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

by Justin C. Vovk

  I am under the impression that they are still left without means of any kind, and that the [family is] all but destitute.1242

  Mildmay’s letter was enough to get the attention of the British government. Lord Curzon, the foreign secretary, used his influence to push through a final annual income for the Habsburgs. The sum of £20,000 per year was settled upon. The Entente decided that the money would come in equal shares of £5,000 from the four successor states to the Austro-Hungarian Empire: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and the now-unified Romania. This amount would have made the Habsburgs reasonably comfortable, but the four countries refused to pay a single pound, leaving them with almost no source of income.

  The lack of money meant the food situation was dire. The Habsburgs lived almost entirely off of vegetables and puddings or jams that Zita made herself. The journey into Funchal was so long and expensive that they could not afford to get meat for the children, who were beginning to languish. Added to this perilous situation was Zita’s eighth pregnancy, which was in its third trimester. Since the empress and her family could not afford the basic necessities of meat and hot water, there was no possibility they could pay for a doctor to care for Zita during this critical time. The only help she could expect during the delivery was from the children’s maid, who was not trained in childbirth. Zita tried to make the best possible life in exile for her young family. She filled her days with household work, cooking, washing, ironing, and patching the few pieces of clothes they had left. When she was not occupied by these duties, she supervised her children, who divided their time between studying and crafts. Quinto’s garden provided foliage for artwork that the children made to pass the hours.

  Particularly important for the empress was a makeshift chapel that she built in one of Quinto’s rooms adjoining the main hall for the family to pray in each day. For help constructing it, Zita appealed to the Funchal authorities, who “fervent Catholics themselves, could not refuse so pious a wish.”1243 The government supplied the Quinto chapel with a small altar and an image of the Sacred Heart. Father Zsamboki, the priest who came with the Habsburgs into exile, conducted the daily Catholic services. In the midst of such dire circumstances, Zita’s faith never wavered. “Even if we have failed in everything,” she said, “we have to thank God, for His ways are not our ways.”1244

  A Portuguese maid who volunteered to serve the family was moved to tears by their plight. “I just cannot bear that these two innocent people should be left so long in this completely inadequate house,” she wrote. “Someone ought to lodge a protest!… Sometimes we do get very low and depressed, but when we see how patiently Their Majesties accept all these ills, we carry on again courageously.”1245

  Outwardly, Charles tried to wear a brave face during his exile, but the people around him could see that he was but a shell of his former self. In March 1922, accompanied by Otto and Adelhaid, he made the long pilgrimage down into Funchal. For weeks, he and Zita had saved every penny to buy some toys for their son Carl Ludwig, who was about to turn four. Someone ran after the emperor to offer him a warm overcoat, but he declined to take it. Though it was sunny that day, the air was cold and damp. Charles, who had always been plagued by a weak constitution, soon fell ill with bronchitis and a fever of 104 degrees. For the next two weeks, his condition worsened. On March 25, pneumonia set in. Out of desperation, he was injected with turpentine to draw the infection away from his lungs. By the end of the month, his body was covered in sores, blisters, and lesions from countless unsuccessful treatments. A priest was brought in to lead the family in a special Mass of intercession, to take the emperor’s confession, and to offer him Holy Communion.

  Charles refused to allow his children into his sickroom at first. This was a long-standing rule upon which he insisted in order to prevent contagion. This became moot when Felix and Carl Ludwig came down with pneumonia anyway; Robert was suffering a postoperative gastric infection; and the household staff members were beginning to contract influenza. Late on the night of March 27, after the emperor partook of the Holy Sacraments, he summoned Otto to his bedside for some time alone between father and son. The next day, Charles said: “The poor boy. I would gladly have spared him that yesterday. But I had to call him to show him an example. He has to know how one conducts oneself in such situations—as Catholic and as Emperor.”1246

