Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires
Page 2
Hosting so many reigning monarchs at one time was a first for Germany since its unification in 1871. At the wedding feast that night, some twelve hundred guests watched in awe as the blushing bride danced the Fackeltanz, the traditional candlelight Prussian royal wedding dance. As candelabras flickered, reflecting off the diamonds, emeralds, and medals of the enthralled guests, Victoria Louise danced with her father. The king of England and the tsar of Russia had the honor of dancing with her next. As radiant as the princess was that day, there were three women whose presence not only outshone the bride but also captured public attention. The three individuals in question were the highest-ranking women in the world at that time. They were the bride’s mother, Augusta Victoria, German empress and queen of Prussia (1858–1921); Queen Mary of England, empress of India (1867–1953); and Tsarina Alexandra of Russia (1872–1918).
What was it about these women that caused such a stir? How did they manage to steal the spotlight at the biggest royal wedding of the decade? The wedding of Augusta Victoria’s daughter marked the first and only time in history that these three women—the reigning consorts of three of Europe’s four imperial powers—were together at the same time. Many historians have speculated what must have been going through their minds on that warm, sunny day in May 1913, for what would be the last gathering of the “royal mob” before the cataclysm of the First World War only fourteen months later. It is doubtful that they had any prescience about the disasters that lay ahead for each of them.
As I delved into the lives of the empress, the queen, and the tsarina, I could not help but reflect on what they each experienced as they stood witness to the decisive collapse of Europe’s empires in the first half of the twentieth century. The rule of the tsars was brought to an end by the blood-soaked Russian Revolution in 1917, replaced with the equally repressive Soviet Union. The German Empire was dissolved and reorganized into a republic at the conclusion of the First World War in 1918. Without a doubt, Great Britain enjoyed the easiest—though by no means a bloodless—transition from a vast overseas empire to a commonwealth of nations, the provenance of which began at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and culminated after 1945. As I pondered these women’s lives and their roles as the last empresses, my mind could not help but be drawn to the story of a lesser-known imperial consort whose life was just as impacting as her counterparts and whose legacy has made a profound impact on European affairs. This individual was Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma, empress of Austria, queen of Hungary, Bohemia, Croatia, and so on (1892–1989). Her husband’s reign—and her role as empress—came to an end when Austria-Hungary—like Germany—collapsed in 1918. With Zita’s life and experiences coming into focus, I undertook to write this, my latest book. It is the tumultuous story of Europe’s imperial past, a story that will take readers from the opulent world of nineteenth-century royalty to the catastrophic Great War, the various revolutions that swept the continent in its aftermath, and the decades of instability that followed.
For almost a century, historians, academics, novelists, and journalists have intricately studied the end of the imperial era. Equally scrutinized have been the significant lives and reigns of the husbands of these women—King George V, Emperor Wilhelm II, and Tsar Nicholas II. Despite this incomparable body of literature, there has never been a book that looks at the women who sat on the thrones of these great empires. To that end, Imperial Requiem is a collective narrative of the destruction of Europe’s four empires—Austria-Hungary, Germany, Great Britain, and Russia—the turbulent aftermath, and the birth of the modern world, all filtered through the experiences of the last women who ruled them.
For all the political, diplomatic, and military factors that are brought to bear in this book, at its heart it remains the story of four extraordinary women. There were, of course, other imperial consorts who were contemporaries of these protagonists. However, my decision in choosing the empresses I did was deliberate. Initially, I had chosen to include Empress Eugénie, wife of Emperor Napoleon III, the last French monarch. Their deposition and exile in 1871 marked the permanent end of monarchy in France. After much thought, I chose to exclude Eugénie because there was a significant generational chasm between her and the other four women—she was already eighty-eight when World War I began, but her counterparts were relatively young women. There is also a generational gap between Zita and the other three. When she became empress, she and Augusta Victoria’s daughter were the same age, but her role in the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and subsequent European events in the postwar period were too significant to be overlooked.
I also chose to exclude Queen Mary’s daughter-in-law Queen Elizabeth, consort of King George VI. While technically she did become empress of India upon her husband’s accession in 1936, it was a title she was forced to relinquish upon Indian independence eleven years later. Queen Mary rarely ever used her imperial title. She and the other consorts of British rulers almost exclusively referred to themselves as queens. Mary’s role as empress of India and her de facto position as imperial consort of the British Empire made her inclusion in this book an obvious choice. I also did briefly consider including the beautiful yet tragic Empress Elizabeth of Austria, Franz Joseph’s wife, who was assassinated in 1898, but she was not the last empress of Austria. Like Empress Eugénie, she did not have a place in the story of Imperial Requiem.
