The Phoenix Land

by Miklos Banffy

  ‘Why do you not attack if you have such an overpowering force?’ asked the Englishman. The Chief of Staff just shrugged ‘We couldn’t do that,’ he said. ‘It would be too risky!’

  Coming straight from Vienna, my English journalist friend told his story in high good humour.

  It was also possible that the government in Vienna was afraid that their entire army might refuse orders and just go home, for it was quite certain that the Austrians had no warlike spirit left in them at that time. This was, of course, one of the reasons why there were so few casualties on either side. It was at this time that we began to hear all sorts of humorous anecdotes about the guerrillas on the border, like the ‘kuruc’ stories of long ago. Here are three of those that we heard then.

  A group of partisans, said to be about eight or ten men, encircled about thirty Austrian soldiers and disarmed them. No harm was done to the prisoners, but they did not only have their weapons removed but also their warm army trousers. The weather turned cooler so the lightly clad partisans pulled on the thick Austrian breeches and turned the Austrian soldiers loose to find their way home clad only in their dark-green army tunics with the gold braid that none of them liked. And so the Austrians went free, with helmets on their heads and their upper parts glorious in the Waffenrock89 but otherwise only their underpants.

  Here is another story, this time from a little further south.

  In spite of being strictly forbidden to cross the border into Austria proper, an overeager partisan leader, with a band of some fifty men, attacked a Styrian village where a battalion of Austrians had been stationed. He was a shrewd man and led his little attacking force down the valley that led to the village. On both sides the hills were covered in forest, and only a narrow strip of meadow on each side of the stream was open country. He ordered some forty of his soldiers to advance along the meadow, keeping up heavy fire. The rest of his men he sent through the forest, blowing trumpets and making as much noise as possible. Indeed they made so much noise that the Austrian battalion commander assumed some immense force was approaching. He thought it prudent to evacuate the village and retreat, whereupon the villagers lost heart and fled. That is, all the men fled, but the women and girls refused to budge, saying that they were not afraid of the Hungarians; and indeed they were not. By the time news of this reached us and the group were ordered to withdraw, our soldiers had spent three days riding on the crest of the wave, and the band of partisans marched away to the Hungarian border escorted by weeping women.

  My third tale is about a Viennese millionaire, an industrial baron who had rented a shoot near Pápa in the Bakony Mountains. The season for deerstalking started in September, and so the baron set out in his magnificent Mercedes, his mistress beside him, along with her lover, an Austrian count. The car was laden with hams, foie gras, preserved fruit, champagne and other wines. They headed for Bruck-Hegyeshalom on the Hungarian border. He had been warned in advance that this was not the moment to travel in that part of the country, but the baron knew better, saying that he did not give a fig for the partisans and would have four good sporting rifles with him anyway. The party had barely crossed the river Lafnitz when it was stopped by a band of partisans who surrounded the car and insisted that they go, car and all its occupants, with them some six or seven kilometres to the military headquarters of Iván Héjjas, who was in control of the territory between the Danube and Lake Fertö. Héjjas spoke only two languages, Hungarian and Albanian, having learned the latter in 1913 when Prince Wied90had been put forward by us as candidate for the Albanian throne. As it turned out, Prince Wied never reached Albania, but Héjjas had gone ahead of him and learned there this universal language. Through an interpreter he informed the millionaire that his car and his weapons would be impounded for the duration of hostilities, but that as soon as the fighting was over they would be returned to him. He would not, however, allow the party to continue their present journey, although they would be permitted to return home unharmed … and on foot. It was not far to the Austrian border.

  Baron Habig and the Austrian count started off to find the frontier; but not the lady. It seemed that she had the eye for Héjjas, having not failed to notice how good-looking he was. So she said: ‘Schöner Bandenführer, ich bleibe mit Dir!’ – ‘Oh, handsome leader, I will stay with you!’ But, despite the fact that the girl was very pretty, all the handsome captain replied was: ‘Jetzt Krieg … nix Frau … Marsch weg! – ‘There’s a war on … no women … on your way!’ Later she went to London, where she was kept by a press baron.

  Here I will jump a little so as not to finish the tale later. When the partisan bands dissolved a month later Héjjas came to see me in my office. This is when I first saw him, and it was true that he was a fine-looking man, rather like a Spanish toreador. He came to ask if the Foreign Office would accept the Austrian millionaire’s car and guns and restore them to their rightful owner.

  I told him that I did not want to become involved in this and suggested that he should go to the Austrian Embassy and hand over the car and guns himself. And so he did. When he arrived and told the doorman his name the door was at once slammed in his face. The terrified doorman ran up to the office and announced that the terrible Héjjas was demanding to come in with four guns on his shoulder. Indescribable panic broke out until some employee bolder than the others decided to risk his life, opened the door a slit and asked what this ferocious visitor wanted. Only when he had been convinced that the guns were not loaded, and that it was only a question of handing them over, did the panic subside and Héjjas was let in.

  I heard all this from Héjjas himself when he came back to show us the official receipt. He was still laughing when he left the ministry.

  By the middle of September the hostilities had ended, but the problem had yet to be settled. There was a further complication in the first zone, for after it had been reoccupied by the partisans it proclaimed itself as the independent republic of ‘Lajtabánság’ with Pál Prónay as head of state. This seemed to me not only somewhat childish but also nonsense, but his new self-appointed status had clearly gone to Prónay’s head if he was trying to form a government and was behaving as if he were a legitimate ruler. Unfortunately, this affair dragged on so long that government control of the territory was lost, and complaints soon started coming in from the southern part. None of this would have been of any importance but it was enough to spoil the mood of the inhabitants who had until then all been pro-Hungary. One serious complaint was that the partisans had bought the whole local production of cereals but paid for it only with fine words.

  In foreign affairs the situation was more serious, for what had just happened at home proved again how easy it was to start a fight and how difficult to restore peace.

  We had received several demands from the Council of Ambassadors to recall the partisans and proceed with handing over the Burgenland. We replied that these rebellious armed bands were independent of the government and would not obey our orders. If we were now to withdraw the government troops from the second and third zones, this would immediately lead to uprisings there too, followed by complete anarchy. We were able to gain time by the exchange of documents, and, for my sake, the ambassadors did everything in their power to help our cause, although they were not able to do more than delay action on the treaty terms since they were only the mouthpieces of the Council of Ambassadors. It was clear that a solution had to be found and that what was needed was someone who would act as intermediary before the situation became so aggravated that the Great Powers felt obliged to force Hungary to comply, not merely by written demands but perhaps also by economic sanction or by stopping all shipping on the Danube, which was, in any case, due to be controlled at the end of September.

  In this critical situation I tried first to find a solution through Castagnetto, who had been on leave in Italy but who, when the first news broke of the Austro-Hungarian hostilities, raced back to his post, travelling from Vienna via Sopron, through the thick of the fighting. Th
e armed bands not only let him pass with no delay or difficulty but were also wily enough to show how much they loved Italy. They feasted him in Sopron, where he made a brief stop and then, wherever he went and wherever he paused on his way, they cheered the Italian flag on his car. So he returned to Budapest in high good humour, and I felt that he had a real understanding of our cause. We soon became firm friends, and I often used to go to his house. His wife, too, was a charming woman.

  At the end of September, in the course of one of our talks, I asked if it would not be possible for him to suggest to the Italian government that they did something to help. He said he would do his best but that I must understand that whatever he did would merely be his own personal action, for he had had no official instructions to intervene. In the next few weeks I would repeatedly ask him if he had had any reaction from Rome, but the answer was always negative. October arrived: still nothing.

  As the matter was now so pressing I decided to reopen the discussions I had had at Marienbad and remind Benes of those talks in which we had referred, albeit only briefly, to the Burgenland, and mentioned that cooperation between Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia would be much easier if this problem could first be solved.

  Question and answer passed rapidly between us, and since I could not leave Budapest for more than a day, Benes came to meet me at Brünn. Before I left I let the Italian ambassador know that, since it seemed that his government was reluctant to mediate, I felt obliged to try something else. Castagnetto agreed that I had no alternative and so, on the morning of either 4 or 5 October, I am not now sure which, I left for the Moravian capital.

  The immediate result of our discussion was that Benes without hesitation officially accepted for his country the role of mediator between Hungary and Austria. He was most sympathetic and asked for nothing in return. He did not even mention the Czech-Yugoslav corridor, and I took this as a most hopeful sign. There was more news waiting for me at home.

  Now followed the most dramatic day of my ministerial career.

  In the morning Castagnetto came to see me with advance notice, although he could not yet say anything definite, that he believed his representations at Rome had succeeded. This was in confidence, from one good friend to another, and must remain a dead secret. It was very good news indeed.

  I was still feeling somewhat dazed when late the same afternoon, I was told that the three ambassadors wanted to see me urgently. I imagined that it was because of what I had been told that morning and so awaited them with joy.

  You can imagine my consternation when Hohler, speaking for all of them, announced that the Great Powers would no longer tolerate our remaining in the Burgenland. He then handed over an ultimatum, stating that we had three days to withdraw our forces and disarm the partisans, and, in the most menacing terms, said that should we fail to carry out this demand, the Great Powers would use every means, including force, to make us do so.

  My heart constricted as I read this. I answered that I could not make any answer until I had consulted the prime minister.

  Now the ambassadors started to leave the room. I found myself unable to keep from turning to the Italian and saying ‘This is not what I expected from you!’ in a voice full of anger.

  Castagnetto gestured me to say no more and, as the others were already at the door, said hurriedly that a long coded message had arrived from Rome half an hour before and that it was now being decoded. Perhaps …? Then he quickly joined his colleagues lest they should notice that he had stayed behind.

  At that moment I thought this was said only to forestall my reproaches.

