Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires

by Justin C. Vovk

  The way that Zita was slanderously referred to as “the Italian woman” mirrored the way Alexandra of Russia was labeled “the German woman.” No one seemed to notice, or chose not to notice, that because of Zita’s position as the Austrian empress, her family’s homes in Italy were confiscated by the government. Villa Pianore and several other homes were turned into naval hospitals. The New York Times reported on the rising anti-Austrian sentiment in Italy: “After the last discussion in the [Italian] Parliament Premier Orlando initiated a stricter policy against subjects of the Central Powers. Several arrests were made, many Austro-Germans were interned, and hotels managed by Germans were closed. The public, however, has been complaining that nothing was being done to sequestrate the beautiful villas and palaces belonging to German and Austrian royalties.”997

  One British newspaper could not help but notice the parallels between the way Tsarina Alexandra and Empress Zita were depredated.

  The latest instance is the agitation now being made in Vienna against the Austrian Empress, who is declared to be responsible for the Piave disasters owing to her protest against [the] destruction of Italian towns, and against other forms. Her masculine critics are also adopting another old device, where women are concerned, by making imputations against her character.… The Empress Zita is not the first Royal consort to be blamed for a country’s ills. The ex-Czar’s wife was said to be mainly responsible for her husband’s downfall … Queens are rarely, if ever credited by men with their countries’ triumphs.998

  Zita tried not to dwell on the problems that plagued her and her husband. One bright spot in the midst of all the turmoil surrounding the empress’s life was her family. On March 10, 1918, she delivered a son named Carl Ludwig. To celebrate, Charles offered amnesty to a number of people charged with political crimes, reinforcing his sobriquet as “the Peace Emperor.” He believed that the happiness experienced by the pardoned prisoners would mirror the “joyous event of the delivery by my wife the Empress and Queen.”999 This was not the first time the emperor had shown clemency to enemies of his government. On July 2, 1917, some two thousand political prisoners—mostly Czechs—were set free in a broad amnesty. But the happiness Zita and Charles enjoyed over this latest addition to their family was short lived. The war’s climactic final stage was set to begin and would shatter the lives of not only Zita and her family but of Dona of Germany and the Hohenzollerns as well.

  Ground zero for this theatrical endgame was the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, Count Ottokar Czernin, who had represented the empire at the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. At the conference, when he was asked about the greatest obstacle to lasting peace, he replied that it was none other than Georges Clemenceau, the French prime minister. According to the count, “I was willing [to negotiate over peace] and that, as regards to France, I could see no obstacle to peace apart from the French desire for Alsace-Lorraine. The response from Paris was that negotiation on this basis was not possible.”1000 Czernin “blamed France for failing to grasp the opportunity to prevent the slaughter on the Western front, and in particular pointed to Clemenceau … as an obstacle in the way of peace.”1001 Czernin later declared that the emperor had been fully aware of his remarks and supported them, but in her diary, the empress painted a very different picture: “H.M. received it [notification of Czernin’s remarks] so late that he could not deal with it in time.”1002

  Czernin’s statements were followed by a scurrilous exchange of attacks that flew back and forth between Czernin and Clemenceau. The day after the controversial remarks were made, Clemenceau barked with rage, “Count Czernin is lying.”1003 Angry beyond words, Clemenceau focused his ire squarely at Czernin and Austria. “For it was actually the Emperor Karl who, in an autographed letter of March, 1917, gave his definite support to the just claims of France relative to Alsace-Lorraine,” Clemenceau said. “The only thing left for Count Czernin to do is to make a full admission of his guilt.”1004 Attempting to protect his own interests, Czernin forged a number of low-level documents supporting his claims, which he made available to the public and included the letter Charles had sent to Sixtus in March 1917. Zita remembered her and Charles’s reaction to the release of the letter: “As events were now more than a year old and had anyway been written off, we could not reconstruct them exactly from memory.… we had no means of proving or disproving the exact words quoted by Clemenceau.”1005 Realizing he did not have the support of the emperor and empress, Czernin went into a mad frenzy, forging and reforging documents that made him appear innocent.

