Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (75 page)

At the peace conference to rebuild postwar Europe, Britain was expected to play one of the leading roles. Representing Great Britain at the bargaining table was David Lloyd George, its irascible prime minister. The conference was expected to bring together some of the greatest statesmen of the early twentieth century, including Woodrow Wilson of the United States and Georges Clemenceau of France. Germany was forced to take responsibility for the war. Austria-Hungary, though, suffered the worst breakup. It lost all of its territories that did not have a majority of ethnic Germans. The new state of German-Austria (which was renamed the Republic of Austria a few months later) was reduced to less than half of its former size with no access to the Adriatic Sea. Semiautonomous regions were absorbed into neighboring Allied nations, such as Italy and Romania. Despite the meager portions that some of the smaller Allies received, Great Britain emerged victorious as Europe’s only remaining imperial power. In addition to its own overseas territories, the empire received Germany’s colonies in Africa. With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire—the Porte would completely disintegrate in 1922—Britain also became the dominant power in the Middle East. Over the course of the next twenty-five years, British foreign policy in places like Iran and Palestine would fundamentally shape global events well into the twenty-first century.

During the conference, Mary and George played host to an old friend—Queen Marie of Romania, another granddaughter of Queen Victoria and the king’s first cousin. Marie used her stay at Buckingham Palace to launch a whirlwind campaign to gain British support for war-ravaged Romania. Marie remarked about the “tremendous emotion” of arriving in London after so many years away, where she was “greeted at the station by George and May, with a crowd of officials and many, many friends.”
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Her visit to London lasted only a few days before she returned to Paris for the remainder of the conference, which had become mired in petty squabbles among the delegates. The stalled peace process weighed heavily on Queen Mary’s mind. “Alas,” she wrote to an old American friend, “the end of the war seems to have brought great unrest behind it, it seems such a pity that all classes had worked so well during the war, it is not possible now to work for the reconstruction of the world—it would have been a splendid opportunity to have come together.”
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With much of the world’s attention fixed on the high-stakes negotiations taking place in Paris, few noticed that the British Empire was beginning to crumble, despite its territorial acquisitions at the bargaining table. The high mortality rate of conscripted Indian soldiers during the war led to a resurgence of anti-British activity in India, which was only made worse by the brutal, almost dictatorial rule that the British colonial government established in 1918. Complete press censorship, arrests without warrants or trials, and martial law turned British India into a powder keg that exploded in 1919 after the massacre in the city of Amritsar in northwestern India. What began as anti-British demonstrations turned violent when five Englishmen were killed. An English female missionary who just happened to be riding her bike nearby was violently assaulted. The retribution a week later by the British government was brutal. As tens of thousands of people crammed into a public garden known as the Jallianwala Bagh near the Golden Temple, British officers opened fire on the crowds at point-blank range. Terrified people literally trampled one another to death as they desperately fought to reach the exits; some were shot as they tried climbing over the garden wall. After six minutes of horrific bloodshed, 379 people were dead, with another 1,500 wounded. The loss of life and the attacks Britain received from the world were harsh reminders that, although the British monarchy was the strongest in the world, in the postwar years, its empire was being shaken to its very foundations.

The New Year brought little relief to Empress Zita of Austria and her family. In spite of her best efforts, Christmas had been exceptionally gloomy. It was becoming obvious that the hunting lodge at Eckartsau was by no means a permanent home. Its damp climate became inhospitable as the temperature outside plummeted. It was also becoming increasingly difficult to heat the building, forcing the young children to huddle together for warmth.

Any hope that Charles and Zita may have had of permanently settling their family abroad was dashed when Swiss authorities went back on a previous offer of total asylum. Instead, the most they would offer the family were traveling visas. In February 1919, the need to get out of the country became more pressing when the first democratic elections were held in Austria. The result was an overwhelming majority for the Socialists, who were antagonistic toward the members of the Habsburg family. A few weeks later, the government passed the Habsburg Law of 1919, forbidding any Habsburgs from entering Austria without renouncing their imperial titles. The government went a step further and confiscated all the land belonging to the members of the imperial family. Estimates at the time placed the worth of these estates at well into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Years later, Archduke Otto wrote that everything, even “all the data of the family including the family archives have been taken from us by the Republic of Austria so that we have none.”
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Internationally, the emperor and empress continued to come under fire, but unlike the slanders against Nicholas and Alexandra (which had some elements of truth), those being made against the Habsburgs were totally unfounded. One American newspaper ran a story in February 1919 claiming “that former Austrian emperor Karl is contemplating seeking a divorce from his wife, Zita, on the grounds that she assisted Italian victories” during the war.
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Those who knew the emperor and empress refused to acknowledge such slander since divorce completely went against what they both believed about marriage. Their continued devotion to one another through their trials also helped dispel the divorce rumors.

