by Theo Aronson
Saturday 9 November was the day of decision. The weather was cold and damp; a thick mist shrouded the Château de la Fraineuse. All morning, sometimes in the sodden garden, sometimes in the almost equally cold rooms of the house, the Kaiser deliberated. While Prince Max kept telephoning from Berlin, urging him to abdicate in order to avoid civil war, Wilhelm conferred with the newly arrived Crown Prince and with his various generals.
Not long after luncheon his mind was made up for him. He was told, via that ceaselessly ringing telephone, that Prince Max, on his own initiative, had already announced the abdication of both the Kaiser and the Crown Prince. Soon after, a republic was proclaimed from the steps of the Reichstag.
Wilhelm was furious. 'Treason, gentlemen! Barefaced, outrageous treason!' he exclaimed. 'I am King of Prussia and I will remain King. As such I will stay with my troops!' He then fired off a salvo of telegrams to Berlin, each more explosive than the last. It was all to no purpose. A visit from Admiral von Scheer convinced him that he could no longer rely on the navy, and by now even that dedicated monarchist, Hindenburg, had advised him to go. Afraid that the Kaiser might suffer the same fate as the Tsar, Hindenburg begged his master to take refuge in Holland. A body of mutinous troops was said to be marching on Spa. Finally, after several more hours of indecision, Wilhelm agreed to go. He would leave for Holland at five the following morning. Not until two weeks later, though, did he sign a formal act of abdication.
It has been claimed that George V had earlier asked Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands to grant the Kaiser asylum. If this is true, the request would have had to have been made in the greatest secrecy. With feeling against the Kaiser running so high in Britain, the King would never have risked an overt gesture towards his brother monarch and cousin; the question of the Tsar's future had given him quite enough trouble. But it is not improbable that George V had approached Queen Wilhelmina.
After a six-hour wait at the frontier, Wilhelm was given permission to enter Holland. He was told that he was to be the guest of Count Bentinck at his castle of Amerongen.
On the afternoon of 11 November 1918, the day that was from now on to be known as Armistice Day, Wilhelm arrived at Amerongen. The first words of this monarch who was regarded – in Britain particularly – as a bloodthirsty, bloodstained monster who deserved to be hanged, were richly typical, both of his contradictory nature and of his royal internationalism.
'Now', he said briskly to his host as they drove through the castle gates, 'for a cup of real good English tea.'6
While the monarchs who had lost their crowns were everywhere scuttling to safety, those who had managed to keep theirs were basking in the sunshine of victory. Overshadowed for so many years by the generals and the politicians, humiliated by the defeat of their armies or the occupation of their countries, they had again come, gloriously and triumphantly, into their own. Sovereigns were being hailed as the hierophants of victory; they were once more the focal points for national loyalties. Just as support for the vanquished monarchs had evaporated almost overnight, so did support and adulation burgeon for those kings whose countries had been victorious.
When an American division attached to a force commanded by King Albert of the Belgians broke through the German lines in October 1918 and freed a group of Flemish civilians, the deliverers were astonished by their first question. 'The King!' shouted the excited civilians. 'How is the King?'
Paradoxically, the only monarch to remain impervious to this sudden surge of public acclaim was the King whose countrymen had sparked off the great conflict: old Peter I of Serbia. In spite of the fact that he had been proclaimed King of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes on 4 December 1918, he played no part in the state entry into Belgrade. Indeed, he did not return to his aggrandised kingdom until late in 1919. Nor, bent over a stick and wearing a long white beard, was he recognised by his subjects. When his son, the Regent, begged him to take up residence in his former palace, he refused. Instead, he went to live with his other son, the deranged and dispossessed Prince George, in a modest villa at Topchider. King Peter was to die, at the age of seventy-seven, in 1921.
