Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (47 page)

Enthroned on high beneath a golden dome, looking outwards to the far north from whence they came, their Majesties, the King-Emperor and Queen-Empress were acclaimed by over 100,000 of their subjects. The ceremony at its culminating point exactly typified the Oriental conception of the ultimate repositories of Imperial power. The Monarchs sat alone, remote but beneficent, raised far above the multitude, but visible to all, clad in rich vestments, flanked by radiant emblems of authority, guarded by a glittering army of troops, the cynosure of the proudest Princes of India, the central figures in what was surely the most majestic assemblage ever seen in the East.
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The day after the coronation, Mary wrote, “Yesterday’s Durbar was simply magnificent & too beautifully arranged, I am still quite under the influence of Imperialism it inspired.”
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King George was just as rapturous, writing to his mother, “The Durbar yesterday was the most wonderful & beautiful sight I have ever seen & one I shall remember all my life.”
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The high note on which the imperial coronation ended did not last. A week after the
durbar
, Sir Charles Hardinge, the new viceroy, was wounded when a bomb was thrown at his procession, killing one of his aides. Thankfully, George and Mary were on their way to Nepal and out of harm’s way.

Always thoughtful and introspective, King George took this opportunity to look back and take stock of his life. When he did, the one person who was always there for him, to whom he owed unending gratitude and love, was his wife. He wrote the following to her while she was sightseeing in Jaipur:

Each year I feel we become more & more necessary to one another & our lives become more and more wrapt [
sic
] up in each others. And I am sure that I love you more each year & am simply devoted to you & loathe being separated from you even for a day. Especially now in my present position with the enormous amount I have to do & with all my many responsibilities I feel that I want your kind help & support more than ever. And I must say you invariably give it [to] me, I greatly appreciate it & thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the love & devotion you give me.… very proud of being your husband & feel that our coming here to India as the first Emperor and Empress has certainly proved itself to be what I always predicated, a great success.
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The Indian coronation marked a turning point in Mary’s life. She became more confident in her role as queen and empress. This was buttressed when she and George returned to England. The crowds gathered to greet them cheered like had never been done for a British monarch before. There was little doubt at the close of 1911 that, with few exceptions, King George V and Queen Mary were the most popular monarchs in the world.

12
“The Little One Will Not Die”
 

(1912–14)

W
hen Charles and Zita returned from their honeymoon, they settled down to the quiet life of a provincial soldier and his wife. The archduke resumed his position in the Austrian military, beginning with the Seventh Dragoons at Brandeis, a small town on the Elbe River in what is today the Czech Republic. A few weeks later, Charles was transferred to the regiment at Galicia, located in the uppermost corner of the Austrian Empire near what is now Ukraine. The time that Charles and Zita spent in the company of their countrymen earned them immense popularity. One story that circulated during their first winter as husband and wife is ample testament to this.

During a car journey they had to stop while some repairs were carried out, and they took shelter in a nearby house where the housewife gave them hot drinks and chatted comfortably. When she heard where they were headed she was pleased—her son was a young soldier in the regiment [at Galicia]. Would they take his clean washing back to him for her? And also this small envelope of money that he needed? The Archduchess cheerfully took charge of the laundry, and the Archduke promised to deliver the money safely. Only later, when both had been handed over to the young soldier—the money with some extra added—did the story emerge, and the country woman realise who her guests had been … The friendliness and naturalness of the young couple who were second in line to the throne were beginning to win hearts.
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In 1912, Charles and Zita relocated to Vienna, bringing an end to his tour of duty in the provinces. The move was prompted by an accident that nearly put an abrupt end to Charles’s life. Earlier that year at Lemberg, he was thrown off his horse and hit his head on the ground, causing a severe concussion. The field hospital in Galicia was not equipped to treat this type of injury, so Charles was moved to a hospital in Vienna. After several days gripped with anxiety, Zita was finally able to see an improvement in her husband’s condition. Within a matter of weeks, he was back on his feet.

