Thunder At Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914

by Frederic Morton

  He was exhilarated again at Bad Ilidze, a pleasant suburb of Sarajevo. Despite a downpour, a sizable throng awaited him, shouting their "Zivio!" ("Long may he live!") and waving their umbrellas. That was nice. Nicer still, the embrace of his wife who had arrived earlier on her much less labyrinthine journey. General Conrad also presented himself, saluting with a grimness that carried, here at least, no power. To avoid the contretemps of previous army exercises, the Chief of Staff had asked to attend this time as a purely passive observer.

  Under the Archduke's sole command, then, the simulated war between the "North Camp" (the 15th Austrian Army Corps) and the "South Camp" (the 16th Army Corps) began. For two shower-splattered days it thundered up and down the craggy hills west of Sarajevo, some cautious eighty kilometers away from the Serb border. At the Archduke's order the field pack of each man was ten pounds lighter than the weight set by General Conrad. This prevented exhaustion and enhanced the spirit of the troops. Franz Ferdinand was impressed by the dispatch with which the men handled the most modern equipment. He liked the way the heavy howitzers moved so fast through mud deepening with every squall.

  Nothing could dampen the Archduke's uncharacteristic good mood. Usually his aides must try to restore his calm. Now he reversed the process. Once as he observed a "battle" from a hummock, a man suddenly broke out of the underbrush with a black instrument. Nervous bodyguards jumped the suspect. Franz Ferdinand chortled: "Oh, let him shoot me. That's his job! That's just a camera in his hand-he's a court photographer. Let him make a living!"

  ***

  On Saturday, June 27, at 10 A.M. the Archduke's signal ended the maneuvers. Shortly thereafter he sent a telegram to Bad Ischl where the Emperor had begun his summer sojourn on the same day.

  I beg to report most humbly that my journey has been excellent despite the unsteady weather; the reception… very gratifying and patriotic… The condition of the soldiers and their performance were outstanding and really beyond praise. Almost no injured or sick, everybody is healthy and well. Tomorrow I visit Sarajevo, to depart from there at night. In deepest devotion I lay myself at the feet of Your Majesty

  Your most humble Franz

  This, his last report to the Emperor, the Archduke scrawled vigorously in his own hand, using not the Gothic script he preferred but Roman characters as demanded by Army regulation for military cables. And Franz Ferdinand also conformed to another, more hurtful rule. His message said "Tomorrow I visit Sarajevo…" Morganatic restriction forbade "Tomorrow we visit Sarajevo…" We would include his wife on an equal basis. The long arm of Vienna's protocol reached even into this remote corner of the Empire.

  It reached-and struck-the Archduke again, a few hours later, when he showed his First Lord Chamberlain Baron Rumerskirch the toast he had drafted for the evening gala. The Baron sighed and said he was compelled to suggest that the first three words of the phrase "my wife and I" should be omitted. The toast would not only enter the official minutes but no doubt be widely published in Vienna. It should be framed with care so that the court cabal could not use it against His Imperial Highness.

  His Imperial Highness re-framed it with care.

  That shadow apart, the day was splendid, ending sumptuously. On the night of June 27 the Archduke hosted a banquet (the very one to which Finance Minister von Bilinski had received no invitation) at his personal headquarters in Ilidze, the Hotel Bosna. General Potiorek attended the dinner together with the region's luminaries. Everybody enjoyed the potage regence, souffles delicieux, blanquette de truite a la gelee, followed by main entrees of chicken, lamb and beef, followed by creme aux ananas en surprise and cheeses, ice cream, candies. Sommeliers poured an array of wines from Madeiras to Tokays and including, as a bow to local taste, Bosnian 2ilavka.

  Graciously the Archduke raised a goblet even to General Conrad, then gave a smooth, morganatic, wifeless toast. After all, his Sophie sat quite unmorganatically between two Archbishops. And tomorrow he would make sure that all Imperial obeisance shown him would be hers as well at Sarajevo.

  25

  Mist smothered the Bosnian sunrise on Sunday, June 28, 1914. The Archduke and the Duchess began the day on their knees. They prayed at an early Mass in a room specially converted to a chapel at the spa hotel. Afterwards he retired to his bedroom to practice, over and over again, the Serbo-Croation paragraph ending the speech he was to make at Sarajevo's City Hall. Those Slav consonants hadn't gotten any easier, but when he finished work, Sophie rewarded him with a happy bulletin just telephoned from Vienna. Their older son Max had done very well in his examinations at the Schotten Academy. The parents congratulated the boy with a cable anticipating the family reunion set for the day after tomorrow.

