by Theo Aronson
And while Ferdinand fiddled, Rome was about to burst into flames. On 14 September 1918, the Allied forces – among them the Serbs under old King Peter's son, Prince Alexander – launched their offensive along the southern Macedonian frontier. Within days they had broken through the Bulgarian front. As the Bulgarians retreated helter-skelter through the mountains, and mutinous troops marched on Sofia, Ferdinand concurred with his ministers' request to seek an armistice. The Bulgarian peace delegates travelled to Salonika and on 29 September agreed to the cessation of all hostilities between Bulgaria and the Allies.
'Was anything said about me?' asked an apprehensive Tsar Ferdinand of the head of the returning armistice delegation.
'I do not wish to discuss that subject,' came the diplomatic answer. 'But the Allies spoke in terms of admiration about the Crown Prince.'
Ferdinand understood. For the following three days he shut himself up in his rooms, seeing no one. Then, on 3 October, he called together his two sons, Boris and Cyril, and his secretaries. He informed them that he had decided to abdicate in favour of the twenty-four-year-old Prince Boris. The secretaries drew up a document and he signed it. Summoning his prime minister, the Tsar handed him the document.
'My abdication!' he announced baldly. 'Accept it!'
And then, turning from the prime minister to Prince Boris, he said, 'Let us two be the first to swear allegiance to the new Tsar.'
'From now on,' he declared to his son, 'I am your subject but I am also Your Majesty's father.'1 Not even in this desperate moment had Ferdinand's sense of theatre failed him.
The following evening, accompanied by a small suite, Ferdinand left his kingdom.
For over thirty years, by a combination of guile, tenacity, ability and audacity, Ferdinand had managed to hold on to his crown. And even though he had finally lost it, he had been able to save the monarchy. It would be left to Hitler and Stalin, between them, to destroy that.
'The sensational news today', wrote an exultant Queen Marie of Romania on 4 October 1918, 'is that Ferdinand of Bulgaria has abdicated in favour of his son Boris, who was immediately crowned in Sofia.'
Suddenly, the long deadlock had been broken; everything was becoming fluid again. The abdication of Tsar Ferdinand marked the beginning of a complete transformation in southeastern Europe. 'For the first time', wrote Marie, 'we really see light ahead.' She, who since the German conquest of Romania, had been regarded as something of an embarrassment, now suddenly found herself acclaimed. Her flicker of resistance was developing into a great blaze of triumph.
'There are fearful battles being raged on all fronts,' she noted a few days later. 'French troops have entered Sofia, the Allies are advancing into Serbia and Albania. Turkey is going to pieces, in Palestine her armies are almost completely destroyed. The German front is at last crumbling everywhere.'
One afternoon a French aeroplane, flying up from Salonika, dropped a message for the excited Queen. It was from her cousin, George V. Written on a tiny scrap of paper, it promised Marie that 'Romania would not be forgotten'. 'All this is tremendous news for us, makes us tremble with excitement and expectation,' she gushed. For, by his message, the British King meant that the territorial promises, made to Romania when she joined the Entente Powers two years before, would be remembered on the day of victory.
But, in truth, the Great National Dream was already coming true. Earlier that year, the previously Russian-controlled territory of Bessarabia, on Romania's northeastern frontier, had been annexed. Now, with the gradual crumbling of the Habsburg empire, Romanians living in Transylvania and Bukovina were clamouring to join their mother country. 'The dream of Romania Mare seems to be becoming a reality,' wrote the gratified Marie. 'It is all so incredible that I hardly dare believe it.'
In his less demonstrative fashion the Serbian Regent, Prince Alexander, was also rejoicing in this sudden turning of the tide. No less were his years of defeat and waiting being rewarded. With his father, the old and increasingly eccentric King Peter I, living the life of a recluse in Greece, it had been left to Alexander to reclaim the kingdom. And, as much as Queen Marie, could the small, austere, highly disciplined Serbian Regent look forward to the aggrandisement of this kingdom.
