The Sleepwalkers (80 page)

In their replies to the individual points, the drafters offered a subtle cocktail of acceptances, conditional acceptances, evasions and rejections. They agreed officially to condemn all propaganda aimed at the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the annexation of its territories (though they used a modal form of the verb that avoided the implication that there had ever actually been any such propaganda). On the question of the suppression of irredentist organizations, the reply stated that the Serbian government possessed ‘no proof that the Narodna Odbrana or other similar societies' had as yet committed ‘any criminal act' – nevertheless, they agreed to dissolve the Narodna Odbrana and any other society ‘that may be directing its efforts against Austria-Hungary'. Point 3 stated that the government would happily remove from Serbian public education any anti-Austrian propaganda, ‘whenever the Imperial and Royal Government furnish them with facts and proofs of this propaganda'. Point 4 agreed to the removal from the military of suspect persons, but again, only once the Austro-Hungarian authorities had communicated to them ‘the names and acts of these officers and functionaries'. On the question of the creation of mixed Austro-Serbian commissions of enquiry (point 5) the reply stated that the Serbian government ‘did not clearly grasp the meaning or scope of the demand', but that they undertook to accept such collaboration, inasmuch as it could be shown to agree with ‘the principle of international law, with criminal procedure and with good neighbourly relations'. Point 6 (on the participation of Austrian officials in the prosecution of implicated persons) was rejected outright on the grounds that this would be contrary to the Serbian constitution – this was the issue touching on Serbia's sovereignty, on which Sazonov had urged Belgrade to stand firm. As for point 7, calling for the arrest of Tankosić and Ciganović, the Serbian government stated that it had already arrested Tankosić ‘on the very evening of the delivery of the note'; it had ‘not yet been possible to arrest Ciganović'. Again, the Austrian government were asked to provide the ‘presumptive evidence of guilt, as well as the proofs of guilt, if there are any [. . .] for the purposes of the later enquiry'. This was a somewhat devious response: as soon as the name of Ciganović had cropped up in connection with the Sarajevo enquiry, the prefecture of police in Belgrade had hustled him out of the capital on a special commission, all the while officially denying that any person by the name of Milan Ciganović existed in the city.
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The reply accepted without condition points 8 and 10 regarding the prosecution of frontier officials found guilty of illegal activity and the duty to report to the Austro-Hungarian government on the measures undertaken. But point 9, under which the Austrians had demanded an explanation of hostile public comments by Serbian officials during the days following the assassinations, elicited a more equivocal response: the Serbian government would ‘gladly give' such explanations, once the Austrian government had ‘communicated to them the passages in question in these remarks and as soon as they have shown that the remarks were actually made by said officials'.
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It is hard to dissent from Musulin's breathless admiration for this finely wrought text. The claim often made in general narratives that this reply represented an almost complete capitulation to the Austrian demands is profoundly misleading. This was a document fashioned for Serbia's friends, not for its enemy. It offered the Austrians amazingly little.
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Above all, it placed the onus on Vienna to drive ahead the process of opening up the investigation into the Serbian background of the conspiracy, without, on the other hand, conceding the kind of collaboration that would have enabled an effective pursuit of the relevant leads. In this sense it represented a continuation of the policy the Serbian authorities had followed since 28 June: flatly to deny any form of involvement and to abstain from any initiative that might be taken to indicate the acknowledgement of such involvement. Many of the replies on specific points opened up the prospect of long, querulous and in all likelihood ultimately pointless negotiations with the Austrians over what exactly constituted ‘facts and proofs' of irredentist propaganda or conspiratorial activity by officers and officials. The appeal to ‘international law', though effective as propaganda, was pure obfuscation, since there existed no international jurisprudence for cases of this kind and no international organs with the authority to resolve them in a legal and binding way. Yet the text was perfectly pitched to convey the tone of voice of reasonable statesmen in a condition of sincere puzzlement, struggling to make sense of outrageous and unacceptable demands. This was the measured voice of the political, constitutional Serbia disavowing any ties with its expansionist pan-Serbian twin in a manner deeply rooted in the history of Serbian external relations. It naturally sufficed to persuade Serbia's friends that in the face of such a full capitulation, Vienna had no possible ground for taking action.

