Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (89 page)

By dawn on coronation day, some fifty thousand people had flooded Pall Mall. Another two million people poured into London that day. Those invited to be in the congregation at Westminster Abbey had to be in the church around 7:00 a.m. The guest list included George VI’s aunt and uncle Queen Maud and King Haakon VII of Norway; his second cousins the kings Christian X of Denmark and George II of Greece; King Yeta III of Barotseland (part of present-day Zambia); the prince-regent of Yugoslavia; Prince Chichibu of Japan; and Crown Princess Juliana of the Netherlands and her husband, Prince Bernhard. Departing from Buckingham Palace, Maud and Mary led the procession to Westminster Abbey in a glass coach escorted by a troop of mounted Horse Guards. As they proceeded down Piccadilly, thousands of voices cheered, “Queen Mary! Queen Mary!”
¹³⁷³

Upon arriving at Westminster, the various royals processed down the abbey. After the Kents and Gloucesters took their seats, Queen Mary entered with Queen Maud at her side. “As Queen Mary’s noble figure appeared against the sombre woodwork of the choir-entry the impression was such as to give me a catch in the throat of my memory,” wrote one observer. “She was ablaze with large diamonds the size of beans, and she wore around her silvered head the circlet of her former crown with the 4 arches removed. But it was not alone the glory of her personal appointments, but the majesty and grace of her bearing that made everyone hold their breath.”
¹³⁷⁴
The two elderly queens were seated together in a special pew with the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. “Maud and I processed up the Abbey to the Royal Box,” Queen Mary recalled. “I sat between Maud and Lilibet, and Margaret came next. They looked too sweet in their lace dresses and robes, especially when they put on their coronets. Bertie and E. looked so well when they came in and did it all too beautifully. The service was wonderful and impressive—we were all much moved.”
¹³⁷⁵
During the service, little Margaret fidgeted incessantly. Mary eventually settled the princess by giving her a pair of opera glasses to look through. Later, along with the queen of Norway and the rest of the royal family, Mary posed with the newly crowned monarchs for the formal portrait. Queen Mary looked majestic in her famous diamond-and-pearl crown, red royal sash, and flowing ermine-lined robe. Queen Maud later admitted of her nephew, “Thank goodness dear Bertie and Elizabeth are so devoted to each other, and great help to each other, and they are
so
popular, and so are the darling little children.”
¹³⁷⁶

Just before midnight on coronation day, Queen Mary wrote to the newly-crowned king and queen: “I cannot let this day pass without once again telling you both how beautifully & reverently you carried out this most beautiful impressive service, I felt
so
proud of you both, & I felt beloved Papa’s spirit was near us in blessing you on this wonderful day. I could not help feeling what that poor foolish David has relinquished for nothing!!! but it is better so & better for our beloved Country.”
¹³⁷⁷

The outpouring of affection for the monarchy at this time touched the royal family deeply. Queen Mary received thousands of letters from the people offering her their prayers and support after everything she had endured in the last year. Moved by “the kind letters” she had received, Mary asked the king’s permission to issue a message of thanks to the British people. He immediately gave his consent, saying, “It will be such a great help to me.” Cosmo Lang, the archbishop of Canterbury since 1928, composed the message on Queen Mary’s behalf. Direct and uncontroversial, the message tried to give some credit to Mary’s eldest son, while begging for support for George VI. She “declared that her heart had been filled with distress when her dear son laid down his charge.” She concluded by saying, “I commend to you his brother, summoned so unexpectedly and in circumstances so painful to take his place … With him I commend my dear daughter-in-law who will be his Queen. May she receive the same unfailing affection and trust you have given to me for six and twenty years.”
¹³⁷⁸

Any tranquility that was hoped for after the abdication crisis was marred by talk of war in Europe again. After less than eighteen months on the throne, King George VI was confronted with the greatest trial of his life. On March 12, 1938, the Nazis invaded Austria in a forced union they called the
Anschluss
. At Hams Castle in Steenokkerzeel, Zita and her family were deeply distressed by the annexation of their beloved homeland through Hitler’s fait accompli. The next day, the empress spent hours in the private chapel of her castle praying “for a miracle to save Austria for the Hapsburgs.” Acting on his authority as head of the family, Otto “was reported bound to consult friendly statesmen of France and Britain on Reichsfuhrer Hitler’s Austrian coup.”
¹³⁷⁹
The union between Germany and Austria was a cause for alarm in Europe, but few governments were willing to take a stand against Adolf Hitler. It was a mistake the world was about to regret.

Before the unthinkable happened, Queen Mary’s life was marred by further heartache. Her favorite sister-in-law and childhood friend Queen Maud died on November 20, 1938. The queen of Norway had come to England for a visit. While she was there, she checked herself into hospital after she began feeling unwell. An x-ray revealed Maud was suffering from an abdominal obstruction, prompting doctors to operate. The night before her surgery, Mary sat with Maud, keeping her company. Things seemed to be going well after the surgery until Maud suffered a sudden heart attack during the night and died. Her death came as a deep loss to Mary. The pair had grown up together, became close friends, and eventually sisters-in-law. Queen Mary confided that she “felt stunned at the tragic news.”
¹³⁸⁰
In a last act of friendship to the queen of Norway, Mary asked that her body be allowed to lie in state in the chapel of Marlborough House. It was a fitting choice, since Maud had been christened in the very same chapel sixty-eight years earlier. King George V and Queen Maud’s uncle the Duke of Connaught sent Queen Mary a heartfelt note the day Maud’s body arrived at Marlborough House: “My thoughts are with you today when dear Maud will be brought back to her old home to rest in the Chapel in which she was christened previous to her crossing the seas to the land of her adoption [Norway].”
¹³⁸¹
After three days at Marlborough House, Queen Maud’s body was taken aboard the RMS
Royal Oak
bound for Norway. Assembled at the train station to bid an emotional last farewell to independent Norway’s first queen was Mary and the rest of the British royal family, including Queen Victoria’s three surviving children—the Duchess of Argyll, the Duke of Connaught, and Princess Beatrice.

