Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (16 page)

When the imperial train bearing the new monarchs on their return from San Remo pulled into the Charlottenburg station in the west end of Berlin’s old quarter, Dona, Willy, and his brother Henry were there to meet Fritz and Vicky. The winter that year was especially unforgiving, with large snowdrifts and howling winds sweeping through the station. When the emperor and empress got off the train, the scene that unfolded was heartrending. After embracing his son, Fritz turned to Dona, who, with tears streaming down her face, threw herself into the towering emperor’s arms. One witness at the station recalled that the “whole scene was exceedingly affecting, and many of the onlookers were moved to tears.”
¹⁴⁶
A few days later, the city of Berlin gathered to mourn the death of the man who had forged the German Empire. The royal family, dressed in furs and pelts, walked behind the gun carriage bearing the old emperor’s coffin—the use of a gun carriage in state funerals was a sign of the deceased’s status as a great military leader. Fritz’s wretched health was devastated by the harsh winter, forcing him to watch the funeral procession from a raised dais so he could see through the palace windows while he wept. One witness noted that there was nothing “more pathetic, more tragic, than the spectacle of the funeral
cortège
wending its solemn way through the snow-drifted park, with the death-stricken Emperor Frederick looking on from an upper window of the Palace, because [he was] unable to follow the body of his father to the tomb!”
¹⁴⁷

Willy chose this opportunity to step up his attacks on his mother. Even though Vicky’s husband was the reigning emperor, Germany’s social elites were inclined to side with her truculent son. Bismarck made sure Willy was named deputy emperor on March 23, along with arranging for him to chair a number of government committees and take up a position at the German Foreign Office. “So they already look upon me as dead,” Fritz muttered to Vicky.
¹⁴⁸
Willy’s supporters quickly expanded to include Vicky’s older children, Charly and Henry. She wrote bitterly to her mother, “People in general consider us a mere passing shadow soon to be replaced by
reality
in the shape of William!!”
¹⁴⁹
Queen Victoria had “no words to express” her “indignation and astonishment” at how coldly Willy was acting during this time.
¹⁵⁰
Frederick III was nearly incapacitated. He had endured a painful tracheotomy, could barely speak, and issued his orders by scrawling them onto pieces of scrap paper. His own chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, unscrupulously jumped ship and threw his support behind Willy.

To help shore up support for her daughter, and to remind Willy that she was still a powerful woman, Queen Victoria made a rare visit to Germany on her way back to England after a holiday in Italy. After arriving at the Charlottenburg station on April 25, where the queen was met by Vicky, her daughters, and all their children, she was taken to Vicky’s home, the Neues Palais. Once she had readied herself, Victoria accompanied her daughter to see Fritz. In her diary, the queen recorded the emotional reunion with her beloved son-in-law: “He was lying in bed, and he raised up both hands with pleasure at seeing me and gave me a nosegay. It was very touching and sad to see him thus in bed.”
¹⁵¹
It was the last time Fritz and the queen would ever meet. Afterward, Victoria made a visit to the nearby Marble Palace to see Dona and the children. Although she enjoyed the presence of her great-grandchildren, the two women were icily cold to one another, stemming from the latter’s anger over the precedence issue from the jubilee the year before.

Of all the meetings the queen held during her brief German visit, it was her face-to-face audience with Otto von Bismarck at Charlottenburg Palace that was the most memorable. After the forty-five-minute confrontation, the politically battle-hardened Bismarck walked out of the meeting wiping the sweat from his forehead. According to Arthur Bigge, the queen’s assistant private secretary, Bismarck declared, “
Mein Gott! That
was a woman! One could do business with her!” The next day, Victoria returned to the railway station bound for the coast. She described in her diary that night the wrenching good-bye from her daughter: “I kissed her again and again. She struggled hard not to give way, but finally broke down, and it was terrible to see her standing there in tears while the train slowly moved off, and to think of all she was suffering and might have to go through. My poor child, what would I not do to help her in her hard lot.”
¹⁵²

