by Theo Aronson
Others claim that, in a convoluted way, the Archduke's visit was meant to demonstrate his sympathy for the Slavs. His appearance among them would illustrate his concern for them: it would give them an opportunity to appreciate their future Emperor better. Franz Ferdinand was known to loathe that other dominant group within the Empire – the Hungarians – and to have some understanding of the legitimate aspirations of the Slavs. Was he not planning one day to grant them some measure of autonomy within the framework of a federated Habsburg empire?
There were said to have been more personal reasons as well. The visit would bolster Franz Ferdinand's self-esteem. Cut off from the centres of Austro-Hungarian power, the Archduke craved the recognition which an official visit such as this would bestow. And he craved it, even more, for his wife. For fourteen years, because of the morganatic nature of their marriage, Franz Ferdinand had been obliged to see his wife suffer in a hundred little ways. He therefore welcomed an opportunity for her to be received, by his side, as an equal.
But the explanation was simpler than this. Franz Ferdinand went to Bosnia because it was his duty to do so. If the manoeuvres had indeed been planned as a warning to Serbia, it was not he who had planned them. Nor, having already been received in state – with his wife – by Kaiser Wilhelm II, King George V and King Carol of Romania, did he really need a visit to a small Balkan capital in order to assert himself and elevate Sophia. In fact, far from wanting to go to Bosnia, Franz Ferdinand had tried to get the trip cancelled. Filled with an unaccountable apprehension, he had approached the Emperor about it. But Franz Joseph had held firm and, dedicated soldier that he was, Franz Ferdinand had felt duty-bound to carry out the Emperor's wishes. In the final analysis, Franz Ferdinand went to Sarajevo because he was commanded to do so.
Two attempts were made on the couple's lives in the streets of Sarajevo that day. As their procession neared the city hall, a bomb narrowly missed their car. 'I come here on a visit,' shouted the badly shaken Archduke to the agitated officials gathered for the civic reception, 'and you throw bombs at me! It's an outrage!'
To avoid the possibility of another such outrage, it was decided that the procession would make the return journey by a different route. Apparently – and incredibly – the only person not to have been told of the change of plan was the driver of the leading car. Yet had he been allowed to continue along the wrong route, the couple might yet have escaped assassination: it was when the procession was held up in order to allow the leading car to reverse and change direction that the assassin struck. A slim, nineteen-year-old boy aimed a pistol and fired twice. The first shot hit Franz Ferdinand, the second Sophie. While he remained upright, she slumped against him.
'Sopherl, Sopherl, don't die. Stay alive for our children,' murmured Franz Ferdinand as the car sped on towards the governor's palace.
In the meantime, the assassin had been arrested. His name was Gabriel Princip, a Bosnian of Serbian extraction and one of six young fanatics who had conspired to kill Franz Ferdinand that day. It was by the merest chance that Princip had suddenly found himself face to face with his victim as the procession halted to allow the leading car to change direction.
'I am a South Slav nationalist,' he later explained at his trial. 'My aim is the union of all Yugoslavs, under whatever political regime, and their liberation from Austria.' He could hardly have put it more succinctly.
Since then, there have been several theories about the true originators of the Sarajevo murders. That the young conspirators were acting alone seems unlikely. The most plausible theory is that they were organised by the chief of the Serbian military intelligence, a bull-like patriot known as Colonel 'Apis', who happened to be the chief of the notorious Black Hand as well. Fearing that Franz Ferdinand's intention of granting reforms to the Slavs within the empire might weaken the cause of South Slav nationalism, Apis had decided that the heir must be killed before becoming Emperor. It has also been suggested that he was hoping to provoke a general war, in the cause of Greater Serbia, and that he was being encouraged by the Russians.
But whoever the originators of the murders might have been, their efforts were successful. Fifteen minutes after the shooting, Franz Ferdinand and Sophie died, side by side, in a room in the governor's palace.
Franz Ferdinand's last words could hardly have been less appropriate.
'It is nothing,' he muttered feebly.
Only gradually did the monarchs of Europe come to a full realisation of the implications of the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. At first they were more appalled by the crime of regicide than by the possible consequences of that crime.
