Meanwhile, the international situation was changing to Austria’s disadvantage in other important respects. In 1903 Russia had still been absorbed in the Far East, and in so far as she was interesting herself at all in Balkan affairs, her favourite client was Bulgaria, with which she had concluded a military Convention, directed against Roumania, only the previous year. Indeed, when Austria recognized King Peter, it had been against the advice of the Russian Foreign Minister, Count Lamsdorff, who had told the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador in Petersburg, Count Aehrenthal, that Austria ought to occupy Belgrade and restore order there. The Mürzsteg Agreements70 were concluded four months after the murders, and a year later, Austro-Russian relations were still cordial enough to allow Lamsdorff and Aehrenthal to exchange Notes pledging the two countries to loyal and complete neutrality if either became involved in a war, not provoked by it, with a third Power, other than a Balkan State.71
What changed the situation was Russia’s defeat at the hands of Japan in 1904. This gave birth to two developments, curiously different in their nature.
The first in time was the direct product of the revolution in Russia which followed her defeat and brought into the Duma a number of more or less idealistic men who rejected the policy of Great Russian chauvinism which Russia’s Government had been following. They, and the representatives of the non-Russian peoples themselves, really forced through the Duma several considerable cultural and administrative concessions to the Poles, Ukrainians and White Russians of the Czarist Empire.
At the same time, some of them became the adepts of a purified version of the old Pan-Slavism, which they called ‘Neo-Slavism’, to distinguish it from the older movement. It repudiated imperialism, specifically recognizing the right of every Slav people to its own national individuality, speech, religion and political independence. It aimed only at a close and friendly association between all the Slav States, but was nevertheless fundamentally political in the highest degree, since it counted the Monarchy as a Slav State, which would have, indeed, to be transformed politically so as to give its Slav peoples the weight in it to which their numbers entitled them, the Germans and Magyars stepping down into their proper places of minorities.
These doctrines, while they never bit on the Ukrainians, met with a considerable response from the Russian Poles, among whom, as we have said elsewhere, a school of thought, of which the National Democrats were the chief exponents, had for some time past been growing up which held that the future of Poland lay in a friendly understanding with Russia which would eventually make it possible for the three branches of the Poles to combine against the real enemy, Prussia. The next step must be to convert the Austrian Poles, and to this end the Russian patrons of the movement called in Kramař, who had long held, or professed to hold, views similar to theirs, and indeed claimed to be the true spiritual father of neo-Slavism. Kramař duly organized a ‘Preparatory Conference’, which was held in Prague in July 1908 and attended by delegates of all the Polish parties of Russia and Austria, except the Social Democrats, all the Czech parties, with the same exception, and a number of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Bulgarians, as well as a strong delegation of Russians. The Congress drew up an imposing programme of ‘All-Slav’ solidarity, which was carefully framed to include no directly political postulates, but was of course admittedly designed to promote conditions in which the long-term political ideal of the movement could be realized.
Neo-Slavism as such was killed by the Russian Government itself, for in 1907 – thus even before the Congress had met – Stolypin had withdrawn almost all the concessions which had been made to the non-Russian peoples of the Czarist Monarchy and reintroduced the old policy of Russification. Nevertheless, the idea of Slav solidarity had become fashionable again in Russia, and was now proclaimed by a multitude of organizations and publications which fiercely denounced all the non-Russian oppressors of other Slavs, Germans, Magyars and Turks. These effusions were not entirely without their effects on the Slav peoples of the Monarchy72 and the feeling of Slavonic solidarity, in a form which, indeed, had more in it of the old Pan-Slavism than of its variant, thereafter constituted a strong element in Russia’s official policy, which, as the second consequence of her defeat in the Far East, was now facing West again.