The highly charged atmosphere in Potsdam was slightly interrupted a month later when Willy’s brother Henry married Alix’s sister Princess Irene of Hesse on May 24. Everyone made a valiant though transparent effort to seem happy. Fritz donned one of his elaborate military dress uniforms, leaning heavily on a cane during the ceremony. Vicky, dressed in a pale green silk dress accented with diamonds around the neck, did everything within her abilities to set aside her feelings for Willy and Dona. This bitter struggle between Dona, Willy, Vicky, and her meager number of supporters resumed after the wedding, but it did not last long. After a reign of only ninety-nine days, Fritz’s agonizing battle with cancer came to an end on June 15, 1888, making him the shortest-reigning monarch in Prussian history. It was a bittersweet day for the immediate royal family, as only hours before they had put on brave faces to celebrate the eighteenth birthday of Willy’s sister Sophie. “What a birthday for the poor child!” Vicky recorded, “what a recollection for the whole of her life! The last day on earth of her beloved father!” In the moments after his death, Vicky placed on his chest the wreath she had given him during the Franco-Prussian War. After placing a sword in his hand, she collapsed beside his bed, consumed by her grief as Dona, Willy, and her daughters looked on in silence. Upon hearing the dreadful news of Fritz’s passing, Queen Victoria immediately sent a letter to her grandson. “I am broken-hearted,” she wrote. “Help and do all you can for your poor dear Mother and try to follow in your best, noblest, and kindest of father’s footsteps.”
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If his early years had shown Willy to be a selfish albeit young man, his accession to the throne as Emperor Wilhelm II revealed how truly flawed his character was. Within an hour of his father’s death, Wilhelm sent his soldiers to ransack the Neues Palais in search of documents to incriminate his parents. Rooms were torn apart, desks were overturned, and belongings were destroyed. When the new emperor finally returned, dressed in his full military uniform, “he gave his shocked mother no explanation. More high-ranking officers came to ransack the palace and rifle through Fritz’s desk again while Vicky huddled with her three youngest daughters, the dead emperor’s body still lying nearby.”
¹⁵⁴
Queen Victoria was horrified by his actions and shuddered to think about Germany under his rule. She wrote to her granddaughter Victoria of Battenberg, “It is too dreadful for us to think of Willy & Bismarck & Dona—being the supreme head of all now! Two so unfit & one so wicked.”
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The new emperor immediately set about consolidating his power. He wanted to ensure there was no question that he reigned supreme by the will of God. On June 25, he made his first throne speech to a crowded Reichstag. Keeping with his theatrical personality, Wilhelm spoke with bravado and rhetoric. He was explicit that the entire powers of the Prusso-German monarchy were embodied in him, along with the empire’s complex constitution, which he swore to “watch over and protect.”
¹⁵⁶
His words were quickly to put to the test. Less than ten months after becoming emperor, Wilhelm was faced with his first major crisis in the form of massive, nationwide labor strikes. The crisis began in May 1889 in the empire’s heavy industry core, the Ruhr basin, situated on the Westphalian plain near the Lower Rhine. In a relatively short period, the unrest spread into Aachen, the Saar region, Saxony, and eventually to Silesia, one of the richest mining regions in the eastern empire. It was a tremendously violent uprising that lasted for nearly a year. Direct mediation was required between the emperor, the chancellor, and the industry leaders before some sort of equilibrium was restored months later.

Vicky, somewhat naively and with her usual poor choice of timing, felt that during the heavy industry crisis of 1889–90 was an appropriate time to enlist Dona’s help in deflecting some of her son’s wrath. She hoped her daughter-in-law, who was now German empress and queen of Prussia, would be able to step into the fray in a direct manner on her behalf. But at the time of her husband’s accession, Dona could do little. At thirty years old, she was almost nine months pregnant with her fifth child. Many were afraid that the stress of two deaths and two accessions in three months would cause Dona problems during her pregnancy. These concerns were put to rest a month later. After what turned out to be a particularly harrowing six months, Empress Augusta Victoria was blessed with another son. Vicky, who was now styled as Empress Frederick, wrote to her mother, “William is overjoyed that it is a boy … He was afraid it might have been ‘only’ a girl!!
She
is pleased too.”
¹⁵⁷
When the baby prince was christened that summer, he was given the name Oscar, in honor of his illustrious godfather, King Oscar II of Sweden.

