by Theo Aronson
It was, perhaps, this possibility of a restoration (for Sophie, better than anyone, appreciated the capriciousness of the Greeks) which prevented the Queen from buying a permanent home in Florence. Yet she had her eye on a likely property. Near Fiesole, on the wooded hill of San Domenico overlooking the city, lay a charming fifteenth-century villa. On Helen's arrival from Bucharest, Queen Sophie took her to see the house. 'If we had to stay here permanently,' she said, that is where I should like to live.'
But Queen Sophie did not live long enough; not to decide to buy the villa nor to see the restoration of the monarchy in Greece. Towards the end of 1931 she went into a hospital in Frankfurt for an operation. During the course of the operation, it was discovered that she had cancer. Both her parents, the Emperor and Empress Frederick, had died of the same disease. She lived for a few weeks more, surrounded by all her children, and died, peacefully, on 13 January 1932.
Her body lay in state in the great hall at Friedrichshof, the home which her mother, the Empress Frederick, had built near Frankfurt, and in which her own body had lain thirty years before. Queen Sophie's body was then taken to Florence to lie beside the remains of King Constantine and of his mother, Queen Olga (who had died in 1926) in the crypt of the Orthodox Church.
The villa, which Queen Sophie had loved so much, was bought by her daughter Helen and turned into a family home for the late Queen's exiled sons and daughters. It was renamed the Villa Sparta. After long and complicated negotiations between Helen and Carol, it was arranged that their son Michael would live in Romania and spend one month, twice a year, with his mother at the Villa Sparta. With this, Helen had to be content.
Within less than four years of Queen Sophie's death, the monarchy was restored in Greece. One of those inevitable plebiscites recalled her eldest son, King George II, to the throne. This time the restoration would last for almost forty years, until the declaration of yet another republic in 1973. In November 1936, King George II had the bodies of his parents King Constantine and Queen Sophie, and of his grandmother, Queen Olga, brought back to Athens. The funeral was a magnificently staged affair. Through silent crowds, the three flag-draped coffins were drawn on gun-carriages to the Cathedral. For six days they lay in state while the people filed by in their tens of thousands to pay homage. On the seventh day they were buried with all possible pomp. 'Eighty bishops,' writes Constantine's brother Christopher, 'gathered from every town in Greece, lined the steps of the high altar, making in their jewelled robes a symphony of light and colour against the sombre background of the Cathedral'
The ostentatious ceremony over, the coffins were taken to that simple family cemetery at Tatoi for final interment. Queen Sophie, the honest, dignified, unpretentious and much maligned granddaughter of Queen Victoria, had come back to Greece for the last time.
CHAPTER THIRTY
'I thought I had done well'
1
'And who, after all, can tell . . .' Queen Ena of Spain once said to the Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, who was living in exile in Paris. 'In a very few years I might join you here.'
For Queen Ena's apprehensions, there was considerable justification. The situation in Spain, by the end of the 1920s, was as uncertain as it had ever been. For a period, after the establishment of General Primo de Rivera's dictatorship in 1923, things had looked fairly secure. A well-meaning and somewhat genial dictator, General Primo had applied his energies to the reorganization of the country. Having restored order, he set about improving and constructing roads, railways, hotels, hospitals, dams and schools. By allying herself with France, Spain finally subdued Morocco, and the King was able to pay a truimphant visit to the pacified territory. When a plebiscite on the question of the dictatorship was submitted to the Spanish people, a large majority pronounced in its favour. In the autumn of 1925, the dictatorship was re-established as a civil institution.
Nor did the régime neglect the showier side of national life. Spain, although shorn of her once-mighty Empire, was still the mother country of much of South America and, in an effort to renew kinship, Primo's Directory staged two great exhibitions. One was held at Barcelona, the other at Seville. Both were dedicated to the achievements of the Spanish-speaking world. The International Exhibition at Barcelona concentrated on industry; that of Seville, where each South American state had a pavilion, was the more romantic. A semicircle of Moorish arches, flanked by slender towers, had been built in a beautiful park; from the elegant centrepiece, one could stroll through the trees to the various pavilions. Painting, sculpture, tapestry, jewellery, armour, furniture, embroidery, brocades – all these bore witness to the taste and genius of Spain. And at night, when the floodlit fountains flung their water high into the warm air, and golden balls, lit from within, glowed on the orange trees, it was like fairyland.