While Izvolski, who was a convinced adherent of the ‘Western’ orientation, had become Russian Foreign Minister as early as the summer of 1906, his hands had been closely tied in that year by the revolutionary conditions in Russia, and by the extreme liability of the international situation. Even a revival of the old Russo-German Alliance had seemed a possibility. But by the end of 1907 the tangles had been straightened out. The Franco-Russian alliance had been cemented by the great French loan to Russia. Britain had consummated her entente with France and had reached agreement with Russia on the chief issues which had divided the two Powers in Asia, and pari passu with this, the long period of search for friendship between Britain and Germany was drawing to its close. The partition of Europe into the two great power-blocks of Triple Entente and Triple Alliance was broadly complete, subject, of course, to the looseness of Britain’s attachment to the one and the ambiguous position of Italy in the other. Russia was still very weak, and desperately conscious of her weakness, but yet not willing to let the Central Powers steal any marches on her in the Balkans without compensation to herself, and Izvolski had even reached the stage of regarding the problem from the other angle: that Russia might herself achieve a positive advance in the area, in the shape of a revision of the regime of the Straits, which would have, indeed, to be brought about in agreement with Austria and paid for by concessions to her.
By this time important changes had taken place in certain key positions in the Monarchy. In October 1906, Goluchowski had been forced out of office, directly, on account of a quarrel between him and the Hungarian Coalition,73 but also, in large part, because of the hatred with which he was pursued by Francis Ferdinand, who chose to regard him as standing in the way of Austro-Russian friendship.74 He was replaced, on Francis Ferdinand’s recommendation, by Baron Lexa von Aehrenthal, at that time Austro-Hungarian Ambassador in Petersburg. A month later, Conrad von Hötzendorff, another protégé of the Archduke’s, replaced Baron von Beck as Chief of the General Staff – de facto the most important post in the armed services of the Monarchy75 – while Baron von Schönaich took over the Ministry of War from von Pitreich, whose head, also, the Archduke had demanded. Changes were made at the same time in the High Command of the Navy and in the Emperor’s Military Chancellery.
Some changes at the head of the defence forces were certainly overdue. Von Beck, a highly competent man in his day, had held his post since 1881 and was now nearer eighty than seventy. Many of his coadjutors were of the same generation, and things had got into a rut. Conrad, who belonged to a younger generation, was full of ideas for reorganizing the army, remodelling its tactics and making it an instrument capable of fighting a modern war. He did not, however, regard his functions as confined to such technical tasks, but was constantly pressing on the Government his prescription for the Monarchy’s foreign political situation, which was that she should make preventive wars on Italy and Serbia while she could still do so with hope of success.
As this panacea was never adopted – even Francis Ferdinand always set his face against it – Conrad’s actual influence over the foreign policy of the Monarchy was, until the decisive moment in 1914 when he may have tipped the scales in favour of war, not great, but he did succeed in generating and maintaining an atmosphere of unrest which enhanced the difficulties of the Monarchy’s last years.
Aehrenthal was, historically, by far the more important man, for with Francis Joseph now loosening his grip on the reins of policy and his nephew not allowed to take them from him, the foreign policy of the Monarchy was, from the day of Aehrenthal’s appointment to that of his death in harness on 17 February 1912, what he made it. He has been most variously judged, and many of the judgments have been very hostile. Some of them are
probably unfair, but the documents prove that he was repeatedly, almost habitually, disingenuous even towards his own allies, not to speak of the rest of the world, and his actions also bear out the accusations that he was misled into unwise moves by a desire to score a quick personal success which may well have been due to a certain inferiority complex: rumour credited him with a Jewish strain in his ancestry. The rumour appears to have been unfounded, but he seems to have felt that a prejudice existed against him on the strength of it. And as it happened, these personal weaknesses played a big part in bringing about the unfortunate results in chief of his years of office, which were not only to leave the Southern Slav question more of a festering sore than ever, but also to make Russia, at last, Austria’s conscious enemy, with Serbia her preferred client.