  By then it was just past 9 A.M. Their train awaited them for the brief ride to Sarajevo. It steamed into the terminal there at 9:20 A.M. On the platform a band of the 15th Army Corps cymballed the Imperial Anthem. Red-carpet formalities over, Franz Ferdinand helped his wife climb into the high, huge Graf & Stift convertible. That moment the weather changed as dramatically as during their entrance at the Vienna Derby three weeks earlier. The mist lifted like a curtain. Brightness fell on a resplendent pair. The Archduke, tall and rugged, shone in the ceremonial uniform of an Austrian Cavalry General-sky-blue tunic, gold collar with three silver stars, black trousers with red stripes; the green peacock feathers of his helmet bounced above the pale-blue gleam of his eyes, the black spear tips of his upturned hussar's mustache. His Duchess was a stately vision in white: white picture hat with a gossamer white veil, long white silk dress with a red and white bouquet of roses tucked into her red sash, ermine stole draped over her shoulders.

  After a long siege of rain, the sun shed on them the radiance of a doubly special day. This Sunday marked not only St. Vitus Day for the Serbs but also the anniversary of a marriage sorely tried yet victorious. Exactly fourteen years ago, on June 28, 1900, Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand and the Countess Sophie Chotek had taken their vows in stealth, in disgrace, in the pointed absence of the Emperor and the entire Imperial clan. For fourteen years the Crown Prince had had to announce his own wife's inferiority of blood. During all court functions of all those years she had had to enter alone after the Emperor; he had had to wait for Sophie to creep in at the tail end of protocol, after the youngest Archduchess toddled by in diapers.

  Today would atone for much of that. This morning's dazzle at Sarajevo would be his revenge and her redress.

  At the first stop, inspecting the honor guard at Filippovic Barracks, he undid a good deal of those fourteen years. To Sophie's glory he upended military proprieties. Today the colors dipped for the Duchess no less than for the Archduke. At his instruction she stood not behind him, but at his side. When he walked past the reverence of rifles presented at attention, his hand rested not on the hilt of his saber but on the handle of her parasol as his Sophie strode with him, shoulder to shoulder. Today, instead of denying her existence, he celebrated it. He exalted it. He, Crown Prince of the realm, was her servitor. He carried her parasol at a most public occasion.

  And therefore the cannons starting their roar while the Imperial party re-boarded their six automobiles-the cannons booming their twenty-four-fold salute-boomed in her honor as well as his. They boomed while the motorcade rolled along slowly at Franz Ferdinand's orders; he wanted his Sophie to savor her triumph in leisure, and he wanted her to see at least some of Sarajevo's one hundred mosques and ninety churches. The cannons boomed from the hilltop fortress specially repainted for the occasion-its Habsburg yellow matched the black-yellow flag fluttering from Franz Ferdinand's car. The cannons boomed as the procession passed Cemaszula Street just renamed Franz Ferdinand Boulevard. They boomed as the huge cars turned into Appel Quay along the Miljacka river. They boomed across spires, domes, minarets, whitewashed houses on one side of the street; they boomed across poplars and cypresses greening the hills against the sky on the other. They boomed above gold-crested police helmets behind whose thin line stood a somewhat thicker
crowd of people crying "Zivio!" They boomed over portraits of the Archduke placed on many window sills-hundreds of stern Franz Ferdinands glaring down from picture frames at the Prince's now more amiable live face, gliding by in the seat next to his wife.

  The last boom reverberated away. A peculiar echo followed it. One of the cars behind the Archduke's seemed to have blown a tire. The Duchess reached for the back of her neck where she thought a gnat had stung her. At the same time, confused shouting spread along the quay. Gendarmes started running toward some sort of scuffle that was tumbling down the river embankment.

  The Archduke's raised hand signaled the procession to a halt. A member of his retinue, Count Franz von Harrach, jumped out to reconnoiter.

  Two minutes later he was back, breathless: A bomb had been thrown at the car behind them. It had injured some bystanders as well as Lieutenant Colonel Erich von Merizzi of the Archduke's escort. But Merizzi had only been hit in the hand, by a splinter. The perpetrator had just been arrested as he'd tried to escape across the river.

