Nor was it in England only that Marshal Haynau was visited by public opprobrium. His offences were still remembered, two years afterwards, when he ventured to visit Brussels. There also, at the Vauxhall Gardens, the police had to protect him from the mob; and public opinion did not allow the punishment of the women who spat in his face in public, hissing at him the word “Hyaena.” So intensely had the Austrian excesses stirred the indignation of Europe; and the only way in which Francis Joseph was able to express his resentment at the rough handling of the butcher who had done his dirty work was by refusing to send a representative to London to attend the funeral of the Duke of Wellington. CHAPTER VII Why Francis Joseph was called “The child of the gallows”—His affront to Napoleon III. and its consequences—The Bach system and the objections to it—Francis Joseph’s _bonhomie_—The attempt on his life—Impressions formed of him by the King of the Belgians, and Lady Westmorland—The story of his romantic marriage. It is a curious fact that Francis Joseph, who was to find the hangman so much work to do, was given, at his birth, the nickname of “the child of the gallows.” The story is that his mother, in the later days of her confinement, threw the scalding contents of a coffee-cup in her husband’s face, and declared that she could be safely delivered of a child on one condition only—that a free pardon were granted to some criminal lying under sentence of death; and there was nothing for it but to satisfy her whim. The only Austrian subject fulfilling the conditions was clearly guilty of the blackest crimes; but he was let out of prison, to his amazement, at the hysterical request of the Archduchess Sophia, whose bowels of compassion then closed, never to be reopened. Assuredly neither she nor anyone else prompted her son to compassion when Italy and Hungary lay helpless at his feet. The clemency accorded to a vulgar criminal was not to be extended to political offenders until the heads of all the tallest poppies had been cut off for the greater glory of the Habsburgs and their bureaucrats; and the policy of repression enjoyed an illusory success. If the strong hand was a bloody hand, the bloody hand was a strong hand; and Austria did not “muddle through” her difficulties, but carved her way through them. She had nothing as yet to fear from Prussia; she strode with jack-boots through Hungary and northern Italy; and the House of Habsburg—bankrupt, but with the most effective army in Europe—could once more afford to be arrogant. So that we find Francis Joseph, as soon as his position was secure, manifesting his family pride by a proposal that Napoleon III. should be insulted.