by Theo Aronson
Within their palaces, everything was designed to overawe. 'With all their glitter and pageantry, their pomp and mise-en-scène,' writes Lord Frederic Hamilton, the courts of Europe emphasised the sovereign's direct link with the days of the divine right of kings. The state apartments were almost overwhelming in their magnificence. 'The throne room,' runs his breathless account of Wilhelm II's Berlin palace, 'was one of the most sumptuous in the world . . . '
Even more sumptuous were the Russian palaces. The Winter Palace in St Petersburg, with its enfilade of state rooms, gleaming with marble, porphyry and malachite and glittering with gold, glass and crystal, made an unrivalled royal setting, almost barbaric in its splendour. Yet the Dowager Tsaritsa of Russia could exclaim that she had no words to describe the beauty of Edward VII's embellishments to Buckingham Palace. 'It makes one's mouth water to see all this magnificence,' she reported to her son, Nicholas II.
Ceremonial within these lavish settings was formal to a degree. Everyone moved in strict order of precedence; everything was acted out according to long-established custom. Etiquette was particularly exacting at the courts of the three Continental empires – Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary. It gave them an unreal air. Wilhelm II's court swarmed with pages dressed in the wigs, ruffles and knee-breeches of Frederick the Great's day. Four gigantic negroes in scarlet trousers, gold-embroidered jackets and white turbans stood guard at Tsar Nicholas II's door. 'They were not soldiers', explained the Tsaritsa's friend, Anna Vyrubova, 'and had no function except to open and close doors or to signal, by a sudden noiseless entrance into a room, that one of Their Majesties was about to appear.'
To be invited to a 'Ball at Court' (not to be confused with the less exclusive 'Court Ball') at the Emperor Franz Joseph's palace in Vienna, one had to lay claim to sixteen quarterings: to be able to prove, in other words, that one could trace one's ancestry back to eight male and eight female noble forebears. It was no wonder that the balls at the Hofburg were so deadly dull.
That these sovereigns saw themselves as a race of superior beings can hardly be wondered at. Even the more enlightened Edward VII remained acutely aware of the mystique that set kings apart from other mortals. When the German Crown Prince protested at having to give precedence at the British court to Kalakua, King of the Cannibal Islands, Edward VII had a perfectly reasonable explanation. 'Either the brute is a king,' he argued, 'or he is an ordinary black nigger. And if he is not a king, why is he here?'
Indeed, the profusion of imperial, royal, grand-ducal and most serene highnesses (not to mention imperial and royal highnesses) made for endless complications of precedence. Touchiest of all in these matters were the sovereigns themselves. Wilhelm II had once earned the sharp edge of his grandmother, Queen Victoria's tongue by suggesting that his Uncle Bertie, at that stage still Prince of Wales, treat him as an emperor in private as well as in public. And after Edward VII's funeral, the young King Alfonso XIII of Spain lodged a formal protest at being placed behind the older Kaiser, on the grounds that whereas he had succeeded at birth, in 1886, Wilhelm II had not succeeded until two years later. It was patiently explained that it was the Kaiser's close relationship to the late King, and not his seniority, that had earned him his place in the first row.
More heated still was the row between Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria and the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria as the Orient Express hurtled them across Europe towards London for Edward VII's funeral. With each wanting to have his private carriage ahead of the other, the Archduke had triumphed by having his carriage placed immediately after the engine. But Tsar Ferdinand had his revenge. As the Archduke needed to pass through the Tsar's carriage to reach the dining car, Ferdinand was able to refuse him permission to do so. The result was that the Archduke had to wait until the train reached a station, alight, hurry along the platform to the dining saloon and, having eaten, wait until the train stopped at another station before making his way back to his carriage.
Thorniest of all was the question of royal marriages. To maintain the illusion of a superior breed, royals intermarried. A mésalliance was regarded as little less than a mortal sin. The plainest of princesses who, in any other station, might have considered herself lucky to find a husband, frequently ended up a queen. For to marry outside the golden stockade of royalty was to court disaster.