Already, the year before, the exiled royal Serbian government had met a delegation of South Slavs from the Austro-Hungarian empire and had together issued a manifesto proclaiming a 'Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, a democratic and parliamentary monarchy under the Karageorgevic dynasty'. It had been, in effect, a declaration that from out of the ruins of the Habsburg empire, a new South Slav state, eventually to be known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, would be born. Now, in the early days of October 1918, as the Serbs, led by Prince Alexander, came marching triumphantly back towards Belgrade, the age-old dream of Greater Serbia was indeed coming true.
Victor Emmanuel III of Italy was also tasting the fruits of victory achieved and ambitions fulfilled. On 24 October 1918, he had the satisfaction of seeing his troops, together with their French and British allies, finally moving forward from the River Piave. After two days of determined resistance, their Austro-Hungarian enemy began to flag. First the Hungarian divisions, declaring that they would defend only Hungarian soil, headed for home. Their defection seriously undermined the morale of the remaining troops. They fought on, but their hearts were not in it.
On 29 October the Emperor Karl, pressed by his desperate general staff, asked for an armistice. On 4 November the Austrians surrendered. By then the victorious Italians were in control of their longed-for terre irredente: the army was in Trento and the navy in Trieste. Yet another national dream was being realised. Victor Emmanuel III had finally achieved the ideal of the Risorgimento.
For the Emperor Karl of Austria–Hungary, there was no dream to be realised; only a nightmare to be lived through. It was at his expense that his fellow sovereigns – the kings of Romania, Serbia and Italy – were seeing their territorial ambitions fulfilled. From the great white and gold rooms of Schönbrunn Palace outside Vienna, Karl looked out on an empire that was fast disintegrating. The remorseless Allied advances, through the Balkans in the south and from Italy in the west, considerably worsened the troubles already raging throughout his realm. To widespread hunger and war-weariness was now added defeatism. This, in turn, encouraged the empire's endemic separatist movements: movements that had been given a tremendous boost by Wilson's Fourteen Points. By now self-determination for all minorities had become not only respectable; it had become almost imperative.
In a desperate effort to ride out this storm, Karl issued a manifesto. With the exception of the always intractable Hungary, the Habsburg empire would be converted into a federal state with complete self-government for the various nationalities. The well-meant gesture came too late. The Emperor's manifesto was coolly received throughout the empire. Backed up by President Wilson's insistence that it was up to them – and not to him or the Emperor Karl – to decide their fates, the various minorities promptly cut loose. Czechoslovakia declared itself a republic. The South Slavs declared for union with Serbia in what would become Yugoslavia. The Polish minority joined the newly independent Poland. Transylvania and Bukovina asked Romania to annex them. Trieste and Trentino went to Italy. Hungary, deciding that it was also a national minority, seceded.
Within weeks the vast Habsburg empire had been reduced to German-speaking Austria alone. The Emperor Karl now reigned over an empire that had shrunk to less than one-fifth of its original size. But he did not reign over it for long. The Austrians, no less impressed by Wilsonian theories of freedom and democracy, wanted as much self-determination as any of the other peoples in the rapidly dissolving realm. Karl could only sit helplessly by while the political parties wrangled about the form this new state should take. Some favoured a constitutional monarchy, others a republic. One Socialist deputy even went so far as to suggest that a republic, with Karl as president, would satisfy both the republicans and the monarchists.
'My only wish', s
ighed Karl, 'is that everything shall be liquidated peacefully.' In the end a republic was decided upon. Yet even now the politicians could not decide on whether they should recommend immediate abdication or wait for the Emperor to be formally deposed.
Their minds were made up for them by the threat of violence. It was feared that the increasingly unruly workers and soldiers might stage a march on Schönbrunn. The country could not possibly afford a civil war. On Monday 11 November 1918, a deputation of desperately worried ministers arrived at Schönbrunn. They brought with them a document for the Emperor's signature. By signing it, he would be relinquishing 'all participation in affairs of state'.