For George V and Queen Mary, the end of the war brought tremendous public acclaim. All those wartime carpings about the King's German ancestry and his alleged German sympathies were forgotten. Cheering crowds surged to Buckingham Palace on Armistice night; time after time, and deep into the night, the sovereigns were obliged to show themselves on the palace balcony. On five successive days the royal couple drove in an open carriage through the streets of the capital. 'Nine miles through masses of cheering crowds,' noted the King in his diary. 'The demonstrations of the people are indeed touching.'
Rome, too, echoed to vociferous cheering as, on that same Armistice day, Victor Emmanuel III returned to his capital. 'As I watched his triumphant progress from the station to the palace down the Via Nazionale in a blaze of flags through a rain of flowers,' wrote the British ambassador, 'I felt a sense of happy exultation because the King, for whom as a man I had such a profound regard, whose judgements had been right and sound throughout, who had never lost faith or courage in the grimmest hours of those dark years, might now feel proudly conscious that under his guidance the unity of his kingdom and the old Italian dream had been fulfilled.'7
But possibly no crowned head felt so profound a sense of elation as did Marie of Romania. Not until the end of November did King Ferdinand and Queen Marie return from Jassy. Their state entry into Bucharest was set for 1 December 1918. For the diffident Ferdinand it was a particularly triumphant homecoming. With Romania about to be more than doubled in size, he was bringing more than mere victory in his train. 'Kaiser Wilhelm, when drunk with success,' wrote Marie, 'had cried out in a loud voice that King Ferdinand would be the last of the Hohenzollerns to sit on a Romanian throne. King Ferdinand had said nothing but he had quietly, humbly, pursued his thorny way. Today, the Kaiser and his son were without a country, and King Ferdinand, loyal and modest, was hailed as a deliverer, was the King of all the Romanians! How not to bow my head in the wonder of what had come to pass.'
But bow her head was the very last thing that Queen Marie intended to do on the day of the state entry into Bucharest. It was an unforgettable occasion: a day of 'wild, delirious enthusiasm'. As the bands played and the troops marched and the flags fluttered and the crowds cheered, the King and Queen rode their horses through the streets of the capital. Both were in uniform. On her head Marie wore a grey astrakan busby and, over her tunic, a long military cloak with a fur collar. At one point they halted to kiss a great cross held up by a group of chanting, lavishly vestmented priests; at another, they were presented with the traditional gifts of bread and salt by the mayor of the city.
The parade was followed by a Te Deum in the Cathedral. For over two years this showiest of queens had seldom been seen in anything other than her Red Cross uniform or Romanian national costume. Now for the Te Deum she changed into one of her floating, glittering garments and, kneeling beside Ferdinand in 'the dusky church lighted by a thousand candles', gave thanks for their great victory.
But the most poignant homecoming of all was that of King Albert and Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians. Their return had been gradual, for the King, commanding a combined force of Belgian, British, French and American troops, had had to battle his way towards Brussels. For a month, while the fighting continued, the royal family had lived in the Château de Lophem, just south of Bruges. Not until the armistice had been signed, on 11 November, could Albert think in terms of a formal entry into his capital.
At least though he had the satisfaction of knowing that the tide had turned; that those four long years on the Yser had not been in vain. Even before taking up residence at Lophem, Albert had heard that the Bulgarian resistance had collapsed and that his Coburg uncle, Tsar Ferdinand, had lost his throne. This turn of events gave him some wry satisfaction. He remembered that, at the beginning of the war, Ferdinand had called him a fool for not allowing German troops to pass freely throug
h Belgium. 'Today', mused Albert, 'he must have altered his opinion; he must understand that it is always in a man's best interests to remain honest.'
It was while he was at Lophem that King Albert, in consultation with his ministers, inaugurated several radical political changes. During the last weeks of the war a certain section of the Belgian population was anxious for the King to take advantage of his enormous prestige to assume dictatorial powers. For four years he had governed by decree: why, it was asked, should he not continue to do so? Even if he were not to go so far as to stage a coup d'état he should at least take advantage of this opportunity to strengthen the executive. The monumental task of reconstruction, they argued, would be simplified were the King able to work unhampered by party political squabblings.
