The Sleepwalkers (77 page)

Why the prime minister was feeling so poorly is impossible to establish with certainty. His collapse may well, as some historians have suggested, have been precipitated by his anxieties about developments in Paris – a telegram had arrived on Wednesday reporting that Caillaux had threatened to expose various sensitive transcripts in court.
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But it is more likely that Viviani – a deeply pacific man – was alarmed by the steadily intensifying mood of belligerence at the various Franco-Russian gatherings. This is certainly what de Robien thought. It was clear to the French attaché that Viviani was ‘overwrought by all these expressions of the military spirit'. On 22 July, de Robien noted, the talk was of nothing but war – ‘one felt that the atmosphere had changed since the night before'. He laughed when the marines who crewed the
France
told him that they were worried about the prospect of coming under attack on the home crossing, but their nervousness was an ominous sign. The highpoint was Thursday 23 July – Poincaré's last day in Russia – when the heads of state witnessed a military review involving 70,000 men against a backdrop of military music consisting mainly of the
Sambre et Meuse
and the
Marche Lorraine
, which the Russians appeared to consider ‘the personal hymn of Poincaré'. Particularly striking was the fact that the troops were not wearing their elaborate ceremonial uniforms, but the khaki battledress they had worn for training – de Robien interpreted this as yet another symptom of a general eagerness for war.
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Poincaré and Paléologue witnessed one of the most curious expressions of alliance solidarity on the evening of 22 July, when Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, commander of the Imperial Guard, gave a dinner for the guests at Krasnoye Selo, a recreational suburb of St Petersburg with many handsome villas, including the summer residences of the Tsars. The scene was picturesque: three long tables were set in half-open tents around a freshly watered garden bursting with fragrant blooms. When the French ambassador arrived, he was greeted by Grand Duke Nikolai's wife, Anastasia, and her sister Militza, who was married to Nikolai's brother, Pyotr Nikolaevich. The two sisters were daughters of the remarkably energetic and ambitious King Nikola of Montenegro. ‘Do you realise,' they said (both talking at once), ‘that we are passing through historic days!

At the review to-morrow the bands will play nothing but the
Marche Lorraine
and
Sambre et Meuse.
I've had a telegram (in pre-arranged code) from my father to-day. He tells me we shall have war before the end of the month . . . What a hero my father is!. . . He's worthy of the Iliad! Just look at this little box I always take about with me. It's got some Lorraine soil in it, real Lorraine soil I picked up over the frontier when I was in France with my husband two years ago. Look there, at the table of honour: it's covered with thistles. I didn't want to have any other flowers there. They're Lorraine thistles, don't you see! I gathered several plants on the annexed territory, brought them here and had the seeds sown in my garden . . . Militza, go on talking to the ambassador. Tell him all to-day means to us while I go and receive the Tsar . . .
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Militza was not speaking figuratively. A letter of November 1912 from the French military attaché in St Petersburg, General Laguiche, confirms that in the summer of that year, while her husband was attending the French manoeuvres near Nancy, the grand duchess had sent someone over the border into German-controlled Lorraine with instructions to collect a thistle and some soil. She brought the thistle back to Russia, cared for it until it germinated, then planted the seeds in the Lorraine earth, watered it carefully until new thistles grew, then mixed the Lorraine soil with Russian soil to symbolize the Franco-Russian Alliance and passed it to her gardener for propagation with the warning that if the thistles died, he would lose his job. It was from this garden that she harvested the samples she showed to Poincaré in July 1914.
⁴⁴
These extravagant gestures had real political import; Anastasia's husband Grand Duke Nikolai, a pan-Slavist and the first cousin once removed of the Tsar, was among those most active in pressing Nicholas II to intervene militarily on Serbia's behalf, should Austria press Belgrade with ‘unacceptable' demands.