  Pale but composed, the Duchess said that a splinter must have touched her, too, in the back of her neck. Instantly the Archduke examined her. He found the barest evidence of a tiny scratch; the skin had not been broken.

  "Madness!" the Archduke said. "But let's go on."

  They went on. Count von Harrach did not resume his seat by the chauffeur. He stood on the running board to shield the Archduke. Shortly after 10 A.M. the motorcade reached City Hall. It was just a few minutes late, as though nothing had happened.

  And nobody at City Hall thought anything had. Under the red-gold moorish loggias, on top of a white staircase, bowed an array of Bosnian notables. Turbaned mullahs, bishops in miters and gilt vestments, rabbis in kaftans, municipal personages with sash and decorations. The mayor Fehim Effendi Curcio, in fez and tailcoat, had heard a bang; to him and to the others it had sounded like some additional salute from a smaller cannon. Blithely the mayor launched into his own fulsome greeting: "Your Imperial and Royal Highness, our exalted Crown Prince! Your Serene Highness, our Crown Prince's most esteemed wife! At this most happy moment our hearts are overflowing with gratitude for the most gracious visit bestowed-"

  "Mr. Mayor!" The Archduke's gravel voice cut through the air. "What kind of gratitude! A bomb has been thrown at us! Outrageous!"

  The mayor gagged. Fezzes, turbans, kaftans trembled and huddled. The Duchess whispered briefly into the Archduke's ear. The glare in his eyes softened. "Very well," the Archduke said. "Very well. Mr. Mayor, get on with your speech."

  The Duchess's intervention allowed everything to continue with remarkable smoothness. The mayor went through the rest of his oration. For a moment it seemed as if Franz Ferdinand would not be able to answer because the text of his response (with its Slavic finale) had been left in the car disabled by the bomb. Just then an equerry came running with white pages blotched red from the wounded officer.

  Franz Ferdinand ripped the script out of the man's hand. The Duchess put one finger on her husband's arm. Once more her touch composed him. Evenly he wiped the blood away with a handkerchief offered by the equerry. Evenly he began to read his speech, improvising only one deft change. "I consider," he said, "the welcome extended to my wife and me as expressions of joy that the attempt on our lives has been foiled."

  All dignitaries clapped hands in relief. The Archduke went into his Serbo-Croat peroration: "Standing in this beautiful capital city, I assure you, our Slav and Mohammedan citizens, of our august Emperor's continued interest in your well-being and of my own unchanging friendship."

  "Zivio!" from the dignitaries. Much applause. A courier roared up on a motorcycle. Good tidings from the garrison hospital to which the injured officer had been brought. Doctors confirmed that he had only a slight flesh wound.

  Now the ceremonies resumed their planned course. The Duchess went upstairs to the second floor of City Hall where Muslim ladies wanted to tender their respects to her unveiled. Franz Ferdinand recovered his mordant humor. "Did you hear?" he said to an aide. "The bomb thrower wanted to swallow cyanide? Idiot! Doesn't he know our Austrian criminal justice system? They'll give the man a decoration!" Thinlipped smiles from the retinue. "And maybe they'll have to give out more than one decoration. Maybe we'll have some more Kugerln coming our way." The Archduke was speaking in Viennese dialect, relishing its sardonic diminutives. "Kugerln" meant "bulletlets."

  More thin-lipped smiles all around. With a mocking bow the Archduke turned to General Potiorek, Bosnia's Military Governor. "What do you think, General? Any more Kugerln in your valued judgment?"

  "Your Imperial Highness, it was an isolated lunatic," Potiorek said. "I think Your Imperial Highness can go on at ease.

  "The program, then, as scheduled," Franz Ferdinand said. "But first I'll visit Merizzi in the hospital."

  "Your Imperial Highness, the wound is nothing," Potiorek said. "Merizzi will be released within an hour-"

  "This man is my fellow officer," the Archduke broke in. "He is bleeding for me. You'll have the goodness to understand that. You'll have the further goodness to order another car to take my wife back to her hotel-"

  Now it was the Archduke who was being interrupted. The Duchess had returned from the upper floor. She stopped his sentence not with words, but with a silent headshake. She stepped closer to her husband. A small step, but irrefutable. She was not going to the hotel in a different car. Not under any circumstances. She was staying by his side.

