Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (73 page)

Wilhelm opted to leave the country as quickly as possible, since his safety could no longer be guaranteed. The one concession he forced his ministers to agree to was that he would not sign the abdication until he was safely outside of Germany. One of the last letters he ever wrote on German soil was to Dona back in Potsdam.

If I am not allowed to stay in the midst of the remaining faithful [officers], then I must go with you to a neutral State, Holland or elsewhere, where merciful heaven may permit us to eat our bread—in exile. God’s hand lies heavily upon us! His Will be done! So, on Hindenburg’s advice, I am leaving the army, after fearful mental struggles. As God wills,
auf Wiedersehen
. My lasting gratitude for your faithful love—

Your deeply mortified husband.
¹⁰⁹⁰

In England, the queen was relieved to hear that Wilhelm was no longer in power. “Heard that William had abdicated & his son renounced his right to the Throne,” she wrote in her diary on November 9. “What a downfall, what retribution to the man who started this awful war.”
¹⁰⁹¹
King George described Wilhelm’s abdication with added poignancy in his own journal.

We got the news that the German Emperor had abdicated, also the Crown Prince. “How are the mighty fallen.” He has been Emperor just over 30 years, he did great things for his country, but his ambition was so great that he wished to dominate the world and created his military machine for that object. No one man can dominate the world, it has been tried before, and now he has utterly ruined his Country and himself and I look upon him as the greatest criminal known for having plunged the world into this ghastly war with all it’s [
sic
] misery.
¹⁰⁹²

The day after George wrote this, Wilhelm implemented his decision and went into exile. Since it was imperative that he leave immediately, and since most of his family was back in Potsdam, he had no choice but to go without them. “My wife stays, and they want me to leave,” Wilhelm exclaimed to his aides. “It would look like fear.”
¹⁰⁹³
The emperor received assurances that because his wife was still widely respected, she would be protected from harm. At 4:30 a.m., Wilhelm and his entourage boarded his personal train. Their destination upon leaving Spa was the Netherlands, where Wilhelm’s cousin Queen Wilhelmina had invited him into exile. But once reports reached Spa that several of the rail crossings were now controlled by revolutionaries, the emperor was transferred to a black car, with the imperial insignia scratched off to avoid drawing attention. The atmosphere as Wilhelm departed Spa in the foggy dampness was highly charged, but the send-off was very formal without any fanfare; the German press printed only a short byline about his departure.

Once he reached the border, Wilhelm boarded a train again, bound for a nearby Dutch village. He saluted each of his generals, thanking them for their service. When he boarded the train, a message from Dona was there waiting for him. She reported “that she was in good spirits”—most likely a lie—and that her thoughts were with him. He spent most of the journey alone in his private coach, pacing up and down across the floor. Periodically, he stopped to stare at a photograph hanging on the wall that depicted him having tea with Queen Victoria at Osborne House. In England, King George V wrote in his diary, “William arrived in Holland yesterday. Today has indeed been a wonderful day, the greatest in the history of this Country.”
¹⁰⁹⁴
Crown Prince Willy arrived in the Netherlands two days later. It was equally imperative that he get out of Germany as quickly as possible, since his behavior over the years had made him universally hated by his people. Instead of joining his father, with whom he had always had a difficult relationship, Willy found a home on Wieringen Island in North Holland. Empress Zita was hardly surprised by the outcome and later remarked, “The emperor Charles was not surprised … including the choice of Holland, though, to put it mildly, it wasn’t considered exactly an inspiring example. But as we always knew that he was under the thumbs of his generals, this, after all, seemed the natural end. They had just packed him off.”
¹⁰⁹⁵

With the German emperor’s abdication and exile in November 1918, the Allies accepted the unconditional surrender of the Central powers. The end of the war saw the fall of the eagles, as Europe’s imperial powers were known. Tsarist Russia fell to the Bolsheviks in 1917, followed a year later by imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary. Of Europe’s imperial monarchs, only King George V and Queen Mary remained on the throne. Nicholas and Alexandra were dead, Wilhelm went into exile while Dona lingered on in Potsdam, and Zita and Charles had driven off into the night, leaving Vienna forever.

