious musicians and
composers flocked to Vienna.

One of them was Mozart.

For years, he'd toured Europe
as a musical child prodigy,

encouraged and trained
by his ambitious father.

Now he was 25, and he
wanted to make it at court.

In 1781, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
arrived here at court in Vienna

celebrating the
accession of Joseph II.

He was small, slight, pale,

but with a huge head
of wild, blonde hair.

He was irrepressible,
untameable, exuberant and shameless.

He was uninhibited,

and his taste for the scatological
was soon notorious in Vienna.

For example, as he
wrote to his cousin,

"Good night, my darling.

"Sleep well, shit in your bed,
and let it all burst out."

It's impossible to understand Mozart

without some sympathy
for the earthy.

It was in the Schonbrunn Palace

that Mozart and Joseph II, the
musical Emperor, worked together.

After the concert,
conductor Vinicius Kattah

agreed to tell
me more about Mozart

and play me some of
his work on the clavichord.

Simon. Hi.

Nice to see you. Nice to see you,
too. Lovely to hear you playing.

Thank you. So let me
ask you first of all,

why did Mozart come to Vienna?

Vienna was, and I think still is,
the world capital of music.

And Mozart wanted to come to
Vienna to become the court composer.

And, of course,
Mozart wanted to present his art

to the musical Emperor, Joseph II.

What in Mozart's music, what in his
personality, what in his talent,

made him so special?

So what Mozart did
was just improvise.

Somebody would give to
him just a small thing like...

HE PLAYS SIMPLE TUNE

And tell him with those four
notes, improvise and do something.

So he would sit on the piano
and play something like that.

PLAYS COMPLEX TUNE

He would just play with music.

He would enjoy it.
He would just go with it.

Mozart was no ordinary man.

He was for sure really somebody
who had a lot of energy.

And he was... I would say,
he was a rock star.

He was something like a
jazz musician from nowadays.

How did Vienna...

This great cosmopolitan city,
how did it influence Mozart's music?

Vienna was huge at that time.

So you had a lot of influences
from Germany, Turkey and everything.

So for example you would hear
a German dance in his music.

HE PLAYS RHYTHMICALLY

And then you would hear
also an Italian canzonetta.

HE PLAYS IN A DIFFERENT STYLE

Or even the famous alla Turca,
a Turkish March.

HE PLAYS IN NEW STYLE

And I think, only in Vienna

you could have such a
huge diversity of music.

And Mozart was clever
enough to write it down.

I love that. Thank you.
Thank you very much.

Mozart never became court composer,

but Joseph II found
him a role that allowed him

'to compose some
of his finest works.'

But much of what we remember
of Mozart today, historically,

is based on the great
film and play Amadeus.

Joseph II appears as the bumbling,
simplistic Emperor who complains

that Mozart's music
has too many notes.

But, in fact, actually he
meant exactly the opposite.

He was complaining
that Viennese audiences

might not appreciate Mozart's
music as much as he did.

Joseph wanted the Viennese
to rethink everything.

As well as appreciating new artists,

he issued an edict of tolerance
that gave unprecedented rights

to religious minorities.

He reformed the legal system.
He abolished serfdom.

He even wanted to challenge
the Viennese obsession, death.

In the 18th century,
Vienna had doubled in size.

There was no space for burials.

Funerals became so lavish they
were bankrupting the mourners.

A little-known fact about Joseph
is that he micromanaged a solution.

To see it, I've come to
one of his new cemeteries

that he established on
the outskirts of Vienna.

Hidden in its storage
is the Emperor's ingenious attempt

to revolutionise the coffin.

From now on, he decreed,

everyone must be buried
stark naked in a sack.

And, they must use
this new design of coffin.

All this was to accelerate
decomposition and save wood.

And this is how it worked.

The body was placed inside,
it was lowered into the grave,

and then this lever
was pulled to open it.

And out would fall the body.

Joseph's new reusable
coffin proved a step too far.

It was too plain,

and the Viennese demanded

the freedom to pursue
their lavish funerals,

what they called "schone Leiche" -
a lovely corpse.

The coffin riots broke out.

And Joseph was forced
to rescind his decree.

Joseph's enlightened
despotism was creating chaos.

A rationalist at home,
he was an expansionist abroad.

He entered into an alliance with
Catherine the Great of Russia.

Together they would carve up
the crumbling Ottoman Empire.

But the war failed,
Joseph fell ill at the front,

and staggered back
to his capital, sick.

His Treasury was empty,
the Empire was in revolt.

In 1789,
the French Revolution erupted.

If rebellion spread throughout
the Habsburg monarchy,

disaster awaited Austria.

To preserve his dynasty,
Joseph began to repeal his reforms.

