Grandmama of Europe: The Crowned Descendants of Queen Victoria

by Theo Aronson

  Least co-operative of all were the Croats. Catholic Croatia, which before the war had been part of the Austrian Empire, had joined the new state rather unwillingly. Since then she had resolutely refused to pull together with the Orthodox Serbs. That democracy could not work in Yugoslavia was in no small measure due to this intractability on the part of the Croats. The dream of many Croatians was autonomy for their country. To achieve this, they would first have to destroy the newly established state.

  All this King Alexander found exasperating. So self-controlled and undemonstrative a man, he could not understand these parliamentary rantings. Accustomed to the ordered ways, the esprit de corps, the unity of purpose and, it must be admitted, the unquestioning obedience of the army, he had no patience with these squabbling politicians. As Rebecca West has so succinctly put it, he 'suffered at all times from the professional soldier's inability to distinguish between an argument and a mutiny'. King Alexander was, in many ways, too straightforward and incorrupt to make his way through the labyrinth of Balkan politics. And then, although no fool, he did not like to be surrounded by clever men. Regrettably, he valued good character above brain. Honest, simple men who did their job he appreciated; he did not really have much faith in democracy.

  Yet, in the beginning, King Alexander did what he could to make parliamentary democracy work. Elections were free. On the rare occasions that the politicians came to some agreement, he never tampered with their decisions. Determined to unify the various nationalities (there were no fewer than nine different groups in the new state) he showed admirable impartiality. He never favoured his own Serbs above the others. Orthodox himself, he showed every consideration for the Catholics. The British Minister at Belgrade claimed that the King was the only real Yugoslav that he had ever met. To prove that he was as much King of the Slovenes as the Serbs, Alexander established a summer residence at Bled, in the mountainous, far-western corner of Slovenia. To please the fractious Croats, he named his second son – born on 19 January 1928 – Tomislav, after the legendary King of Croatia. Going further still, he gave a cabinet post to Stephan Raditch, the hitherto persecuted leader of the Croat Peasant Party.

  But not all King Alexander's moves were quite so statesmanlike. The régime had its share of bannings, censorship, imprisonments and arbitrary actions by the police. These, in turn, simply led to further upheavals. Indeed, ten years after the founding of the new state, the situation was more chaotic than ever. National unity was still no more than a word; little was being inaugurated, let alone accomplished.

  By 1928 even Raditch, the Croat leader, was advising a temporary dictatorship as the only solution to the country's troubles. The King should sweep away the wrangling politicians and appoint a military government. To Alexander, the idea had considerable appeal but he hesitated to take so bold a step. But Raditch persisted, and in parliament delivered an impassioned harangue in favour of a royal dictatorship. 'What is more natural,' he cried, 'than that the King, who is the glory of the monarchy, should become the arbiter of our destinies?'

  His answer came from a wild-eyed Montenegrin deputy. On 20 June 1928, he shot Raditch, who died six weeks later.

  For a few months longer Alexander grappled with the situation. Since the murder of Raditch, the Croat deputies had refused to sit in parliament. This emasculated body had become, in the King's words, simply a negative force causing dissension in the land. Thus on 6 January 1929, he dismissed it and appointed a general as Prime Minister, thereby infringing the constitution. In a statement to the nation, the King declared that his greatest aim was the unity of the country. Although parliamentarianism remained his ideal, it had failed and he was being forced to try another method. He was now a dictator.

  2

  'The Queen,' King Alexander once said of his wife Mignon, 'has no part in affairs of state. I admire her because she is devoted to her children and seeks no other sphere of interest.'

  This was true. 'I really don't know much about politics,' the Queen would say. 'I have the children to look after and the houses and the vines.'

  This is not to say that Queen Marie of Yugoslavia was an excessively maternal creature, interested in nothing other than her children. On the contrary, she had a brusque, somewhat unmotherly manner. With the passing years, she had developed into something very like an English country gentlewoman: plainly dressed, plainly spoken, practical and unflurried. She had been brought up, she would say, in the English fashion – never 'to make a fuss'. Of the theatrical aura of her mother, Queen Marie of Romania, Mignon had nothing. 'I shall never be as good a Queen as she is,' she once declared. 'You see, I don't really like clothes.' That was all too obvious. She was very little interested in her appearance. She wore no make-up; her hair, cut short, was often kept in place by a hairnet; she was happiest in flannel suits and brogues. Yet her air, if blunt, was never gruff. Her smile was attractive, her manner friendly and her nature unexpectedly gentle.