  The Archduke gave a mellowed nod; revoked his order for another automobile. As they walked out of City Hall he took her parasol again. Just outside the entrance, he gripped her hand. They stood in the blinding sunshine on top of the stairs, a clear target for any sharpshooter in the multitude below.

  The multitude did nothing but cheer. "Zivio!.. Zivio!"

  From Sarajevo's church towers the clocks struck half past ten in the morning. To the notables at City Hall the clangor ended a crisis.

  26

  The same church bells tolled a very different message to the ears of a teenage schoolboy with a bomb and a pistol under his jacket. "All is over, all is over," they tolled for Gavrilo Princip. It was all over. It had all been for nothing. For nothing, all the training, the planning, the efforts, the hardship of the last four weeks.

  Exactly a month ago, on May 28, he had left Belgrade with his two cohorts, Graben and Cabrinovic. Sarajevo lay a little more than a hundred miles away, but it had taken the three youths eight days to cover the distance. Through part of the journey within Serbia they trudged across forest and bush to avoid police checking out transients. Princip didn't mind. He was the youngest, smallest, frailest of the trio. He was also the commander of the mission. With the Black Hand in Belgrade he had mapped out a route, tortuous but safe, called the "Apis Tunnel."

  The Tunnel worked. At the town of Sabac, the first station of their trip, Princip found a Serbian Army Captain playing the right exotic card game at the right coffee-house terrace (that of the Cafe Amerika) at the right time of day. The captain, a Black Hand agent, excused himself "to go for a walk with my nephew." When Princip rejoined his mission-mates half an hour later, he carried in his pocket papers identifying the group as "customs officers" with Princip as "the sergeant in charge."

  They were now ready to cross the border into Austria. And just then Princip found himself badly beset by a problem he thought he had eliminated at the outset.

  While still in Belgrade he had made his partners take a vow as solemn as their Black Hand oath: to exercise utmost caution and discretion; to avoid all social contacts save those required by common courtesy; to leave politics out of all conversations with outsiders; and, of course, to tell no one the truth of where they were ultimately going or why. The rule applied to all encounters, be they Austrian, Croat or Serb, no matter how friendly. Even a Serb might be an undercover minion of the Serb Prime Minister who was Apis's foe. "What your enemy should not know, you must not tell your friend."

  Grabel, a j
uvenile delinquent until his politicization by Princip, honored this pledge. The unpleasant surprise was Cabrinovic. Cabrinovic had been an activist even before he'd met Princip. He'd seemed cool and dedicated during target practice in Belgrade. That changed when they embarked on the awesome adventure itself; when they'd marched up the gangplank of the steamer with weaponry and cyanide under their coats, committed to slaughter or suicide or both.

  At that point Cabrinovic had begun to be nervously garrulous. It was as if he wanted to save his life by "accidentally" giving away the mission. While still on the ship he struck up a prolonged conversation-with a gendarme, of all people. Luckily an impassive, incurious gendarme.

  Princip admonished him afterwards, to little effect. In a town close to the Austrian border, Cabrinovic ran into an acquaintance, a fellow volunteer for Serbia in the Balkan War of the previous year. With him, Cabrinovic's talk became so unnaturally animated that his coat fell open to reveal the bombs. Princip dragged him away just in time.

  More folly at Koviljaca, a spa near their entry spot into Habsburg terrain. Here Princip decided that they should act like ordinary tourists, engaged in tourist activities like buying postcards. Princip addressed his own card to a cousin in Belgrade, with the message that he was on his way to a monastery where he would prepare himself for high school finals. But Cabrinovic? He wrote to friends in Sarajevo and Trieste, inside the Austrian Empire where mail was likely to be monitored at the border. Worse yet, Cabrinovic scribbled on one such chancy card the Serb nationalist saying "A good man and a horse will always find a way to break through."

  That was too much for Princip, who always reviewed his crew's correspondence. He tore up the card, took Cabrinovic to a toilet stall in a cafe where he confiscated Cabrinovic's bombs and pistol. He informed Cabrinovic that he must make the rest of the journey alone; alone, he was less likely to endanger his companions or the task they must fulfill. He was to enter Austria separately, at one of the alternate crossing points designated by the Black Hand. If all went well, they would reunite in Sarajevo.