Lying fatally ill,
his last edict was how he, himself,

should be interred
in the Imperial Crypt.

Here's his coffin.

designed by the Emperor himself,

and its simple austerity
is in marked contrast

to the sarcophagus of his
mother, Maria Theresa.

Look at its macabre magnificence.

And yet Joseph II himself

was much more impressive than
history has given him credit for.

He was an autocrat.
But he was way ahead of his time.

His emancipation of minorities,
especially the Jews,

helped create the unique Viennese
culture of the late 19th century.

But he felt himself
a terrible failure.

He wrote his own epitaph,
and this is what it reads.

"Here lies a prince
whose intentions were pure

"but who had the misfortune to see
every one of his projects collapse."

And yet, he was more
successful than he ever knew.

MUSIC: Requiem Mass in D Minor
by Mozart

Joseph's radical reforms dragged
Austria into the modern age.

Although many laws were repealed,
his reign introduced new ideas,

and changed Viennese attitudes.

As for Mozart, he barely
outlived the musical Emperor.

While the myth persists that
Mozart was buried like a pauper,

he actually chose to
have a rational burial

in one of Joseph's
unmarked mass graves.

The French revolutionaries
despised the traditional order

of kings and queens.

And they especially loathed
their own Austrian queen,

Marie Antoinette.

Indeed, they hated everything
Austria and the Habsburgs stood for.

In 1792, their
aggression led to war.

Austria failed to contain the
energies of the French Revolution.

Many battles and lands were lost.

And finally, to the
horror of the Habsburgs,

Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
were beheaded at the guillotine.

Pressure was growing on the
new Habsburg emperor, Francis II.

He vowed to annihilate the French,

but to do so, he would have to beat
the embodiment of the revolution.

Napoleon Bonaparte.

The brilliant general Napoleon
was the Superman of his age,

representing the
dynamism of the new.

The Holy Roman
Emperor Francis represented

the obsolescence
and weakness of the old.

They were complete opposites.

While Napoleon wanted to
rule the world and win battles,

Francis was happiest boiling toffee
in the imperial kitchens.

In 1804, Napoleon crowned
himself Emperor of the French.

He already dominated
Germany and Italy,

at the expense of the Habsburgs.

And when Francis challenged
him again on the battlefield,

Napoleon defeated the
Austrians and the Russians

at the Battle of Austerlitz,

his greatest battle
at the height of his genius.

Whilst many now feared
Napoleon's expansionist ambitions,

he was welcomed when he
rode into Vienna triumphant.

The Viennese watched him

with a surprising degree of
admiration and fascination.

Francis had to sue for peace.

But now even he realised that
the Holy Roman Empire was finished.

He'd already given himself a
grand new title, Emperor of Austria.

But it was a sign of
his own embarrassment

that he chose this beautiful,
but obscure church to announce

the end of an institution
that had lasted 1,000 years.

Francis was defeated.

The Holy Roman Empire was no more.

Vienna had fallen to his nemesis.

Francis' vast empire was crumbling.

And he believed its
culprit was diversity.

His troops came from so
many different territories,

they had their own languages,
cultures, traditions.

And so to create unity,

Francis tried to introduce
the rising idea of the time,

German nationalism.

By 1809, Francis was able
to assemble a new army.

Once again, he declared war
on France.

Two armies met here at Aspern,

right on the River Danube,
just outside Vienna.

The Austrian commander
was Archduke Charles,

a much more intelligent
and dynamic brother

of the plodding Emperor, Francis.

As the French army
crossed the river,

Charles ingenuously floated
barges packed with explosives down.

They destroyed the French bridges,
cutting off the French army.

The Austrians fell upon them.

Charles managed to defeat Napoleon,

the first time the French emperor
had been defeated for ten years.

It was quite an achievement.

But victory turned to ashes.

The Austrian army was
paralysed with heavy losses.

Napoleon called in reinforcements
and planned his vengeance.

The French emperor marched north

and obliterated what remained
of the Habsburg forces.

Napoleon returned to Vienna
and this time he decided to stay.

In the coffee houses,
palaces and theatres,

a French-occupied Vienna,
ideas flourished.

The French idealised freethinking.

Nationalism,
romanticism, rationalism,

intermingled and
surged in popularity.

And this had the most lasting impact

on the city's
greatest product, music.

This is the musical concert hall

in the Palace of
Prince Franz Lobkowitz.

And it was here

that one of his proteges
performed for the first time

his new Third Symphony.

His name was Ludwig von Beethoven.

He was famously irascible,

if anyone talked or laughed
during one of his concerts,

he would storm out.

He had produced a great symphony
that celebrated the new, rational,

enlightened revolutionary age
that he so admired.

And to him, the personification
of this age was Napoleon Bonaparte.