The official mourning period prescribed by etiquette for the death of Emperor Frederick III was insultingly short—at Wilhelm’s insistence. With Fritz’s calming presence gone, the battle within the royal family turned decisively against Vicky and in favor of the new emperor and empress. Wilhelm funded a vituperative public campaign to smear his mother. Accusations against her ranged from “passing military secrets to the French during the Franco-Prussian War” to contributing “to her husband’s death because she had supposedly ignored the German doctors.” The accusations against her prompted her to write to her mother, “I am no longer astonished at any
lies
or impertinence. The most imprudent gang in the world, without principles or conscience, is now in power! I feel
utterly without any protection
whatsoever!” She accused her son of trying “to wipe out all trace of Fritz’s reign, as of an
interlude
without importance.… William II succeeds William the 1st—in
perfect
continuity.”
¹⁵⁸

With her husband now the head of the German Empire and the Prussian royal family, Dona found herself somewhat relegated to the sidelines, less involved in the battle between her husband and her mother-in-law. Dona took a less direct stand against Vicky and instead focused all of her energies on her children, whom she kept isolated from the dowager empress, which left her mother-in-law speechless. “They are kept entirely away from me, though I am so passionately fond of children,” Vicky wrote to a friend.
¹⁵⁹
She could not believe Dona would not unite with her against Wilhelm’s outrageous behavior. Vicky wrote to Queen Victoria, “She has
quite
forgotten me, or does not like to remember, or really does not understand what she owes me.… She has a great sense of duty, but she does not seem to see
what
her duty towards
me
is!”
¹⁶⁰
The environment at the Prussian court quickly became toxic. The Empress Frederick publicly disapproved of everything Dona and Wilhelm did. This left Dona, who always felt somewhat intimidated by Vicky, feeling more insecure than ever. She overcompensated by becoming obsessed with her role as empress and the prerogatives that came with it. The problem was that she had never been properly educated about wielding power, and Wilhelm’s egocentric personality greatly enhanced her own less appealing qualities. In time, Dona would develop a dichotic personality, marked by narrow-mindedness and haughtiness but also by loyalty, honor, and devotion. The question was, which traits would prevail, and what would Empress Augusta Victoria’s lasting legacy be?

4
“Bitter Tears”
 

(1889–92)

I
n January 1889, Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt returned to Russia for six weeks to visit Serge and Ella. Unlike her first visit for Ella’s wedding, this time Alix was the center of attention. A small crowd of royals gathered at the train station to welcome the princess, including Ella, Serge, Tsar Alexander III, and his besotted son Nicky. When he saw Alix again, Nicky enthusiastically wrote in his diary that she “has grown up a lot and become much prettier.”
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Alix stayed at Ella’s home, the pink-tinged, “grandiose” Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, on the banks of the Neva and Fontanka rivers in Saint Petersburg. Ella’s home embodied all the magnificence of imperial Russia. Everywhere inside the palace there was a “profusion of wealth and splendour … Silks and velvets, marble and ormolu, gilding and tapestry, plate and pictures, inlaid floorings and mosaic tables, were all literally scattered everywhere.”
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Alix’s first day in Russia was packed with activities in Saint Petersburg, whose winter social scene was reportedly the most extravagant in the world. Ice-skating and tobogganing in the afternoon were followed by a candlelit ball at the Winter Palace. Alix recalled that after dinner that evening, she and Ella “went to the Winter Palace where we dressed for the ball (white diamonds, white flowers and sash).”
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The thousand-square-foot marble White Ballroom was decorated in sparkling diamonds for the occasion. During Alix’s visit, her constant companion was the young and handsome Tsarevitch Nicholas, whose parents, Alexander and Minnie, watched her closely, scrutinizing her every move. Whatever adolescent feelings Nicky and Alix may have had when they first met had since fully blossomed into love. When Alix returned to Darmstadt, she left her heart in Russia. She and Nicky began writing to one another in English, the only language they shared. “It was so good of you to write and it gave me great pleasure,” Alix wrote after receiving one of Nicky’s letters. “Thank you so much for your dear little letter,” came the reply from Nicholas, who made no secret of his feelings for Alix by closing with the words, “With much love, your ever loving Nicky.”
¹⁶⁴