  Her interests, as she said, were her children, her houses and her vines. The royal couple had three sons, Peter, Tomislav and Andrej. All three were healthy, lively, attractive boys. For most of the time they lived separately from their parents: with their nurses or governesses in cottages in the grounds of the various royal homes. There were several royal residences. The official palace was the main one in Belgrade, which Alexander had enlarged on his marriage. But the couple had never really enjoyed living there. It was too public. All day the trams hurtled past the front door; all night the crowds jabbered at the pavement café on the corner. In 1929, after assuming dictatorial powers, Alexander moved his family out to a new palace, on a hilltop at Dedinje, a few miles from the capital. In a way, this was a mistake. Alexander was simply removing himself still farther from his people. Already considered somewhat aloof, undemocratic and un-Serbian, the King seemed to be emphasizing his remoteness from his subjects by moving away from their midst.

  As far as the family was concerned, however, the great white, arcaded palace at Dedinje was a delight. The estate was quite self-contained. The King, an ardent bibliophile, devoted himself to his books. Often, late at night, he would be found in dressing-gown and slippers on a small stepladder, peering through his pince-nez at some rare and beautifully bound volume. He allowed no one to touch his books. With him, said the Queen, the pleasure of acquisition was greater than the pleasure of reading. His poor eyesight might have had something to do with this. 'You are happy,' he once said to her. 'You can always find something to do with your hands in your spare time, whereas I can only read.' Indeed, Mignon was never at a loss for something to do. Interested in practical things, farming in particular, she busied herself with the garden, the horses, the cows, the poultry, even the carpenter's and machine shop.

  In the summer the family moved to their home at Bled, in the Julian Alps. Here they spent some of their happiest times. The house was beautifully situated. The King could go shooting and fishing, the Queen could go careering along the mountain roads. Wedged between Austria and Italy, the countryside around Bled was quite different from the rest of the Balkans. Its flavour was Austrian, German, Western. The royal family, however, lived in an almost exclusively English atmosphere. The King's cousin, Prince Paul, now married to Princess Olga of Greece, lived twelve miles from Bled. The aesthetic Paul, having been to Oxford, was something of an Anglophile; his household spoke English. In fact, it was at his home near Bled that his wife's sister, Princess Marina, became engaged to Prince George, the youngest son of King George V of England.

  Into this British enclave, the Queen fitted very happily. Although she usually spoke French to the King, she preferred using English. Her sons were being educated in English. Nurse Bell had given way to Miss Crowther (called, inevitably, 'Crowdy') and a Mr Parrot arrived as tutor. Plans were being made to send Crown Prince Peter to school in England. In time, all three boys went to British schools.

  And, of course, whenever Queen Marie of Romania descended on the royal household, its tone became more British still.
That, King Alexander never minded; what he did mind about his mother-in-law's visits was the atmosphere she engendered. She was far too ebullient for his taste. Once, towards the end of a particularly long and exhausting stay, he was heard to mutter, 'It's enough.'

  An enthusiastic traveller, Queen Marie of Yugoslavia loved to visit Miločer, on the Adriatic coast. She adored the sea. Leaving the King in Belgrade, she and her sons would make the two-day train journey to the coast. Here they would revel in the informality of seaside life – the picnicking, the boating, the fishing and the bathing. In time, Mignon had a house built at Miločer.

  Another of the royal houses was at Topola, some fifty miles from the capital. It had been built by King Alexander's father, King Peter I. For the taste of the royal family, however, it was far too ornate, and they had built a much less pretentious home for themselves nearby. It was, says Rebecca West, 'a cottage planned by the Queen, where she and Alexander and the children lived the kind of home life, uncultured but civilized and amiable, that Queen Victoria made common form for European royalty.' One of the chief glories of Topola was its vineyards. In these, the Queen took an active interest. It was here, at Topola, that Mignon was visited by Rosita Forbes, at that time touring the Balkans.