The safety of Zita’s family seemed to be in danger until help arrived on February 15. Strangely enough, that help did not come from the Austrians, the Hungarians, or even the Swiss. Instead, the two people who took up the cause of the Austrian imperial family were none other than King George V and Queen Mary. George had very strong feelings when it came to Charles. According to Empress Zita’s official biographer Gordon Brook-Shepherd,

the King nursed a distinctly uneasy conscience over his reluctance to support a rescue bid for his cousin, Tsar Nicholas, the year before. The butchery of the Russian Emperor and his family at Ekaterinburg by Bolshevik thugs had brought soul-searching as well as shock. There was no blood tie between the houses of Windsor and Habsburg and, moreover, they had fought for four bitter years in opposite camps. But the King had not forgotten that, as Archduke Karl, newly-engaged to his Bourbon Princess, the beleaguered squire of Eckartsau had attended his coronation in London (indeed, for the procession, he had been placed in the carriage immediately in front of those carrying the British royal family). But the events of the summer of 1918 rather than those of the summer of 1911 were uppermost in the King’s mind now. When told that Eckartsau could easily become a second Ekaterinburg, he hastily arranged for emergency military protection.
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Zita’s brother Sixtus had visited Buckingham Palace to seek help for his sister and her family. In a meeting with the king and queen, Sixtus gravely explained the danger of the situation, alluding to the massacre at Ekaterinburg. Queen Mary was deeply troubled by what she heard. Turning to her husband, she said, “What Sixtus has told us is very serious.” The king was equally concerned. “We will immediately do what is necessary,” he said. According to Gordon Brook-Shepherd and Queen Elizabeth II’s personal librarian, Sir Robin Mackworth-Young, the exact details of this meeting were never recorded, but it was enough to spur the British monarchs into action.
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George deployed two British colonels to Eckartsau in an effort to relieve some of the family’s burdens. The officers in question were Colonel Sir Thomas Cunningham, Britain’s military representative to the Allied Mission in Vienna, and Colonel Summerhayes, a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps. They were ordered to “endeavour by every means … to ameliorate the conditions of life of the Emperor and Empress and give them the moral support of the British government.”
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The family at Eckartsau was informed that Summerhayes and Cunningham would be arriving in February 1919 to be of service. Zita described how her husband was “astonished and overwhelmed with gratitude and relief and also [was] deeply touched by this gesture of solidarity from one monarch to another across all the barriers of war.” With Zita’s help, Charles drafted a short thank-you note for the king of England.

Majesty,

I am happy to be able to thank Your Majesty for the delicate attention in sending Colonel Summerhayes. I am very touched by this courteous act and at the same time am very grateful. The Colonel is a charming man who fulfills his mission with great tact and amiability. The situation in the world is very difficult for us sovereigns. May God have pity on humanity’s suffering and soon give them the rest they need!

Your Majesty’s good brother and cousin,

Charles

Eckartsau, 21 February 1919
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After a few weeks, a third officer—Colonel Edward Strutt—arrived on the scene to relieve Cunningham and Summerhayes. A fluent linguist from an aristocratic background with a deep Catholic faith, Strutt developed a strong rapport with Zita and Charles. He recorded his impression of the emperor in his diary. “It was impossible to avoid liking him,” Strutt wrote; “an eminently lovable if weak man, by no means a fool, and ready to face his end as bravely as his ancestress, Marie Antoinette.”
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Strutt was also struck by the empress, whom he described as having “extraordinary strength of character.” Colonel Strutt noted that there was a determination “written in the lines of her square little chin, intelligence in the vivacious brown eyes, intellect in the broad forehead half hidden by masses of dark hair.”
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He was deeply moved by the empress’s strength, believing that if she had the chance, she alone could have carried the Austrian monarchy. It was his opinion that Zita “must always share with the Queens of the Belgians and Rumania the honour of being one of the three great royal women of the war.”
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The colonel made just as strong an impression on the family as they did on him. Otto, Zita’s eldest son, recalled decades later, “I still think with great respect and great gratitude toward him. Recently, an English person asked me whether I was not full of resentment against the British for the way they had treated my father later on in his exile. I replied: ‘But after all, there was Colonel Strutt.’”
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By March, anger in Austria toward the monarchy was at an all-time high. Soldiers belonging to the new government made regular assaults on the grounds surrounding the hunting lodge. One particularly violent incident occurred when a cart loaded with food, clothing, and medicine bound for Eckartsau was intercepted by a group of young officers who proceeded to destroy and then light the cart and its contents on fire. When the badly beaten cart driver arrived at Eckartsau, he was carrying a note from a lieutenant addressed to “Mr. Karl Habsburg.” With the army now clearly against them, it became imperative for Zita and her family to get out of Austria as quickly as possible. On March 15, the British War Office received intelligence suggesting the family was in imminent danger. They sent a note to their mission in Vienna, saying, “Most desirable to get the Emperor out of Austria without delay. All possible steps to be taken to expedite departure.”
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It was now up to Colonel Strutt to get the family safely out of the country, but Charles was implacable. He refused to leave Austria under any circumstances. The colonel realized his best chance was to appeal to the empress. He met with her alone, making a passionate speech saying that, from everything he could see, the country was entirely against them. He would get them out of the country somehow, he said, without Charles having to abdicate. For a moment, Zita fell silent.