King Alfonso and Queen Ena showed themselves frequently during this memorable season. They made a handsome couple: he so dark and lithe and splendidly uniformed, she so fair and elegant. One could almost believe, as one moved about these magnificent exhibitions and heard the tumultuous ovations for the royal couple, that Alfonso had indeed brought greatness back to Spain and that no monarchs were more popular than they.
The façade might be impressive but the walls were cracking. 'How long,' the French journalist Tharaud once asked King Alfonso, 'do you think this régime will last?' The King protested that he would like nothing better than to return to parliamentary rule but that the old party leaders, the caciques, had shown no sign that they had mended their ways. 'If one reopened the Cortes,' he said, 'one would see the old parties which led the country to its own undoing begin their disputes again and recommence their chatter at the point where General Primo interrupted it. We should be back into anarchy.' Spain, he assured his listener, had at most six thousand politicians as against twenty million people who cared nothing whatsoever for politics. 'To please six thousand people must we sacrifice twenty million?' he asked. 'I leave the answer to you.'
Those six thousand, however, were becoming increasingly restive. Although the King had never intended the Directory to be permanent, neither he nor Primo seemed able to make up their minds as to what sort of government should replace it. The years of strict censorship, the banishment of critical intellectuals, the worsening economic situation (this was a problem which Primo never mastered), an indefinable craving for change – all these things led to a growing discontent. And to them was added a vague irritation with the King himself.
Although over forty years of age, Alfonso had never acquired the gravity and serious-mindedness so dear to the Spaniard. In his well-cut suits, with one hand holding a cigarette and the other caressing his jaunty moustache, he looked and behaved like a young man-about-town. He still drove his cars at breakneck speed, he still galloped his horse across the polo field, he still joked and gossiped with dangerous indiscretion. With the intellectual life of the country he had no contact at all. Whenever he visited a school or a university, his equerries would see to it that he spoke only to the sportsmen or the aristocrats, never to the thinkers. This chronic adolescence, grumbled his critics, was distinctly out of place in a ruler.
His home life, too, gave cause for discontent. He was said to neglect Queen Ena; his amorous adventures were widely discussed. There was disappointment, and much ill-informed gossip, about the poor health of his sons. It was known that his haemophilic heir, the Prince of the Asturias, who turned twenty-three in 1930, was obliged to spend long periods in bed. There was a macabre rumour prevalent among the simpler-minded Spanish peasants, which no number of official denials could stamp out, that a young soldier had to be sacrificed every day in order that his warm blood might be used to keep the heir apparent alive. The Prince of the Asturias played almost no part in public life; what sort of King would he make? King Alfonso's second son, the deaf and nearly dumb Don Jaime, would be no better; nor his youngest son, the haemophilic Don Gonzalo. To only one life, that of the third son, Don Juan, could the succession be entrusted.
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br /> It was no wonder that the habitual expression of the once lively Queen Ena was now one of melancholy.
By the end of the 1920s, the old charges of the King having broken his constitutional oath and of his being responsible for the disaster of Anual were being raised once more. And Primo de Rivero was in no position to silence them now.
For the General himself had fallen from power. By the beginning of 1930 he was feeling so conscious of his loss of prestige that he sent a circular letter to the captains-general asking for their confidence. Their replies, when they bothered to reply, were noncommittal. None of them came out in full support of the dictator. The King, who learned of this move, not from Primo but from the newspapers, was furious. He summoned the General to the palace and demanded to know why he, the King, supreme representative of the people and head of the armed forces, had not first been consulted. Primo attempted to explain his motives but when, a day or two later, he offered his resignation, Alfonso accepted it. The ex-Dictator, dispirited and ill, left for Paris. He died there two months later.