Wilhelm II was racing his yacht Meteor off Kiel when the news was shouted to him from an Admiralty launch coming alongside. He immediately cancelled the regatta and returned to Potsdam. 'The cowardly detestable crime . . .' he wired to his chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, 'has shaken me to the depths of my soul.' But his plan to attend Franz Ferdinand's funeral was firmly scotched by the Emperor Franz Joseph. In the hope of keeping King Peter of Serbia away from the funeral, explained the Austrian ambassador to the astonished Kaiser, no other monarchs would be allowed to attend.
Tsar Nicholas II was also at sea, aboard his yacht Standart off the coast of Finland, when he heard the news. But no more than most sovereigns did he appreciate its significance. Unlike the Kaiser, he did not even feel it necessary to return home. In any case, the Russian imperial family was facing what seemed like far more serious concerns at the time. On boarding the Standart, three days before, the haemophilic Tsarevich had twisted his ankle. By now he was in the most agonising pain. And this time there was no appealing to Rasputin to alleviate the boy's suffering. For, on the day before Franz Ferdinand's assassination, an attempt had been made on the starets's life. Yelling 'I have killed the Anti-Christ!', a woman plunged a knife into his stomach as he walked the streets of his home village, Pokrovskoe. For a fortnight Rasputin was gravely ill. But, blessed with a powerful constitution, he pulled through. To Nicholas and Alexandra, the assassination attempt at Pokrovskoe far outweighed in importance that of Sarejevo.
Britain's George V proved no more perceptive than the rest. 'Terrible shock for the dear old Emperor,' he noted in his diary on the night of the murder. Queen Mary, too, saw it as yet one more cross to be borne by 'the poor Emperor' and as yet one more crime to be committed by anarchists. But, implacable monarchist that she was, the Queen was not quite so distressed as not to consider it 'a great blessing' that both the Archduke and his morganatic wife had been killed: it made 'the future less complicated with regard to the position of their children', she noted.
The object of all this solicitude – the old Emperor Franz Joseph himself – was not nearly as upset as was generally imagined. 'I found Papa amazingly fresh,' noted his daughter, the Archduchess Marie Valerie on the day after Sarajevo. 'He was certainly shocked . . . but, as I had imagined in advance, he was not personally stricken.' And when an official letter was being drafted in which the Emperor was to thank the Grand Master of the Imperial Court for arranging the various ceremonies connected with the Archduke's death, Franz Joseph crossed out the words which read 'a death painful to me'.
But lack of personal grief for the victim did not denote any lack of strong reaction to the crime itself. That Franz Joseph had not liked his nephew was neither here nor there. The heir to the Habsburg throne – a sacrosanct being, chosen by God to continue the six-century-long rule of the Habsburg dynasty – had been struck down. To preserve the pride of his House, Franz Joseph was obliged to punish the perpetrators of this outrage. The Emperor might have been old and tired and peace-loving but he was enough of a monarch to insist that the crime of regicide be avenged.
That the guilt lay with Serbia, the Emperor had no doubt at all. 'The bloody deed was not the work of a single individual but a well-organised plot whose threads extend to Belgrade,' wrote Franz Joseph to Wilhelm II. 'Although it may be impossible to establish the complicity of the Serbian government, no one ca
n doubt that its policy of uniting all Southern Slavs under the Serbian flag encourages such crimes and that the constitution of this situation is a chronic peril for my House and my territories.'1 Serbia, he concluded, must be eliminated as a political factor in the Balkans.
And even if Franz Joseph had not been so intent on 'eliminating' Serbia, his more warlike associates, particularly his foreign minister, Count Berchtold, and his chief of staff, General Conrad von Hotzendorff, would have egged him on. No less than the monarch himself were the political and military authorities convinced that the preservation of the monarchy depended on the subjugation of Serbia.
The first thing for Franz Joseph to do was to make sure of Wilhelm II's support. Without it, he dare not make a move against Serbia. This was obtained, by the Austrian ambassador, during the course of one of those elegant and leisurely luncheon parties at which so much of the diplomacy of the period was conducted. The Kaiser, without waiting for his chancellor's concurrence, assured the Austrian ambassador that the Emperor could count on his full support, whatever happened. His armour was ready for buckling on, his sword for unsheathing, his banner for unfurling. No less than Franz Joseph did Wilhelm feel that the Serbs must be crushed, even at the risk of a general war.