Regarding it as an act of abdication, Karl refused to sign. 'This crown is a responsibility given to me by God and I cannot renounce it,' he claimed. Zita was equally adamant and, as always, more vehement. 'A sovereign can never abdicate!' she cried. 'He can be deposed and his sovereign rights declared forfeit. All right. That is force. But abdicate – never, never, never! I would rather fall here at your side . . . '2
Zita's passionate outburst was to give rise to the rumour that, whereas Karl had been prepared to abdicate, she would not allow him to. This she always denied. Karl was just as determined to resist abdication. And indeed, no more than those other high-spirited and brave-talking consorts – the Tsaritsa Alexandra, Queen Marie of Romania, Queen Sophie of Greece or even the Empress Dona – could the Empress Zita really influence events.
In mounting agitation the delegation explained to Karl that the document was not exactly an act of abdication: it was simply a renunciation of his political powers. And, in any case, there was really no alternative. Reluctantly, Karl signed. But he made it clear that he was neither abdicating nor renouncing his dynastic rights. Just before leaving that evening, he issued a proclamation.
'Filled, as ever, with unwavering devotion to all my peoples, I do not wish to oppose their free growth with my person. I recognise in advance whatever decision that German–Austria may take about its future political form. The people, through its representatives, has taken over the government. I renounce all participation in the affairs of state.'3
There was not much more to be done. Before leaving the palace, the Emperor, the Empress and their five children went to the chapel to pray. Those members of the household who would not be following the imperial family into retirement assembled in the sumptuously gilded and tapestried Hall of Ceremonies. Slowly, in his charming, unassuming way, the young Emperor made the cercle, shaking hands and saying a few words to each of them. Then, having been warned that it would be unsafe to travel in the royal cars, Karl reluctantly agreed that the family should leave in private vehicles. It was to be a singularly undramatic exit for the last monarch of this once-mighty, six-hundred-year-old empire.
At dusk, on 11 November 1918, the heavily laden cars were driven out of the gates of Schönbrunn, headed for the temporary refuge of Eckartsau Castle, fifteen miles away.
Two days later a delegation from the new Hungarian government arrived at Eckartsau. As Karl's Hungarian crown had always been separate from his Austrian crown, he was being asked to give that up as well. On the same conditions – that he was renouncing only his share in the government and not his dynastic rights – Karl acquiesced.
The brotherhood of kings, which had been such a feature of pre-war Europe, was to come into play once more for the Emperor Karl. A few months after his fall, with the imperial family still living at Eckartsau, there were rumours of a Bolshevik-inspired plot against them. The Empress's brother, Prince Sixtus, with the fate of the Russian imperial family very much in mind, begged the President of France to grant them some protection. Poincaré was sympathetic but unhelpful. So Sixtus went to see George V. Both King George and Queen Mary were very disturbed by the Prince's news.
'What Sixtus has told us is very serious,' said the Queen.
The King agreed. 'We will immediately do what is necessary,'4 he assured the Prince.
So George V arranged for a British officer to be assigned to the Emperor and Empress for their protection. He was still with them when, a few weeks later, they left Austria for exile in Switzerland.
'No ruler has experienced a fate so ill as that which befell the Emperor Karl,' wrote the socialist chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, in later years. 'Whether he was a great monarch, was wisely advised at all times, did the right thing always, is not the question here. To recognise that he was thoroughly good, brave and honest, and a true Austrian who wanted the best, and in misfortune bore himself more worthily than many other men would have done, is to assert the truth – and this truth has been suppressed far too long.'5
The last drama of the reign of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor had been acted out amidst the splendours of Schönbrunn; the German Emperor played his final scene in the altogether less palatial setting of the Château de la Fraineuse at Spa.
The Kaiser had returned to Spa, after a short spell at Potsdam, on 29 October 1918. He had been urged to do so by the Empress and Hindenburg. Both of them imagined that the Kaiser would be better able to save his crown among his generals at headquarters than among his ministers in Berlin. For with crowns, as the leader of the Independent Socialists in the Reichstag so graphically put it, 'rolling about the floor', the possibility of the Kaiser being able to hang on to his was becoming increasingly remote.
