The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

  It was an achievement which was hailed in many circles in the Monarchy with great satisfaction as proof of the Monarchy’s continued vitality. Yet the end of the crisis probably left the Monarchy’s situation, on balance, less comfortable than ever. On the credit side, if it was a credit, was to be set an increased intimacy of her relations with Germany, where leading circles had been seriously wondering whether the dangers of alliance with her did not outweigh its possible advantages, particularly if Austria, on her side, continued to be so lukewarm in her support of Germany on issues where she was not herself directly involved, as she had been at Algeciras. Even before the annexation, however, Bülow had decided that ‘Germany and Austria must stand together as a solid bloc … loyal co-operation with Austria would be and must remain the fundamental basis of German foreign policy’.86 Germany had acted in this sense during the crisis, and after it military consultations between the General Staffs of the two countries were resumed.87 This, it is true, increased the danger that Austria might be dragged in Germany’s wake into war with the Western Powers, but Aehrenthal thought the danger not too serious. ‘We stand aside,’ he wrote in a self-briefing for a conversation with Sir Charles Hardinge in August 1908, ‘from the rivalries between Germany and England, especially the competition in naval armaments, which we regard as not without danger. We are justified in expecting that these frictions between Berlin and London will not be allowed to affect the relationship between Austria-Hungary and England.’88

  This, however, showed a serious misconception of feeling in the West. The faith of the Western Powers in Austria’s value as a counterweight to or barrier against Germany had already been shaken by the Kaiser’s tactless description of her at Algeciras as Germany’s ‘brilliant second’; now it was further diminished. They accept a situation which had been achieved largely through their mediation, but they seem never again really to have trusted the Ballhausplatz.

  Another, very important effect of the Annexation, and of the whole international revirement, was to bring about a change in the attitude of British public opinion towards national problems in the Monarchy. France had long been cultivating friendly unofficial relations with the Slavs of the Monarchy. Now British opinion began to follow French in seeing Austria, especially as guided by Aehrenthal, in a new light. The two publicists of the day who occupied themselves seriously with the problem, Wickham Steed, then correspondent of The Times in Vienna (later to become its Foreign Editor, then its Editor) and R. W. Seton-Watson, both wished and at the time believed in the survival of the Monarchy, but both took up the cause of its ‘subject peoples’ and wrote arguing that the survival would be possible only if the domination of its Germans and Magyars were broken.

  Steed and Seton-Watson were only individuals; there was at the time nothing like any general consensus of British opinion on the Monarchy, and other writings continued to appear which were friendly enough to it. But the judgments of these two men carried exceptional weight, even at the time, and later events were destined, as we shall see, to put them in a position in which their views counted for more than those of all other observers put together.

  Italy hotted up her agitation in the Trentino and Trieste still further, and Tittoni revenged himself by concluding yet another agreement with the other side. On 4 October 1909, Italy and Russia agreed, under the Raccognino Agreement, to endeavour to maintain the status quo in the Balkans, and if violent trouble broke out there, to uphold the principle of nationality, i.e., not to impede the development of the Balkan States and to exclude foreign domination there, combining to resist any undertaking which ran contrary to these principles. Further, Italy promised to support Russia over the Straits, while Russia promised not to oppose Italy’s designs on Tripoli. Immediately after this, it is true, Italy made another Pact with Austria under which the two Powers agreed to communicate to one another ‘any proposal by a third Power which might conflict with the principle of non-intervention or of the status quo’. But these diplomatic engagements were coming to look extraordinarily unreal in the light of the open hostility with which the two countries regarded each other. The offence was by no means all on one side. Conrad, when the question of the annexation was first discussed in the summer of 1908, described war with Italy as ‘almost inevitable’. The official organ of the Austrian Army, Danzers Armeezeitung, actually advocated a preventive war against Italy in 1909, when she was weakened by the Messina earthquake. It is true that Aehrenthal never lent himself to these suggestions, but the relationship between the two States was not improved by the fact that everyone knew that Conrad had received his post through the Archduke Francis Ferdinand’s patronage. Francis Ferdinand, himself never, indeed, endorsed either of Conrad’s schemes for a preventive war (against Italy or Serbia), but he was convinced that war against Italy, which he regarded as the Monarchy’s enemy in chief, was bound to come, and in his military capacity was devoting much attention (which did not escape notice) to preparing for the eventuality.