When it came to Great Britain, however, November 1918 was a time unparalleled in the nation’s history. Despite their casualties between 1914 and 1918—which included 750,000 killed from Great Britain alone, as well as another 200,000 from across the empire—one historian noted that the country “had triumphed through the long years of attrition, and her monarchy, alone of the major monarchies which ruled Europe before the war, had emerged not only intact but thriving.”
¹⁰⁹⁶
November 11, 1918, was declared Armistice Day. The king, the queen, and the Prince of Wales appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. The scene that unfolded was awe inspiring. A crowd numbering more than one hundred thousand had gathered in the great round courtyard beyond the palace gates, cheering on the royal family and holding up their portraits. In the center, rising above everyone, was the Queen Victoria monument that had been dedicated by George and Wilhelm seven years earlier. Accompanying the king and queen that day was David Lloyd George, Britain’s long-suffering, redoubtable prime minister, who shrunk into the balcony’s doorway so as not to pull attention away from the royal family. Queen Mary wrote simply in her diary of that day, “dull first, rain in the afternoon.” But even she could not help but describe the joy at seeing the end of “this ghastly war,” and considered Armistice Day “the greatest day in the world’s history.”
¹⁰⁹⁷
In a speech at the Palace of Westminster, the king declared, “May goodwill and concord at home strengthen our influence for concord abroad. May the morning star of peace, which is now rising over a war-worn world, be here and everywhere the herald of a better day, in which the storms of strife shall have died down and the rays of an enduring peace be shed upon all nations.”
¹⁰⁹⁸

The news of the armistice may have brought a feeling of relief that was “indescribably intense,” but it was bittersweet for George and Mary. Their German relatives, many of whom they had been close with before the war, were now suffering in defeat. Mary’s cousin the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz—Aunt Augusta’s grandson—committed suicide by shooting himself in February. “Uncle Willie,” the king of Württemberg, abdicated on November 30. So too did George’s cousin the Duke of Coburg. This tiny, central German dukedom had been the ancestral home for the entire British royal family. The young duke’s life “was a tragic example of the royal family’s divided loyalties during the war. As an Eton schoolboy of fifteen, having inherited his father’s title upon his early death, Queen Victoria had insisted the boy, who had never been out of Britain, be sent to Germany to prepare for his reign in his duchy. Now, he was
persona non grata
in both countries.”
¹⁰⁹⁹

Exuberant crowds in London danced around bonfires until the small hours of the morning. In the week that followed, the king and queen rode throughout the city in an open carriage five times. A photograph taken of Mary en route to an armistice celebration with her husband and Queen Alexandra shows her beaming with a wide, toothy smile that radiated warmth and exuberance. Everywhere the royal couple went, they were met with crowds exploding with enthusiastic patriotism for king and country. The
Times
reported “the wonderful popularity with Londoners—as we are convinced, with the whole country—of THEIR MAJESTIES the KING and QUEEN … this signal outburst of loyal feeling is born of the conviction that the CROWN, well-worn, is the symbol and safeguard of unity, not only here in England, but in the free dominions overseas, and in India.”
¹¹⁰⁰
Mary wrote to her son Harry, “It has been very wonderful and gratifying that after all these 4 years of ghastly warfare the people did crowd here to
us
the moment they knew the war was practically over.”
¹¹⁰¹
It is uncertain whether even Queen Victoria was as popular as George and Mary were at the end of the First World War.

In the days following the signing of the armistice, a subdued, gravely ill Dona was alone at the Neues Palais, save for a few faithful retainers. She was joined by some family members a few days later, including several of her sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren. The day that Emperor Wilhelm fled Germany, the empress sent a letter to her daughter, Sissy, who had taken refuge with her in-laws at their private estate at Gmunden in Austria.

I’m still here in our old home, but for how long? With me I have some of my boys, some daughters-in-law and grandchildren and their love does me good. I worry so much about beloved Papa! He is so alone in his misfortune and I am not with him to help him bear it, he who has always wanted and done his best for the Fatherland. May God grant that I should be reunited with him once more.… God grant that we shall see each other again.
¹¹⁰²

The
New York Times
reported that “Wilhelm II’s wife, Auguste Viktoria, and the former Crown Princess Cecilie and her children have remained at the New Palace in Potsdam under the protection of the local soldiers and workers’ council. Auguste Viktoria has expressed her thanks to the council for her family’s protection.”
¹¹⁰³

The end of the war brought speculation over Dona’s fate. Those loyal to the monarchy suggested she remain in Germany. Since there were no immediate threats against her life, and since most of the German people still held her in high regard, many hoped that, by remaining in the country, she could serve as a rallying point for monarchists. The most ardent royal supporters even hoped that her presence would pave the way for an eventual restoration of the monarchy. But when asked about what course of action she would take, the empress was unequivocal: she would join her husband in exile. The newly formed Council of People’s Commissars granted her permission to travel safely to the Netherlands now that her husband had promised to abdicate. For Dona, “there was never any choice in this matter. For one thing, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands wished her to join William to give his stay in Holland a more private character.” On a deeper, more personal level, “she could not have born [
sic
] the thought of being separated from William at a time when he needed her more than ever.”
¹¹⁰⁴
As soon as the decision was made to go into exile, Dona frantically began packing as many belongings as she could take with her. The idea of common thieves appropriating her personal treasures almost overwhelmed her, prompting her to pack everything from clothes and jewels to cutlery and knickknacks. Her daughters-in-law offered the stoical empress support, but she demurred, choosing instead to be left alone. Even the presence of her eldest grandchild, Prince Wilhelm, failed to cheer her up.