That night, at Peterhof, the Tsar welcomed his guest at a formal banquet. “I shall long remember the dazzling display of jewels on the women’s shoulders,” wrote Paléologue. “It was simply a fantastic shower of diamonds, pearls, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, topaz, beryls—a blaze of fire and flame. In this fiery milieu, Poincaré’s black coat was a drab touch. But the wide, sky-blue ribbon of St. Andrew across his breast increased his importance in the eyes of the Russians…. During the dinner I kept an eye on the Tsaritsa Alexandra Fedorovna opposite whom I was sitting. She was a beautiful sight with her low brocade gown and a diamond tiara on her head. Her forty-two years have left her face and figure still pleasant to look at.”
Two days later, Paléologue attended the review of sixty thousand troops at the army encampment at Krasnoe Selo. “A blazing sun lit up the vast plain,” he wrote. “The elite of St. Petersburg society were crowded into some stands. The light toilettes of the women, their white hats and parasols made the stands look like azalea beds. Before long the Imperial party arrived. In a court horse calèche was the Tsaritsa with the President of the Republic on her right and her two elder daughters opposite her. The Tsar was galloping by the side of the carriage, followed by a brilliant escort of the grand dukes and aides de camp…. The troops, without arms, were drawn up in serried ranks as far as the eye could reach….
“The sun was dropping towards the horizon in a sky of purple and gold,” Paléologue continued. “On a sign from the Tsar an artillery salvo signalled evening prayer. The bands played a hymn. Everyone uncovered. A non-commissioned officer recited the Pater in a loud voice. All those men, thousands upon thousands, prayed for the Tsar and Holy Russia. The silence and composure of that multitude in that plain, the magic poetry of the hour … gave the ceremony a touching majesty.”
The following night, the last of Poincaré’s visit, the President entertained the Tsar and the Empress at dinner aboard the France. “It had indeed a kind of terrifying grandeur with the four gigantic 304 cm. guns raising their huge muzzles above the heads of the guests,” wrote Paléologue. “The sky was soon clear again; a light breeze kissed the waves; the moon rose above the horizon…. I found myself alone with the Tsaritsa, who asked me to take a chair on her left. The poor lady seemed worn out…. Suddenly she put her hands to her ears. Then with a pained and pleading glance she timidly pointed to the ship’s band quite near to us which had just started on a furious allegro with a full battery of brass and big drums.
“‘Couldn’t you?’ … she murmured.
“I signalled sharply to the conductor…. The young Grand Duchess Olga had been observing us for some minutes with an anxious eye. She suddenly rose, glided towards her mother with graceful ease and whispered two or three words in her ear. Then addressing me, she continued, ‘The Empress is rather tired, but she asks you to stay, Monsieur l’Ambassadeur, and to go on talking to her.’”
As the France prepared to leave, Nicholas invited Paléologue to remain aboard the Imperial yacht. “It was a splendid night,” Paléologue wrote. “The Milky Way stretched, a pure band of silver, into unending space. Not a breath of wind. The France and her escorting division sped rapidly away to the west, leaving behind long ribbons of foam which glistened in the moonlight like silvery streams…. Admiral Nilov came to the Tsar for orders. The latter said to me, ‘It’s a wonderful night. Suppose we go for a sail.’” The Tsar told the Ambassador of the conversation he had just had with Poincaré. “He said, ‘Notwithstanding appearances the Emperor William is too cautious to launch his country on some wild adventure and the Emperor Franz Joseph’s only wish is to die in peace.’”
At 12:45 a.m., July 25, Paléologue said goodnight to the Tsar, and at half past two he reached his bed in St. Petersburg. At seven the next morning, he was awakened and informed that the previous evening, while he had been out for a sail, Austria had presented Serbia with an ultimatum.
The wording and the timing of the Austrian ultimatum had been carefully planned in Vienna. With the Emperor Franz Joseph’s approval, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had decided to make war on Serbia. Conrad-Hötzendorf, the Chief-of-Staff, wanted to mobilize and attack Serbia immediately. But Count Berchtold, the Chancellor, took a subtler line. He persuaded his colleagues to send the Serbs an ultimatum so outrageous that Serbia would be forced to reject it.