  The backlash was immediate and dangerous. Propaganda painted Zita as an intriguing harlot who was using her brother to fuel her quest for power. Allied planes dropped leaflets on Czech, Hungarian, and Slovenian troops claiming Zita was giving away their military secrets. Like Nicholas II, Charles was portrayed as docile, weak willed, and dominated by his wife. Some of the more hurtful rumors included Charles being a secret alcoholic who was on the verge of divorcing his wife. The campaign of vilification against them was an undeniable mirror of the same sad circumstances that faced Nicholas and Alexandra. In a letter to the British statesman Arthur Balfour, the foreign secretary Sir Horace Rumbold empathized with the imperial couple. “No one could blame the Emperor, that is, to say, the Empress, for trying to make peace after her own fashion: she could not be expected to realise that the days are long gone by, when women and priests could sway the destinies of nations,” he wrote in May 1918. “It seems strange however, that the Entente, one of the planks whose democratic platform is the abolition of secret diplomacy, should have availed themselves readily for her services.”1006

  The Austrian monarchs now faced a political crisis. Wilhelm II felt betrayed by Charles, who had no choice but to send an emergency telegram to Wilhelm denying the letter’s authenticity, saying, “At a time when Austro-Hungarian cannon [sic] are thundering alongside German guns on the Western Front proof is scarcely needed that I am fighting and will continue to fight for your provinces as though I were defending my own.”1007 Wilhelm warily accepted Charles’s explanation, but not before the latter was forced to travel immediately to German military headquarters at Spa for an emergency meeting face-to-face. After an audience that lasted hours, Charles regained Wilhelm’s support—but at the cost of “the closest military, political and economic union which the two empires had hitherto concluded.”1008 The cost of Ottokar Czernin’s irresponsible remarks was Austria-Hungary’s now total dependence on Germany. The famed Habsburg historian Edward Crankshaw summarized the calamity of the situation this way:

  When Clemenceau published the Sixtus letter in 1918 as a retort to Czernin’s blustering.… Austria found her last escape route closed. William II was not unnaturally indignant when he discovered that Karl had pledged himself to back France’s demand for Alsace-Lorraine. Karl was summoned to the German Emperor’s headquarters at Spa, there to explain, to apologise and to suffer his inheritance to be tied indissolubly to the Hohenzollern destiny: therefore the great Empire, already subservient to Berlin in all matters concerning the higher conduct of the war, was in every way a German satellite.1009

  In May 1918, Charles traveled by train to Berlin to sign the official documents binding Austria-Hungary into a closer alliance with Germany. Wilhelm was satisfied to have the agreement signed, but Dona forced Charles to submit to her “wrath” for having betrayed Wilhelm.1010

  Empress Zita was forced to personally bear the consequences of Czernin’s indiscretion. Threats were made on the life of her brother Sixtus. She confided to her diary, “The brothers [Sixtus and Xavier] are in great danger of being shot.” Count Czernin claimed that the only way for Charles and Zita to save her brothers’ lives was to announce that the emperor “suffers from periodic mental lapses.” He insisted that Charles “must withdraw from government on the grounds that it was during one of these fits that he wrote the letter Clem. has published.”1011 Not surprisingly, Charles refused to consider abdicating over this crisis of Czernin’s making. In an u
ncharacteristic outburst of anger, he leveled the foreign minister.

  “It’s out of the question,” he declared. “What shall we come to once we start declaring monarchs to be lunatics?”1012 Desperate to save face, Czernin then turned to Zita, imploring her to use her influence to encourage Charles to accept Czernin’s solution.