When the Grand Duke Michael, brother of Tsar Nicholas II, married the twice-divorced daughter of a Moscow lawyer, his mother, the Dowager Tsaritsa, pronounced it 'so appalling in every way that it nearly kills me!' The marriage had to be kept, she instructed, 'absolutely secret'. And when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, married a mere countess, his transgression shook the meticulously structured Habsburg monarchy to its foundations. The union had to be morganatic, his wife had to give precedence to the least important of the archduchesses and his children were to be denied any rights as members of the imperial house. To this, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand had to swear a solemn oath.
Nor were these draconian prohibitions confined to the leading royal houses. One poor princess of Saxe-Weimar, on being told that she could not possibly, as a member of a royal family, marry a Jewish banker, promptly shot herself.
This same aura of exclusivity, of imperiousness, of grandeur surrounded these monarchs as they moved about their realms or paid state visits to their fellow sovereigns. They went bowling along beflagged boulevards in spectacular carriage processions; they cruised the Baltic or the Mediterranean in superbly appointed yachts; they drove to private appointments in highly polished motor cars. But, above all, they travelled by train. The opening years of the twentieth century saw the high summer of royal train travel. From Lisbon to St Petersburg, from London to Constantinople, these palaces-on-wheels carried the royal families of Europe to christenings, weddings, funerals, house-parties, private visits and public jamborees. The red carpet was forever being rolled out and the potted palms forever being set up for the arrival of yet another king or crown prince or dowager empress.
King George V's private carriages were as richly upholstered and as cluttered as any drawing-room at Sandringham. Kaiser Wilhelm II's dark blue and ivory coaches were decorated in ice-blue satin. The Tsar of Bulgaria's private train, with its green velvet walls in the drawing-room carriage and its turquoise silk hangings in the bedrooms, was described as 'un vrai bijou d'intimité voyageuse'. Perhaps most luxurious of all was Tsar Nicholas II's train. Consisting of a string of royal blue saloon cars with the double-headed eagle coat of arms emblazoned in gold on the sides, it had everything – sitting-rooms, bedrooms, a study, a dining saloon, a kitchen equipped with all modern conveniences – to ensure the comfort of the imperial family as they journeyed across the interminable distances of the Russian empire. To confuse any potential assassin, two identical trains would make every journey. If nothing else, this halved the chances of the Tsar being blown to smithereens by revolutionaries.
The most important train journeys undertaken by the crowned heads were those which carried them on visits to each other. The meetings, both public and private, between the sovereigns of Europe, were generally regarded as momentous occasions. Who could doubt that by their exchange of showy state visits or by their informal talks in some Continental spa these crowned cousins were making history? Surely these plumed and bemedalled sovereigns were settling matters of international importance? Surely these queens and princesses, with their aigrettes, feather boas and pouter-pigeon silhouettes, were planning further dynastic aggrandisement? Could those mammoth family gatherings, on yachts or in country palaces, be anything other than occasions of great consequence?
The late Edward VII had certainly been regarded as a supreme royal diplomat. By his state visits to almost every capital in Europe, he had given the impression that he was a political force; that by his air of authority and astuteness of mind he was manipulating the affairs of Europe. His nephew, the Kaiser, had no doubt whatsoever that this was true. Edward VII might have been known as 'the Peacemaker
' to some but to Wilhelm II he was 'the Encircler': a satanic schemer intent on ringing Germany with enemies. This was why, when, standing before the coffin of Edward VII, the Kaiser and the new British King ('the Encircler's' son, George V) clasped hands, their gesture was regarded – by the Kaiser at least – as one of deep international significance.
Even the most trivial incidents could have far-reaching repercussions. In 1909 Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria arrived on a state visit to Berlin with a valuable armaments contract which he intended to give to the German firm of Krupps. But while Ferdinand was leaning out of a window of the Neues Palais in Potsdam, on the occasion of a banquet in his honour, his fat bottom was stingingly slapped by his host, the exuberant Kaiser. When Wilhelm II refused to apologise for this bit of horseplay, Ferdinand left the palace in a huff. With him went his important armaments contract, to be placed with the rival French firm of Schneidcr-Creusot.