  In the Balkans, Turkey soon got over her resentment, and Bulgaria showed signs of wanting a closer relationship with her fellow-beneficiary of the crisis, although these were not followed up, partly, perhaps, owing to Francis Ferdinand’s strong dislike and distrust of Ferdinand of Bulgaria. But Serbia’s promise to become Austria’s ‘good neighbour’ proved not worth a pie-crust. Her agitators were as active as ever in Bosnia and Croatia, and they were, as it happened, singularly fortunate in that two attempts by the Austrian authorities to discredit them were extraordinarily badly handled. In March 1909, 53 Serbs of Croatia were put on trial in Zagreb for high treason, viz. conspiracy against the Monarchy with irredentist circles in Serbia, directed by the Slovenski Jug. The indictment adduced many absurd indications of treason, but for ‘proof’ of the main charge the prosecution relied almost entirely on most unconvincing ‘revelations’ by a notorious character called Nostić. The moving spirits here were, incidentally, the Croats of the Pure Right, whose hatred of the Serbs had driven them into a curious Interessengemeinschaft with Hungary. Not only were the charges flimsy, but the trial was most scandalously conducted, and after the first Court in Zagreb had sentenced 31 defendents to terms of imprisonment totalling 184 years, the sentences were quashed by the Court of Appeal, which ordered a retrial.89 The second case, which opened immediately after (in December 1909) had an equally ignominious ending. When the annexation crisis was at its height, and with the purpose of justifying a declaration of war, which then seemed imminent, by Austria on Serbia, the Ballhausplatz supplied the Viennese Reichspost and the distinguished historian, Dr Friedjung, with a number of documents purporting to reveal Serbian intrigues in Bosnia.90 Some of them implicated Supilo and the Serbo-Croat Coalition. The editor of the Reichspost, Funder, published a pamphlet and Friedjung wrote an article in the Neue Freie Presse, and a libel case followed.91 It transpired that some, or most, of the documents were forged, and many of the particular allegations contained in them demonstrably unfounded. Professor Friedjung had to eat his words, and the defence collapsed.

  The two cases received enormous publicity, particularly since they were unlucky enough to attract the especial attention of R. W. Seton-Watson, then a young man whose genius was at its spate, who wrote them up in very great detail.92 They undoubtedly did much deserved harm to Rauch’s regime in Croatia, and to Aehrenthal’s credit in the Chancelleries of Europe; an incidental effect of them was to raise still higher the reputation of Professor Masaryk, who took a prominent part for the defence in both of them.

  Yet it would be a gross error to suppose that the collapse of the trials proved either that pro-Serb irredentism did not exist in Bosnia or Croatia, or that it was not being fostered from Serbia. The Slovenska Jug itself had, all official whitewash notwithstanding, been so heavily compromised at the trials that the Serbian Government had to dissolve it, but in its place came a new society, the Narodna Obrana (National Defence), dedicated to the same purpose of furthering Serbia’s ambition for national expansion. This soc
iety, too, was nominally ‘cultural’, but the propaganda, open and secret, issued by it was so violent as to make the adjective a mockery; and after 191193 there stood behind it, and in close connection with it, another society, the Ujedinjenje Ili Smrt (Union or death), more commonly known as the Cerna Ruka (Black Hand), whose objects, and the methods advocated by it, were militant in the extreme. They included the assassination of opponents, especially in the Monarchy; the execution of these was usually left to young Bosnian Serbs, Austro-Hungarian subjects, who were organized in a subsidiary secret society, the Mlada Bosna (Young Bosnia).