  “The honour of a gentleman,” she calmly replied, “is to protect his sovereign.”1013 The Sixtus Affair finally came to an end on April 14, 1918, at a Crown Council presided over by both Emperor Charles and Empress Zita. “Dreadful scene with Czernin,” the empress wrote in her diary that night. “He again tries to persuade the emperor to step down and when that doesn’t succeed, he has a nervous breakdown, weeps, and suddenly offers his resignation, which H.M. immediately accepts.”1014

  Throughout the entire ordeal, Zita had been skeptical of her husband’s foreign minister. Rumors abounded that Czernin himself had been responsible for the threats against the empress’s brothers. Another rumor claimed that he was engineering a German-backed overthrow of the Habsburgs. Although none of these accusations were ever proven, they certainly lend credence to why Czernin was so adamant that he could only save Sixtus and Xavier by forcing Charles to abdicate. What everyone failed to realize was that the Sixtus Affair and Ottokar Czernin’s fall from grace were only the beginning. Time was ticking for Europe’s empires as they stood upon the brink of an abyss. The weeks and months to come would prove to be the most difficult in the lives of Charles and Zita of Austria-Hungary.

  21

  The House of Special Purpose

  (May–July 1918)

  After four years of fighting, imperial Germany was beginning to erode under the increasingly successful attacks of the Allies. German military leaders were crushed by the news that their forces were defeated in the Battle of Amiens in August 1918. It proved to be “the largest tank battle of the First World War—and Germany’s enemies had all of the tanks.”1015 German casualties soared beyond thirty thousand, with thousands more of their soldiers surrendering en masse. Within a matter of weeks, Allied forces captured fifty thousand additional German soldiers. Tensions were escalating between the Hohenzollerns and the Habsburgs, whom they believed were not doing enough to help the war effort compared to German sacrifices. The Allied victory at Amiens brought about the final collapse of the western front, prompting Emperor Charles and Empress Zita to head to Spa for a few days for an emergency summit with Wilhelm, who described the tense visit as “unwelcome.” By this point, any pretense of friendliness that Wilhelm felt for the Austrian monarchs had been discarded. It was by now widely known that the emperor “disliked Karl and his empress, Zita of Bourbon-Parma.” Wilhelm believed Charles “was the creature” of his wife, whom he described as “spiteful” and “anti-Hohenzollern.” When Charles and Zita arrived at Spa, “the Kaiser found the royal couple untrustworthy and detestable.”1016

  After Charles and Zita left Spa, Wilhelm made a brief visit to Berlin before returning to military headquarters. When he arrived in the capital, he was shocked by how unbearable life there had become. There were visible shadows of the revolution in Petrograd from the year before. The British blockade of Germany, along with its recent defeats, devastated the Prusso-German economy. Starving people sliced cuts of meat off horses that had died from the cold or from exhaustion when bread, potato, and turnip rations ran out. Heating in Berlin was not consistent, and electricity was spotty at best. Thousands of people “stood in food lines through the night, through rain and snow, suffering from cholera and typhus that swelled into epidemics.”1017 Protesters marched on government buildings. In the Reichstag, there was a heated debate over reclaiming its powers from the Bundesrat. The Socialists called for an end to the war, accompanied by Wilhelm’s abdication. Chancellor Georg Hertling sought help from Empress Augusta Victoria. In a meeting with her, Hertling insisted that the government would have to start granting concessions to the public if they hoped to avoid further unrest. He hoped that she would be willing to convince her husband to take a more liberal political stance. As an ultraconservative monarchist, the empress was furious at such an idea. “I am prepared to suffer the worst, before I will tolerate that any right of the crown is curtailed,” she told Hertling.1018

  There were few options left by the summer months. Wilhelm’s generals were forced to admit that a military victory for the Central powers was no longer possible. Dona had since moved to her favorite summer residence, the Wilhelmshöhe Palace in Kassel. She acutely felt these latest trials her husband was facing. Helpless as Wilhelm slipped into depression, and weak from overstrained nerves and heart disease, the empress suffered a massive heart attack in mid-August. Dona’s recovery at Wilhelmshöhe was slow, but thanks to the highly skilled team of doctors at her service, her condition was quickly stabilized. She was confined to her bed for weeks and was placed on a strict diet of cold foods. Wilhelm was on his way to Spa from a tour of the naval shipyards at Kiel and interrupted his journey to visit his convalescent wife. The growing unpopularity of both the war and the monarchy in Germany did not diminish the affection the people had for their empress. During an appearance at the Krupp factories in Essen on September 18, the emperor noticed the genuine sympathy of the people for “his bedridden spouse.”1019