Nicholas became determined to make her his wife. What he did not realize was that he would have to contend with the most powerful force in Alix’s life: her grandmother, who was against the match. Queen Victoria had hoped to pair Alix with her grandson Prince Eddy. He was a young man to whom historians have been somewhat ungenerous. While certainly not a pillar of the monarchy or a man who inspired great confidence, the listless, indolent Eddy became the subject of a historical feeding frenzy when an article appeared in the periodical
The Criminologist
in November 1970. The author, Dr. Thomas Stowell, began a decades-long belief that Eddy was not only a sybaritic, syphilitic lethario, but that he was also Jack the Ripper. This also led to speculation that Eddy was involved with the notorious Hundred Guinness Club on Cleveland Street, which was embroiled in a scandal in 1889 alleging the club was a male brothel.
¹⁶⁵

In pairing Alix with Eddy, Queen Victoria was also in love with the idea of Alix one day becoming queen of England. When Alix was seventeen, Queen Victoria brought her and Eddy to her Scottish home, Balmoral Castle, to give them a chance to take a liking to one another—this was something the queen did often, as she fancied herself her family’s matchmaker. Strained lectures on Eddy’s virtues, coupled with his own protestations of love for Alix all came to naught. It became quickly obvious that Alix had no interest in Eddy, despite the tantalizing prospect of becoming queen. Queen Victoria was resolute until the end. She wrote to Alix’s sister Victoria in March 1889, trying to convince her to intervene: “Is there
no
hope abt. E[ddy].? She is
not
19—& she shld. be made to reflect seriously on the folly of throwing away the chance of a very good Husband, kind, affectionate & steady & of entering a united happy family & a very good position wh. is second to
none
in
the world
!”
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A few months later, the queen wrote again to Princess Victoria, frustrated by Alix’s lack of interest in Eddy: “We have just a
faint lingering
hope that Alicky
might in time
look to see what a pleasant home, & what a
useful
position she will lose if she ultimately
persists
in not yielding to Eddy’s
really earnest
wishes. He wrote to me he shld.
not
give up the idea (tho’ it is considered for the
present at an end
)—and: ‘I don’t think she shows how I love her, or she cld. not be so cruel.’”
¹⁶⁷
In the spring of 1890, Alix sat down to write Eddy a letter. Once and for all, she wanted to put an end to any notion of their getting married. Although it “pained her to pain him,” she wrote that she could not marry him, nor would they ever be truly happy as husband and wife. She reaffirmed her cousinly affection for him and left it at that.
¹⁶⁸
Her words did little to soothe the sting of rejection Eddy was feeling. He wrote to Prince Louis of Battenberg, Alix’s brother-in-law.

For I can’t really believe Alicky knows how much I love her, or she would not I think have treated me quite so cruelly. I can’t help considering it so, as she apparently gives me no chance at all, and little or no hope; although I shall continue loving her, and in the hope that some day she may think better of what she has said, and give me the chance of being one of the happiest beings in the world. For I should indeed consider myself so, if I would only call her my own.

….Perhaps later you might be able to find out if there is any real reason why Alicky does not care for me, and if I have offended her in any way. For Ernie said there was none, which makes it all harder for me to understand.
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“It is a real sorrow to us,” Queen Victoria wrote to the Empress Frederick once the matter was settled, “she [Alix] says – that if she is
forced
she will do it – but that she would be unhappy & he – too. This shows g[rea]t strength of character as all her family & all of us wish it, & she refuses the g[rea]test position there is.”
¹⁷⁰
One of the great historical ironies of Alix’s life was that she probably would have been much better as the queen of England than the empress of Russia. Trained by Queen Victoria, she fit the British idea of royalty exactly. It remains uncertain whether or not Alix ever realized how incredibly different her life—and history as a whole—would have been had she married Eddy.

