Winder gives readers humour and pathos in the history of the Habsburgs

EUROPA REGINA is a mannerist-era map of Europe drawn in the guise of a queen. The river Danube, like an artery, runs through the continent that for over four centuries was controlled or more aptly was in the fidgety hands of the longest and the most bizarre of royal families, the Habsburgs. Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe is an oddball, if somewhat long, description of kings and queens with strange names and extraordinarily complicated titles; made-up family ties to Hercules and Odysseus; clumsy negotiations; territorial exchanges; intermarriage and ugly jaws; and humiliating consequences of many of their innocent mistakes. At the same time it is unmistakable to see that their influence across Europe was vast. Winder says that “time and again the defining moments of Europe’s history were brought about as much by the Habsburgs’ uselessness or prostration as by any actual family initiative.” It is remarkable how laughable many of the Emperors were, and yet an almost uncountable number of potential rivals ended up gathering dust while the Habsburgs just kept moving forward.

Winder’s “personal history” is a journey across central Europe, where the “plural, anarchic, polyglot” lands of old had given way to the “small and dirty cages of new nation states”. How different the future if? – is the question Winder keeps coming back to, from the emergence of the Habsburgs in the Middle Ages, through their centuries of rule over the Holy Roman Empire to their inglorious end in 1918. For instance, Charles V arranged to marry his son Philip to Mary, the sister of the now dead English king. If Mary were to have a son he would inherit England and Burgundy creating a formidable and curious state. Mary suffered from a phantom pregnancy, which if real would have had the most astounding consequences. But she died five years later, taking a possible Habsburg England with her.

Danubia describes the Habsburgs and their Empire, which from 1400 to the beginning of the First World War was the center of almost all major incidents in European history. Winder’s spirited run-on sentences testify Habsburgs’ role in defining European national boundaries, languages, religious practices and the appearance of their major cities. They defended Central Europe against fierce Ottoman attacks. They were the champions of tolerance in a 19th-century Europe driven mad by ethnic nationalism. They developed marital or military relations with almost every part of Europe they did not already own. Keeping the empire together was achieved through practical measures but also through the creation of a formidable magic circle, which each generation reinforced through manipulation of special objects, ceremonies and events. Winder describes how the Vatican had to exhume alleged Christian martyr’s graves, subsequently called the catacomb saints and decorate them with garish jewelry and install them in public squares - an example of the mysterious and crazy workings of the Catholic Church and the Habsburgs trying to control their seesawing power relations.

The book moves chronologically but common themes about each generation surfaces which makes it lively and interconnected through centuries of history. Winder’s writing cannot be considered old-fashioned history book material. The book is a travel-ogue, with stunning descriptions of Hungarian villages, Transylvanian mythologies and postdiluvian abstractions. It is combined with an autobiographical foray – often anecdotal and funny – but at all times filled with excitement and fascinating discoveries about art, architecture and music.

Like most of the things the Habsburgs did Winder earnestly and with seriousness emphasizes that to think of them as a coherent, central authority is to miss the point. And it is immediately clear from the first chapter that Winder’s approach to his sprawling subject is more of amusement and irreverence than that of a solemn historian surrounded by thick footnoted tomes. Winder and us as readers of his book find humour and pathos in the history of the Habsburgs, who for five hundred years ruled territories stretching from North Sea to Peru with a “dizzying blend of ineptitude, viciousness and occasional benignity”. And clearly, Winder’s vocabulary for describing the peculiar circumstances the Habsburgs found themselves in is inexhaustible.