To these urgings Albert did not even deign to reply. He was bound to the constitution by his oath. That, as much as his distaste for autocratic rule, ensured his rejection of any such scheme. In common with kings like Ferdinand of Romania, Albert realised that the day of the power-wielding monarch was over. In fact, far from assuming more power for himself, he was determined to grant more to his subjects. While at Lophem Albert agreed to the immediate introduction of universal suffrage and to the gradual granting of various reforms to the Flemings. These moves were to be accompanied by sweeping social legislation.
It was rumoured, at the time, that the King had been frightened into these reforms. A riot, instigated by dissatisfied German soldiers and supported by some Belgian revolutionaries, had erupted in the streets of Brussels during the last days of the war. Tricolour cockades, red flags and the strains of the Marsellaise had scared some of the populace into believing that a revolution was imminent. The disturbances had been quelled but news of the revolutionary threat was said to have been purposely exaggerated in order to frighten an unwilling King Albert into conceding reform.
The rumour was nonsense. Few things were guaranteed to make the King more annoyed than the mention that he had granted these concessions under pressure. 'I want you to know that what I did at Lophem, I did of my own accord, actuated by no one but myself,' he afterwards declared.
By this broadening of the base of political life, Albert was to place himself, once and for all, above party politics. No longer would the socialists, growing yearly more powerful, be able to identify him with the privileged classes. The introduction of universal suffrage was to increase his prestige enormously; he was to become less of a political figure and more of a national symbol – the respected and impartial arbiter between the Catholic, Liberal and Socialist parties.
King Albert, claimed Emile Vandervelde, the great Belgian socialist leader, in later years, 'was the ideal incarnation of the "Republican Monarchy" which the authors of our Constitution wished deliberately to create in 1831'.
It was on 22 November 1918 that King Albert finally re-entered his capital. Dressed in khaki, with a steel helmet topping his lined and weather-beaten face, he rode slowly through the gaily decorated streets. Beside him, mounted on a huge white charger and wearing a faded grey riding habit, rode the Queen. Behind rode their sons, Prince Leopold and Prince Charles, and among the horsemen who followed after were Britain's Prince Albert – the future George VI – and Queen Mary's brother, the Earl of Athlone.
They say that no one who was in Brussels that day could ever forget this homecoming. For years afterwards it was spoken about with something like awe; it came to constitute one of the great royal set-pieces of the First World War. Every rooftop, every window, every inch of pavement was packed with people. Flags fluttered, handkerchiefs waved, cheer upon tumultuous cheer rose up as the procession passed by. Throats were hoarse, arms were limp, faces were wet with tears. Even the King, usually so serious, smiled with happiness at this heartfelt welcome.
It was the Queen, though, who was the most moving sight of all. 'Plainly overwhelmed by their reception,' remembered one eyewitness, 'she sat erect and motionless on her white horse, her face piteously grave in the midst of so much rejoicing and her eyes stonily fixed on the road ahead, as though she dare not glance to right or left for fear of breaking down. '8
No amount of public acclamation could blind Europe's triumphantly returning monarchs to the fact that their world had ended. With the coming of peace, the old Europe – the Europe of the Kings – disappeared. The fall of the three great dynasties– the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburgs and the Romanovs – meant that the only major European throne still standing was the British. Victor Emmanuel III was soon to be completely overshadowed as head of state by Mussolini; Greece would become a republic in 1924; the Spanish throne would fall a few years later. The remaining monarchies would be confined to the opposite corners of the Continent: to the Balkans (and they would be swept away by the Second World War) and to the countries bordering the North Sea.
The days when sovereigns could bestride the Continent like gods had gone forever. Although there would still be exchanges of royal visits among Europe's dwindling band of monarchs, their scale and significance would be altered. Their political importance would be minimal; their power to influence international affairs negligible; their function purely ceremonial. Never again would the myth that the destinies of the world were being controlled by a family of kings have the slightest substance. Monarchs would become little more than figureheads.