  When his condition became critical, a crucifix was brought before him. The heavily pregnant Zita, sitting next to the sickbed, held it as her children sat in hushed reverence. “I must suffer like this so my peoples can come together again,” Charles told his wife, his eyes fixed on the cross.1247 Charles lingered on for days, slowly suffocating. His face pale, covered in sweat, he repeatedly kept telling his wife how much he loved her. “Oh, why do they not let us go home,” he asked Zita. “I want so much to go home with you.” By March 31, he was drifting in and out of consciousness. Looking around his room, he called each of his children by name. “Protect their bodies and their souls,” he muttered to his wife. At 12:23 p.m. on April 1, he was ready to surrender his life. Looking over at Zita, who was still sitting next to him with the crucifix in her hands, he managed to mutter, “I can’t go on much longer … Thy will be done … Yes … Yes … As you will it … Jesus!”1248 A few moments later, Charles I of Austria died in his wife’s arms. He was only thirty-four years old. Zita, his eight-month-pregnant widow, was thirty. A few minutes after the emperor died, his devastated family and their small staff assembled in a nearby room. Dropping to their knees, they hailed ten-year-old Otto as “His Majesty.” Otto later recalled how odd that moment was: “I thought this was somehow wrong. His Majesty had always been my father. That was surely still my father.”1249 Had the Habsburgs not been dethroned, Otto would have taken on the mantle of emperor, with Zita acting as regent. Otto was now hailed as the rightful heir to the Austrian throne, though he did not assume the title of emperor, and he did not begin exercising his authority as head of the House of Habsburg. That would remain Zita’s domain until he came of age.

  Five days later, the emperor’s body was taken in a simple, two-wheeled handcart to the church of Nossa Senhora do Monte for a funeral service. Several thousand people lined the route the pitiful funeral procession took. A deep silence prevailed as a sign of respect for the imperial family. Empress Zita had hoped to obtain permission to bury her husband in the Habsburg crypt in Vienna, but the Austrian government refused. She instead had the body buried in the cemetery at Nossa Senhora. One of the bouquets placed at the grave had written on a small band tied around it, “TO THE MARTYR KING.”1250 An Austrian woman who witnessed the funeral was deeply impressed with how Zita carried herself.

  This woman is really to be admired. She did not for one second lose her composure, nor did the children. I saw no tears from any of them. They only looked very pale and sad. When she came out of the church, she greeted the people on all sides and then spoke to those who had helped with the funeral. They were all under her charm … But what will now become of this poor family?1251

  The foreign press could not deny the significance of the emperor’s passing. One Austrian newspaper recorded that “his death on a distant and remote island must bring a pang of nostalgia to all those who recall what we had lost, lost through relentless fate but also, in part, through him.”1252 In Vienna, a requiem mass performed at Saint Stephen’s Cathedral was interrupted by cries of “Down with the Republic!” by monarchists. Empress Zita received numerous heartfelt condolences. “The whole Hungarian people mourns alongside Your Majesty,” the Hungarian prime minister Count Bethlen telegraphed. “I would like you to accept the expression of my deepest sympathy in the name of the royal Hungarian government.”1253 By all accounts, the condolences offered by the Hungarian government were sincere. The London Times reported the reaction in Budapest to Charles’s death.

  The Regent, Admiral Horthy, and the Prime Minister, have sent heartfelt condolences to the Queen. The Government has ordered all public buildings to fly a flag at h
alf-mast. Theatre performances and music are all forbidden. The wedding of the Regent’s daughter has been postponed. Church bells are tolling. The Cardinal Primate will personally celebrate the Requiem Mass. It is, at any rate, agreed that Hungary must by united expressions of mourning fulfil its chivalrous duties towards the Monarch banished by foreign decree. An imposing manifestation of mourning is expected …1254

  The passing of Emperor Charles I brought to the fore the tremendous changes that had taken place in the former crown lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. “Along with the Habsburgs had fallen their ambitions,” wrote one historian. “Ukraine was Soviet; Poland was a republic; Austria was stripped of empire; Hungary had rejected its Habsburg king.”1255

  In less than a decade, Empress Zita of Austria was crowned, deposed, arrested, exiled, and widowed, all by the time she was thirty. The loss of her husband marked the most pivotal turning point in her life the same way her father’s death did in 1907. She was now solely responsible for the care of seven—soon to be eight—children, all ten years of age and younger. Following in the tradition of Queen Victoria and her own ancestor Empress Maria Theresa, the last empress of Austria wore only widow’s black for the rest of her life to mourn the loss of her beloved Charles, the man who had been hailed as the Peace Emperor during his reign of less than two years.

