Crowns in Conflict

by Theo Aronson

  The First World War had cut down the last great flowering of European monarchy; the field was now ready for the dictators and the Second World War.

  Epilogue

  Victors and Vanquished

  NOT UNTIL thirty years after the end of the First World War did the last of the embattled monarchs finally disappear from the scene. Those two crowned Balkan patriarchs, Nicholas of Montenegro and Peter of Serbia, both died in 1921. Nicholas, with his old mountain kingdom about to be absorbed into the new state of Yugoslavia, died in exile in the South of France at the age of seventy-nine. Peter, as monarch of this new kingdom, died – an all-but-forgotten recluse – in his villa at Topchider. He was succeeded by his son, as King Alexander I of Yugoslavia.

  King Alexander's task, in controlling his polyglot kingdom, was no more successful than Franz Joseph's had been in managing his multi-national empire. The Serbian dream quickly turned into a nightmare. The nine different national groupings, whose determination to be united had sparked off the First World War, were soon at each other's throats. No one cooperated; no one compromised. Parliament was simply a collection of bickering minorities. In the end Alexander, who had started his reign with every intention of making parliamentary democracy work, was obliged to assume dictatorial powers. He was assassinated, by a Croat organisation, in 1934.

  In the year of Alexander's accession, 1921, the ex-Emperor Karl of Austria–Hungary made two attempts to regain at least one of his two crowns. In 1920, with the fall of a short-lived communist regime, Hungary was once again declared to be a monarchy, under the regency of Admiral Horthy. With Horthy showing very little sign of keeping his promise to restore the exiled ex-Emperor, Karl twice arrived in Hungary to claim his throne. Both of these quixotic gestures failed. On the second, and very nearly successful occasion, when Karl and Zita landed from a small private aeroplane, Horthy had to get rid of them by force. The imperial family was then banished, on British insistence, to the island of Madeira. Here, in a damp and doleful little villa, on 1 April 1922, the last and almost penniless Habsburg Emperor died of pneumonia. He was thirty-five. The Empress Zita, at the age of ninety-four, is still alive in 1986.

  The return of King Constantine of the Hellenes to his kingdom was an altogether more triumphant affair. In October 1920 his second son, who had ascended the throne as King Alexander on Constantine's dethronement, died suddenly of blood poisoning after being bitten by a monkey. To solve the problem of the succession, Venizelos, the Greek prime minister, called an election. In it, his own party was soundly defeated. The disgusted Venizelos left the country. A plebiscite decided, by almost a hundred to one, on the return of King Constantine. So, on 19 December 1920, Constantine and Sophie arrived home to a tumultuous welcome. Constantine was deeply moved by this riotous show of affection; the more cynical Sophie considered it 'too exuberant to last'.

  She was right. Against his better judgement, Constantine was obliged to continue a campaign – started by Venizelos in his stubborn pursuit of the Great Idea of Greek aggrandisement – against the Turks. In September 1922 the Greeks were soundly beaten and the largely Greek population of the city of Smyrna savagely massacred. The Greek army revolted and, quite unjustifiably blaming the King for the defeat, demanded his abdication. Constantine agreed. For a second time he and Sophie left Athens. This time there was no frantic crowd to prevent their departure.

  Three months later, on 11 January 1923, in a hotel room in Palermo, Sicily, Constantine died of a brain haemorrhage. In his hand was clutched a small leather pouch containing Greek soil. Like the Emperor Karl, his life had been shattered by the war.

  Constantine was succeeded by his eldest son as King George II. But in just over a year after Constantine's death, George II was also in exile. In March 1924 the Greek National Assembly passed a resolution abolishing the monarchy and declaring Greece a republic.

  Some ten years later the volatile Greeks restored the monarchy. Forty years after that, in 1974, they again abolished it.

  The post-war gratification of King Ferdinand of Romania had also turned sour. His last years were clouded by the feckless behaviour of his eldest son, Crown Prince Carol. Carol's scandalous and widely publicised private life culminated in his desertion of his second wife, Princess Helen of Greece, for the more voluptuous charms of Elena Lupescu. The couple fled Romania and Carol renounced his rights to the throne. His position as heir was taken by his only son, the four-year-old Prince Michael. (King Michael went into exile with the fall of the Romanian throne after the Second World War.)