In truth, Eddy was never a contender for Alix’s affections. Her heart belonged to Nicky of Russia. Their romance was encouraged by her sister Ella, who enjoyed playing matchmaker between her sister and her husband’s nephew. When Queen Victoria caught wind of this, she was livid. She wrote Alix and Ella’s sister Victoria to “take care &
tell
Ella that no marriage for
Alicky in Russia
wld be
allowed
, then there will be
an end of it
.”
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By the end of the year, no one had been able to dissolve the prospect of marriage between Nicky and Alix. Frustrated with the whole thing, the queen told Princess Victoria, “Papa must put his foot down and there must be no more visits of Alicky to Russia—and he must and you and Ernie must insist on a stop being put to the whole affair.” Later, she explained to her granddaughter why she was so adamant about Alix not marrying Nicky: “The state of Russia is so bad, so rotten that at any moment something dreadful might happen and though it may not signify to Ella, the wife of a
Thronfolger
[heir to the throne] is in a most difficult and precarious position.”
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Determined not to see her favorite granddaughter married to the Russian heir, Queen Victoria hatched another plan to get Alix married off to someone else. The new incumbent was Prince Max of Baden, a cousin of Emperor Wilhelm II. Tactless and unpopular but otherwise acceptable, Max was brought to Darmstadt on the queen’s order and was under the distinct impression that Alix had already accepted him. Alix—who had been completely unaware of the scheme up until that point—was horrified when she was told that Max had come with the explicit purpose of proposing to her. “I vividly remember the torments I suffered,” Alix told a friend years later. “I did not know him at all and I shall never forget what I suffered when I met him for the first time.”
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Sensing another forced romance, Alix summoned all of her defenses. Her icy outward demeanor became stronger than ever, prompting her to withdraw into herself. It took a combined plea from both herself and her sister Victoria to convince Max that she had no interest in him. His visit made a profound impression on Alix because she realized that the matchmaking would never come to an end until she was engaged or unless she made a declaration to never marry.

At the same time that Princess Alix was visiting Russia, Europe was hit by one of the biggest royal scandals of the nineteenth century. On the morning of January 30, 1889, the heir to the Austrian throne, Crown Prince Rudolf, was found dead along with his mistress, Baroness Marie Vetsera. Their bodies were discovered at the crown prince’s hunting lodge in the tiny village of Mayerling, fifteen miles southwest of Vienna. Rudolf’s father, the ultraconservative Emperor Franz Joseph, ordered his government to release an official statement in the Austrian newspaper
Wiener Zeitung
claiming the cause of death was apoplexy. This was later edited to be heart failure. No mention was made of the baroness whatsoever; she was quickly buried privately at the abbey cemetery in nearby Heiligenkreuz. Few people believed the official story, and it did not take long for rumors to begin to circulate. One of the more outlandish conspiracy theories was that Freemasons had perpetrated the murder to seek revenge on the Habsburgs for their devoted adherence to Catholicism. The more popular theories claimed that Rudolf “had been seriously wounded out shooting and could not live; that he and his mistress had been found in bed dead from cyanide poisoning; that he had died after a duel; that he had been killed by a forester for seducing his daughter; that he had been hit over the head with a bottle by his cousin the Archduke John …”
¹⁷⁴

Investigators who arrived at Mayerling were eventually forced to conclude that Rudolf killed Marie, then shot himself in the head in a grisly murder-suicide pact. Various explanations for what could have possibly motivated such a tragedy were put forward. Some claimed Rudolf had been suffering from depression. Others mentioned the fact that his mother, Empress Elizabeth, came from the Wittelsbach dynasty of Bavaria, whose members reportedly suffered from mental instability for a confounding forty generations.
¹⁷⁵
A more widely circulated rumor, even to this day, was that the crown prince had contracted a venereal disease and found killing himself preferable to a long, lingering death from his supposed illness.