But he doubted that it would come to that. 'I do not believe in any serious warlike developments,' he said to one senior military man the following day. 'The Tsar will not place himself on the side of regicides.'
Having delivered this wildly inaccurate prediction, the Kaiser set out on his annual cruise off the coast of Norway. The Wilhelmstrasse and the General Staff heaved a collective sigh of relief. For at least three weeks they would be safe from their master's weathercock changes of policy direction.
From this point on, things began gathering momentum. Assured of German support, or given the Kaiser's 'blank cheque', Austria drew up an ultimatum to be presented to Serbia. 'We must confront Serbia with the sharpest kind of ultimatum,' declared Franz Joseph. 'If they do not knuckle under we will go to war.'
Indeed, the ultimatum was so deliberately sharp that no self-respecting country could possibly have accepted its terms. Wilhelm II, on receiving a copy on board the Hohenzollern, called it 'a spirited note', while Sir Edward Grey, the British foreign secretary, declared that he had never known one state address another in such formidable terms.
The Austrian ultimatum was delivered on 23 July 1914; that is, twenty-five days after the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. It could have been presented four days earlier, but as Raymond Poincaré, the French President, was paying a state visit to his ally, Tsar Nicholas II, the Austrians delayed its delivery until the French had sailed from St Petersburg. The Entente allies must be allowed no opportunity for consultation.
During the following ten days, Europe was drawn inextricably into war.
Yet at the time it seemed – at least to the monarchs most immediately concerned – that war was not necessarily inevitable. Serbia's reply to the Austrian ultimatum was abject; but not abject enough for Vienna. So diplomatic relations between the two states were broken off. 'Also doch' – So, after all – muttered Franz Joseph on hearing the news, but went on to comfort himself with the observation that 'the breaking off of diplomatic relations still does not mean war'.
The Kaiser was even more optimistic. Or he may simply have been more realistic. By now back from his cruise, Wilhelm had been warned, by his ambassador in London, that British neutrality could not be taken for granted in the event of a European war. This unnerved him. Switching abruptly from war lord to man of peace, he expressed his delight at the conciliatory tone of the Serbian reply. 'A great moral victory for Vienna,' he wrote, 'and with it every reason for war disappears.' This last phrase he underlined.
In his determination to keep the peace, he dashed off a telegram to the Tsar – in the English which the two sovereigns always used in their personal exchanges – asking 'Nicky' in the name of 'the hearty and tender friendship which binds us both from long ago with firm ties', to help him in his 'efforts to smooth over difficulties that may still arise'. He signed it 'Willy'.
Nicholas II was just as worried. 'Everything possible must be done to save peace,' he said to a member of his entourage. 'I will not become responsible for a monstrous slaughter.'
But, of course, Russia was obliged to come to Serbia's aid. Not only was she the traditional protector of the Slavs but, as a great power, she dare not again suffer the sort of humiliation she had suffered at the time of Austria's annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. Already, on hearing of Austria's ultimatum to Serbia, Nicholas II had promised Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia that 'Your Royal Highness may rest assured that Russia will in no case remain indifferent to the fate of Serbia.'
Yet the Tsar could assure the French ambassador that 'notwithstanding appearances, the Emperor Wilhelm is too cautious to launch his country on some wild adventure and the Emperor Franz Joseph's only wish is to die in peace.'
But it was not, apparently, the Emperor Franz Joseph's only wish. On 28 July he rejected the reply to his ultimatum and declared war on Serbia. On the following day Nicholas II, after some characteristic shilly-shallying, ordered a partial mobilisation of the Russian forces – along the Austrian border only.
This led to a positive snowstorm of telegrams between Nicky and Willy. It was all to no purpose. On the afternoon of 30 July the Tsar's foreign minister, Sazonov, convinced Nicholas that the order for a general – as opposed to a partial – mobilisation could no longer be delayed.
