Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (63 page)

The appeals Charles made for peace through the usual diplomatic channels had failed. The only alternative he and Zita could think of to find a peaceful solution was to use the empress’s brother in the Belgian army—Prince Sixtus—to open the lines of communication with France. With his intellectual prowess, erudition, and reputation as a Renaissance man, Sixtus was the natural choice to act as a conduit between Vienna and Paris if there was to be any hope for peace. Raymond Poincaré, the French president, expressed interest in an article Sixtus had published in a French magazine that called for peace via Charles and Zita. The ensuing episode, which would ultimately help to topple Charles from the throne, would come to be known infamously as the Sixtus Affair.

In early 1917, Charles ordered his military attaché in Switzerland to look into making contact with Sixtus “in order to sound out the readiness for peace on the other side.”
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The emperor and empress of Austria’s peace initiatives were motivated not only by a desire to preserve their empire from any further losses but also to ally Austria with France and Britain against Germany. A British intelligence report from June 1917 cited that the “Emperor and Empress are entirely pro-French and pro-English. They are strongly anti-German and hate (a) the Kaiser (b) Prince Rupprecht [of Bavaria] both on political and private grounds. The Kaiser insulted the present Empress when she was young: Prince Rupprecht is a course [
sic
] dissolute Prussianised atheist who bullies the Emperor and Empress for their religious and moral principles.”
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A memorandum written by Philippe Pétain, the French general in chief, to Paul Painlevé, the minister of war, shows that—at least at first—the French were willing to talk peace. The memo, dated August 4, 1917, highlights the desire on France’s part to limit German power in the postwar era.

The only enemy of France, the one danger in Europe is Prussia. The amendments to the constitutions of the other [German] governments are secondary factors as long as Prussia is not entirely and definitely vanquished and reduced to impotence. The Entente must therefore create an irremediably hostile power next to Prussia. It [the Entente] can achieve this through the Habsburgs by forming, with a bond of the personal union, a federation with a majority of Slavic states …
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Once it became apparent that the French were on board and using the Duchess of Parma as a go-between, the empress convinced her brother to come to Laxenburg, a palace outside Vienna, for a secret meeting; Charles was uninvolved in the initial contact to give himself plausible deniability if needed. When Sixtus arrived on behalf of President Poincaré, he set the tone for the meeting by asking Charles Salomon, Poincaré’s political adviser, to join him. At the meeting, Sixtus pulled out a folded piece of paper from his pocket. It listed four points from the French government that were nonnegotiable for the peace talks to go forward. In no uncertain terms, if Austria wanted peace, France demanded the return of Alsace and Lorraine from Germany, which had been seized in the Franco-Prussian War; the restoration of Belgium’s independence; the guaranteed independence of Serbia; and the handover of Constantinople to Russia. Years later, Prince Sixtus wrote in his memoirs his impression of the initial peace negotiations.

The young Emperor was innocent of his predecessor’s faults and had come to the throne with only one desire, which was to put an end to the universal slaughter. He wished to play an untrammeled [
sic
] game, face to face with his associates and face to face with his enemies, in order to provoke a possibility and a necessity for peace. The Emperor Charles would have gone on further, for his duty clearly showed him that he could not uselessly sacrifice his people to the obstinacy of an ally [Germany] whose pride was causing his coming destruction.… a separate peace with Austria would have realised the principle object of the war. It would have brought about invincibly the submission of Bulgaria and Turkey. The facts of 1918 have proved how easy it would have been after 1917 to come to an understanding with these two powers. The war would have been concentrated on the French front and brought about the results obtained eighteen months later. The lives of thousands, nay millions of men would have been saved.
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Upon leaving that first meeting, Sixtus obtained a guarantee from Count Ottokar Czernin, the Austrian foreign minister, that he was fully committed to the peace process. Ambitious, underhanded, tall, and with a gaunt face and deeply recessed eyes, Czernin was a vocal Germanophile who was committed to Austria-Hungary’s military alliance with the Hohenzollern Empire. There were even rumors that he was a German spy. All of these things made Sixtus very skeptical of his assurances, but he trusted Zita and Charles implicitly. It was enough for the peace process to go to stage two: examining the feasibility of France’s terms. Empress Zita recalled her husband’s reaction to the demands.

The return of Alsace-Lorraine was of course a French interest. But it was also one of the Emperor Charles’s, who was the head of the House of Lorraine. This family link of his with Lorraine was one reason why President Poincaré, who came from that province himself, had so much personal sympathy with the Emperor.

The four points that [were taken] back to Switzerland were personally drafted by the Emperor. It was still too early in his reign for him to have formed any close circle of advisers around him. As for the South Slav kingdom idea, I remember that he had pondered on this—and discussed it with several advisers and friends including my brothers—while he was heir-apparent and even earlier, before the war.… It was envisaged by the Emperor as part of his overall federalist solution.
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Once Sixtus returned to France, a flurry of letters flew back and forth between him and Zita, to whom Charles had asked to speak on his behalf. It spoke volumes to the deep love the emperor and empress had for one another that Charles was able to trust his wife implicitly to speak for him. It was also hoped that should these negotiations ever be made public, it would appear as a woman asking her brother for help, not the emperor of Austria suing for peace.