Any lingering hopes of a Habsburg restoration in Austria came to an abrupt end after the
Anschluss
with Germany in March 1938. Hitler was so worried about a Habsburg restoration that he gave the
Anschluss
the cryptonym “Operation: Otto” in the hopes of preventing the archduke from being placed on the Austrian throne. Zita and Otto, who were by now visibly anti-Nazi, could never consider a restoration under Hitler’s banner. “The great European powers,” Zita once wrote, “must be made well aware that, if they are against an Anschluss, then they must support the restoration.”
¹³⁸²
These seemed like such hollow words once Germany invaded.

Once the Nazis were firmly in control of Austria, Zita and her family took a very public stand against Hitler and his agenda. On the day of the
Anschluss
, Otto—with Zita’s endorsement—released a declaration from Steenokkerzeel condemning the invasion. In his statement, Otto announced that he spoke as “their heir to a dynasty which, for 650 years, has presided over the greatness and prosperity of Austria and is now the spokesman of the ardent patriotic feelings of millions of Austrians.” He called on all people worldwide to condemn the “violent annexation” of Austria and to “support the Austrian people in their unquenchable will for liberty and independence.”
¹³⁸³
It did not take long for Otto’s declaration to receive a response from the Nazis. On April 19, the Ministry of Justice in Vienna issued a warrant “for the arrest of Otto Habsburg for the crime of high treason.” German authorities claimed that the order for Otto’s arrest “marked the well-deserved end of a charlatan who, for years, has used the great wealth of his house to foment unrest.” Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy at the time, gave orders that Otto was to be executed if caught. Nazi reprisals against the Habsburgs were not limited to Otto. Though they did not seek to detain Zita, they were determined to curtail her influence in Europe. It was their hope that Otto’s arrest would draw “a final line under the Legitimist adventures of Zita of Habsburg-Parma-Bourbon.”
¹³⁸⁴
For the moment, Otto and Zita were beyond Nazi reach in Belgium, but not every Habsburg was so lucky. The Gestapo rounded up and imprisoned a number of archdukes, including Franz Ferdinand’s two sons, Max and Ernest.

In September 1939, the situation in Europe collapsed completely when Germany invaded Poland. Great Britain, as a leading member of the Allies and a guarantor of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, could not remain idle. With the consent of his empire and the Commonwealth, King George VI declared war on Nazi Germany, igniting the Second World War. On the morning of Sunday, September 3 Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (who replaced Stanley Baldwin in 1937) announced to all of Great Britain that they were once again at war. Queen Mary, who was at Sandringham at the time, was at church that morning when the broadcast was made. The rector set up his wireless in the church’s nave so the parishioners could all listen. That evening, Queen Mary—with tears in her eyes—sat next to the radio and listened as her son made his now-famous radio address to the nation and the Commonwealth. She remarked that the king’s voice reminded her of her husband’s.
¹³⁸⁵

Over the next six months, events moved forward at a staggering pace. By April 1940, Germany had conquered Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Of all the Scandinavian countries, Norway held out the longest, launching a resistance movement against the Nazis that lasted nearly two months. In the end, defeat was inevitable, prompting Queen Mary’s brother-in-law King Haakon VII to flee to London. Hitler soon set his sights on Western Europe.

On May 9, 1940, Empress Zita’s family gathered together to celebrate her forty-eighth birthday at Hams Castle. That night, German troops swooped down on Belgium as a prelude to an all-out invasion of France. Armed paratroopers landed only a mile away from Steenokkerzeel. There was now no choice. Zita and her family had to immediately flee Hams, their home of ten years, before Nazi troops could arrest Otto and his relatives. Only a few hours after they evacuated, German dive-bombers fired on the old castle, collapsing part of the roof.

Using the pseudonym Duchess de Bar to conceal her identity, Zita, her children, and their entourage fled to a villa in southwest France called Lamonzie-Montastrue. Owned by the empress’s sister-in-law Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg and guarded by French Moroccan soldiers, the family found refuge here after more than a month of traveling under forged French passports and dodging German invasion forces. The Habsburgs used Lamonzie as a staging point for the rest of their escape. It was clear that Nazi troops were pressing farther west, leaving Zita with only Spain and Portugal as possible destinations for refuge. With the assistance of French troops, the family made it to the Spanish border, where one of the patrol guards recognized Zita and her group. The officer had been a fisherman in Lequeitio and vividly remembered the kind, generous woman whom the town had affectionately named “Our Empress of Lequeitio.” With the officer’s help, the group made it safely into Spain, just beyond Hitler’s reach.