  27

  Return to Grace

  (1922–28)

  Within two months of her husband’s death, Zita was forced to move her family yet again, since the widowed empress did not want her last child to be born in near poverty on Madeira. Less than a month after the emperor’s death, help for the family finally arrived from King Alfonso XIII of Spain, who was partially prompted by the compassion of his wife, Queen Victoria Eugenie (“Ena”). Upon his deathbed, Charles had placed the hope for his family’s future in the Spanish king. “He is chivalrous,” he told Zita, “he has promised me.”1256 Alfonso unequivocally told the Allies that he was now going to help Habsburgs. The king was a natural proponent, since he and Charles I’s father were second cousins—his mother, Queen Maria Cristina, was an Austrian archduchess.

  In May 1922, the Spanish warship Infanta Isabel arrived at Funchal to take Zita and her family to live in Spain. It was an emotional departure because, for the first time, they felt that they were really saying good-bye to Charles. As Zita watched Madeira shrink on the horizon, her “heart throbbed with a piercing ache. There, on that island, she was leaving behind her other self—that which had been most precious in her life.”1257 In Spain, Empress Zita, her children, and their tiny staff disembarked from the Infanta Isabel in Cadiz where they boarded a train bound for the Puerta de Atocha Station in Madrid.

  Looking somber and dignified in her black, widow’s dress, the empress waved to the tens of thousands of people who greeted her with shouts of “Viva la Emperatriz!” The king, the queen, and their highest-ranking officials amassed to greet Zita and the awestruck archdukes and archduchesses. When they arrived at the Royal Palace in Madrid, one witness recalled a conversation between Alfonso and Zita about her husband’s last illness.

  King Alfonso related to her, how in the night before the death of the Emperor Charles, he was overcome with a feeling that, in the event of the Emperor’s death, if he, the King, would not take his widow and the children under his protection, his own wife and his own children would suffer one day the same fate. He only found peace, after he had firmly resolved to give the bereaved family a home in Spain, as the death of the Emperor seemed to be certain. King Alfonso was not less overcome than the Empress Zita, when she then told him what the Emperor Charles had said before his death [about Alfonso being chivalrous].1258

  Zita’s life of widowhood began in the Spanish capital, but within a few days, she and her family relocated to the palace of El Pardo in the Madrid suburb of Fuencarral-El Pardo. A luxurious palace, El Pardo was built as a hunting lodge in 1406 but had been refurbished numerous times over the centuries. The bright and cheery El Pardo was much better maintained than Eckartsau or Quinto, providing the most comfortable home that Zita and her family had known since their escape from Schönbrunn in November 1918. It was at El Pardo that Zita gave birth to her eighth and final child, a daughter, on May 31, 1922. Her family’s luggage had not even been delivered to the palace rooms when the contractions began. Unlike her previous deliveries, this one was long and difficult. The exhausted empress was in labor for nearly a day before finally giving birth to the tiny infant. The posthumous daughter of the last emperor of Austria was named Elisabeth, after Franz Joseph’s wife.

  Little Elisabeth was sickly, and many did not expect her to live long. King Alfonso pressed for the archduchess to be baptized immediately. After a few days, her health improved. Zita’s postnatal recovery was not so quick. Her eighth delivery in almost as many years took its toll on the normally robust empress. She was bedridden for two weeks before she even showed a glimpse of recovery. But the sight of her newborn daughter beginning to thrive reinvigorated her spirits. So too did frequent visits from the Spanish royal family. Alfonso and Ena made regular trips to see the archdukes and archduchesses playing happily in their nursery at El Pardo. The queen also had her personal physician regularly check on Zita.