Yet Aehrenthal had gone to the Ballhausplatz after a diplomatic career spent largely in Petersburg, with the reputation of a pronounced Russophile, a strong partisan of a revival of the Dreikaiserbund, and the actual inspirer of the Austro-Russian agreement of October 1903 (his initiative it had been that had brought about the Mürzsteg meeting which had resulted in the Agreements of that name); and he was fully prepared to let Russia have her share of the prize from the operation which he appears to have been planning long before he reached Ministerial rank.76 The trouble was that he left other factors out of his calculations, and further alienated his own proposed partner by his dishonesty.
What he proposed to do was to abandon Goluchowski’s policy of quieta non movere and to revert to the old alternative course of a political partition of the Balkans. Russia was not to be treated ungenerously – he told a confidant that ‘he was not afraid of the result of handing over Constantinople and the Dardanelles to her’,77 with, of course, firm control over Bulgaria. Austria, however, was to have the Western Balkans down to Salonica inclusive, under ‘some form of protectorate, i.e., the establishment of overlordship by means of alliances, trade and military conventions, etc.’,78 and as he usually expressed his intentions, Serbia was to be left nominally independent and territorially intact, but put back into the condition of political and economic subservience in which she had stood under the Obrenović. Even this, however, is not certain,79 and in any case, the method by which he chose to open his operation was such as to arouse Russia’s immediate suspicions.
On 27 January 1908, without having done more than hint to Russia of his intentions,80 he announced in the Delegations, with considerable flourishes, that he had negotiated an agreement with the Porte under which Austria was to build a railway through the Sanjak to link up with the Macedonian system, thus giving the Monarchy direct communication with Salonica.
Aehrenthal afterwards tried to argue that the purpose of the railway was purely economic. Economics were one thing, politics another, and as politics did not come into the question, no one need object. But if the railway had been constructed (and the engineering difficulties were such that the enterprise would have been enormously expensive, and in fact, it was, for that reason, never carried through81) it would obviously have strengthened Austria’s strategic position in the Balkans, thus contravening at least the spirit of all Austria’s international undertakings respecting the Balkans. Moreover, strong suspicions soon became current that Austria had paid the Sultan for the concession by promising to sabotage the reforms which the Powers were pressing on the Porte.
The announcement evoked a tempest of popular wrath in both Serbia and Russia, where the nationalist Press called for the cancellation of the Austro-Russian agreement. In April, Izvolski retorted with a counter-suggestion that a second railway should be constructed from Roumania across Serbia and Montenegro to the Adriatic, and Aehrenthal, the prisoner of his own contention that railways did not involve politics, replied perforce on 1 May, that Austria would not object to this. But Izvolski’s heart was really set, not on railways across the Balkans, but on getting the Straits opened to Russia, and on 2 July he sent Vienna a memorandum which, in effect, offered Aehrenthal a bargain: Russia’s support for Austria if she annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Sandjak in return for Austria’s support for Russia in a revision of the regime of the Straits. Both questions, the memorandum said, were European problems and would have to be discussed on that level, but Russia was prepared first to enter into friendly discussions on them with Austria. This offer must have come to Aehrenthal as a gift from Heaven, for the situation in Bosnia itself (and, in connection therewith, the Monarchy’s relations with Serbia) had become genuinely intolerable. Things could not go on as they were, and Austria had in effect only two courses open to her (if one excludes as humanly impossible that of handing the Provinces back to Turkey). One would have been, while leaving the constitutional position intact, to restore order with an iron hand – this was what Conrad, in his bluff way, was advising; the other, which was advocated precisely by those who, like Burian, wanted to create model conditions in the Provinces which would then make them a magnet to draw in the other Serbia, was to annexe them; for without this, as Burian argued, the necessary reforms could not be carried through.82
Burian had made representations to this effect in April 1908 and Aehrenthal had probably then become convinced that the annexation would presently be a necessity, although he had thought the international situation inappropriate for immediate action.83 But then came Izvolski’s letter, which arrived almost simultaneously with a piece of news which really forced Austria’s hand: on 6 July the Young Turks seized the power in Constantinople and forced the Sultan on the 25th to issue an order convening a Parliament to which Bosnia-Herzegovina, with the other territories of the Ottoman Empire which were in a similar ‘occupied’ position (Eastern Roumelia and Crete), were to send elected representatives.