In reality, then, this was a highly perfumed rejection on most points. And one can reasonably ask whether any other course was open to Pašić, now that, by refusing to take the initiative in shutting down the irredentist networks, he had allowed the crisis to reach this point. Various reasons have already been considered for the prime minister's peculiar passivity after 28 June – his continuing vulnerability after the recent struggles with the military party and the Black Hand network, the deeply ingrained habits of reticence and secretiveness that he had acquired over thirty years at the dangerous summit of Serbian politics, and the fundamental ideological sympathy of Pašić and his colleagues for the irredentist cause. To these one could add a further consideration. Pašić must have had good reason to fear any thoroughgoing investigation of the crime, because this might well have unearthed linkages leading into the heart of the Serbian political elite. Any light shed on the machinations of Apis would have damaged Belgrade's cause, to put it mildly. But far more worrying was the possibility that the pursuit and investigation of the double agent Ciganović, whom the Austrians had identified as a suspect, might have revealed the foreknowledge of Pašić and his fellow ministers, foreknowledge that Pašić had vehemently denied in his interview with
Az Est
(The Evening) on 7 July. In a sense, perhaps, the Austrians really were demanding the impossible, namely that the official Serbia of the political map shut down the expansionist ethnic Serbia of irredentism. The problem was that the two were interdependent and inseparable, they were two sides of the same entity. In the ministry of war in Belgrade, an official location if there ever was one, there hung, in front of the main reception hall, the image of a Serbian landscape, before which stood an armed allegorical female figure on whose shield were listed the ‘provinces still to be liberated': Bosnia, Herzegovina, Voivodina, Dalmatia, and so on.
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Even before he took delivery of the reply, Giesl knew that the acceptance would not be unconditional. An order for Serbian general mobilization had been in effect since three o'clock that afternoon, the city garrison had departed with great noise and haste to occupy the heights around the city, the National Bank and the state archives were evacuating Belgrade, making for the interior of the country, and the diplomatic corps was already preparing to follow the government to its interim location at Kragujevac, en route to Niš.
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There was also a confidential warning from one of the ministers involved in drafting the reply.
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Five minutes before the deadline, at 5.55 p.m. on Saturday 25 July, Pašić appeared at the Austrian legation and handed over the note, saying in broken German (he did not speak French): ‘Part of your demands we have accepted [. . .] for the rest we place our hopes on your loyalty and chivalry as an Austrian general,' and left. Giesl cast a supercilious eye over the text, saw it was wanting, and signed a pre-prepared letter informing the prime minister that he would be leaving Belgrade that evening with his staff. The protection of Austro-Hungarian citizens and property was formally entrusted to the German legation, the codes were taken from the strongroom and burned, and the luggage – already packed – was carried out to the cars waiting at the door. By 6.30 p.m., Giesl, his wife and the legation staff were on the train out of Belgrade. They crossed the Austrian border ten minutes later.

Did this mean war? In a curious telegram of 24 July to Mensdorff in London, Berchtold instructed the ambassador to inform Edward Grey that the Austrian note was not a formal ultimatum, but a ‘time-limited démarche' whose expiry without a satisfactory result would bring about the cessation of diplomatic relations and the commencement of necessary military preparations. Yet war was still not inevitable: if Serbia subsequently decided to back down, ‘under the pressure of our military preparations', Berchtold continued, she would be asked to pay an indemnity in respect of Austria's costs.
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On the following day, as Berchtold was travelling westwards to Bad Ischl to meet with Emperor Franz Joseph, a telegram from First Section Chief Count Macchio in Vienna reached him at Lambach. Macchio reported that the Russian chargé d'affaires in Vienna, Kudashchev, had made an official request for an extension of the deadline. In his reply, Berchtold stated that an extension was impossible, but he added that even after expiry of the deadline, Serbia could still avoid war by complying with Austria's demands.
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Perhaps these words reflected, as Albertini believed, a momentary failure of nerve;
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perhaps, on the other hand, they were merely a play for time – we have seen how anxious the Austrians were not to get behindhand with their military preparations, once these became necessary.

