We all laughed heartily at the misunderstanding. I have been mistaken for many things in my life – a poverty-stricken artist, a commercial traveller, the conductor on a ferryboat and a house painter – but never before a potential gaoler.
Next came the news that the royal couple, together with their entourage and Ostenburg’s little troop of armed men, had left for Tata and were to stay in the Esterházy palace there106. They took Siménfalvy with them as a prisoner.
Here follows what he himself told of this experience.
He had been captured by Lehár’s men between Györ and Komárom and locked in a cattle-wagon connected to the rear of the king’s train. They warned him not to look out, or he would be shot. Nevertheless, whenever the train stopped, he did look out, either peeping through a slit in the door or the corner of a window. At nearly every halt, were it a station or signal box, he would see a well-dressed young man who boarded the royal train. Then they had stopped for a long time at Biatorbágy, where there had been an open-air mass, an inspection of a guard of honour who had presented arms, and had gone through other court ceremonies. Later he had heard distant cannon fire. Sometimes he had caught a glimpse either of the king or Queen Zita taking a walk or chatting with the officers. Of course, he had not been able to hear any news and knew nothing of what was happening.
Towards evening he felt the train start again, this time moving backwards. It moved along in the same sluggish way as before, and again there were frequent stops, where the same young man he had seen jumping onto the train would jump off again and disappear.
It was already dark when they arrived at Tata. Suddenly the wagon door was wrenched open, and the same men who had imprisoned him now told him to take command of the guard and be responsible for the safety of the royal couple.
He looked after everything. Outside the king’s rooms he placed armed guards chosen from among the officers who had remained faithful to the king and, when everything had been arranged to his satisfaction, he too went to his bed. He was aroused at about two in the morning. What had happened was that one of the partisan leaders, Rákosi by name, had decided to march to Budapest to offer his services to Horthy. On the way he arrived at Tata and there he found all the loyal guard asleep not only at the castle gate but also outside the king’s door. Even Ostenburg was down in the basement with some woman. So he disarmed them all and placed his own guards in their place. General havoc everywhere! The partisan guards were filthy dirty from sleeping in the fields and dusty after their long march. Their clothes, civilian not uniform, were in tatters, and it was hardly surprising that everyone in the house imagined they had been attacked by bandits. It took some time for Siménfalvy to restore order and send Rákosi on his way. Finally silence again reigned in the castle at Tata107.
So ended the first phase of King Karl’s attempt to overthrow the government.
There can be no doubt that if Karl and Zita had not allowed themselves to be wined and dined in Sopron, had not wasted time attending military parades, Te Deums, open-air masses and formal reception of envoys and had had no more than two trains hitched together as one, then they could have reached Budapest either Friday evening or early Saturday morning, when they would have met almost no resistance. We had no resources, and we would have either been chased out or arrested. Then they would have been able to play monarchs for a few days at least. But for their awkwardness, and the childish conceit that allowed them to waste time on trivialities, that vital day and a half would not have been lost.
There can also be no doubt that their glory would have been brief. The Czech army had been mobilized and was being rushed to our border; while the Serbs had despatched yet another battalion to Bácksa to reinforce their forces already in Baranya. If a Habsburg king had seized power in Budapest, then there would have been an immediate Serb attack followed by a Czech invasion. The country would have been overrun. The resolute resistance of the Hungarian government averted this danger, at least for the time being.
Later the Legitimists were to say that had Karl been accepted by us, the Czechoslovak army would never have marched into Hungary because all those Slovaks still loyal to the king would have changed sides. There is no need for me to deny that, for it has been authoritatively refuted by one of the most reliable of King Karl’s supporters, Tamás Erdödy, who had been a childhood playmate of the king’s and perhaps his only true friend. Erdödy tells in his memoirs how the unhappy royal couple had been led astray and repeatedly fed with encouraging but false information by a group of desperate political exiles whose only hopes lay in the restoration of the monarchy. And it was these people who played up to the poor king, a man weak in every respect, who was not fitted to rule and who could not even have managed a medium-sized farm.
Some Hungarians who had taken part in the putsch later claimed that King Karl’s return had been approved by the Great Powers. To refute this, I will again quote Erdödy. According to him Queen Zita’s Bourbon-Parma brothers had brought the news that Briand, and not only him, had said that should Karl succeed and his restoration as king of Hungary become a fait accompli, then he, Briand, would be content to make only a formal protest and would try to win over the newly created states on our borders. This was said to have been stated by the French prime minister before the first putsch at Easter108. How much of this was true is anybody’s guess. And even if it were true it would have been a weak enough basis for such an important enterprise, even putting on one side Briand’s well-known unreliability. It was said of him, when he was still France’s foreign minister, that if, in the middle of explaining his policy in the Assembly, he sensed that he was being received coldly, he was capable to saying the opposite before he sat down. He was an orator and a parliamentarian who was determined, above all, to remain popular. He had good manners and a most winning way of saying anything that would please, provided only that it cost him nothing. The message to King Karl, even if meant seriously, should only have been a very slight encouragement. It was always clear that the main obstacle was the attitude of Prague and Belgrade. It is impossible to understand how the royal party could possibly imagine that the Czechs and the Serbs would not intervene with force, regardless of any formal protest from the Great Powers, who would be obliged to validate such a protest. And France, once the Allied protest had become official, could take no other course but to follow suit. Briand’s ‘promise’, dating as it did from before the first putsch, had become immeasurably less likely by the time of the second. And, even if it had ever been made, it was always possible that Briand had changed his mind after the failure of the first attempt.
I was at that time on such close terms with Foucher that, had he heard any whisper of all this, it was certain he would have whispered it to me too. I never then saw any change in his attitude to me, or in that of the other ambassadors, who remained as well disposed to us as they always had been, while insisting with continued firmness that we faithfully carry out every demand made upon us by the Council of Ambassadors – and the Council of Ambassadors was completely under the thumb of Benes.
This was perhaps the most important aspect of the situation during the second phase of the king’s attempt to regain power. In this crisis, where only a little provocation was needed, a renewed invasion of our territory would have been certain; and with it a further dismemberment of the country.
Karl and his accompanying party were then removed to Tihany109 under the surveillance of the Allied powers. Karl and Zita were lodged in a Benedictine convent, the ‘ministers’ and others who had taken part in the plot being in a well-guarded villa nearby. There they were visited by, among others, Csernoch, the prince primate of Hungary, General Soós and by various politicians who, with the authority of the government, tried to persuade the king to abdicate his own rights, perhaps in favour of his young son, Otto. At this time, right at the beginning of the crisis, there was hope that this would satisfy Benes. However, influenced it seems by his wife, Karl was not willing to do this.
I had
very little personal knowledge of these details at the time because I was then very much occupied with the daily worsening situation with respect to our foreign relations.
The first sign of things to come was that the Czechoslovak chargé d’affaires came to see me on behalf of Benes. He said that Benes still had friendly feelings towards me but that ‘circumstances are stronger than friendship’.
I replied that the government had done everything in its power to foil the king’s attempt at restoration and that therefore Hungary could not be held accountable for Karl’s mad adventure. We sent the same message more than once to the Council of Ambassadors, stressing that the putsch had been foiled by our strength of purpose and resistance and that therefore we had the right to expect that the Council should recognize our good faith and energetic action by protecting us from the demands of the newly-created states.
I should mention here that a few days later the removal of the royal party from Hungary was finally completed, thereby satisfying the wish of the Parisian Council110. The English steamer, the Glow-worm and her sister ship, came up the Danube to fetch them, and as it was important that their journey should not be used as the occasion for a demonstration by supporters of the king, which would certainly have been used against us by Prague and Belgrade, I devised a plan with the director of MAV (Magyar Allami Vasutak – the Hungarian State Railways) and with the British ambassador, Hohler, that the train carrying the royal party should be officially scheduled to run from Tihany to Dunaföldvár, where they would board the steamer. However, a reliable chief controller was to travel with the engine driver and, just before the train arrived at the branch-line, would order him to go straight to Baja and not, after all, to Földvár. It was the same with the steamers. These were to dock the previous evening at Földvár but later to set sail under cover of night and tie up under the bridge at Baja. And so it happened. Only the four of us were in the know; and nothing untoward occurred. It was just as well. Indeed, at Földvár a number of local landowners had gathered to make a big demonstration, while the occasion had brought a large crowd to the station and the quayside who, even if they were not exactly supporters of the Habsburgs, would surely have cheered and waved, as mobs so often do if the occasion offers.
A tragic incident was linked to these events. József Hunyadi, the chief court steward, was not able to make the journey with the royal couple, and a replacement had had to be found in case they had needed something on the way. I had asked my old friend Miksa Hadik to go with them to Madeira111 and stay there until Hunyadi arrived. The poor man accepted gladly, but when the car went at dawn to pick him up, they found that he had died in the night of a cerebral palsy. I mourned him greatly and still think of him today. He was a fine man.
In about a week the Czech mobilization was completed, and the army posted in readiness on our borders.
In the meantime, on the first day of the week, we had held an important cabinet meeting so as to hear what General Röder, Chief of the Hungarian General Staff, had to tell us and then to decide whether or not we too should mobilize.
Röder informed us that we had already arrived at the last moment when such a decision could be taken; otherwise it would be too late. However, the decision was not only a military one. There were also political considerations. If we were to mobilize then this would entail our releasing a supply of arms that had previously been hidden from the watchful eyes of the Disarmament Committee and so reveal the continued existence of arms we had denied we still possessed. We would have no other way of defending ourselves. When he told us this I at once asked what were our military chances if we were fully armed and mobilized. Röder did not beat about the bush but told us frankly.
‘We can resist for ten days, perhaps two weeks.’
‘No longer?’ I asked.
‘No! No longer. The other side is four or five times stronger than we are; and besides we shall have to fight on two fronts: north and south.’
It was a dreadful situation and I was faced with a terrible responsibility. It was up to me to decide whether we should leave the country defenceless or take up the challenge when we were at such a disadvantage.