Once Zita’s husband recovered, the couple’s relocation was made permanent by his promotion to the rank of major in the Thirty-Ninth Infantry Regiment, with command of the First Battalion in Vienna. The move had been in the works for some time, since Zita was expecting their first child. In the early morning hours of November 12, 1912, the archduchess went into labor at Villa Wartholz, her aunt’s home near Schwarzau. The old castle was chosen because both of the parents wanted their child to be born in peace, away from the public spotlight of the imperial court in the capital. After a lengthy delivery, a healthy son was born. He was named Otto for his paternal grandfather. Outside the castle, the townspeople gathered to sing and celebrate the baby’s safe arrival. So thunderous were the celebrations that Zita’s mother-in-law and brothers went out to greet the people. At Otto’s baptism on November 25, Cardinal Franz Nagl, the prince-archbishop of Vienna, poured water from the Jordan River over his head. One of Vienna’s leading newspapers wrote an article extolling the highest hopes for Otto’s future: “In the new-born child … is an emperor who, in all probability, will only be called upon to guide the destiny of this state in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and then, hopefully, in calmer times than we are living through now.”
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Otto’s birth only enhanced Charles and Zita’s popularity. Their reputations for being down-to-earth, unaffected people spread across Austria. Archduchess Zita garnered particular acclaim for making an effort to learn every major language of the empire, beginning with the notoriously difficult Czech. During a state dinner at the Hofburg, she charmed the different delegations from across the empire by greeting each of them in their native languages. The elderly Franz Joseph used every excuse he could think of to be in her company, and even Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, enjoyed the company of this attractive, wholesome young family. Zita was only nineteen.

The first home Zita and her family settled into in Vienna was Hetzendorf Castle, on the western edge of the city. Although it was still attractive with its Baroque architecture and its lush, verdant parklands, Hetzendorf was a far cry from the stateliness of the Hofburg and Schönbrunn, the two principal residences of the Habsburgs in Vienna. Situated on the western edge of the city, the Rococo-decorated Schönbrunn contained more than one thousand rooms. It was beloved by Habsburgs for centuries for its beautiful gardens, menagerie, orangery, and the Dutch Botanical Gardens. Schönbrunn may have been a pastoral Xanadu on the outskirts of the capital, but the Hofburg was the imperial family’s symbol of power and authority. Built in the heart of Vienna on what is now the Ringstrasse, the Hofburg was the Habsburgs’ main residence since the late thirteenth century. With its several thousand rooms and more than half a dozen wings, it easily dwarfed most other European palaces, putting it on par with Versailles or the Winter Palace.

When it came time for Charles and Zita to take up permanent residence in Vienna, they did not allow the splendor of the imperial court to affect them. They continued to win over the people they met with their charm, kindness, and grace. One contemporary noted that, during Charles’s tour of duty in the provinces, “his boyish simplicity and the girlish charm of Archduchess Zita won all hearts, and when they left the Galician garrison to take up more responsibilities in Vienna – the Emperor Franz Josef fitted up for them the old castle of Hetzendorff near Schönbrunn – they had become the most popular of the younger members of the Imperial family.”
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When Wilhelm I died in 1888, he left a throne that was consolidated and stable. The first emperor’s antithesis was his grandson. Since the day he ascended the throne, Emperor Wilhelm II was noted for his erratic decisions and questionable behavior. Dona was forced to watch him make one poor decision after another, usually in the realm of foreign policy. Wilhelm, who was widely known as the kaiser—the German word for emperor—had succeeded in damaging Germany’s relations with most of the world’s other major powers. Tensions between the empire and Britain escalated after Queen Victoria’s death and Edward VII’s accession. Wilhelm had resented his English uncle, who had been a much more popular monarch.