  A shared concern over their son Carol's transgressions brought King Ferdinand and Queen Marie closer together. It seemed to them almost inconceivable that their wartime years of sacrifice and suffering, followed by their post-war realisation of the Romanian Dream, should have led to this. Ferdinand, his spirit broken by this dynastic crisis, died of cancer on 27 July 1927. Marie, a fascinating figure to the end, died in 1938.

  King Albert of the Belgians was the next sovereign to die. If the Union Sacrèe – the wartime co-operation of all the Belgian people – did not long survive the coming of peace, the King at least had the satisfaction of seeing his country become relatively prosperous. And although he suffered from periods of disillusion, Albert remained a dedicated and conscientious monarch. He remained, also, an extremely modest one. Few things embarrassed him more than references to his heroic wartime role. 'I suppose I shall once more be greeted with acclamations as the Warrior-King,' he once muttered before attending a reception. 'I am getting so bored with it.' Kaiser Wilhelm II would never have said that.

  King Albert was killed, in a rock-climbing accident in the Ardennes on 17 February 1934, at the age of fifty-eight. He was succeeded by his eldest son, as Leopold III. The redoubtable, remarkable and ultimately controversial Queen Elisabeth (the 'Red Queen' they called her because of her visits to various communist countries) outlived him by over thirty years. She died, in her ninetieth year, in 1965.

  King George V died, a revered and popular father-figure, on 20 January 1936. By then he had developed into a quintessentially British monarch; the very symbol of the nation. All but forgotten was his German ancestry and his Continental connections: George V, and his dynasty, had become a truly national institution, the embodiment, it was said, of everything that was best in British life.

  Strangely enough, George V's cousin and enemy, Wilhelm II, had become increasingly like an English country gentleman with the passing years. This, the Kaiser had once said, was what he would have preferred to have been above all else. Wilhelm's twenty-two-year-long exile, at Doorn in Holland, was as notable for its tranquillity as his reign had been for its turbulence. Relieved of the pressures of his position, his personality mellowed. He became, if no wiser, certainly more relaxed and more benign. With his white beard, his tweed suits and his passion for dogs, gardening and chopping wood, Wilhelm made the perfect country squire.

  But he could not resist some self-justification. There was, of course, a great deal to be explained away, particularly with regard to the outbreak of the war. For this Wilhelm persisted in laying the blame on everyone but himself. Chief amongst his host of villains–his advisers, his generals, rival diplomats, foreign rulers – was his uncle, King Edward VII, 'the Encircler'. The 'peace of Europe', argued Wilhelm, 'was never in such danger as when the King of England concerned himself with its maintenance'.

  Yet it was to Edward VII's son, George V, that the dethroned sovereigns of the German Reich sent a petition after the peacemakers at Versailles had decided that the Kaiser was to be tried for 'a supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties'. Reminding the British King, none too tactfully, that his family had originated in Germany, and that to threaten one monarch in this way would be to threaten the sanctity of all monarchs, himself included, the 'German Princes' begged King George to prevent the trial.

  Their request threw the King into a quandary. Fortunately, he was saved from having to take any action by the Dutc
h government's resolute refusal to deliver up the ex-Kaiser.

  With the passing years, the Kaiser's attitude towards Britain began to soften. Unlike Germany, Britain was still a monarchy and for this reason alone Wilhelm felt kindly disposed towards it. Compared with Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, it seemed like a haven of stability. Not until two years after George V's death, though, did the Kaiser make direct contact with his British relations. In 1938, after Neville Chamberlain's meeting with Hitler in Munich, Wilhelm wrote a letter to the widowed Queen Mary. The two of them had last met at the Kaiser's daughter's wedding, in Berlin in 1913. The tone of the letter was richly typical of the writer.

  'May I with a grateful heart relieved from a sickening anxiety by the intercession of Heaven unite my warmest, sincerest thanks to the Lord with yours and those of the German and British people that He saved us from a most fearful catastrophe by helping the responsible statesmen to preserve peace!' ran the feverish phrases. 'I have not the slightest doubt that Mr N. Chamberlain was inspired by Heaven and guided by God who took pity on his children on Earth by crowning his mission with such relieving success. God bless him. I kiss your hand in respectful devotion as ever.'1

  A link had once more been forged, and a few months later, on the Kaiser's eightieth birthday, he received several congratulatory telegrams from the British royal family. In 1940, at Winston Churchill's suggestion, George VI offered the Kaiser refuge in England from Hitler's invading army. Wilhelm refused the offer. It would not do for even a rejected monarch to seek protection from his country's enemies.