The Montenegrin rhapsody continued during dinner, as Anastasia regaled her neighbours with prophecies: ‘There's going to be a war . . . There'll be nothing left of Austria . . . You're going to get back Alsace and Lorraine . . . Our armies will meet in Berlin . . . Germany will be destroyed . . .'
⁴⁵
and so on. Poincaré, too, saw the princesses in action. He was sitting next to Sazonov during an entràcte in the ballet when Anastasia and Militza approached and began upbraiding the foreign minister for insufficient ardour in Serbia's support. Once again, the limpness of the foreign minister's manner gave pause for thought, but Poincaré noted with satisfaction that ‘the Tsar, for his part, without being quite as ecstatic as the two grand duchesses, seems to me more determined than Sazonov to defend Serbia diplomatically'.
⁴⁶

These dissonances did not prevent the alliance partners from agreeing on a common course of action. At 6 p.m. on 23 July, the evening of the departure of the French, Viviani, who seemed somewhat recovered from his ‘attack of liver', agreed with Sazonov the instructions to be sent to the Russian and French ambassadors in Vienna. The ambassadors were to mount a friendly joint démarche recommending moderation to Austria and expressing the hope that she would do nothing that could compromise the honour or the independence of Serbia. These words were of course carefully chosen to interdict in advance the note that both parties already knew the Austrians were about to present. George Buchanan agreed to suggest that his own government send an analogous message.
⁴⁷

That evening, during the pre-departure dinner held on the deck of the
France
, there was a highly emblematic dispute between Viviani and Paléologue over the wording of a communiqué to be drawn up for the press. Paléologue's draft ended by alluding to Serbia with the words:

The two governments have discovered that their views and intentions for the maintenance of the European balance of power, especially in the Balkan Peninsula, are absolutely identical.

Viviani was unhappy with this formulation – ‘I think it involves us a little too much in Russia's Balkan policy', he said. Another more anodyne draft was drawn up:

The visit which the president of the Republic has just paid to H.M. the Emperor of Russia has given the two friendly and allied governments an opportunity of discovering that they are in entire agreement in their views on the various problems which concern for peace and the balance of power in Europe has laid before the powers, especially in the Balkans.
⁴⁸

This was a fine exercise in the art of euphemism. Yet despite its prudent tone, the revised communiqué was easily decoded and exploited by the liberal and pan-Slav Russian papers, which began pushing openly for military intervention in support of Belgrade.
⁴⁹

Poincaré was not especially happy with how the dinner had gone. The heavy afternoon rain had virtually torn down the marquee on the aft deck where the guests were supposed to be sitting and the ship's cook did not cover himself in glory – the soup course was late and ‘no one praised the dishes', Poincaré later noted. But the president could afford to be satisfied with the overall impact of the visit. He had come to preach the gospel of firmness and his words had fallen on ready ears. Firmness in this context meant an intransigent opposition to any Austrian measure against Serbia. At no point do the sources suggest that Poincaré or his Russian interlocutors gave any thought whatsoever to what measures Austria-Hungary might legitimately be entitled to take in the aftermath of the assassinations. There was no need for improvisations or new policy statements – Poincaré was simply holding fast to the course he had plotted since the summer of 1912. This may help explain why, in contrast to many of those around him, he remained so conspicuously calm throughout the visit. This was the Balkan inception scenario envisaged in so many Franco-Russian conversations. Provided the Russians, too, stayed firm, everything would unfold as the policy had foreseen. Poincaré called this a policy for peace, because he imagined that Germany and Austria might well back down in the face of such unflinching solidarity. But if all else failed, there were worse things than a war at the side of mighty Russia and, one hoped, the military, naval, commercial and industrial power of Great Britain.

De Robien, who observed all this from close quarters, was not impressed. Poincaré, he felt, had deliberately overridden the authority of Viviani, who as premier and minister of foreign affairs was the responsible office-holder, pressing assurances and promises upon Nicholas II. Just before they separated, Poincaré reminded the Tsar: ‘This time we must hold firm.'