His body was brought back to Madrid where, as El Salvador de España, he was given a hero's funeral. Notable by his absence from the impressive ceremony was the man whom the Saviour of Spain had tried to save – King Alfonso XIII. Quick to dissociate himself from Primo's failure, the King by his adroitness earned nothing but contempt. If he could not remain true to his friends, to whom then, it was argued, would he ever remain true?
As the Queen had said, he tired of everything.
2
In January 1931, Queen Ena had a telephone call from London to tell her that her mother, Queen Victoria's youngest daughter Princess Beatrice, was seriously ill. She had broken her arm in a fall at Kensington Palace and had then developed bronchial trouble. She was not expected to live. Queen Ena hurried to London. Although her mother recovered, the recovery was slow and painful and Queen Ena was obliged to spend several weeks by her bedside. She did not return to Spain until February.
While she was away, the political situation in Spain worsened considerably. To fill the gap left by General Primo de Rivera, the King and his advisers had chosen another dictator, General Berenguer, ex-High Commissioner of Morocco. The appointment of this somewhat milder man was looked upon as a temporary measure only: his task was to prepare Spain for immediate elections. The news threw the Republicans into a flurry of preparations. With the relaxation of censorship of the Press, anti-monarchical propaganda flooded the cities of Spain. But apprehensive lest these new elections, like the old, be managed by the caciques, the Republicans looked for additional ways to undermine the King's position. With the Socialists and the separatist Catalans, they entered into an anti-dynastic pact. Only a republic, it was declared, could cure the kills of Spain. 'Fuera el Rey!' – Away with the King – became the cry, to which Alfonso, in his flippant fashion, remarked that he seemed to have gone out of fashion.
However, towards the end of February 1931, he seemed suddenly to have come back into fashion. A totally unexpected incident gave him a resurgence of confidence.
Her mother recovered, Queen Ena left London to return home. She was seen off at Victoria station by King George V and Queen Mary, both of them urging her, with encouraging little pats on the back, to get Alfonso to act constitutionally. Queen Ena, bracing herself to face a revolution, entered Spain at Irun on 28 February and travelled down to Madrid. At each station her welcome was more vociferous than at the last and, by the time she reached the capital, she was overwhelmed by the fervour of the crowd. As she stepped down from the train, so chic in her pale, fur-trimmed coat, she was almost deafened by the shouts of 'Viva la Reina!' She drove beside the King through a roaring sea of people to the Palacio Real where, time and again, they were obliged to appear on the balcony to show themselves to the hysterically applauding crowds.
Convinced by this apparently spontaneous demonstration that his position was as secure as ever, the King set about preparing for the promised elections. Municipal elections were to be held on 12 April; those for the Cortes in June. Alfonso, cool as always, went off to England for a short holiday. He returned late in March.
The day of the municipal elections was a Sunday. The people voted quietly. There were no demonstrations, either in the streets or at the polling booths. The first returns, the urban returns, were overwhelmingly Republican. Even the revolutionaries were amazed at the extent of their success. And although, in the final count, the Monarchists gained a majority, these urban results gave the Republicans all the encouragement they needed. The revolution could begin.
Toward sunset the following Tuesday evening a great crowd, waving red flags and screaming 'Viva la Republica!' converged on the Palacio Real. Inside, with the exception of the Infante Don Juan, the King's third son, was gathered the entire royal family. The Prince of the Asturias was in bed, too weak to move. The King was calm. He was determined, at all costs, to avoid bloodshed. He could not allow civil strife for his sake. If a republic was what Spain wanted, then a republic he must let her have. Confident, however, that this republican fervour would burn itself out, he decided that the best thing to do was to leave Spain for a while. He would agree to a suspension of his powers but, like King Constantine of Greece in a similar situation, he would not abdicate. In a moving manifesto to the nation, Alfonso made this clear. 'I renounce nothing of my rights,' he wrote, 'because rather than my own, they are a deposit accumulated by history. . . .'
