The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

  Both the unsuccessful and the successful assassins, and all the other persons arrested on the spot, or immediately after, in connection with the crime, were Bosnian Serbs, and Austrian subjects, but the Austrian Government at once suspected Serbian complicity. An investigator sent down to Sarajevo, Sektionsrat Wiesner, reported that there was ‘no proof, nor even grounds for supposing that the Serbian Government was privy to the murder, or the preparations for it’, and to this day it has not been possible to prove the contrary quite conclusively. But the investigators had no difficulty in establishing the facts that the assassins had been supplied with arms from the Serbian army arsenal in Kragujevac, trained in their use and smuggled across the frontier by a Serbian organization – that they put the blame on the wrong society, designating the Narodna Obrana as the culprits and missing the very existence of the Black Hand, did not affect the real point; and this discovery, coming on top of so many experiences of acts of similar nature, if less sensational, committed during previous years, was enough for the Austrian Government. The hornets’ nest must be smoked out, once and for all, and nothing less than war would suffice.159

  When the consultations began, the only man among all the Emperor’s responsible advisers, civilian or military, to take a different view was Tisza, who not only was (it appears) far less satisfied than the others that a war against Serbia could be localized, but also feared the result of even a victorious war, since he did not want the number of Southern Slavs inside the Monarchy to be increased. From the outset, he wanted ‘Serbia to be given time to show her loyalty’. The Emperor himself thought ‘the time for military action not yet ripe’. The military, on the other hand, pressed Berchtold to take swift and determined action, and when he consulted Berlin, both the German Emperor and the Chancellor assured him that Germany would stand by Austria even if her action should involve war with Russia – a contingency which, however, they thought remote. Austria was even strongly pressed to act (after the first day, when he had taken the opposite line) by von Tschirschky, the German Ambassador in Vienna.

  With these assurances in his pocket, Berchtold convoked the Joint Ministerial Council on 7 July. Tisza was now less confident as to Serbia’s behaviour, but nevertheless insisted that the first step must be no ultimatum – the demands must be hard, but not impossible – and if war did come, consequently on Serbia’s rejecting the Note, the Monarchy must make it clear that she was not aiming at the complete annihilation of Serbia, and would not itself annexe any part of it. All the other participants160 were unanimously in favour ‘of such far-reaching demands being made of Serbia as justified the presumption of their rejection, in order to open the path for a radical solution through military intervention’.

  When Berchtold saw Francis Joseph on 9 July he got no final decision from him. Tisza had sent the Emperor a dissenting memorandum, prophesying that war with Serbia ‘would in all human probability bring about the intervention of Russia, and therewith, world war’. Berchtold got no more out of the Emperor than his agreement that ‘it was impossible to go back now’, and that the Note must demand guarantees that if it accepted it, Serbia would keep its word. He was, however, fully determined on his own course (in which Berlin continued to encourage him), and when, on receipt of Wiesner’s report, the Foreign Ministry set itself to draft the Note, it was, after all, deliberately framed to be unacceptable.161 And now even Tisza agreed to this, subject only to the stipulation that the Ministerial Council should make an unanimous declaration that the Monarchy had no plans of conquest against Serbia and would annexe no Serbian territory beyond frontier rectifications necessary on military grounds.

  The Note went off on 20 July, with instructions to the Austrian Minister in Belgrade to present it at 6 p.m. on the 23rd. Serbia was given forty-eight hours in which to reply. Foreign Governments were to be given the Note on the 24th. The Serbian reply in fact accepted almost all the conditions, but Austria made the small reservations excuse to describe the reply as insufficient and declared war on the 28th.

  Even the Germans were disapproving now: they had got cold feet when they found that Britain was unlikely to stand aside. But they should have seen earlier that the system of European alliances was so constructed as to make a localized war impossible. Inevitably, Russia stood by Serbia, France by Russia, Britain by France, as Germany stood by Austria. By mid-August Austria and Germany were at war with Russia, France, Britain, Belgium, Serbia and Montenegro. The Monarchy’s allies, other than Germany – Italy and Roumania – took the view that the casus foederis under the Triple Alliance had not arisen for them, and stood aside.