'Think of the responsibility you are advising me to take,' protested Nicholas. 'Remember, it would mean sending hundreds of thousands of Russian people to their deaths.'
But eventually, he gave in. 'The Tsar,' wrote Sazonov later, 'remained silent and his face showed the traces of a terrible inner struggle. At last, speaking with difficulty, he said "You are right. There is nothing left for us to do but get ready for an attack upon us. Give . . . my order for [general] mobilisation." '
With this order, Tsar Nicholas II set off a chain reaction that nothing could stop. The monarchs, and the diplomats, might assure themselves that mobilisation did not necessarily mean war, but the generals knew better. Once the cumbersome process of mobilisation had started, war became almost inevitable.
The Kaiser, on hearing of the Tsar's mobilisation order, proclaimed a state of 'imminent war' and drew up an ultimatum in which Russia was required to halt all military preparations by a certain time. Another ultimatum was sent to Russia's ally France, demanding that she remain neutral in the event of a Russo-German war. A third ultimatum went to Belgium in which it was made clear that, with or without permission, German troops would cross Belgium into France.
With Russia ignoring the ultimatum, Germany declared war. The date was 1 August 1914 and the time was just after seven in the evening.
Even at this late stage the Kaiser was hoping that the conflict could be confined to the eastern front. A few days before, on 26 July, his brother Henry, who had been yachting at Cowes, had called on their cousin, George V, at Buckingham Palace. In the course of an eight-minute talk, the King had expressed the hope that Britain might be able to stay neutral in the coming struggle. 'But if Germany declared war on Russia, then I am afraid we shall be dragged into it,' explained the King.
Prince Henry, having first gone to see his sister, Queen Sophie of the Hellenes, who was holidaying with her children in Eastbourne, returned to Germany. There he blandly assured the Kaiser, as he had done the year before, that the King had said that Britain would remain neutral. This the Kaiser, with that unshakable belief in the powers of crowned heads, interpreted as an official assurance of British neutrality. When Admiral von Tirpitz expressed his doubts about Britain staying out of the war, the Kaiser gave a crushing reply.
'I have the word of a King and that is enough for me,' declared Wilhelm.
This was why, when it finally became clear that Britain would not remain neutral, the Kaiser lost his temper. I
n a flurry of marginal notes, he abused the British as 'a mean crew of shopkeepers', their foreign secretary as 'a common cur', and George V as 'a liar'. He even lashed out against his late uncle, Edward VII, whom he held responsible for encircling Germany with enemies. 'Edward VII is stronger after his death than I, who am still alive,' railed the Kaiser. His uncle's nefarious work had been 'finally completed and put into operation by George V'.
But even after he had reluctantly signed the order for general mobilisation, Wilhelm held out hopes of a war on the Russian front only. Patiently, it was explained to him that the redeployment of the million men who were already moving towards the Belgian frontier was impossible. Once the military machine had begun to roll, once the famous Schlieffen Plan had been put into operation, there was no way of stopping it.
Yet the worried Kaiser could still send a telegram to George V, explaining that for 'technical reasons' mobilisation could not be countermanded but that 'if France offers me neutrality which must be guaranteed by the British fleet and army, I shall of course refrain from attacking France and employ my troops elsewhere.'
The no less worried King Albert of the Belgians was also in touch with the Kaiser. On the day before receiving the German ultimatum, he had written Wilhelm II a personal appeal. Albert had hoped that the Kaiser might be able to give him some sort of private reassurance: a reassurance which Wilhelm could not, for political reasons, make public. With the help of Queen Elisabeth, King Albert drafted the letter.
'All her remarks', says Baron van der Elst, who was with them on the occasion, 'were sound and betrayed a sure judgement and that particular tact which often makes women better psychologists than men.' She spoke softly, he says, almost timidly, putting her views in the form of questions. Every word, every phrase of the important letter was carefully considered. When it was finished, the Queen suggested that she translate it from French into German. To ensure that it was done with the utmost accuracy, she fetched a dictionary from an adjoining room and, placing it on an armchair beside her, knelt in front of a low table and began to write. Behind her, bent anxiously over her shoulder, stood Albert. Only when the couple were completely satisfied, was the letter despatched.