Anglo-German relations did enjoy a brief resurrection when Wilhelm, Dona, and their daughter visited England in May 1911 for the unveiling of the now-iconic monument to Queen Victoria outside Buckingham Palace. After arriving at Sheerness on the evening of May 15 aboard the
Hohenzollern II
, the emperor, empress, and Sissy arrived in London the next day by train, where they were met at Victoria Station by George, Mary, and other members of the royal family. Mary’s direct connection with the various German royal families—and George’s amiability toward Wilhelm—ensured that the new king and queen enjoyed a more amicable, stable relationship with Wilhelm and Dona than had their predecessors. In the procession down Pall Mall to Buckingham Palace, Wilhelm, George, and the Prince of Wales rode in the first carriage, followed by the second carrying the queen, the empress, and their daughters Sissy and Mary. “Enormous crowds thronged the route from the railway station to the palace, and cheers greeted the party throughout the ride,” reported the
New York Times
.
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“The reception on the part of the English royal family and the people of London was cordial,” Wilhelm later wrote in his memoirs. This “cordial.… very magnificent” visit was the last one Wilhelm and Dona would ever make to Great Britain.
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Despite this reprieve, the Prusso-German monarchy suffered further blows in the early years of the twentieth century, notably when Wilhelm II made an unannounced appearance in French-controlled Morocco. His hope was to escalate that people’s incendiary desire for independence from France. The escapade was a foreign policy debacle. France’s position in the region was strengthened. So too was Britain’s, who stood behind their republican ally.

The second blow occurred in 1908 when an English officer named Colonel Edward Montagu-Stuart-Wortley published a series of private interviews with the emperor at Highcliffe Castle as a single article in the newspaper
Daily Telegraph
. An attempt to show Wilhelm as a lover of England, the article backfired, making it “the biggest and most damaging of the many media sensations of Wilhelm’s reign.”
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Wilhelm’s slightly deluded, unbalanced sense of humor came across as a personal insult to the British public. “You English,” he said, “are mad, mad, mad as March hares.”
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He then went on a diatribe describing an unending list of mostly fictitious selfless acts he supposedly performed on Britain’s behalf. With characteristic braggadocio, he also proclaimed that it had been himself personally who prevented France and Russia from siding against Britain in the unpopular, unsuccessful Boer War, a continuing sore spot in Britain’s cultural pride. The entire fiasco sparked a two-pronged response. In Britain, it was met with slightly amused ridicule. Wilhelm genuinely seemed somewhat of an Anglophile, and the newspaper
Westminster Gazette
described it as “well meant” but “embarrassing.”
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Lord Esher added that it was “amazing” that the emperor “thinks himself immortal and omnipotent.” The reaction in Germany was darker. German bitterness toward England had been rising for decades, and the
Daily Telegraph
article inflamed those feelings. The people resented their emperor’s admiration for his mother’s homeland. This was one area where Dona’s personal feelings made her very visibly more popular than her husband. Her strident Anglophobia reflected public sentiment in Germany, helping to cement her already-excessive popularity. The former German chancellor Bernhard von Bülow described the article as a “dynamite bomb … [full of] sad effusions, which could scarcely have been surpassed in tactless stupidity.” At the time, even Edward VII understood the damage Wilhelm was doing to his monarchy. “Of all the political gaffes which HIM [His Imperial Majesty] has made, this is the greatest,” he said.
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The
Daily Telegraph
affair was a turning point in Wilhelm’s reign. Public opinion turned against him in a striking way. For the first time, people openly questioned his sanity. Theories began to arise trying to ascertain the cause of the emperor’s unbalanced personality. Some suggested it was overcompensation due to his physical shortcomings—during his perilous birth in 1859, in which his brain failed to receive oxygen for several minutes, his left arm was permanently damaged, rendering it useless to him for the rest of his life. Author Miranda Carter suggested that his erratic personality was possibly, though improvably, due to “those first few minutes without oxygen [which] may have caused brain damage. Willy grew up to be hyperactive and emotionally unstable; brain damage sustained at birth was a possible cause.”
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This hypothesis has since been supported by several other royal historians like Jerrold Packard in his book
Victoria’s Daughters
. After two days of intense deliberation, some members of the Reichstag and Bundesrat called for his abdication. The federal princes’ attitude devastated the emperor, but there was little love lost between himself and the Reichstag. As early as 1883, Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria remarked that Wilhelm “never speaks of the parliament except as ‘that pig sty’ or of the opposition deputies other than those ‘dogs who must be handled with a whip.’”
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The emperor’s general sentiments about Germany’s parliament were evidenced by the fact that he dissolved the Reichstag four times, in 1878, 1887, 1893, and 1906.