Throughout their lives, mostly after marrying, these women stayed in contact with one another. Their husbands wrote to each other, passing along news between their wives. They visited one another, sometimes on official state visits, sometimes on private holidays, and often for royal weddings, which at that time seemed to occur at least once a year. Some of the empresses—like Alexandra and Mary—were fond of each other. In other cases, such as with Augusta Victoria and Alexandra, they loathed their counterparts. Along with their shared experiences as consorts, these women were also connected through bonds of family, both by blood and marriage. Augusta Victoria, Mary, and Alexandra all had ties to Queen Victoria. Augusta Victoria’s mother was Princess Adelaide of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, daughter of the queen’s elder half sister, and Frederick VIII, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein. Mary was the daughter of Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, Queen Victoria’s cousin and a granddaughter of King George III, and Francis, Duke of Teck. Both Mary and Augusta Victoria would marry grandsons of the queen as well. Alexandra had a direct link with the British matriarch. Her parents were Princess Alice, Queen Victoria’s second daughter, and Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse. Zita was on a peripheral orbit when it came to familial connections with her three counterparts. Her parents were the deposed duke Robert I of Parma, and Infanta Maria Antonia of Portugal, one of Augusta Victoria’s second cousins.
Each of these women came to occupy one of the four imperial thrones spread across Europe. In the far corners, there was Great Britain in the west and Russia in the east, where Europe merges into Asia. In the center, Germany was situated in the north, occupying the land between France and Russia. The dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary stretched toward Russia in the east and into the Balkans in the south. The countries and courts that these princesses married into bore striking similarities in spite of their differences, which could also be said of the women themselves. By the late nineteenth century, every European nation was governed by hereditary royalty, save for France and Switzerland. These royal states saw the rest of the globe as a frenzied game of imperialist conquest, with every Great Power scrambling to build an empire, both at home and overseas. This invariably led to conflicts, especially between Britain, Germany, and Russia, who were each struggling to become the ultimate power. But what drove these imperial monarchies? Why was it so important for them to be set apart as empires? One modern historian answered these questions this way:
[In] the 1870s, Britain and Russia, along with the other Western Great Powers, had launched themselves into a violent phase of territorial acquisition, carving up the globe beyond Europe into colonies and “spheres of influence
.” There are many complex and conflicting arguments as to why the (mostly) Western, (relatively) developed powers all decided they needed an empire: the natural evolution of global power politics made it inevitable that the few rich, militarily superior, technologically developed powers would dominate and exploit the other, more “backward,” weak territories; the need of the industrialized nations for raw materials, and for new places to put their capital; a sense of fierce competition among the Great Powers and a perception that new territories were the way to steal a march on their competitors. All these aspects played their role.1
These ideas were critical factors in the events that shaped Europe in the decades leading up to 1914. They also fueled the leaders who instigated the First World War. As we will see, in the end, it proved to be the imperial ambition itself that helped bring these empires down.
When I began writing this book in 2009, the issues I encountered were legion. Along with the normal burdens an author carries, I also found myself shouldering the legacy of my first book, In Destiny’s Hands. It was an account of five children of Empress Maria Theresa—two were reigning emperors, and the other three were reigning consorts. In the months that followed that book’s release, I was contacted by several readers who expressed concerns over the accuracy of the facts I presented. There are many factors an author has to take into account when writing nonfiction.
In compiling a biographical narrative, one always tries to use as many primary sources as possible—direct quotes from protagonists or contemporaries are an author’s favorite source. But even into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, contemporary accounts of people or events have not always been trustworthy. They can be biased, hyperbolic, misleading, or all of the above. One witness may have recorded a series of events one way, but another witness may have a had a totally different recollection of the exact same event. It can be challenging for an author to discern which piece of information is most accurate. More than once was I forced to make a judgment call when sources were vague or contradictory.
Another important consideration is the concept of publishable materials. In this age when media is pervasive, information has never been more accessible than through the Internet. I received several correspondences from readers citing a fact on a website or forum that contradicted information I had presented. Simply because a piece of information is widely disseminated does not make it accurate. Furthermore, when a nonfiction author submits his or her manuscript, publishers and editors often examine the bibliography to ensure that credible sources are used. Websites—with exceptions, such as governmental, official, or academic—are rarely acceptable.
None of these are excuses for poor nonfiction. Authors have a responsibility to present the facts, ideally without bias. Professor Abbas Milani of Stanford University aptly describes the writing process and the challenges faced by nonfiction authors in his latest book, The Shah.