  Miss Forbes had just come on from a hair-raising visit to King Alexander in southern Serbia. By now the royal dictator lived under the constant threat of assassination. Where southern Serbia bordered on the revolutionary province of Macedonia, the threat was particularly serious. His entourage expected the King to be blown to bits at any moment. Yet Alexander never showed the slightest flicker of nervousness; he was utterly without fear. 'It is a waste of time to be afraid,' he would say in his quiet fashion.

  But if Alexander was without fear, Rosita Forbes was not, and it had been with considerable trepidation that she had accepted the King's invitation to join him in a cup of coffee at an ill-lit café, well known as a meeting place of the very Macedonian Comitadjis who were planning to kill him. Throughout the nerve-racking visit the King had remained quite calm. 'I doubt if they would shoot me here,' he said ruminatively. Miss Forbes was not quite so certain.

  Her interview with the Queen would be, she imagined, much more relaxing.

  The house at Topola was hardly more than a villa, and Miss Forbes was received in a room furnished with wickerwork and English chintzes. She found the Queen disarmingly matter-of-fact. When Miss Forbes apologized for being late, explaining that her driver had assumed that the royal family lived in the grandiose building on the hill opposite, Queen Marie laughed heartily. 'We probably shall be soon,' she said. 'It's the morgue.' On the visitor thanking her hostess for agreeing to receive her, the Queen's reply was no less to the point. 'Well, my mother told me that I must,' she said.

  Inevitably, the talk turned to the assassination attempts on the King's life. Queen Marie treated the subject, says her guest, as though it were influenza. They were always trying to shoot the King, grumbled the Queen. 'He doesn't mind, but sometimes it does interrupt his work.'

  Tea over (there were none of Queen Marie of Romania's silver, bird-shaped teapots here; merely a china one), Queen Marie took her visitor to see the vines. They passed the cottage in which lived the little princes; a fully armed guard stood at every window. A few minutes later, as they strolled up a slope, there was a sudden, ear-splitting explosion. Part of a hillside was flung up into the air and came crashing down to within a few yards of their feet. Rosita Forbes stood rooted to the ground in terror. Queen Marie did not turn a hair. In fact, she went on speaking as though nothing had happened. Only on finishing her sentence did she remark on the violent crash. 'I wonder if they are dynamiting for my vineyard – or it might be a bomb,' she said briskly. 'I'll ask.'

  At that moment a breathless aide-de-camp dashed up to reassure them it had indeed been a charge of dynamite for the vineyard. By some miscalculation, it had been much too large. 'Well, I don't see how we're going to get the vines planted now,' complained the Queen, peering into the dust-filled chasm. 'It's too steep.'

  The last sight that Miss Forbes had of this unaffected Queen that day was running down the steps of the villa after they had already said goodbye.

  'Wait! Wait!' called the Queen. 'It's late and you'll be cold driving back to Belgrade. Look, I've brought you a coat.'

  She handed it over and then strode back across the darkening garden to her closely guarded house.

  3

  A soldier and a dictator, King Alexander of Yugoslavia was dedicated to peace. Unlike those other European dictators, Hitler and Mussolini, he had no dreams of military conquest and national aggrandizement. His dreams were all of Yugoslav unity. But if this elusive ideal could be realized in no other way, then it must be imposed by the throne.

  One of Alexander's first moves after becoming dictator was the geographical reorganization of his country. The old names of the various states – Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Herzegovina, Bosnia, Macedonia and the Voivodina – were swept away, and a set of new provinces, making up a single country – Yugoslavia – were proclaimed. At an impressive military ceremony in Belgrade the various national regiments gave up their flags and adopted the new Yugoslavian flag. To conciliate the Croats, the Cyrillic script, so dear to the Serbs, was abolished to be replaced by the Latin script. A new constitution, vesting the King and his cabinet with absolute power, was introduced. A parliament, consisting of supporters of the government only, merely confirmed new laws. The Press was rigidly controlled. The police were all-powerful.