The ultimatum declared the the Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s murder had been plotted in Belgrade, that Serb officials had supplied the assassin’s bomb and pistol, and that Serb frontier guards had arranged their secret entry into Bosnia. As satisfaction, Austria demanded that Austrian officers be allowed to enter Serbia to conduct their own investigation. In addition, the ultimatum demanded suppression of all Serb nationalist propaganda directed at the empire, dissolution of Serb nationalist societies and dismissal of all Serbian officers who were “anti-Austrian.” Serbia was given forty-eight hours to answer.
The ultimatum was drafted and approved by Franz Joseph on July 19. Then it was deliberately withheld for four days during the visit of President Poincaré to St. Petersburg so that the President and the Tsar would not be able to coordinate the response of France and Russia. Only at midnight on July 23, after Poincaré was at sea, headed down the Gulf of Finland, was the ultimatum delivered.
Every diplomat in Europe, reading the document, understood its implications. In Vienna, a government official, Count Hoyos, said flatly, “The Austrian demands are such that no state possessing the smallest amount of national pride or dignity could accept them.” In London, the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, told the Austrian Ambassador that he had never before seen one state address to another so formidable a document. In St. Petersburg, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sazonov, said simply, “C’est la guerre Européenne.”
Upon receiving the ultimatum, Serbia immediately appealed to Russia, traditional protector of the Slavs. From Tsarskoe Selo, Nicholas telegraphed to the Serbian Crown Prince: “As long as there remains the faintest hope of avoiding bloodshed, all my efforts will tend in that direction. If we fail to attain this object, in spite of our sincere desire for peace, Your Royal Highness may rest assured that Russia will in no case remain indifferent to the fate of Serbia.” A military council was convened at Krasnoe Selo on July 24, and on July 25 the Tsar summoned his ministers to Tsarskoe Selo.
To the men seated in Nicholas’s study that summer day, the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia appeared aimed directly at Russia. Russia’s classic role as protector of the Slavs and Nicholas II’s personal guarantees of Serbian independence were part of the permanent fabric of European diplomacy; a threat to Serbia, therefore, could be interpreted only as a challenge to Russian power and influence in the Balkans. In the discussions that took place near St. Petersburg those hectic two days, both Sazonov and Grand Duke Nicholas, Inspector General of the Army, declared that Russia could not stand by and permit Serbia’s humiliation without herself losing her rank as a great power.
The roots of this Russian dilemma in July 1914 went back seven years to another European diplomatic crisis, provoked in 1907 by Austria’s sudden annexation of Bosnia. On that occasion, when Russia had been humiliated before the world, the fault lay primarily in the ornate secret diplomacy and personal character of the Russian Foreign Minister of the day, Alexander Izvolsky.
Izvolsky came to power at the end of the disastrous war with Japan and promptly proceeded to liquidate what remained of Russia’s Far Eastern adventure. From the moment he took office with Stolypin in 1906, Izvolsky concentrated on a historical Russian objective: the opening of the Dardenelles. Izvolsky himself was simply for grabbing both the Strait and the city of Constantinople from the decrepit Turkish Empire, but Stolypin absolutely prohibited any such provocative aggressive act, at least until Russian strength had grown. Then, said Stolypin, “Russia could speak as in the past.”
Izvolsky did not give up his dream. Alert, able and ambitious, Alexander Izvolsky was the archetype of the Old World professional diplomat. A plump
ish, dandified man, he wore a pearl pin in his white waistcoat, affected white spats, carried a lorgnette and always trailed a faint touch of violet eau de cologne. In his world of secret diplomatic intrigue, achievement of one objective might mean betrayal of another; Izvolsky took such arrangements easily in stride.