Having written his manifesto, Alfonso took leave of his family. It was decided that he would set out at once for France, with the Queen and the children following the next day. As the Prince of the Asturias could not leave his bed, the King went up to his room to say good-bye. He then took leave of the Queen and the other children. A small convoy of cars was waiting in the darkness below the garden terrace. Having said a last good-bye to the hushed group of well-wishers, the King stepped into the leading car and disappeared into the night.
The dawn was just beginning to silver the sea when he arrived at Cartagena. Here a cruiser was waiting to take him into exile. To shouts of 'Viva la Republica!' from the crowd on the quayside, he climbed aboard and set sail for Marseilles. When he asked why the royal standard was not being flown at the masthead, he was told that it was being cut up by the ship's tailor in order to make the new Republican flag.
Queen Ena and her children remained in the vast, echoing Palacio Real. All night the mob howled about the palace, filling the great rooms with the threatening sound of their voices. Sleep, even rest, was impossible. It was as though the nightmare would never end. As Queen Ena sat by the bedside of her haemophilic son, it seemed like an echo of the time when her cousin Alicky had sat with Alexis at Tsarskoe Selo after the abdication of the Tsar. A sudden heightening of the noise, while the family was eating an informal meal around the sickbed, sent them rushing to the windows. Peeping through the blinds, they saw a truck being driven at full force against one of the palace doors in the hope of breaking it down. Time and again, to the encouraging shouts of the crowd, it reversed and recharged. Was the palace about to be invaded? Already some youths had scrambled up the façade and attached a Republican flag to one of the balconies. Fortunately for the family, a squadron of Hussars cleared away the mob. But the howling went on.
To the accompaniment of this frightening clamour, the royal family gathered a few things together, borrowed some money and said their farewells. They left, just after dawn, by the garden entrance. They were to drive to the Escorial and from there take a train to Paris. The Queen had hoped to keep her departure as quiet as possible but as a small crowd of devotees had gathered by the roadside in the Casa de Campo, she stopped the car and alighted. Sitting on a rock, with the white walls of the Palacio Real glittering in the distance behind her, she took leave of them.
Queen Ena, wrote a witness of this moving scene, 'had held many Courts in the Palace on the horizon, received foreign sovereigns, been the brilliant central figure in many spendid and sumptuous ceremonials. At no
t one of them had she been more queenly, more royally self-controlled, more splendidly a woman than on this sun-drenched morning with a rock for her throne, the high blue sky for her canopy and the unfailing love of a few of her truest friends and servants as her only solace and support'.
At Escorial they entered the train. The Prince of the Asturias, too weak to move, had to be carried aboard. When the very last of the agonizing farewells had been said, the blinds of the royal saloon carriage were drawn and, in almost complete silence, the train slid out of the station.
Almost twenty-five years after becoming Queen, Ena was taking the road to exile. Her comment of this rejection by the Spanish people was poignant: 'I thought I had done well', she said quietly.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Murder in Marseilles
1
At the other end of Europe, in the Balkan peninsula, the austere King Alexander of Yugoslavia was battling with a no less difficult situation. That conglomeration of states, united under the Serbian crown after the war to form a single Slav state, was showing no signs of doing so. The country was a hotch-potch of different peoples, different nationalities, different religions, different languages and different alphabets. Where some states, like Serbia, had considerable experience of parliamentary democracy, others, like Bosnia and Herzegovina, had almost none. The result was that the central parliament, sitting in Belgrade, was simply a collection of bickering minorities. The plans of one section would invariably be defeated by the other sections voting together. No one co-operated; no one compromised. Serbs argued against Croats, Croats against Slovenes; the Orthodox Church against the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church against the Moslems. Insult was heaped upon insult; crisis followed crisis. Every government had to be a coalition; no coalition lasted very long. Cabinets had to be reconstructed several times a year. The first Minister for Agriculture lasted one month; the second for four; the third for two weeks; the fourth for four months; the fifth for three months. Everyone had plenty to say but very few seemed prepared to do anything.