  And although Wilhelm's attitude towards Germany's new master, Adolf Hitler, had been equivocal, he could not resist sending the Führer a telegram of congratulations on the fall of Paris. 'The German war flag over Versailles!' he wrote exultantly to his daughter. 'Thus is the pernicious entente cordiale of Uncle Edward VII brought to nought.'2

  Kaiser Wilhelm II died, a year later, on 4 June 1941.

  King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy did not long enjoy the reputation won during the war years. By the end of 1922, the social and political turbulence of post-war Italy had thrown up Mussolini; and the liberal king found himself completely outshone by the fascist dictator. Although Il Duce made Victor Emmanuel Emperor of Ethiopia and King of Albania, the little monarch was never more than a cipher in affairs of state. He was treated even more summarily by Hitler and Mussolini than he had been by Wilhelm II and Franz Joseph.

  Nor, as in 1915, could he reap any benefits from changing sides. His switch came too late. His dismissal of Mussolini in 1943 could not save him from the stigma of fascism; his subsequent failure to make a clean break with Hitler cost him his throne. In 1944 he withdrew from public affairs; two years later he abdicated in favour of his son, Crown Prince Umberto. The reign of Umberto II lasted for a month. In a closely contested plebiscite, the Italian people opted for a republic.

  Victor Emmanuel III spent his exile in a modest villa in Alexandria, Egypt, lent to him by King Farouk. He died there on 28 December 1947 at the age of seventy-eight.

  The longest lived of these First World War sovereigns was the most colourful of them all: Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria. Like Victor Emmanuel III, Ferdinand lived to see the collapse of everything to which he had devoted his life. Yet his first years of exile were not unpleasant. He had gone to live in Coburg, the cradle of his dynasty; and as – in his astute fashion – Ferdinand had managed to salvage much of his fortune, he was able to live in some style. Always the actor, Ferdinand played the role of what he insisted on calling le pauvre exilé with dignity and restraint. Although he allowed himself a little plaintive grumbling from time to time, he was never bitter or vindictive about his change of fortune. The possibility of exile was simply one of the hazards of kingship. He devoted his time to natural history, gardening, the arts, travel and the occult. He could still, with his white beard and his dramatic clothes, impress visitors by his appearance; his outré conversation could still shock.

  Inevitably, as he moved among the royal families of Europe, exiled or reigning, Ferdinand would come up against reminders of the time when the war had torn many of them so cruelly apart. To the Infanta Eulalia of Spain, he spoke drily of continuing French accusations of treachery because he, whose mother had been a Bourbon-Orleans, had taken up arms against France. 'This I find somewhat amusing,' he said, 'since France herself gave Louis Philippe (his grandfather) his congé and would have none of him or his family.'

  And at the wedding of his eldest son, by now Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria, to the daughter of Victor Emmanuel III in 1930 Ferdinand came face to face with his grand-niece, Princess Françoise of Orleans. When Ferdinand, in his gracious way, assured her that he felt 'more Orleans than Coburg', she was not impressed. 'So, you have already forgotten the war, my uncle?' she answered sharply.

  Another of the wedding guests was the widowed ex-Queen Sophie of Greece. Some seventeen years before, during the Second Balkan War, Sophie's husband Constantine had joined Peter of Serbia in inflicting a crushing defeat on their recent ally, Ferdinand of Bulgaria. But Ferdinand bore no grudge. At luncheon, he and Sophie were inseparable. 'What did you find to talk about?' asked Sophie's brother-in-law, Prince Christopher of Greece. The question astonished her. 'Why old times, of course,' answered Sophie.

  Prince Christopher appreciated that both Sophie and Ferdinand belonged to a generation where royal freemasonry transcended any narrow nationalism.

  Ferdinand's abiding comfort during much of his exile was that he – alone of all the monarchs defeated in the war – had managed to save his country's monarchy. But he would live to see that disappear as well. Just as the years before the First World War had found Ferdinand caught between the Tsar of Russia on the one hand, and the Emperors of Germany and Austria–Hungary on the other, so did the years before the Second World War find his son Boris trapped between their successors – Stalin and Hitler.