  By none of these well-intentioned but draconian moves, however, could King Alexander impose unification or stamp out opposition. The country remained divided; its various groups remained dissatisfied. Agitation among Croats and Slovenes continued; terrorism increased. Arrests, bombings and political murders became daily occurrences. Acts of sabotage, designed to undermine confidence in the régime, multiplied. And, vigorously heaping fuel onto these political fires was Mussolini's Italy. Anxious to gain for his country the Dalmatian coast of Yugoslavia, Mussolini encouraged the Croats in their fight against a united Yugoslavia. A weak, divided Yugoslavia would suit Mussolini very well. The removal of King Alexander from the scene would suit him even better.

  Fully alive to this international intrigue, Alexander remained cool. But there were further dangers. With Italy threatening him on one side, and Germany, under Hitler, beginning to rise to the north, King Alexander realized that not only the peoples of Yugoslavia, but all the Balkan countries, should stand together. Not again must the Western Powers be allowed to meddle in the Balkans. War in the Balkans would undo all his work for Yugoslavia. A pact must be signed between the various Balkan Powers. With this in mind, King Alexander and Queen Marie set off on a tour of the peninsula in the autumn of 1933. They visited Marie's brother, King Carol, in Bucharest; King Boris of Bulgaria at Varna on the Black Sea; Kemal Pasha in Constantinople and members of the Greek government on Corfu. In November 1933, shortly before Alexander's forty-fifth birthday, the Balkan Pact was signed. For the King, it was a great personal triumph. From now on, he was spoken of as a 'man of peace'.

  The following year, King Alexander and Queen Marie were invited to pay a state visit to Paris. They were delighted. On discussing how they should travel to France, Alexander announced that he would like to go by sea. There were several reasons for this. He would avoid crossing unfriendly Italy; in a Yugoslav destroyer, he would be on Yugoslav territory until he reached France; his arrival on a warship would confirm Yugoslavia's claim to be a naval power; landing at Marseilles, he would be able to lay a wreath on the monument to those French troops who had sailed from there to help the Serbian army during the war.

  Mignon was less enthusiastic. She was a very bad sailor and in October the Mediterranean could be stormy. Between them, then, they agreed that he should go by sea and she by rail. She would see him off on the Dubrounik and then take her train.

  They left Belgrade together early in October 1934. With them went
the King's cousin, Prince Paul. Some time before setting out, the King had arranged for Prince Paul to act as Regent for his son Peter in the event of his own death. Assassination was very much in the air these days. There had been a plan to kill the King in the Croatian capital Zagreb the year before. Hitler had had Roehm murdered that year and the Austrian Nazis had killed Dolfuss. Recently, the Queen had noticed that even her normally imperturbable husband was beginning to glance behind him as he walked. It was as well, therefore, that he had made some provision for the future of his régime.

  Was it, perhaps, a premonition of death that made the King decide to revisit some of the scenes of his youth before sailing for France? In streaming rain, the royal party travelled again across the bleak, rocky countryside that had seen the Serbian retreat in the worst days of the First World War. Through these mountains, some twenty years before, the King had accompanied the broken army in its flight to the sea. Now, as Alexander passed by, the peasants, carrying the traditional bread and salt, came out to welcome their King. In Cettinje, the mist-shrouded old capital of Montenegro, Alexander showed his wife the unpretentious stone cottage in which he had been born. In the same room, a year later, his mother, Princess Zorka of Montenegro, had died. At Zelenika, from where he was to sail, the King insisted on revisiting the old monastery of Savina.

  In her straightforward fashion, the Queen afterwards described this last excursion. 'The monastery was locked,' she remembered. 'We could not find anyone, either priest or monk, to open for us. We had not announced our visit and so were not expected. My husband said to Paul, "I must show you the cross; come on, let's wake them up." Then the boys did something they shouldn't have done. Of course it was very wrong. They found two ropes and rang the monastery bells. The bell my husband rang was very rarely sounded. It had a peculiar tone and must have greatly surprised those who heard it. A priest appeared as from nowhere running over the flagstone paving towards us and he was greatly surprised to see who it was had arrived . . . But afterwards we heard a curious story about this visit. I am not superstitious. I consider it rather a legend. We heard that the bells the boys had rung each had a name. The bell my husband had rung was called "Death" and the bell Paul had rung was called "Life". '