Though books often have the name of one person as their author, they are invariably a collective effort—every conversation, every question, every book or essay we read, every criticism, fair or unfair, that we encounter, combine to shape our vision and words and leave indelible marks on any narrative we form. I have made every effort to reduce the affects of these influences to a minimum and allow the facts, reflected first and foremost in primary documents, to speak for themselves.…
There is an element of hubris in biography as a genre. It claims to illuminate the dark corners and the infinite complexities in the life of an individual [or individuals], a life invariably shaped by concentric influences, dreads, dreams, and pressures … Any narrative of a life entails a constant process of cutting, encapsulating, eliminating, glossing, and sometimes surmising. A good biography is not one that forgoes these choices, but one that makes them without any a priori assumptions and in the humble recognition that the search for the truth of a life is ever-exclusive, yet never bereft of interest.2
With this in the forefront of my mind, and coupled with my goal to improve upon those areas of In Destiny’s Hands that came under scrutiny, I have written Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires. I certainly make no claim that this book is a paradigm-altering work that could ever compete with or replace the many incomparable biographies of these women or their husbands and families. In fact, the opposite is true. I have drawn heavily on many splendid authors and historians to compose this work. Saying I am in the debt of authors like James Pope-Hennessy, Julia Gelardi, or Gordon Brook-Shepherd is an insulting understatement. In weaving my narrative I have had to accept the fact that dealing with four lives precludes the possibility of providing readers with the exhaustively-researched biographies that are so often craved, though I have tried to provide as much in-depth detail as possible. Throughout the writing process I was encouraged to discover that the story of these four women—which invariably encompasses many individuals, locations, and events—was greater than simply the sum of its parts. The stories of these four empresses can easily stand alone, but I cannot help but feel that their tales become more fully rounded out when they are set in the context of one another, what preceded their time as reigning consorts, what followed, and how cause and effect came into play.
I have done my best to wean out hyperbole without compromising the narrative epic, to present the facts on their own merit, and to discern proven facts, evidentially supported hypotheses, and reported but unsubstantiated claims in the hopes of showing every side of these women—their strengths, their weaknesses, their quirks, and even their contradictions. It is my desire that readers will see them as more than just two-dimensional women without depth or gradation. If that happens, I think I will have succeeded in my goal and done these incomparable individuals justice. Whether readers judge them as successful or failures as women, wives, mothers, and empresses, no one can deny the incredible impact they each have had. Their tales of duty, self-sacrifice, and inspiration are part of the special legacies they have left behind.
Justin C. Vovk
Ljubljana, Slovenia
July 11, 2011
Part 1
Unlikely Empresses
(1858–94)
1
Imperial Forge
(1858–73)
Far removed from the imperial grandeur of the Berlin Stadtschloss, the first of Europe’s last four empresses came into the world amid humble surroundings. She was born in the yellow Dolzig Palace, nestled in central Brandenburg in eastern Prussia, near the small riverside town of Sommerfeld (now Lubsko in Poland). The palace—which could better be described as a luxurious country villa at best—was the home of the infant’s father, Hereditary Prince Frederick (“Fritz”) of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg3, who received Dolzig as wedding present in 1856 from his father. Fritz’s wife, Princess Adelaide (“Ada”) of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, was twenty-three when she gave birth to their second child on October 22, 1858. It was an excruciating delivery performed without the benefit of chloroform to dull the pain—a practice that Ada’s aunt, Queen Victoria, began to champion since the birth of her son Prince Leopold in 1853; she described the effects as “soothing, quieting and delightful beyond measure.”4
Happy though Fritz and Ada were for their daughter’s arrival, their joy was quickly mingled with grief. Seven days later, on October 29, their first child, a son named Frederick, died at the age of fifteen months. The new baby girl was now an only child. Protocol dictated she be baptized as quickly as possible, which took place a few days later in a simple, Evangelical Lutheran ceremony in Dolzig’s chapel. At that time, the infant received the names Augusta Victoria Friederike Louise Feodora Jenny, though she would always be known officially as Augusta Victoria. In time, her family gave her the diminutive “Dona,” a nickname that would stick for the rest of her life and helped to distinguish her from the ubiquitous princesses named Victoria, Augusta, and Friederike that populated Europe. There are a number of theories regarding whom Dona was named after. The most widely accepted belief is
that Augusta was for Princess Augusta of Saxe-Weimar, the wife of the future king of Prussia, and later, the first German emperor; and that Victoria was either for Dona’s great-aunt, Queen Victoria, or Queen Victoria’s daughter Vicky (who also happened to be Augusta’s daughter-in-law and a close friend to Fritz and Ada). In reality, Victoria was probably for both women.
Fritz Holstein—as Dona’s father was generally known among Europe’s extended, interwoven royal family—was relatively tall according to the standards of the time, possessing a slight frame with dark hair and a matching beard. Labile, forward thinking, and a progressive constitutionalist, he was the son and heir of Christian August II, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, the insignificant ruler of the microscopic city-state Augustenburg, located on Als Island near the Jutland Peninsula in southern Denmark. In 1852, at the end of the First Schleswig War, Christian August lost his family seat after unsuccessfully trying to claim the throne of the twin duchies of Schleswig-Holstein. Financially ruined after the war, he sold his ancestral lands in Schleswig-Holstein to the king of Denmark for 2.75 million thalers—less than half of their total worth. Now hugely unpopular and without any real prospects for the future, the middle-aged Christian August retreated into near seclusion at Augustenburg Palace, his pseudo-Baroque family home on Als Island.