Enhancing still further the status of Europe's monarchs during this period was the growth of nationalism. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, as one after another of the populations of Europe were united into national groupings and people began to think of themselves primarily as Germans or Italians or Romanians, so did national pride become increasingly more militant. And who better to symbolise these ever more aggressive feelings of national identity than a national monarch? So gorgeously uniformed, so confidently mannered, so surrounded by pomp and deference, a king was much more impressive than any frock-coated president. Monarchs became, not only the representatives, but the personification of the state. As late as 1915 the Emperor Franz Joseph could announce that 'The King of Italy has declared was on Me' rather than that Italy had declared war on Austria–Hungary.
As well as personifying the state, these national sovereigns seemed, in a strange way, to mirror its characteristics. Who other than the sabre-rattling Wilhelm II could have headed the thrusting, aggressive Second Reich? Or than the courtly Franz Joseph the ageing, bureaucratic Austro-Hungarian empire? Even the irresolute Tsar Nicholas II somehow suited amorphous, mystical Holy Russia.
And it these monarchs had developed into the very symbols of nationalism, they had developed, no less, into the symbols of nationalism's natural successor, imperialism. For the early years of the twentieth century saw the golden age of imperialism. This was the era of world powers, of the spread of European civilisation, of high-flown theories of racial superiority, of land-hungry visionaries and exaggerated national pride. The great nations were expanding, trading, colonising, establishing spheres of influence and founding empires. Hard-headed realism walked hand-in-hand with high romance.
Until then, these kings had been monarchs on a European scale; now they were monarchs on a world scale. They found themselves reigning over vast areas of desert or jungle or grassland, over unsealed mountain ranges or unfathomed inland seas, over millions of Arabs and Africans and Indians. It was a time of extravagant imperial titles and extravagant imperial gestures. Britain's George V was a King-Emperor, holding sway over a quarter of the world's land mass and a quarter of the world's population. In 1911, at a huge durbar at Delhi, the capital of his Indian empire, George V stood beneath a golden-domed pavilion to receive the homage of his Indian subjects. 'The magnificent ceremonial among those millions of his peoples, many of whom felt for him and hailed him almost as a god,' wrote one of his biographers, 'convinced him finally and for his life of the majesty of his office . . .'4
Nicholas II, 'Autocrat of All the Russians', reigned over 130 million people in an empire so vast that as night was falling on its western borders, day was already breaking on its eastern shore. Not content with this, the Tsar fantasised about a 'Third Rome': a gigantic Russian successor to the Roman and Byzantine empires, which would stretch from the Balkans to the China Sea, incorporating Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet, China and even India. 'The great task for the future of Russia', encouraged one of the Tsar's fellow sovereigns, 'is to cultivate the Asian continent.'
Kaiser Wilhelm II, as 'The All Highest', delivered thundering speeches on the subject of Weltpolitik and of the Reich's determination to claim its 'place in the sun'. His famous Berlin to Baghdad Railway, uniting the icy waters of the Baltic to the balmy waters of the Persian Gulf, was a typically imperialistic enterprise. King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and King Alfonso XIII of Spain founded new empires in North Africa. The ambitious King Leopold II of the Belgians not only acquired but personally owned the vast Congo empire. From here, he planned to gain a foothold on the Nile and, moving northwards into Egypt, to establish the Coburgs as latter-day pharaohs. More than one eastern European monarch, mesmerised by the domes and minarets of Constantinople, saw themselves being crowned in Saint Sophia as the new Emperor of Byzantium.
It was no wonder that to the majority of their subjects these flamboyant royal figures were regarded as a race apart. To ordinary people, the institution of monarchy was bathed in an aura of mysticism and romance. Monarchs seemed more like creatures of mythology than men. Even the diseases which ran rife through their dynasties – melancholia in the Habsburgs, madness in the Wittelsbachs, haemophilia in the Coburgs – tended to be outré, shrouded in secrecy. Many Spanish peasants believed the macabre rumour that a young soldier had to be sacrificed every day so that his warm blood might be used to keep Alfonso XIII's son, the haemophilic heir apparent, alive. Even the relatively matter-of-fact British royal family had a prince – King George V's youngest son – shut away from the public gaze.