After taking time to consider his options, and advised by his loving wife, Emperor Charles wrote Sixtus a long and thoughtful letter in response to the four points the prince had brought with him on behalf of the French government.

My dear Sixtus,

The third year of this war that has brought the world so much mourning and sorrow is coming to an end.…

I beg you to let the President of the French Republic, M. Poincaré, know in a secret and unofficial way that I shall support the just claims of France to Alsace-Lorraine in every way and with all my personal influence.

Belgium must be re-established as a sovereign state, retaining all its African possessions.… The sovereignty of Serbia will be re-established and, as a token of our good-will, we are inclined to guarantee her an equitable and natural access to the Adriatic, and far-reaching economic concessions. Austria-Hungary, on the other hand, will demand as an indispensable condition that the Kingdom of Serbia dissociates itself from, and suppresses the tendency for the disintegration of the Monarchy,… that it shall faithfully and by all means in its power stop that kind of agitation in Serbia and outside her frontiers, and that it will make a pledge to that effect under the guarantee of the Entente Powers.

The recent events in Russia oblige me to withhold comment on that subject until the final formation of a legal government.

Hoping that this way we shall soon be able, on both sides, to put an end to the suffering of so many millions of men and of so many families that live in sorrow and anxiety.

I beg you to believe in my kindest and most fraternal regards,

Karl
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In spite of the best efforts made by Zita’s husband, the peace process was mired by one struggle after another. German military command had been sounded out regarding peace but had not been told about the emperor’s meetings with Sixtus. The Germans refused to even consider most of France’s Four Points. Charles found himself making little progress convincing Wilhelm II or even his own foreign minister, Count Czernin, who was acting as an intermediary between the two emperors. The fact that Wilhelm was willing to negotiate was obvious, but so too was the fact that his generals, specifically those in favor of the war, were actually in control.

In an effort to appeal to Wilhelm in person, Charles and Zita arranged to meet with the German emperor during his visit to the military base at Homburg in 1917. Officially, Charles had arranged the visit so Zita could meet Augusta Victoria for the first time. At the peace talks between the two emperors, Charles conspicuously failed to mention Alsace-Lorraine and a unified Slavic state to Wilhelm. He also failed to mention the fact that the go-between was Sixtus, how far along the peace process was, or even how closely the Austrian monarchs were working with the French. Years later, Zita described the meeting between the two emperors.

The purpose of the Homburg meeting was not to break the news to the German Emperor that we had made a move to the other side, for this
we had already told him
. When Emperor William was in Vienna in February 1917 my husband had confided to him that he had taken an opportunity to make contact with the
Entente
to find a possible solution to the war.

The German Emperor immediately asked for the name of the intermediary. My husband replied firmly: “That’s something I cannot tell you, but I can guarantee his discretion.” Emperor William accepted this and said: “All right, go ahead. I agree.”
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Though Wilhelm may have been open to the idea of peace negotiations, the final word came from his generals, who were clearly opposed to the idea. The difference in attitudes between the Austrians and Germans can be seen in a confrontation between Zita and Henning von Holtzendorff, one of Wilhelm’s generals, at a lunch party at Homburg. When the general commented that Zita sounded against the war, she replied that indeed she was, “as every woman is who would rather see joy than suffering.” Angered, Holtzendorff shot back bellicosely, “Suffering? What does that matter? I work best on an empty stomach. It’s a case of tightening your belt and sticking it out.”
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It quickly became obvious to both Charles and Zita that the German military leaders could not be reasoned with.

Although the Homburg visit failed to gain German support for the Sixtus peace initiative, it gave Empress Zita the first and only opportunity she would ever have to meet Dona. Since her husband’s accession, the two women had kept up an amiable correspondence, but they had never met until now. A photograph of the two empresses taken at the time paints a vivid picture. Both look regal in dark dress suits adorned with pearls, wide hats, and parasols, but it is obvious that the women represented different things. Dona, conservative and dignified, symbolized traditionalism and the past, while Zita, with her more stylish ensemble, embodied liberality and the future of monarchy. During one of the receptions at their meeting in Homburg, Zita brought up a subject with Dona that had disgusted her. Zita had been shocked to learn that, twice a year, German bombers were attacking the home of the king and queen of the Belgians on their name days.

“Just imagine if France or England knew of this meeting taking place and bombed the building!” Zita remarked.

Dona was horrified—as Zita had hoped—and replied, “Don’t worry. I am sure the English would not bomb because they would know there are ladies present.” Zita managed to calm the German empress until she made her point.

“But I am told that the Queen of the Belgians
is
being bombed by German pilots,” she said. Zita later recounted to a friend that Dona “was incredulous and, to my delight, called over [General] Hindenburg … who said he had never heard of these attacks, but would go into the matter immediately. And the fact was that, from that time on, the bombings stopped.”
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