It seems to have been this news which decided Aehrenthal that the annexation was inevitable, and on 19 August he submitted to a Ministerial Council proposals (which the Council duly accepted) that Austria should annexe Bosnia-Herzegovina, while withdrawing her garrisons from the Sanjak. She should enter into negotiations with Russia to secure her consent in return for a discussion of the problem of the Straits. On 29 August, as the first step in this connection, he sent Izvolski (who was then in Karlsbad) a memorandum which gave no indication that Austria had already made up her mind – on the contrary, it laid down the principle ‘that the two Cabinets will remain true to their resolve to uphold the existing status quo in Turkey so long as circumstances make this possible’, but said that ‘if compulsive circumstances forced Austria to annexe Bosnia-Herzegovina’ she would immediately withdrew her garrisons from the Sanjak and definitively renounce any occupation of that territory’, and that she was prepared to enter into a confidential and friendly exchange of ideas with Russia on the question of Constantinople, the Straits and the adjacent territory, as soon as the question became actuel. Berchtold now placed his castle at Buchlow at the Ministers’ disposal, and Aehrenthal and Izvolski met there on 15 September. Aehrenthal believed or at least afterwards maintained, that Izvolski had definitely agreed to the annexation, in return, indeed, for a promise of support for her wishes in the Straits and in respect of certain other Balkan questions, all these questions, however, constituting music of the future, to be settled at a future international conference. He did not consult the Russians again, nor go beyond hints to any other Power, even Austria’s own ally in chief, Germany. Only on 4 and 5 October was formal notice given to Germany, as to the other signatories of the Berlin Treaty, and the annexation was announced, as a unilateral decision, by Francis Joseph on 7 October, a day after Ferdinand of Bulgaria, probably on the basis of an inspired guess,84 had proclaimed Bulgaria’s own independence.
We shall not attempt to retell the details of the ensuing crisis which kept Europe hovering for months on the brink of war. The Turks naturally resented the violation of their sovereignty. Serbia, although technically without a locus standi in the dispute, strengthened her armed forces, demanded territorial compensation and appealed to Russia. Montenegro was equally aggrieved. I
zvolski was deeply offended, for he had, or maintained himself to have, understood differently what had been agreed in Buchlow (as at Reichstadt, thirty years earlier, no agreed statement of the results of the conversations had been put in writing): according to him, the whole programme – annexation, revision of the Straits regime and the rest – was to come as a whole before a Conference of the Powers, and Aehrenthal had not revealed that he was going to jump a claim by effecting the annexation so soon, and without further notice. He felt himself duped, and his grievance was accentuated when, chiefly owing to British objections, no Conference was held, so that Russia came out of the transaction empty-handed. Britain and France, which Aehrenthal had treated cavalierly, if not dishonestly, resented the unilateral denunciation of the multilateral Treaty of Berlin, and even Germany was not best pleased, while Italy felt that she had, into the bargain, been cheated out of the compensation which she could legitimately have expected.85 Angry crowds demonstrated in front of the Austro-Hungarian Embassy in Rome.
In the end, the crisis passed over. The German Emperor decided to back Austria to the limit, and Russia was not ready (nor anxious), for war; still less did Britain or France desire it. Confronted by Germany with a very blunt demand to state her position, Russia abandoned her support of Serbia in return for an assurance from Austria that she would not attack that country, as at one stage she had threatened to do. Left to herself, Serbia had no option but to submit, and in a Note of 31 March 1909, recognized the annexation and promised to reduce her armed forces to the level of the preceding autumn, and to maintain good-neighbourly relations with Austria. Montenegro was induced, with even more difficulty, to follow suit, in return for the removal of certain restrictions placed on her by the Treaty of Berlin. Turkey was persuaded to recognize the annexation in return for a cash payment (disguised as the purchase price of the State forests) of £T. 2,400,000. The coup had come off. Austria had acquired two more provinces, while no other Power had made any gains at all.
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