At almost exactly the same moment [de Robien recalled], the Austrian ultimatum was presented to Belgrade. Our opponents, too, had decided to ‘hold firm'. On both sides they imagined that ‘bluffing' would suffice to achieve success. None of the players thought that it would be necessary to go all the way. The tragic poker game had begun.
⁵⁰

It was in the nature of great men, Paléologue would later write, to play such fateful games. The ‘man of action' he observed in his study of Cavour, becomes ‘a gambler, for each grave action implies not only an anticipation of the future, but a claim to be able to decide events, to lead and control them'.
⁵¹

While Poincaré and Viviani were steaming towards the harbour at Kronstadt, the Austrians put the final touches to the ultimatum to be presented in Belgrade. Travelling in unmarked vehicles to avoid notice, the members of the Joint Ministerial Council made their way to Berchtold's private apartments on Sunday 19 July for a meeting to resolve the ‘forthcoming diplomatic action against Serbia'. There was an informal discussion about the note to be sent to Belgrade and the text was definitively settled. It was agreed that the ultimatum would be presented at 5 p.m. on 23 July (subsequently postponed to 6 p.m. to ensure that it would arrive after Poincaré's departure). Berchtold declared quixotically that he believed it unlikely ‘that word of our step would be publicly known before [Poincaré] left St Petersburg', but since he was aware that news of Vienna's plans had already reached Rome, speed was of the essence. The Serbian government would be given forty-eight hours to respond; if it was not accepted in full by the Serbs, the ultimatum would expire early in the evening of Saturday 25 July.

What would happen next? The rest of the discussion touched on various aspects of the post-ultimatum scenario. Conrad assured Tisza that sufficient forces would be made available to secure Transylvania against possible Romanian attack. Tisza insisted that Austria-Hungary must declare at the outset that it had ‘no plans of aggrandizement against Serbia' and did not intend to annex any of the kingdom's territory. The Hungarian premier was strongly opposed, as at the previous meeting, to any measure that would bring more angry South Slavs into the monarchy; he also feared that the prospect of Austrian annexations would make it impossible for the Russians to back down. This demand triggered some hefty discussion. Berchtold in particular maintained that the territorial reduction of Serbia might, in the aftermath of a conflict, prove to be an indispensable means of neutralizing the threat it posed to Austro-Hungarian security. Tisza stood his ground and the meeting agreed on a compromise: Vienna would formally announce in due course that the dual monarchy was not waging a war of conquest and had no designs on Serbian territory. However, it would leave open the possibility that other states, notably Bulgaria, might secure areas of territory currently controlled by the Serbs.
¹

Neither this nor the other Austrian summit meetings produced anything even remotely resembling what we would today call an exit strategy. Serbia was not a rogue state in an otherwise quiet neighbourhood: adjacent Albania remained extremely unstable; there was always the possibility that Bulgaria, once engorged with lands from Serbian-controlled Macedonia, would return to its earlier Russophile policy; and how would one balance Bulgarian annexations in Macedonia against the need to mollify Romania with territorial compensations?
²
Would the Austrophobe Karadjordjević dynasty remain in place, and if not, who or what would replace it? And there were practical questions of a lesser order: who would take care of the Austrian legations in Belgrade and Cetinje if Austria-Hungary were obliged to break off relations – the Germans perhaps?
³
All of this remained unclear. And once again, as at the meeting of 7 July, the possibility of Russian intervention received only the most perfunctory attention. Conrad's comments on the military situation focused exclusively on Austria's Plan B, a purely Balkan military scenario, rather than on Plan R, which provided for the possibility of a Russian attack on Austrian Galicia. Yet none of the ministers present thought to press Conrad on the question of how he would respond if the Russians did in fact intervene, or to ask him how easy it would be to transition from one deployment scenario to the other.
⁴
The eyes of the Austrian political elite were still riveted on the quarrel with Belgrade, to the exclusion of broader concerns. Even when news reached Vienna of Poincaré's extraordinary warning to Szapáry that Serbia had ‘friends' – a message revealing that France and Russia had harmonized their views on how they would respond to an Austrian démarche – Berchtold did not consider a change of course.
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