The Duchess of Hohenberg, too, entertained the warmest affection for the young couple.
The Archduke was a firm partisan of the Great-Austria programme.

His idea was to convert the Monarchy into numerous more or less independent National States, having in Vienna a common central organisation for all important and absolutely necessary affairs--in other words to substitute Federalisation for Dualism.

Now that, after terrible military and revolutionary struggles, the development of the former Monarchy has been accomplished in a national spirit, there cannot be many to contend that the plan is Utopian.

At that time, however, it had many opponents who strongly advised against dissecting the State in order to erect in its place something new and "presumably better," and the Emperor Francis Joseph was far too conservative and far too old to agree to his nephew's plans.

This direct refusal of the idea cherished by the Archduke offended him greatly, and he complained often in bitter terms that the Emperor turned a deaf ear to him as though he were the "lowest serving man at Schoenbrunn." The Archduke lacked the knowledge of how to deal with people.