The crisis had begun exactly a month before. On 29 September, Hindenburg and Ludendorff had admitted to Wilhelm that the German army could not hold out much longer. Everywhere the Allies were breaking through. An armistice, on the basis of Wilson's Fourteen Points, would have to be asked for. But, in the meantime, the system of government would have to be reorganised so as to make it more acceptable in the eyes of the American President. This was done. The Kaiser's kinsman, the generally respected and relatively liberal Prince Max of Baden was appointed chancellor; long-promised democratic reforms were introduced; the Kaiser was transformed into something more like a true constitutional monarch.
But it had all come too late. President Wilson was unimpressed. While Wilhelm II remained, he argued, there was no guarantee that these hastily instituted changes would be permanent or effective. The Kaiser had spent too many years boasting about his personal power for anyone to believe that he was prepared to give it up now. What Wilson wanted was the Kaiser's abdication.
On finally appreciating this, both Wilhelm and Dona were incensed. 'The hypocritical Wilson has at last thrown off the mask,' thundered the Kaiser. 'The object of this is to bring down my House, to set the Monarchy aside.' The Empress lashed out at 'the audacity of the parvenu across the sea who thus dares to humiliate a princely House which can look back on centuries of service to people and country'.
Yet, had they realised it, it was probably still within their power to save, if not their own crowns, at least that 'princely House' of which they were so proud. Wilhelm could have sacrificed himself for the sake of the monarchy. This is what the adroit Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria had just managed to do. Nor, by this stage, was it only President Wilson who was so anxious to get rid of the Kaiser. There was a growing conviction, among the German government and people, that the abdication of the Kaiser would ensure a better peace. The only hope of saving the monarchy would be for both the Kaiser and his feckless heir to abdicate their rights in favour of the Crown Prince's twelve-year-old son, Wilhelm. Even the Majority Socialists in the Reichstag were prepared to support such a move.
But Wilhelm would not hear of abdicating. He had previously assured his new chancellor, Prince Max, that 'a successor of Frederick the Great does not abdicate.' Now, to prevent Prince Max from pressing the point, the Empress urged her husband to get away from Berlin. Already the chancellor had prevailed upon the Kaiser to dismiss Ludendorff: Dona was determined that Wilhelm should agree to no more such demands from Prince Max or his government.
This was why, on the night of 29 October, the Kaiser set out for Spa. Among Hindenburg and the other generals, in the bosom of his adored army,
Wilhelm would be safe.
It was a grave error of judgement. Although there was no certainty that by remaining in the capital the Kaiser would have been persuaded to abdicate in time to save the monarchy (or even that the monarchy could have been saved by such a move) any chance of this happening disappeared once Wilhelm fled to Spa. When, three days later, an emissary from the chancellor arrived at his château with a plea for the Kaiser to abdicate, Wilhelm was dismissive.
'I have no intention of quitting the throne because of a few hundred Jews and a thousand workmen,' he declared loftily.
In the course of the following ten days – from 1 to 10 November – the old ordered world of Kaiser Wilhelm II fell apart. The fleet mutinied at Kiel; revolution broke out in the industrial cities; the troops at the front were no longer prepared to fight; soldiers' and workers' councils were being formed. Turkey had already capitulated on 30 October; on 4 November Germany's other ally, Austria, signed an armistice. One after another the reigning kings, grand dukes and dukes of the empire were overthrown by revolutions and their kingdoms and duchies converted into republics. 'The Wittelsbachs ruled over Bavaria for seven hundred years,' boasted Kurt Eisner on the dethronement of Ludwig III. 'I got rid of them in seven hours with seven
In the face of this revolutionary disorder and in spite of the fact that armistice talks were already under way at Compiègne, the Kaiser and his advisers thrashed about for some way the monarchy could be saved without his abdication. He should go to the front and die a glorious death at the head of his troops; he should abdicate as German Emperor but remain as King of Prussia; he should lead the army back into Germany to put down the 'Bolshevik revolution'. This particular scheme was quashed when the astonished Wilhelm was assured that the army was no longer prepared to march behind its Supreme War Lord.
Wilhelm even, at one stage, came up with the extraordinary suggestion that the Germans should combine with the monarchical British and Japanese to 'fling' the republican Americans out of Europe.