  This time there was no saving the monarchy. Boris, having been forced to throw in his lot with Germany, was rumoured to have been murdered, on Hitler's orders, for being less than co-operative. His brother Cyril was murdered by the communist regime that took power in 1945. A year later an inevitable plebiscite decided in favour of a republic and Boris's nine-year-old son, Tsar Simeon, took the road to exile.

  Ferdinand, having seen the wholesale fall of thrones at the end of the First World War, had lived through a second royal holocaust – the fall of the thrones of Yugoslavia, Italy, Romania and, of course, Bulgaria – after the Second World War. He died, a barely remembered relic of another age, in Coburg, at the age of eighty-seven, on 10 September 1948.

  Ferdinand's words on hearing that his son Cyril had been shot would serve, says his biographer Stephen Constant, as a fitting epitaph for the close of his own life.

  'Everything', sighed the old monarch, 'is collapsing around me.'

  Notes

  PROLOGUE

  1 Mayer, The Persistence, p 13

  2 Rose, George V, p 154

  3 Gerard, My Four Years, p 78

  4 Gore, George V, pp 263–4

  5 Hamilton, Vanished Pomps, p 316

  CHAPTER ONE

  1 Haller, Kaiser's Friend, pp 200–1

  2 Hamilton, Vanished Pomps, p 334

  3 Balfour, The Kaiser, p 175

  4 Palmer, Gardeners, p 34

  CHAPTER TWO

  1 Cammaerts, Albert, p 80

  2 Cunliffe-Owen, Elisabeth, p 71

  3 Cammaerts, Albert, p 130

  CHAPTER THREE

  1 Gore, George V, pp 247–8

  2 Marie of Romania, Life, Vol II, p 211

  3 Christopher of Greece, Memoirs, p 16;

  4 Rose, George V, p 106

  5 Nicolson, George V, p 248

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1 Waddington, Italian Letters, p 243

  2 Bagot, Italian Year, p 113

  3 Griscom, Diplomatically, p 282

  4 Muller, Kaiser and his court, 25/5/1915

  CHAPTER FIVE
<
br />   1 Vyrubova, Memories, p 101

  2 Newton, Lord Lansdowne, p 199

  3 Kokovtsov, Out of my Past, p 167

  4 Botkin, Real Romanovs, p 61

  5 Kokovtsov, Out of my Past, p 223

  6 Moorehead, Russian Revolution, p 72

  CHAPTER SIX

  1 Constant, Foxy Ferdinand, p 53

  2 Fox, Lenin, p. 186

  3 Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra, p ix

  4 Rose, George V, p 166

  5 Bülow, Memoirs, Vol II, p 355

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1 Festetics, Diary, 28/11/1873

  2 Thomson, Europe, p 452

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1 West, Black Lamb, Vol II, p 444

  2 The Times, 18/6/1903

  3 West, Black Lamb, Vol I, p 594

  4 Balfour, The Kaiser, p 336

  5 Buchanan, Victoria's Relations, p 156

  CHAPTER NINE

  1 Constant, Foxy Ferdinand, p 45

  2 Palmer, The Kaiser, p 153

  3 Paléologue, Journal, p 255

  4 Constant, Foxy Ferdinand, p 288

  5 Seton-Watson, Roumanians, p 469

  CHAPTER TEN

  1 Mansergh, The Coming, p 219

  2 Blücher, An English Wife, p 14

  3 Marek, The Eagles Die, p 441

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  1 New York Times, 11/9/1914

  2 Muller, Kaiser and his court, 4/9/1914

  3 Ibid., 6/11/1914

  4 Cammaerts, Albert, p 283

  5 Paléologue, Memoirs, Vol I, p 147

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  1 West, Black Lamb, Vol I, p 602

  2 Katz, House of Savoy, p 199

  3 Bülow, Memoirs, Vol III, p 264

  4 Robertson, Victor Emmanuel, p 134

  5 Muller, Kaiser and his court, 16/5/1915

  6 Constant, Foxy Ferdinand, p 305

  7 Graham, Alexander, p 90

  8 Marie of Romania, Life, Vol III, p 25

  9 Conv. with Queen Mother

  10 Elsberry, Marie, p 118

  11 Nicolson, George V, p 372