  The Black Hand was only nominally unofficial. Its head was Lieut.-Colonel Dragutin Dimitriević, Chief of the Intelligence Department of the Serbian General Staff, and most of its leaders were serving officers. The Serbian Government, while not necessarily initiated into all its plans, was well aware of its objectives and its preferred methods, and the Crown Prince Alexander contributed to its funds. It is true that before long differences over policy in Macedonia caused a coolness between Dimitriević on the one hand, and the Court and the Radical Party on the other. Alexander founded a second officers’ league, the White Hand, which in 1917 liquidated its rival after the famous ‘Salonica Trial’. The key to the ‘riddle of Serajevo’ may well lie in the ambivalent relationship between the two leagues.94

  The almost limitless resentment which the Serbian agitation evoked in Austria was a very important factor in the history of the Monarchy’s last crisis. Conrad advised preventive war here also, and during the annexation crisis Austria came very near following his advice. Aehrenthal himself had by now come round to the view that the only ultimate solution of Austro-Serb relations was for the Monarchy to incorporate ‘the non-Bulgarian parts of Serbia’ (letting the ‘Bulgarian parts’ go to Bulgaria). International pressure and other causes, which included the old one of financial stringency, made him draw back now, but again and again during the Monarchy’s last years of ‘peace’ one finds the view expressed that Serbia’s provocations were so intolerable as to exclude any peaceful solution whatever. The phrase ‘better an end with terror than terror without end’ became almost a commonplace expression of a widely held view that the Monarchy must either crush Serbia, or itself go under. It is this argument which is adduced by Austrian historians to justify her declaration of war on Serbia in 1914. It is not perhaps altogether easy to reconcile with the same historians’ contention that the Monarchy was nefariously pulled to pieces by outside forces, in spite of its inner solidarity. But logic does not always govern political emotion, and the legitimacy of Austria’s irritation was unquestionable, as was its intensity.

  Serbia could afford these tones towards Austria because she was now under very open Russian protection. Izvolski had, indeed, soon paid for his blamage with his post: he went to Paris as Ambassador, and was succeeded as Foreign Minister by Sazonov, who had not his predecessor’s personal grudge against the Austrians, and was certainly not anxious for war. But Russia was now seriously alarmed at the prospect that Austria, backed by Russia, might become over-powerful in the Balkans, and convinced of the need of countering this by an active policy of her own. The policy favoured by Sazonov, towards which, indeed, Izvolski had already been feeling his way – the Raccognigi Agreements, which were concluded while Izvolski was still Foreign Minister reflected it – was not to attempt territorial expansion for Russia herself, which would be opposed too strongly by the Powers, but to strengthen the Balkan States, individually and collectively, and to bring them under Russian patronage. With this end in view, he set himself to organize the Balkan States in a ‘Balkan League’.

  The further development of the ‘Eastern Question’ was dominated by Russia’s pursuit of this policy, the only secondary motif in it being that of Italy’s attack on Turkey in 1911, which was almost episodic for Austria. The incorrigible Conrad wanted the occasion seized to ‘settle accounts’ with Italy, but Aehrenthal again rejected the idea, on grounds both of honour and policy (he still did not regard Italy as lost irretrievably) and made only the one condition, that the fighting should not extend to the Continental Balkans. As this was fulfilled, Austria and Italy remained allies (the Triple Alliance was even renewed again, unaltered, on 5 December 1912), although if possible, less cordial ones than ever.

  The Italo-Turkish war did not interrupt Sazonov’s efforts, but gave the results of them a turn which he had not intended. Thinking that it would be impossible for Russia to take Constantinople herself, and not wishing to see Bulgaria or Greece there in her place, he had wanted to include Turkey in his Balkan League, but the weakness of the Turks, as revealed in Tripolis, was too much of a temptation to the young Balkan States, and Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece concluded a network of alliances between themselves with the object of taking advantage of it.