  *

  We do not propose to inflict on the reader a pontifical assessment of Austria’s degree of ‘guilt’ for the 1914 war. It is easy indeed to understand the feelings of the men who took the decision for war. Austria had, in truth, been subjected to intolerable provocation, and the milder remedies which she had often tried to apply had proved unvaryingly ineffectual. It was reasonable for her military advisers to argue that if war was bound to come now or later – and that, too, was a reasonable expectation – then better make it now, before the reorganization of the Russian army was complete; reasonable also that they should be influenced by the fear, for which cause could be shown, that if Austria did not show resolution now, Germany would regard her alliance with her as no longer worth keeping up. It was humanly natural for Berchtold to be influenced by the strong criticism which had been levied at him during the Balkan Wars for not intervening at least to annexe the Sanjak, and thus to decide more easily, as Professor Hantsch writes, ‘to break with the inglorious, misinterpreted and, into the bargain, unsuccessful policy of yielding’.162 If it was really legitimate to use war as an instrument of national policy (and in 1914 this had not yet been formally denied), Austria had a very good case for using it. But her apologists should not over-state the case. The decision between war and peace in July 1914 was hers, and hers the choice for war; a choice made in knowledge that the war might prove general. Professor Hantsch tells us that Berchtold ‘would have preferred to localize the war’, and we can easily believe him. But he himself admits that Berchtold knew that there was a risk that localization would prove not to be possible, and took it with his eyes open. No pleading can alter that fact.

  1 Op. cit., p. 252.

  2 He died on 19 May 1896, of a fever caught by drinking the waters of Jordan.

  3 Corti, Der alte Kaiser, p. 314.

  4 Of all the ridiculous things that have been written about Francis Ferdinand, few are more absurd than that ‘he wanted to create a democratic State’. It is true that he supported the attempt to introduce suffrage reform into Hungary, but this was simply part of his campaign against the Magyar oligarchy. He was against suffrage reform in Austria, precisely because it would have given power to the people.

  5 According to Sieghart, p. 239, and Kiszling, op. cit., p. 226, he was largely responsible for frustrating the Czech-German settlement which nearly came into being in 1912, partly because he feared that if the Czechs and Germans combined, the authority of the Crown would be weakened, but partly also because the draft agreement spoke of ‘Kingdom’ and ‘Monarch’ instead of ‘Crownland’ and ‘Emperor’. See also his remarkable outburst against ‘trialism’, meaning federalism for the Bohemian Lands (Sieghart, p. 236; Kiszling, p. 140). It is true that Höglinger, Clam-Martinic, pp. 72 ff., while confirming the Archduke’s objections to the draft agreement, and his reasons for it (another was that he thought it too favourable to the Czechs) says that earlier he had been strongly in favour of reconciliation between the two peoples and had for that purpose wanted the two fractions of the Great Landlords to unite.’ Here, however, he was probably thinking in social rather than national terms.

  6 M. Hodža, in his Federation in Central Europe, pp. 46 ff., seems to deny that Francis Ferdinand disliked the Magyar people as such, but it would be easy enough to adduce quotations to the contrary.

  7 Oddly, this inability to learn Magyar was shared by
the Habsburg who in all history has been most popular in Hungary, the Archduke-Palatine Joseph (see above, pp. 174 ff.)

  8 On this point he was not entirely in the right (see above, pp. 556).

  9 At one time Francis Joseph had entrusted him with the Royal Prerogative, but Koerber had had to ask the Emperor to take it back, as the Archduke did not trouble to deal with the papers (Redlich, Franz Joseph, p. 428).

  10 Strictly, the office, under that name, was sanctioned only in November 1908. Before that Brosch and his predecessors were only the Archduke’s aides-de-camp (Flügeladjutante).