Their deaths were often highly dramatic. Some of them were blown to bits by anarchists' bombs; others were killed by assassins' bullets; yet others were hacked to death by revolutionaries. Violent death came to be regarded as an occupational hazard. An assassinated sovereign became, in a way, a martyr to the cause of monarchy.
Was it any wonder that kings were considered hardly less than gods? That the dividing line between throne and altar had become increasingly blurred? Many believed monarchs had been especially ordained to rule over them; all knew that kings ranked first after God. In Germany, Wilhelm II used to refer to himself as 'The Instrument of the Almighty'. In Russia, peasants would fall to their knees in the fields as the imperial train thundered by and, in their conviction that the Tsar stood nearer to God than to the people, believed that he went to heaven once a week to confer with the Almighty. East African tribesmen, jolted out of their sleep by a violent earthquake, could only imagine that it signified the death of the King of England. To some, the fact that Halley's Comet had flashed its golden way across the skies on the night before Edward VII's funeral seemed like an omen of supernatural significance.
Could anyone doubt then, that this exclusive royal clan was a race of supermen? Who, seeing this self-confident parade of royalty through the streets of the world's greatest metropolis on the occasion of Edward VII's funeral, could imagine that their future was anything but assured?
How many, among the hundreds of thousands of overawed spectators would have guessed that this blaze of monarchical splendour marked, not a royal high noon, but a royal sunset?
For within a decade it would all – or almost all – have been swept away. Never again could such a multitude of kings and princes be gathered together. The most important of these apparently unassailable monarchs were about to be overthrown; such sovereigns as survived the First World War and its revolutionary aftermath were to be little more than figureheads. Against the military, political and social upheavals of these years, kings were to prove both powerless and irrelevant.
And, with the monarchs, would go a whole way of life. All the pageantry, all the pomp, all the panache with which they had diverted the world for so many centuries would disappear. 'I cannot, though,' wrote one diplomat after the war, 'help experiencing a feeling of regret that this prosaic, drab-coloured twentieth century should have lost so strong an element of the picturesque, and should have permanently severed a link which bound it to the traditions of the medieval days of chivalry and romance, with their glowing colou
r, their splendid spectacular displays, and the feeling of continuity with a vanished past which they inspired.'5
But something far more significant than this was to disappear. The entire monarchic and dynastic order of central Europe, as well as the civilisation built upon it, was about to dissolve. The First World War marked the passing of a social order; it constituted the last chapter of an age in history.
That great Armageddon signalled the end of the Europe of the Kings.
Part One
'THE OLD WORLD
IN ITS SUNSET'
1
The All Highest
WITH THE DEATH of King Edward VII, his nephew, Kaiser Wilhelm II, could at last lay claim to be Europe's leading monarch. While his assured and imposing uncle had been alive, Wilhelm II had always felt slightly overshadowed; now he was confident of having no close rival. King George V might reign over a larger empire, Tsar Nicholas II might wield more personal power, the Emperor Franz Joseph might have been on his throne for almost three times as long, but no one could deny that the Second Reich was the most powerful nation on the Continent and its Kaiser the most spectacular sovereign.
Fifty-one in the year 1910, Wilhelm II had been German Emperor for twenty-two years. During this time he had developed into one of the world's most recognisable figures. In that flood of official portraits and photographs with which he submerged the civilised world, he looked the very epitome of the warrior-king. Pictured in one of his four hundred uniforms, his eyes glaring, his chin jutting, his puffed-out chest glittering with orders, Kaiser Wilhelm II created an image at once heroic and intimidating. It was small wonder that a French general could describe the Kaiser's portrait on the wall of the German Embassy in Paris as 'a declaration of war'.