  I rushed over to see Bethlen, and we discussed the matter at length. It seemed that Benes’s mediation had come too late and that we could not resist any longer. If we were to do so, then the Great Powers would almost certainly set the Serbs on us as their army was stationed in full force at Szabadka, barely eighty kilometres from Budapest. The Serbs would like this. They were already angry with us over Baranya and no doubt reckoned that by spilling a little blood they might get it all back. We could not defend ourselves in the field because by the terms of the Trianon treaty we had been obliged to disband our standing army and operate only with young recruits. At that moment we did not have more than six or seven thousand men, and even if we had possessed more, of what use would that have been? Inevitably, there would be a new war, and this would be followed by the occupation of our country and more looting and plunder just as there had been three and half years before. Not only that: one needed more than an army to wage war, one needed economic strength too, and where was that to be found in our ruined impoverished land? Nearly everybody had already been ruined by the state loans raised to pay for the war we had just lost.

  This was a bitter moment. We now had to face the fact that all our work to save Sopron had been in vain and that our country faced a new humiliation. Even to think about it was almost unbearable. Beset by these sad thoughts we talked for a long time.

  Then they announced that supper was ready and, as we walked to the dining room, I was called to the telephone.

  It was Castagnetto. He said that he had something of the utmost importance to tell me, and asked me to come at once to see him. He would, he said, willingly have come to see me but he was shortly expected at a formal banquet at the Hotel Bristol and that if I would come there he would immediately join me in the foyer even if they were already at table. He would leave orders for them to call him as soon as I arrived.

  I raced down from the Fortress and within ten minutes I was there in the foyer but did not have to wait as Castagnetto came straight out to join me.

  ‘On a déchiffré le télégramme. L’Italie a offert sa médiation et le Conseil des Ambassadeurs l’a approuvé’ – ‘They have decoded the telegram. Italy has offered to mediate, and the Council of Ambassadors has accepted the offer.’ Wonderful news, indeed, and completely unexpected. Only fifteen minutes before we had been in despair, and now we could glimpse salvation. Such sudden twists of fortune normally occur only in romantic drama.

  The ambassador handed me a tightly written page. It said that we and the Austrians were called to attend a conference in Venice on 11 October, which was to be presided over by Toretta, the Italian foreign minister. Castagnetto and General Ferrario, the head of the Allied Control Commission in the Burgenland, were to accompany me. The Hungarian delegation would be housed at the Grand Hotel.

  I felt such joy that I almost hugged the plump little Italian. The good fellow was obviously as pleased as I was, for even his monocle seemed to sparkle with pleasure, and I realized what a fine man he was.

  ‘I wanted you to know at once … that’s why I asked you come,’ he said as we shook hands warmly on parting. He then went in to his dinner, while I rushed back to Buda.

  The supper was not even cold when I got there, but what a different mood we were in from half an hour before. Then we faced ruin, humiliation and failure; now suddenly our prospects were rosy and brilliant, and we were filled with hope.

  I could not stay long, as Castagnetto had agreed that I should at once release this great news to the press. It was already nearly ten o’clock, so I would have to move swiftly if it were to be in the morning papers. Later I went happily home to bed.

  It seemed to me a good omen that it was to Venice that we should have been called because that city of lagoons had been my first sight of Italy when, in my teens, I had gone to stay with my good aunt Elise, my father’s elder sister, who had married a Count Berchtold, and took her family there every spring to stay with her mother-in-law, the old countess91. We came every year with my father to visit them, and it was then that I first met the real Venetians. I recall that one year it was so snowy that the statue of Colleone seemed to be wearing a white sheepskin hat. Later I went back so often that Venice became a passion for me. It was there that I paid court, and homage, to the world-famous beauty, Annina Morosini, called by the Italians ‘La Divina’. I went often to La Fenice opera house, and to many balls and soi
rées attended by the descendants of those famous doges whose portraits had been painted by Titian, Bellini and Tintoretto. I loved that mysterious city, with its secret palaces, the faint sound of water from its canals, its kind, friendly people, its excellent small eating-places, even the slight smell of decay rising from the lagoons. I knew all its treasures, all its delights, and I had always been happy there – sometimes very happy indeed.

  So now we were to go there for final decisive talks. It was a good omen.

  We knew that we would never be able to retain the entire Burgenland, but at least mediation meant there was a chance of a compromise, a middle way by which perhaps we would be able at least to keep Sopron and its immediate surroundings, maybe even more. This would mean a great deal to Hungary. What was even more important was the exhilarating hope that at Venice we might finally achieve peace and at the same time, although now a small and impoverished country, inflict just the smallest of dents in the unjust Treaty of Trianon.

  Notes

  86. Friedrich’s dubious activities, and also later at the time of the affair of the forged French francs, are described from a different point of view in Prince Lajos Windischgrätz’s memoirs, which were published in an abridged English translation in 1966.

  87. Colonel Léhar was later to show that his real allegiance was to the exiled monarch. He played a double role at the time of King Karl’s second attempt to regain the throne of Hungary in October 1921, while Sigray was also to play a double role at the time of King Karl’s putsch. His activities then, and also during the affair of the forged French francs, are also mentioned by Windischgrätz.

  88. This line appears in English in Bánffy’s text.

  89. The term used to denote the traditional military tunic.