The reasons for the fall of these long-established European thrones at the end of the First World War varied from country to country. Military defeat, an inability to adapt to the democratic spirit of the times, President Wilson's anti-monarchist attitudes and his encouragement of nationalism – all these contributed to the overthrow of the old monarchical order. In the main, it was the sovereigns without personal power who kept their thrones and those wielding too much power who lost them. By behaving like autocrats, these monarchs had become identified with the shortcomings of their regimes. Tsar Nicholas II was regarded as the symbol of the tyranny and inefficiency of his empire; the Emperor Franz Joseph was held responsible for the subjugation of the minority races in his realm; Kaiser Wilhelm II was seen as the very personification of the militarism, élitism and aggressiveness of the Second Reich.
These lessons were not lost on the kings who survived. More than ever did they ensure that the crown was kept well above politics and faction; that it was identified with all the people and not the aristocracy alone. Those kings like Ferdinand of Romania and Albert of the Belgians, who were still in a position to shape and influence affairs, used their remaining powers to urge political and social reform. Victor Emmanuel III handed over several of his palaces and much of his wealth to the state. Even the politically powerless George V felt the need to safeguard his throne. 'The Crown and its cost', warned Lord Esher, 'will have to be justified in the future in the eyes of a war-torn and hungry proletariat, endowed with a huge preponderance of voting power.'
Once the dust, raised by the revolutionary and nationalistic upheavals that followed the fall of the three empires, had settled, and the peacemakers of Versailles had gone home, the Continent embarked on what was optimistically called a 'new order'. The old order – the dynastic, monarchical order – was held responsible for all the disasters that had fallen upon Europe. The war had been the result of the despotism, ambition and aggression of the kings. The old world of deference and discipline, of oppression and exploitation, of militarism and autocracy, was to be replaced by the Wilsonian dream of democracy and nationalism.
In its stead would rise that other Wilsonian conception – the League of Nations. 'Europe', announced the United States President, 'is being liquidated and the League of Nations must be the heir to that great estate.' The League, wrote his fellow visionary, General J.C. Smuts, 'will have to occupy the great position which has been rendered vacant by the dissolution of many of the old European empires and the passing away of the old European order'.
It was true, of course, that the old monarchical order had a great deal to answer for; that it was guilty of many of the things of which it stood
accused. The monarchs – particularly the monarchs of Central Europe – with their monumental palaces, their glittering courts and their rigid ceremonial, had formed the apex of a pyramid; in this way, they had perpetuated a hierarchical and inequitable system. Their political positions had been too powerful; their governments too unrepresentative.
But if the monarchical system had not been perfect, it was certainly preferable to what followed. For the fall of the kings ushered in, not the utopian world of the League of Nations, but the altogether more draconian world of the dictators. In the place of the hereditary kings came the totalitarian men of the people: men 'risen up from the masses and established by the masses'.
'The day of the Kings was over, not because despotism was out of date,' writes Edmond Taylor, 'but because harsher and more efficient patterns of despotism were beginning to emerge. Above all, the old dynasties were discredited in the eyes of their former subjects because they had been so international, even when they were not, like the Habsburgs, explicitly supranational. As a democratic credo, Wilsonism might be ebbing, but the tide of nationalism that the Fourteen Points had helped to set in motion was running stronger than ever in Europe . . . '
Gradually, as this nationalism gathered strength, a new autocracy replaced the old. Dictatorships of one sort or another were established in almost every country over which the monarchs had once reigned; in very few cases were the personal liberties of these former royal subjects enhanced. In place of men like Nicholas II, Franz Joseph I and Wilhelm II, there now stood the infinitely more menacing figures of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and others. It was almost as though, in a nostalgia for their monarchical past, the peoples of Europe had raised up a new race of still more powerful monarchs.