  This display of support for the monarchy was fleeting and could not prevent the great trials that were set to be unleashed. With Wilhelm’s greatest helpmate removed from his daily life while she slowly recovered, and overwhelmed by the cataclysm surrounding him, the emperor suffered another nervous breakdown at Wilhelmshöhe shortly after appearing at Essen. He was placed on a similar regimen as his wife and was ordered to stay away from war business for several weeks. True to her selfless nature, the moment Dona was told of Wilhelm’s condition, she forced herself out of bed and rushed to his side. She spent days with him, nursing him and restoring his confidence and strength. The fact that his wife was endangering her own health for his sake touched a chord with Wilhelm. He developed a new love and respect for Dona devoid of his previous condescension. A new level of total intimacy entered their marriage that had not existed before.

  At the end of September, Wilhelm was back on his feet at Spa, where he felt he was better equipped to deal with the growing unrest across the empire. On September 29, Count Hertling resigned. His departure marked a turning point in German politics. The emperor was now hard-pressed to find a new chancellor, since few people were willing to take up the mantle of such an unstable government. Wilhelm was forced to admit that things were going to get worse before they got better. He was also deeply anxious about what effect Germany’s mounting problems would have on his frail wife. The night that Hertling resigned, Wilhelm sat down and penned a brief note to Dona, preparing her for the difficult days to come: “We are approaching grave days and important measures will have to be sought to find internal rest and unity as well as external peace. God help us in this work and our heroes, too.”1020

  The next day, he sent his adjutant General Friedrich von Gontard to Wilhelmshöhe to personally update the empress on everything that was happening. “Your Majesty must be strong, for I bring no good news,” Gontard told her when he arrived. It took over an hour for Gontard to deliver his detailed report. He explained to the empress the crisis in the Reichstag with Hertling’s departure, the decisive setbacks for Germany in the war, and the growing unpopularity of the monarchy. Once Dona dismissed the general, she sat alone in her apartments for hours contemplating everything she had just heard. When she finally summoned her trusted friend and lady-in-waiting Countess Mathilde Keller, the countess was in awe of her composure. “She stood like a heroine before me,” Keller later told Gontard, “terribly sad, fully aware of the gravity of the situation, but there was no wailing and moaning. Her composure was remarkable!” That same day, Wilhelm sent Dona another letter from Spa, adding his personal voice to Gontard’s visit.

  Gontard will already have told you how serious it is for us. Our brave army, in glorious d
efiance, is daily smashing back the overwhelming attacks by the enemy masses. But we, too, are suffering losses and our troops are steadily being reduced. Domestically, there’s nothing but discord, wrangles and vexation! So it was decided at yesterday’s conference, 1: In order to restore domestic peace, there will be an enlargement of the government by some men from the different parties who will assume responsibility, 2: To sue for peace and an armistice. Old Count Hertling has asked to be relieved. [Friedrich] Berg [Chief of the Civil Cabinet] and I are once again looking for a successor.

  God has not allowed us to achieve the goal we had hoped for; He has decided on a path of pain and sorrow. We yield to His Holy Will and go to Him with the hope and prayer that He will be willing to give us the strength of His Spirit to pass through this difficult time in the belief that He will lead us to our best way even if His way is also difficult and appears to us to be obscure. May He strengthen our faith, all of us, and not abandon my poor people and the Fatherland, but be a Saviour in need. Without His help it would have been worse for us. I will continue to do my duty to Him and to the Fatherland, with all my strength, as long as God allows me!

  [Postscript]

  The Chancellor has gone in order to make room for new men: noble, distinguished and quite without personal consideration for himself. It will be bitterly hard for me to part from this admirable man. Who could follow him? God help us!1021

  The question of who was finally answered a few days later. On October 3, the patriotic Prince Max of Baden—the same Max of Baden who had once courted Alexandra of Russia—was appointed to the German chancellorship. Many hoped that the liberal Max would be able to grant concessions to the republicans, successfully negotiate peace with the Allies, and preserve the monarchy.