  11 Hanak, op. cit., p. 277.

  12 In eight of the eleven years 1903–11 over 100,000 persons were officially registered as leaving Austria for overseas, with a grand total for the period of over 1,350,000 (in the peak year, 1913, the figure was 194,402). For continental emigration in the last years before the war, Dr Klezl, in International Migrations, II. 402–3, gives the astonishing figure of 450,000 annually. Most of this was presumably seasonal, but Dr Klezl writes that in 1907, 196,000 out of 316,000 Austrian workers in Germany were employed in industry (most of them, presumably, in German Silesia) and many of these probably settled in their places of employment. According to this source, in 1911–12, when the total was 262,944, 80,000 were Poles, 80,000 Ruthenes and 80,000 Germans. The official figures for Hungary were 97,000 for 1904, 170,000 for 1905, 178,000 for 1906, 209,000 for 1907 (the peak year) and about 100,000 a year 1908–13. These figures may well be considerably too low, for after 1881 intending emigrants were required to equip themselves with passports, and as these were often refused, much of the emigration was clandestine. This would hardly affect the figures before 1904, which were based on data collected at the Dutch and German ports of embarkation, but may well have made a difference after 1904, when Fiume began to be used largely.

  13 When the Social Democrat Government of the Austrian Republic tried to introduce a land reform after 1918, very few applicants for land came forward.

  14 Hertz, op. cit., p. 43.

  15 Hanak, l.c.

  16 Id., p. 270.

  17 A Dualiszmus Kora, II. 213 ff.

  18 Hertz, p. 30.

  19 The shadow-side of it is well, although briefly, put by A. Brusatti in Vorabend, pp. 63 ff.

  20 Prices of cereals rose by 47% in 1899–1909; of meat and fats by 34·3%; of all foodstuffs by 36·3%.

  21 The Creditanstalt, for example, which in 1890 had been associated with one bank and one industrial enterprise, controlled in 1914 forty-three industrial enterprises and five commercial, five banks, two insurance companies and two transport undertakings.

  22 This had been raised in 1889 to 103,100 (60,339 for Austria, 42,761 for Hungary, adjusted in 1892 to 59,211 and 43,229), exclusive of the two reserves. Service in the Navy had been increased in 1884 from three to four years. Even now the effective strength of the army had increased since 1868 by only 12%; far less than the total population.

  23 At that date Germany was calling up 280,000 men annually, France 250,000, Russia 335,000 (including the Cossacks) and Italy 100,000.

  24 This demand was being made also by many speakers in the Reichsrat, and the Government was itself planning to introduce the change as soon as it could do so without reducing the peace strength of the Army.

  25 Croat in Croatia.

  26 See above, p. 567.

  27 Kiszling, op. cit., p. 81. Plan U was in readiness also in 1905.

  28 It must be said that these were very slow in coming; some were not made until 1911 and one or two not at all.

  29 A senior member of the Independence Party, Kálmán Thály, suddenly appealed to his colleagues, in full session, not to oppose this, out of pity for the men who were being kept with the colours past their time. The House was moved by the humanitarian force of this appeal, but it was also afraid of the consequences if it resisted it, for rumours were already current that Tisza was preparing to take some drastic steps if he did not get his way.

  30 The Transylvanian Saxons took their seats with the Liberals.

  31 Three were elected, but one of them was promptly assassinated by scandalized patriots.

  32 He had been Commander of the Royal Hungarian Bodyguard.

  33 These obscure transactions are described in detail by Gratz who was a party to them op. cit., II. 115 ff.

  34 Including the Saxon representatives.

  35 Sixteen Roumanians, seven Slovaks and two Serbs.

  36 I.e. ten years after the previous agreement should have been concluded.

  37 The chief of these was to give Counties and Boroughs a right to appeal against demands for recruits. Andrássy’s original demands went much further.

  38 Oddly enough, this view was now supported by Bánffy, who during his Minister Presidency had broken all previous records for chauvinism.

  39 On this, see Kiszling, pp. 151 ff., and Redlich, Schicksalsjahre, II. 179. According to Kiszling, Kristóffy asked Francis Ferdinand’s Military Cabinet for money, and secured through it, from the Christian Social Party, the rather inadequate sum of 50,000 kr. (typically, the Archduke himself gave nothing). But according to Redlich (who dates the event wrongly), Kristóffy secured from a Hungarian source, through the Minister of Finance, Lukács, no less than 318,000 kr. with which to support the Justh candidates. The remarkable thing about this story is that this was the same Lukács who afterwards got into trouble for financing the other side (see below, n. 3).

  40 For particulars, see below, pp. 790–91.

  41 An enraged Deputy fired three revolver-shots at Tisza and a fourth at himself. He missed Tisza completely and the wound which he inflicted on himself proved not mortal. Tisza carried on with the session unmoved.