  El Pardo soon became an appealing pseudocourt in Spain. A bevy of guests began frequenting the palace. The king was a regular face. So too was his mother, Queen Maria Cristina, who usually came with freshly picked lilies and violets for the empress. Everyone was surprised when Zita was paid a visit by Archduke Wilhelm, a member of the extended Habsburg family who had caused the dynasty no end of embarrassments. A vocal socialist with nationalist sympathies for Ukrainians, Wilhelm had spent much of the war years lobbying Emperor Charles for the creation of an independent Ukraine within the monarchy, with him as its king. After the fall of the dynasty, Wilhelm continued to cause controversy with his socialist sympathies and constant requests to Charles for money. When his own fortunes plummeted in 1922, he made for the royalist safe haven in Madrid under the protection of his relative the king. While in Madrid, Wilhelm sought to heal many of the wounds between his branch of the Habsburgs and Zita’s.

  Another individual who visited Zita on an almost daily basis was Alfonso XIII’s wife, Queen Ena. Descending on El Pardo with characteristic calm and dignity, very much a Victorian paradigm like Queen Mary, Ena was eager to embrace Zita as a friend. After her father, Prince Henry of Battenberg, died at a young age, she was raised entirely by her mother, Princess Beatrice, and her grandmother Queen Victoria. All her life, she embodied the traits of ideal an English queen. By contrast, King Alfonso was a fickle, passionate man whose behavior was unpredictable at best. As young adults, the mismatched couple fell passionately in love, but their life together was marred by one misfortune after another. At their wedding in 1906—which had been attended by Ena’s favorite cousins Prince George and Princess May—the couple was nearly killed in a botched assassination attempt. Not long after that, their marriage began to fall apart when it was discovered that Ena—like her cousin Alexandra of Russia—had introduced hemophilia into the Spanish royal family. Unable to reconcile himself to the fact that the woman he had once loved so much had unwittingly helped to weaken the Bourbon dynasty, Alfonso sought comfort in the arms of as many women as he could find.

  The days at El Pardo became uncomfortable when Alfonso began visiting the Habsburgs without his wife. The king, who was driven by his emotions, used his audiences with the empress to air his grievances about Ena. Zita, however grateful to the king for his charity, could see the impact this was having on her family and started looking for a home away from Madrid. The king pleaded with her to stay in the capital. Offering the family permanent use of El Pardo as an incentive, he encouraged the empress to send her children to school in the city. Zita’s friend and biographer Gordon Brook-Shepherd explained why she could not accept such an offer: “But however grateful she was for the rescue, Zita would have none of all this. Madrid was already in political fermen
t, hardly the educational background for Habsburg children, who anyway spoke no Spanish. What their mother needed was a home of their own, where she could supervise the academic programme [sic] herself, through house tutors whom she would select. Above all, she wanted to be closer to France, the home of her ancestors.”1259

  The political situation in Spain during the 1920s was one of the biggest contributing factors to Zita’s decision to take her family away from the capital. The government was led by the politically ambiguous General Miguel Primo de Rivera, whose administration was characterized by its emulation of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy. During the first half of the decade, Madrid was seized by work stoppages and industrial impediments. Writing to Queen Mary, Queen Ena expressed her concerns: “I am sure you must all be anxious about the coal-strike & I do hope that this fearful catastrophe may still be avoided. Really what hateful times we are living in.”1260 Having endured enough political turmoil in the last five years, Empress Zita was eager to take her eight young children out of the maelstrom that was engulfing Madrid. Thus her search began. Out of her element in Spain, Zita appealed to Alfonso and Ena for help.

  “We do not need a palace,” she told the king. “Is there not a house in some small village?” After thinking about it for some time, he replied that there was an old palace called Uribarren in the Basque region.