And hence he named
the symphony The Bonaparte.

But when he saw that Napoleon had
not only crowned himself emperor,

but was set on conquering a personal
empire across the whole of Europe,

he was disgusted.

And the irascible Beethoven
furiously crossed out

the name Bonaparte on his scripts,

so hard that it
went through the page.

And he renamed this celebration
of the heroic age The Eroica.

And that's how
it's known to posterity.

Joseph II's cultural ideas
were back in favour.

Public theatres were established.

The arts became accessible
to the masses.

And Beethoven,
he became a Viennese star.

Napoleon had
conquered most of Europe.

And he wanted to establish
his own Bonaparte dynasty.

But he had no heir.

He blamed his wife,
Empress Josephine,

who'd had children in her youth,

but a botched abortion
left her infertile.

Napoleon divorced her and began to
look for a new, child-bearing bride.

From the dynasties of Europe,
two options emerged,

the Russian Romanovs,
or the Habsburgs.

Austria's brilliant new Foreign
Minister Klemens von Metternich

knew his country needed
time to recover from its defeats.

He used the opportunity to
create a new alliance with France.

When the Romanovs procrastinated,
Metternich proposed.

To find out the
result of this match,

I've come to meet
Dr Monica Kurzel-Runtscheiner,

a historian who wants
to show me the carriages

that survive from this time.

Napoleon himself decided that
he needed to marry Marie Louise,

the favourite daughter of
Emperor Franz of Austria.

How did it come about?

The interesting thing is
that it was a very bad start.

Marie Louise was suffering a lot,

and she really thought she was
sacrificing herself for her father,

and for the country.

But, as we know,
Napoleon was a man

who really knew how
to deal with women.

And how to satisfy women.

When she arrives in France, finally,

Napoleon was so impatient
that he came to meet her.

And in the very first
night he made her his wife,

even though they
were not finally married.

So it was a big shock
for the court society.

She writes her father
a letter telling,

"People really do
not do him justice.

"You have to know him
in order to understand

"what a wonderful person he is."

So in the end, they were both
really in love with each other.

And it was quite a good marriage.

It's just one year after the
marriage she gave birth to the heir,

to the little Napoleon II,
who was getting, by his father,

the very prestigious
title as King of Rome.

Le Roi de Rome.
And this is his carriage.

Not just a carriage,
it's an insignia,

and the symbol for the
future of the little prince.

And we know that the little prince

was really riding this
carriage on the terrace

of the Tuileries Gardens in Paris,
pulled by a team of two Merino sheep

trained by the director
of a circus in Paris.

What happened to Marie Louise and
what happened to the King of Rome?

After the fall of Napoleon,

Marie Louise went back to Vienna
to join her father with her son,

and so he grew up here
in Schonbrunn Palace.

In fact, in Vienna
he was very beloved.

But on the other side, everybody,
especially the politicians,

feared that he could, one day,
want to become like his father,

or recreate the
empire of his father.

And therefore, they took care
that he could never become

too important in political means.

The marriage forced the
Habsburg army to support Napoleon

on his fatal Russian campaign.

But, after Napoleon catastrophically
retreated from Moscow,

Metternich switched sides.

Austria joined a
new anti-French coalition,

and in 1814 the coalition army
proudly commanded by the Austrian

Field Marshal, Prince Schwarzenberg,
defeated Napoleon and took Paris.

Napoleon, ranting against
Austrian betrayal, abdicated.

Napoleon had redrawn the map
of Europe

to promote his own personal empire.

And 20 years of war
had torn the continent apart.

Now the Austrian minister,
Metternich, would invite

all the rulers of the continent

to Vienna to put
it back together again.

This congress would be the
greatest summit meeting in history.

And the most decadent junket.

Unparalleled in its power-broking
and pleasure-seeking.

Emperor Francis
would be the host of Europe.

Metternich would be
the arbiter of Europe.

And for six months in 1814, Vienna
would be the capital of the world.

216 kings, princes and leaders,

20,000 officials and
just about every con artist,

prostitute and mountebank in Europe

arrived in Vienna and
revelled in this new era

of possibilities and depravity.

Five years after humiliation
and defeat by Napoleon,

Vienna was back
and bigger than ever.

More imperial, more majestic.

A city of composers
and conquerors and courtesans.

Palaces and coffeehouses.

But it was about to evolve
into something much more.

In the final chapter
of the story of Vienna,

I will discover how the city created
the modern age while the Habsburgs

headed for extinction.

The Imperial City became
the capital of ideas,

and a battlefield of extremes.

Monarchy versus revolution.

Fascism versus communism.

Wild decadence
versus Catholic piety.

It all happened here,
in Vienna, the world's city.

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