  42 He was accused of having borrowed 4 million crowns from the National Bank, not, indeed, for his personal enrichment, but for Party purposes – the purposes, be it noted, of the Party of Work. The money which he got for the other side does not seem to have come up.

  43 Mailáth, op. cit., p. 27.

  44 In 1903 the Government had organized a ‘labour reserve’ several thousands strong, which could be moved to any place where it seemed unlikely that the harvest could be got in by ordinary means.

  45 Gratz, op. cit., II. 140.

  46 The programme of this Party is given by R. W. Seton-Watson, Racial Problems in Hungary, p. 483.

  47 See above, p. 760.

  48 For a full account of this, see R. W. Seton-Watson, op. cit., pp. 339 ff. It is true that the crowd was not demonstrating directly for Slovak liberties, but indirectly so: to prevent a new church from being consecrated by anyone except Mgr Hlinka, who was then in prison for political agitation.

  49 R. W. Seton-Watson, The Southern Slav Question, p. 114.

  50 In a Court Martial for desertion in 1916 the accused, a Croat sergeant, said that ‘the Croats were always loyal to the Emperor, but he did not love them, and delivered them over to the Magyars, so that they were forced to turn to the Serbs, who at least spoke their language’.

  51 Kiszling, Franz Ferdinand, p. 231, quotes a document (a report to Francis Ferdinand from Kristóffy) that the Croat signatories to the declaration, in return for the Serbs’ promise in respect of Dalmatia, recognized Bosnia as the Serbs’ ‘sphere of influence’.

  52 Subsequently, twelve more Deputies went over from the National Party to the Coalition.

  53 According, however, to Redlich (Schicksalsjahre, I. 12, ad 3 May 1909), this move – always quoted against the Coalition as one of their major blunders – was really the result of a trick played on them by their opponents. The Bill was drafted for Kossuth (who was often away sick) by his Secretary of State, Szterényi, who was put up to it by Wekerle ‘in order to put all the responsibility for the settlement’ (the impending revision of the Nagodba) ‘on the Kossuthists alone, and at the same time, to divert explosive national feelings against Croatia’.

  54 R. W. Seton-Watson, Southern Slav Question, p. 156.

  55 See Redlich, Franz Joseph, p.
407.

  56 Károlyi, Gegen eine ganze Welt, p. 73.

  57 Id., p. 52. I cannot trace any reference at all to Károlyi in such works as I have consulted on Francis Ferdinand.

  58 According to Bogitschewitsch (Kriegsursachen, Zurich, 1919, p. 15), Austria had even helped to prepare the way for Peter’s eventual succession to the throne. Bogitschewitsch is not, indeed, a witness who inspires undiluted confidence. But see Steed, op. cit., p. 241, for Austria’s foreknowledge of the conspiracy and for her absence of alarm when the change of dynasties took place.

  59 It is always the ‘Hungarian feudal magnates’ who are accussed of oppressive behaviour towards the Serbs, but in fact the producers chiefly hit by the Serb competition were the Swabian (and Serb) pig-breeders of South Hungary.

  60 Gratz, A Dualiszmus Kora, II. 237.

  61 The share of the Austrian industrial interests in the negotiations is also regularly passed over by historians. The Austrian industrialists were also threatened with competition from Germany, which had concluded a new trade agreement with Serbia.

  62 Bulgaria’s treaty with the Monarchy had expired in 1903, but had been succeeded by a ‘provisorium’ on the same terms.

  63 Benedikt, op. cit., pp. 164–5. The value of Germany’s exports to Serbia rose from 12·5 million RM. in 1902, to 17·9 in 1910, and of her imports from Serbia, from 5·1 to 19·1 RM. By then the Monarchy’s share in Serbia’s exports had sunk to 31%, and in her imports to 24%.

  64 The fullest account of these events known to me is in Südland, op. cit., pp. 498 ff. Burian’s own account in chapter XVI of his Austria in Dissolution is much less illuminating.

  65 It was promulgated on 1 September 1905.

  66 Burian also introduced a new scheme to enable the kmets to buy their land. They were to get the whole price advanced by a Hungarian bank, the Government guaranteeing the repayments.