It was entirely in character, therefore, when Alexander Izvolsky secretly met his Austrian counterpart, Foreign Minister Freiherr von Aehrenthal, in 1907 and reached a private agreement from which both countries would benefit. In return for Austrian support of a Russian demand that Turkey open the Dardenelles to free passage by Russian warships, Izvolsky agreed to turn his back when Austria-Hungary annexed the Balkan provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Both halves of this bargain were in violation of general European treaties signed by all the great powers. Recognizing this, the two statesmen agreed—or so Izvolsky afterward claimed—that the two moves should be made simultaneously, in order to present Europe with a fait accompli. No date was set for the moves. In Izvolsky’s case, the bargain involved not only defiance of treaties but, infinitely worse, the betrayal of a small Slavic people. His willingness to go ahead indicated the importance he attached to opening the Strait.
Unfortunately for Izvolsky, before he was ready to betray the Bosnians, he himself was betrayed by Aehrenthal. Three weeks after the secret meeting, long before Izvolsky was ready to press Russia’s demand on Turkey, the Emperor Franz Joseph suddenly proclaimed the annexation of Bosnia to Austria-Hungary. Caught red-handed, without a thing to show for his betrayal, Izvolsky hurried to London and Paris, attempting to get support for a belated Russian move on the Strait. He failed. Nicholas, informed of the bargain after it had been secretly struck, was furious. “Brazen impudence gets away with anything,” he wrote to Marie. “The main culprit is Aehrenthal. He is simply a scoundrel. He made Izvolsky his dupe.” Serbia mobilized and called on Russia for aid. Russian troops began to assemble on the Austrian frontier.
At this point, Germany intervened to save her Austrian ally. The intervention was performed in the bluntest possible manner; the Kaiser himself later described it as appearing in “shining armor” beside his ally. The German government asked Izvolsky whether he was prepared to back down. “We expect a precise answer, yes or no. Any vague, complicated or ambiguous reply will be regarded as a refusal.” Izvolsky had no choice; Russia was unready for war. “If we are not attacked,” Nicholas wrote Marie, “of course we are not going to fight.” Later, he explained the situation to her more fully. “Germany,” he wrote, “told us we could help solve the difficulty by agreeing to the annexation, while if we refused the consequences might be very serious and hard to foretell. Once the matter had been put as definitely and unequivocally as that, there was nothing for it but to swallow one’s pride, give in, and agree…. But,” added the Tsar, “German action towards us has simply been brutal and we won’t forget it.”
Russia’s humiliation in the Bosnia crisis was spectacular. Sir Arthur Nicolson, then the British Ambassador to St. Petersburg, wrote, “In the recent history of Russia … there has never previously been a moment when the country has undergone such humiliation and, though Russia has had her troubles and trials both external and internal and has suffered defeats in the field, she has never, for apparently no valid reason, had to submit to the dictation of a foreign power.”
It was in the depths of this humiliation that Russian statesmen, generals and the Tsar himself had formed their resolve never to withdraw again from a similar challenge. From 1909 onward, the commander of Kiev military district in the Ukraine had standing orders to be ready within forty-eight hours to repel an invasion from the West. Izvolsky left his post in St. Petersburg to become Russian Ambassador to France, where vengefully he worked night and day to strengthen the alliance. In 1914, when war came, Alexander Izvolsky boasted happily in Paris, “This is my war! My war!”
Nicholas recognized that the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia was the feared second challenge to Russia. For years, he had faced the fact that Russia could not back down again. But against this resolution he had balanced a hope that the challenge would not come until Russia was ready.
In 1911, Nicholas stressed this point in an interview with his new Ambassador to Bulgaria, Nekliudov. “The Tsar,” Nekliudov later recalled, “after an intentional pause, stepping back and fixing me with a penetrating stare, said, ‘Listen to me, Nekliudov, do not for one instant lose sight of the fact that we cannot go to war. I do not wish for war; as a rule I shall do all in my power to preserve for my people the benefits of peace. But at this moment of all moments everything that might lead to war must be avoided. It would be out of the question for us to face a war for five or six years—in fact until 1917—although if the most vital interests and the honor of Russia were at stake we might, if it were absolutely necessary, accept a challenge in 1915; but not a moment sooner in any circumstances or under any pretext whatsoever.’”
With Russia’s unpreparedness in mind, the Tsar hoped desperately that this new crisis could be negotiated. He instructed Sazonov to play for time. Sazonov’s first move, accordingly, was a plea that the limit on the Austrian ultimatum be extended beyond forty-eight hours. Vienna, determined to let nothing prevent its destruction of Serbia, refused. Next, Sazonov attempted to persuade Austria’s ally Germany to mediate the Balkan quarrel. The German government refused, declaring that the matter was an issue solely between Austria and Serbia and that all other states, including Russia, should stand aside. Sazonov then asked Sir Edward Grey to mediate. Grey agreed, and proposed a conference of ambassadors in London. Sazanov hurriedly accepted Grey’s proposal, but the German government refused. Finally, in reply to Serbia’s appeals for aid, Sazonov advised the Serbian Premier, Pashich, to accept all the Austrian demands which did not actually compromise Serbian independence.
The Serbs, no less anxious to avoid a military showdown than their Russian patron, agreed, and replied to the Austrian ultimatum in extravagantly conciliatory terms. So humble was their reply, in fact, that it took Vienna entirely by surprise. Count Berchtold was aghast and didn’t know what to do with the document. Accordingly, for two days, July 26 and July 27, he hid it. When the German Ambassador in Vienna asked to see it, he was told that he would have to wait because of the pile-up of paperwork in the Austrian Foreign Ministry.
By July 28, however, Berchtold and his colleagues had reached a decision. Austria, rejecting the Serb reply, issued a declaration of war. At 5 a.m. the following morning, July 29, Austro-Hungarian artillery began hurling shells across the Danube into Belgrade, the Serbian capital. The bombardment continued all day, in disregard of the white flags fluttering from Belgrade rooftops. In St. Petersburg, Tsar Nicholas gave the order to mobilize all Russian military districts along the Austrian frontier.
How fast and how far the war was to spread now depended on the reaction of Germany. Despite the urgent demands of the Russian General Staff for general mobilization, Nicholas had permitted only partial mobilization against Austria. The long frontier with Germany running through Poland and East Prussia still slumbered in peace. The Tsar believed, as he had said to Paléologue, that the Kaiser did not want war.
Predictably, the Kaiser’s views had changed several times during the crisis. He first assumed that the cringing Slavs could be bullied into backing down before the shining Teutons. In October 1913, William had spoken of just such a situation to Count Berchtold, the Austrian Chancellor: “If His Majesty the Emperor Franz Joseph makes a demand, the Serbian government must obey,” said William. “If not, Belgrade must be bombarded and occupied until his wish is fulfilled. And rest assured that I am behind you and ready to draw the sword wherever your action requires.”
As he spoke, William rested his hand on the hilt of his ceremonial sword. Berchtold was suitably impressed. After Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, the Kaiser’s militancy appeared to increase. “Now or never,” he scribbled on the margin of a telegram from Vienna. “It is time to settle accounts with the Serbs and
the sooner the better.” “We could reckon on Germany’s full support,” cabled Count Szogyeny, the Austrian Ambassador in Berlin, after a talk with the Kaiser. “His Majesty [the Kaiser] said … Austria must judge what is to be done to clear up her relations with Serbia. Whatever Austria’s decision may turn out to be, Austria can count with certainty upon it that Germany will stand by her friend and ally.” Having given his pledge, William cheerfully left for Kiel to board the Hohenzollern for a cruise through the Norwegian fjords.
Wreathed in his own bluster, the Kaiser miscalculated the reactions of each of Germany’s three major antagonists. According to Sazonov’s estimate: “The authorities in Berlin were not convinced that Russia would care to risk a war in order to preserve her position in the Balkans…. In any case, they scarcely believed her capable of carrying on a war. Nor did they entertain a very high opinion of France as a military power. As for the possibility of England siding with their enemies, no one in Germany ever thought of it; the warnings of the German Ambassador in London, Prince Lichnowsky, were derided, and he was indulgently referred to as ‘good old Lichnowsky’ at the Berlin Foreign Office.”
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family Page 34