I decided that I would vote against mobilization and I am sure, even today, that I was right. Mobilization would have meant immediate war, for the Czechs and Serbs would hardly have waited until we were ready for them. They would have struck at once, albeit without their full resources. Therefore for us to mobilize would have been futile. And not only that but we would also have diminished our standing with the Great Powers by revealing our illegal cache of arms. If we had had any military prospect of defending ourselves and holding out for longer then, perhaps, the risk might have been justified, for while we held out there might have been time to find a solution, as in the case of the Burgenland. But to risk the country’s safety when we could only fight for ten days or a fortnight, and then, after a disastrous struggle, to have to capitulate? No! That we could never accept. I repeated all my arguments, and the cabinet finally agreed with me. Röder then said that it was his duty to ask for an immediate decision, and so the responsibility fell once more on me, and I had no other course but to accept it. I stipulated, however, that our frontier guards should be withdrawn to half a kilometre behind the border so as to diminish the possibility of frontier incidents that might be used as a pretext for action against us. Röder promised this and was as good as his word.
One can imagine the sleepless nights I passed during the whole of that fortnight until the many problems provoked by the king’s actions had finally been resolved. I had resolved that I would not live to witness a renewed invasion of my country as a result of any decision I might have taken and for which I would be blamed by everyone. My conscience was quiet, but one cannot live without honour.
These two weeks were the worst of my time as foreign minister.
Hardly a day passed without Benes coming up with new demands, at first directly to me and later through the Council of Ambassadors and always, contrary to all logic, accusing Hungary of wanting the Habsburgs back. His demands grew steadily. At first he only exacted the dethronement of the king, but he was not satisfied when, because of the pressure of the Great Powers, we accepted this, and went on to demand that this should be extended to cover all members of the Habsburg-Lorraine family. This was all done by ultimatum after threatening ultimatum. It was clear that he wanted war or at least a further dismembering of Hungary; and it was at this time that more than once I heard tell of an old plan that was being disinterred by which Budapest and its surrounding lands should be reconstituted as a small republican city-state, with the rest of historic Hungary to be divided between its three neighbours. It is possible that in this way Benes thought he could at last realize that project for a Czech/Serb corridor at which he had hinted during our talks at Bruck.
Finally we brought forward the legislation necessary for dethroning the king. I found it infinitely humiliating that we should be forced to this by foreign pressure, and began to think of resigning my office.
It was not that I wanted in any way to facilitate the possible return of the Habsburgs, but according to law the hereditary kingdom of the Habsburg-Lorraine house rested on the Pragmatic Sanction: that is to say, on the mutual defence needs of the hereditary lands. The final break-up of these had made it worthless – indeed, damaging – for Hungary. Restoration would have been a disaster for us, especially with a ruler who would always have been looking over his shoulder at the Austrian border and, regardless of whether it would ever be possible, wondering when he could make the leap towards Vienna. Restoration would also have brought with it a built-in obstacle to achieving those good relations with our neighbours, which I knew to be not only essential, but also sensible, practical politics. I could therefore hardly bear, as a result of my office, having to be the mouthpiece by which Benes’s constantly blackmailing tactics were conveyed to our government.
On the very day that parliament passed the dethronement law, Hohler came to see me and
told me, in the name of the Council of Ambassadors, that this was not enough and that Benes would not withdraw his troops until the day we passed further legislation declaring the permanent exclusion from the throne of any Habsburg.
I told Hohler that this message came too late, as on that very day we had already satisfied the requirements of the Great Powers. If I had known only twenty-four hours before the text of the proposed new law could have been modified, but now that the law had been passed it would be impossible to reintroduce it into parliament, and too humiliating for the nation. The demand was also nonsense, for diplomatic promises, and even laws, were not for all time but could always be changed according to the pressures of the day.
I explained that for these reasons I had to reject this new and wholly unjustified demand, and that it was now the Council of Ambassadors’ turn to deal with Benes.
At this Hohler seemed somewhat uncomfortable. He told me in confidence that I could not count on this, and that the Great Powers would not intervene even if Benes were to attack us. The best they could offer would be ‘leurs bons offices’, by which he meant their moral support. More than this they would not do, and I should know what this was worth.
So it seemed that we were now faced with the threat of another war, a war that our own chief of staff had declared we could not win. Terrible is the situation of a small country that stands alone. Somehow I had to find a solution that would avoid war and with it the ruin of my country.
Nevertheless, for the reasons outlined above I was not prepared to agree to further legislation. I therefore said that I would personally send a declaration to the Council of the Great Powers stating that Hungary would not come to any decision as regards the monarchy without previously obtaining the consent of the Great Powers who were represented by the Council – not, that is, of the Council itself but of each national Cabinet. This was, of course, little more than pointing out the reality of the situation, for without the consent of the Great Powers no Hungarian king would be able to keep his throne. It was to our advantage that, although the Great Powers were still bound to each other by the need to keep watch over the distribution of war loot, it was certain that sooner or later their interests would diverge and then all would depend on the views of the strongest. It would also mean, and this would be to our advantage, that Benes would not obtain all he wanted.
The Phoenix Land Page 34