  In all this activity, Russia played a curiously ambiguous role, the complexity of which was due in part to the divided councils prevailing between the more conservative Foreign Ministry in Petersburg and the enthusiastically Slavophile Russian Ministers, Hartwig in Belgrade and Neklyudov in Sofia. Russia was kept informed of the negotiations and resultant Treaties, and even accepted the role of arbiter between Serbia and Bulgaria over the allocation of part of Macedonia. Yet Sazonov continued to insist that there must be no aggression against Turkey. When the intentions of the Balkan States became apparent, Russia even collaborated once more with Austria in a joint Note warning them that no change in the Balkan status quo would be permitted. But on the very day on which this was presented (8 October 1912), Montenegro, first of the four, declared war, and the League won such rapid successes that it was soon obvious that the status quo was past saving. Berchtold, who had succeeded Aehrenthal as Austrian Foreign Minister on the latter’s death in the previous February, refused to take the step, repeatedly pressed on him by the ‘forward party’, of letting Austria join in the competition for territorial acquisitions (‘settling accounts’ with Serbia during the process) and confined himself to efforts to keep the readjustments of the map as innocuous as possible, and here he found himself, for once, in agreement with Italy, but at odds, not only with Serbia and Montenegro, but with Russia. In the complex negotiations which occupied the winter of 1912–13, Berchtold obtained the creation of an independent Albania, and Serbian and Montenegrin forces which had occupied territory earmarked for Albania were forced to withdraw, although to achieve this, an ultimatum had to be sent to Serbia and at one stage it looked as though Austria would after all be involved in war. But the settlement still left Serbia and Montenegro substantially enlarged, now territorially contiguous, brimming with self-confidence and intensely inflamed against the Monarchy. ‘The first round is over,’ said Pašić, the Serbian Prime Minister, ‘now we must prepare for the second, against Austria.’

  The situation changed once again after this. One of Russia’s great difficulties in negotiating the Balkan League had been the rivalry between Serbia and Bulgaria over Macedonia, and in this had lain Austria’s great hope of preventing the formation of the League: but she could offer Bulgaria no price comparable to what membership of the League could give her. Now, in July 1913, the Balkan allies quarrelled over the division of the spoils, and fighting broke out between Bulgaria on the one side and her former allies, reinforced by Roumania and later by Turkey, on the other. Bulgaria had now a natural community of interests with Austria, especially as she had quarrelled with Russia),95 and Berchtold would have liked to take advantage of this. But she could not support Bulgaria without offending Roumania, who was claiming territory from her. Both the German Kaiser and Francis Ferdinand, amongst others, were very hostile to the King of Bulgaria, and strongly predisposed in favour of Roumania, so that all that Berchtold was able to do was to give Bulgaria a little hesitant diplomatic support, which availed her nothing, and offended Roumania pro rata. From now on – if it had not been the case before – the Monarchy’s alliance with Roumania was as hollow as that with Italy. The Roumanian and Russian Royal famili
es themselves fraternized. Roumanian publicists attacked the Monarchy – in this case the Hungarian half of it – almost as venomously as the Serbian and Italian.96 Count Ottakar Czernin, who was sent to Bucharest in November 1913, reported that the Austro-Roumanian Treaty was not worth the paper it was written on.97 Sazonov’s view was that Roumania ‘would work with the side which turned out to be the stronger, and offered her more’.98

  In any case, the Monarchy could certainly not rely on Roumania to help her against Serbia, and probably not against Russia unless the war had already been three-quarters won without her. If the Monarchy got into difficulties, she would very likely find Roumania among those seeking to profit from them.

  *

  There was another field in which Russia was working directly against the Monarchy. Neo-Slavism had gone under, but Russia had rediscovered the Ruthenes. In 1906 or 1907 a ‘Galician-Russian Society’ was founded under the Presidency of Count Vladimir Bobrinskij, a leader of the Russian Right, who had repeatedly voiced his belief that the security of the Russian Empire demanded that its flag should be planted on the Carpathians.99 The agitation which he developed was undoubtedly irredentist in purpose, although it chiefly took the form of propaganda for conversion from the Uniate to the Orthodox Church. His collaborator in chief in Galicia was the Old Ruthene leader, Dr Markow.

  Bobrinskij attended the Prague Conference of 1908. After it he toured Galicia and the Bukovina, making propaganda and enlisting agents so openly that the Austrian authorities issued a warrant for his arrest. But the agitation went on apace, financed by subsidies given (with astounding openness)100 to individuals, or sometimes in other ways: thus when the Galician harvest failed in 1913, large sums were sent from Russia to relieve the distress. Students’ hostels were founded, in which students were put up free and taught Pan-Slavism; pilgrimages to Kiev organized, and subversive leaflets circulated.101