In retrospect, it is clear that there was no mileage in these last-minute manoeuvres. On 26 and 27 July, exultant dispatches arrived from Spalajković, bringing news that the Russians were mobilizing an army of 1,700,000 men and planned ‘immediately to commence an energetic offensive against Austria-Hungary as soon as it attacks Serbia'. The Tsar was convinced, Spalajković reported on 26 July, that the Serbs would ‘fight like lions' and might even destroy the Austrians single-handedly from their redoubt in the interior of the country. The stance of Germany was as yet unclear, but even if the Germans did not enter the fray, the Tsar believed there was a good chance of bringing about ‘a partition of Austria-Hungary'; failing that, the Russians would ‘execute the French military plans so that victory against Germany is also certain'.
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So excited was Spalajković, the former political chief of the Serbian minstry of foreign affairs, that he turned to proposing policy: ‘In my opinion, this presents to us a splendid opportunity to use this event wisely and achieve the full unification of the Serbs. It is desirable, therefore, that Austria-Hungary should attack us. In that case, onwards in the name of God!' These effusions from St Petersburg contributed to a further hardening of the mood. Last-minute concessions to Austrian demands were now inconceivable. Pašić had long believed that the union of the Serbs would not be achieved in peacetime, that it would be forged only in the heat of a great war and with the help of a great power. This was not and had never been a plan as such – it was an imagined future whose hour now seemed imminent. Nearly two weeks would pass before any serious fighting took place, but the road to war was already in sight. For Serbia, there would be no looking back.

On the morning of 28 July 1914, Emperor Franz Joseph signed his declaration of war on Serbia with an ostrich-feather quill at the desk in his study in the imperial villa at Bad Ischl. In front of him was a bust in brilliant white marble of his dead wife. At his right elbow was a state-of-the-art electric cigar lighter, an unwieldy bronze structure on a plinth of dark wood, whose plaited cord led to a wall-socket behind the desk. The text followed the manifesto format the Austrians had used for declaring war on Prussia in 1866:

To my peoples! It was my fervent wish to consecrate the years which, by the grace of God, still remain to me, to the works of peace and to protect my peoples from the heavy sacrifices and burdens of war. Providence, in its wisdom, has otherwise decreed. The intrigues of a malevolent opponent compel me, in the defence of the honour of my Monarchy, for the protection of its dignity and its position as a power, for the security of its possessions, to grasp the sword after long years of peace.
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By this time, Belgrade was already a depopulated city. All men of serving age had been called up and many families had left to take refuge with relatives in the interior of the country. Most of the foreign nationals had gone. At two o'clock in the afternoon of 28 July, the rumour of imminent war spread like a bush fire through the city. Extra editions of all newspapers sold as soon as the vendors could carry them on to the street.
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Before the day was out, two Serbian Danube steamers carrying ammunition and mines had been seized by Austrian pioneers and watchmen. Shortly after one o'clock on the following morning, Serbian troops blew up the bridge over the river Save between Semlin and Belgrade. Austrian gunboats opened fire and after a brief engagement the Serbian troops withdrew.

The news that war had finally been declared filled Sigmund Freud, now fifty-eight years of age, with elation: ‘For the first time in thirty years, I feel myself to be an Austrian, and feel like giving this not very hopeful empire another chance. All my libido is dedicated to Austria-Hungary.'
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After four hectic days of receptions, military reviews, speeches, dinners and toasts, Maurice Paléologue needed some rest. Having seen Poincaré off on the
France
on the evening of 23 July, he told his servant to let him sleep in on the following morning. But it was not to be: at seven o'clock came an urgent telephone call announcing the Austrian ultimatum. As the ambassador lay in bed still half-asleep, the news entered his mind like a waking dream: