The Phoenix Land

by Miklos Banffy

  As our train crossed the dike to Mestre I leant out of the window to wave goodbye to the city of lagoons where once again I had found myself filled with joy and where I had had such good luck.

  We were all in a good mood, except for Khuen-Héderváry who seemed full of gloom. It turned out he was highly superstitious and that he thought it a bad omen that the agreement had not only been signed on 13 October but that the day had also been a Friday. He had done everything he could to have the agreements drawn up by 12 October, but there had not been time even though the drafting commission had worked without stop right up to midnight.

  The rest of us just laughed; but Khuen-Héderváry was soon proved right.

  A week later King Karl arrived at Sopron; and this second putsch nearly destroyed everything we had just achieved.

  Notes

  92. This is actually a mistake on Bánffy’s part. The Venice Municipio then occupied, and still does, the two twelfth-century Romanesque palaces of the Loredan and Farsetti families.

  93. His name was Richard Oppenheimer. This, however, is not the British Colonel Oppenheimer who figures in Chapter Eight of From My Memories.

  Chapter Six

  We did not arrive back in Budapest until after ten o’clock in the evening of that Saturday because we had to return by way of the Tyrol, Vienna and Bratislava.

  Even though it was so late there was a huge crowd waiting for us at the Western railway station. The platforms were jammed with people, and we were greeted with a speech by Ferenc Herczeg. There was such a multitude of people that our car was hardly able to move because of all those waving their hats and handkerchiefs in the air and trying to touch our hands. The next day the capital was filled with joy, as everyone understood that the Venice Agreement had been a great victory for us. On Monday Government-Commissioner Antal Sigray, Colonel Lehár, Ostenburg, Ranzenberger94 and Prónay, the commanding officer of the gendarmes, were summoned to the prime minister’s office to make preparations for the plebiscite and arrange for our gendarmerie to be under the authority of General Ferrario. We also had to discuss the most important question of the disbanding of the partisans without delay.

  We outlined what would be needed and established every detail of the actual deployment of our forces. There would be no need of so many gendarmes: at least four-fifths of their number could be recalled at once.

  It was mainly Bethlen who did the talking, because these matters came under his authority. As he went into all the details, I was looking at the others. Ranzenberger and Prónay listened in silence. Both of these were big strong men, Prónay with fists as large as horse’ hooves, while Ranzenberger was built like a prizefighter. Both were clearly proud of their physiques, and I noticed that, as they sat there listening but not speaking, again and again they would flex their muscles as if somehow they were both trying to impress upon the other how terrible each could be. It was difficult not to smile.

  I could not say the same of Ostenburg. His name had originally been Moravec but apparently he could not use this because of some ancient feud, and he had therefore chosen the better-sounding Ostenburg. He, like Prónay before he had become a gendarme, had once been notorious as the leader of one of those irregular bands that had wreaked so much havoc at the time of the White Terror. Moravec/Ostenburg just sat there lazily, occasionally nodding his head when Colonel Lehár said something.

  Lehár himself was very different from the others. He was a good-looking military type, intelligent, reserved: a man of few words.

  I had known Sigray for a long time. He was an old friend with whom I had often played polo. He was bold and witty, with a quick brain. As I silently watched these last two I had the impression, from what they said and asked, that they shared some secret idea, something that qualified their reactions. Although they agreed with everything, and accepted all the arrangements, they seemed to speak with some hesitation. They would say things like: ‘All right, if it turns out like that…’ or ‘Yes, that could be done.’ rather than ‘It will be done.’ or ‘We’ll do that.’

  Accordingly, when the discussions were over I sat down next to Sigray and asked for an unequivocal promise from him, as the man responsible for carrying out the government’s decisions, that I had his word of honour that he would faithfully execute the programme we had just agreed.

  For a moment Sigray seemed to hesitate. Then he said: ‘All right. I give my word of honour,’ and we shook hands.

  After the meeting the two of us shared a car back into town. We were both in a good humour and discussed the tasks ahead of us like friends not simply as official colleagues. Then Sigray suddenly threw in the remark: ‘If King Karl should happen to be there, I’ll put him on a train and send him to you.’ Astonished I then asked: ‘There’s no question of that, I hope?’ ‘No! No! But one never knows with him. I just meant that I wouldn’t bother with him myself but let you sort it out back here.’95

  Unfortunately, I did not take this casual remark seriously at the time. I just replied: ‘God forbid! But if he does turn up, it would be best for him not to stay there.’ If I had then thought to ask Sigray why he had mentioned this I might have then discovered, and thereby have better understood, what later occurred, but we let the subject drop, as he then started to talk about something to do with the conference, and the king was not mentioned again. It was as friends that we parted in front of the Ritz.

  It was either the same day or the next when Gustáv Gratz, our ambassador in Vienna, came to see me at my request. I had asked him to call because we had chosen him to represent Hungary at the economic conference due to be held at Portorosa on 21 October.

  When I entrusted him with this task he at first hesitated and then tried to get out of it, although without giving me any reasons for his reluctance. Finally he accepted.

  This also did not arouse my suspicions, because I imagined that as my predecessor as foreign minister, he might now resent taking orders from me. However, he did take the dossier from me before returning at once to Vienna since he would have to leave on 19 October.

  Some little time before, the prime minister had held some confidential talks with the Legitimists. As I have already written, these people had grown in strength ever since the king’s attempted putsch at Easter, and so Bethlen had thought it best, at least for the time being, to keep the matter in the air by arriving at some sort of compromise. He had therefore, with the agreement of Andrássy and his friends, worked out a declaration of which the substance was that in the present situation, and for some time to come, the government would be unable to consider the question of the ruler, but that he was convinced that the matter could not be resolved without involving the king96.

  Bethlen had agreed with the Andrássy Party that he would include this in the speech he was to give at Pécs on 20 October, when an important meeting had been planned to celebrate the return to Hungary of Baranya. As well as the head of government, several ministers and many members of parliament would also be there.

  I believe that these discussions had been held before we went to Venice, but I did not take part in them and only heard later about the agreement.

  I was not present either at Pécs, but stayed in Budapest.

  Apart from myself and Belitska, the defence minister, all the other members of the cabinet had accompanied Bethlen to the meeting.

  The twentieth of October was a Friday, just a week after the Venice conference. On that day I needed to telephone Sopron about some minor matter. In the late afternoon I called long distance and, after a long wait, our exchange told me that it was impossible to get through and that there must be some fault on the line.

  I then went to the prime minister’s residence to have dinner with my cousin, Margit Bethlen. From there, both before and after our meal, I tried again to call Sopron and, later, Szombathely. There was no reply from either.

  Now I began to be puzzled, so I asked Belitska to come over, and together we sat by the telephone from nine o’clock until eleven. Still no answe
r. Belitska grew tired of waiting and went home, but I began to be worried and felt that something must be wrong. Finally it occurred to me that perhaps the superintendent’s department at the post office could get through on their own line.

  So I asked for their help.

  Finally, at half past eleven I received an answer. They told me that they had got through, but only to Szombathely. A post office employee had answered the call. She had said just a few words before hanging up, just enough to pass on a rumour that King Karl had arrived in Sopron and that the Government-Commissioner had forbidden any communication with Budapest!

  The omen had been proved true.

  Bethlen returned early on Saturday morning. I had sent word to the station of the news from Sopron. Soon afterwards there was a conference of the government ministers and talks with Horthy. By noon reports had started coming in, not from Sopron itself but from Ovár and Györ, where there were those conscientious enough to send us what information they could. So as to give a coherent account of King Karl’s arrival I will tell what happened in chronological order even though it was only later that we learned some of the details.

  On 19 October King Karl presented himself at József Cziráky’s house at Dénesfa97. He arrived with Zita and Borovicsényi. Borovicsényi was a secretary at the embassy who, on his own request, had been granted leave from the foreign office to attend King Karl. The intention had been that he should send back regular reports as to what was happening in the exiled court. His duties should have included his trying to dissuade King Karl from attempting a second putsch and also letting us know of the King’s intentions. It was some time before we had realized that he was unsuitable for that post, as he had been seduced by the glamour of the ‘court’. It was probably clumsy of us to have sent him there. Borovicsényi had been Bethlen’s secretary in Vienna in the spring of 1919 and it had been part of his duties then to liase with the representatives of the Great Powers, which sometimes involved him in fairly important matters. As so often happens in revolutionary times, some quite mediocre characters find themselves in positions way beyond their real capacities simply because they happen at that time to be the only people available. Such persons are apt to fancy themselves geniuses, and this is what had happened to Borovicsényi. When normal times returned he had gone back to the foreign office in the same, or maybe only slightly higher, grade to which he would have been entitled by his years of service. Unfortunately, after his time in Vienna, he had thought himself worthy of better things and decided this was a backward step.

  In Budapest he was always discontented and always criticizing whatever was done, which is probably why Kálmán Kánya, the foreign minister’s deputy who dealt with staff matters, gave him leave.

  King Karl’s other companion was Queen Zita herself. It must have been a hard decision to leave her many children – for she gave birth nearly every year – in order to be at her husband’s side, but she did it even though she was once again pregnant. She was, of course, a strong-willed woman. When her husband had still been heir to the throne she had come to Kolozsvár; and as I had been assigned to her service I had several days in which to observe her at leisure. This little anecdote may help illuminate her character.

  One day it had been arranged that she should visit various places in the town including the Transylvanian Museum and several churches and convents. Archduke Friedrich, then commander-in-chief of the army, arrived on the same day and also wanted to see the sites of Kolozsvár. This immediately created difficulties because the Archduchess Zita declared she did not want to meet Archduke Friedrich anywhere. Accordingly, the day’s programme had entirely to be rescheduled, which was not easy in such a small place. The cars would have to make all sorts of detours so as not to meet on the road. It was a real headache, but in the end I thought I had worked it all out. If everyone kept strictly to the times allotted for each visit, then the two would not meet. But it was not to be. No matter how often I would say, with watch in hand, that it was time to go, we always stayed too long wherever we went. And so it happened that, although we managed to avoid an actual meeting, their cars did pass each other while going through the park. Zita was furious, and when angry she could be terrifying. She went very pale and her tongue darted in and out of her thin lips like a snake’s. ‘Ich hab ‘doch gesagt, dass ich ihn nicht sehen will!’ – ‘I have already said I will not meet him,’ she said over and over again, and her whole body trembled with hate.

  How this fierce hatred began, I am not sure but I suspect that it started when Queen Zita’s family, the Bourbon-Parmas, lived in Pozsony (now Bratislava) in somewhat less affluent circumstances than the immensely wealthy Archduke Friedrich nearby. Furthermore, it is possible that, as the Bourbon-Parmas did not rank very high on the royalty scale, they may at that time have been treated by Friedrich in a manner they found humiliating.

  One might also add that, just like Friedrich, the Bourbon-Parmas had a number of pretty daughters, and that when Archduke Karl first came to Pozsony (Bratislava) it was to woo one of the archduke’s daughters, but he fell in love with young Zita instead98.

  All this may have provided her with reasons for disliking Friedrich, but her furious rage must have been an inherited family characteristic. Her mother had been a Braganza princess, grandchild of that King Manuel of Portugal who, it is said, chased his own father from the throne after killing the king’s favourite minister with his own hands. Queen Zita, with her dark hair and olive skin, had inherited the Braganza looks; and it may be that on the Parma side there were some worrying hereditary traits, for among her half-brothers and sisters not a few had been either mad or dim-witted.

  However, when she wanted she could be most charming even though echoes of her iron will could be heard in every word she spoke. It seems likely that she came with her husband this time because, knowing his indecisive character and general softness, she was determined he should not again return to her unsuccessful and shamefaced.

  They arrived at Dénesfa by aeroplane, where many people just happened to be collected together, ostensibly for the christening of one of Count Cziráky’s children, a function which would provide an excellent reason for their presence there that day. Gyula Andrássy was stepfather to Cziráky’s wife, and György Pallavicini was his son-in-law. Countess Cziráky’s sister, the beautiful divorced Princess Kája Odescalchi, was there too, having only just returned from Lucerne, where King Karl and his family had been staying ever since the first putsch. She had been there several times before, presumably acting as messenger for the Legitimist Party. All the noble aristocrats taking part in the new putsch were either close relations of Andrássy or part of his intimate circle of friends. Sigray was the only exception. Analysing all these facts, and knowing all the relationships, it is not difficult to unravel the conspiracy. It was clear that everything had been planned in advance, and Andrássy’s later statement – that they had known nothing beforehand and that King Karl’s arrival had taken them all by surprise – was clearly untrue.

  Andrássy had previously discussed the statement that Bethlen was to make in Pécs and knew well in advance that this would be done on 20 October. Accordingly, King Karl’s arrival was planned so that he should already be in Sopron by the time Bethlen was due to speak. This is why it was forbidden for every telephone and telegraphic line to be used so that the prime minister could not be informed before he uttered those phrases concerning the king. The conspirators must have thought that by doing this they would so tie Bethlen’s hands that he would be prevented from ever afterwards acting against the king’s return.

  All the armed gendarmes in the Burgenland were under the command of Colonel Lehár, and as Lehár was their man it meant that his entire troop of some three to four hundred men99 was at their disposal. This would be enough to quell any resistance, and that is why the Burgenland had been chosen for launching the putsch.

  This is also why the christening of the Cziráky child had been postponed for months – a thing almost unheard
-of in Catholic families – so as to have the excuse of the ‘chance’ gathering at Dénesfa; this is why as early as mid-September they had sent Countess Aimée Pálffy, who had previously been lady-in-waiting to Queen Zita, to Pinkafö to win over Prónay, who until then had always been in favour of a free election to settle the question of the monarchy. Indeed, Prónay fell in love and married the beautiful Countess Aimée, but beautiful though she was, she could never persuade him be anything but neutral. It is true that he did not side with Horthy, but he did not side with the Legitimists either. It is possible that his appointment as Lajtabán (governor) of Lafnitz, which had made him almost an independent ruler there, had gone to his head, and that he too had appreciated, as England had done during the Boer War, the ‘splendid isolation100’ of his position.

  Further proof that all this had been planned in advance was the so-called ‘chance’ presence in the neighbourhood of István Rakovszky, who had been the most turbulent member of the former coalition government and was now Speaker of the House. I do not know if he had been in Györ or Magyarovár, but by Friday 20 October he was in Sopron and had already appointed Karl’s new prime minister.

  Gustáv Gratz also arrived from Vienna at this time, having abandoned his official assignment, and was at once given a ministerial appointment. Because of Gratz’s absence from Portorosa Hungary was left without a representative at a conference when matters of great importance to us were to be decided. It was also odd that Prince Louis Windischgrätz, King Karl’s intimate friend, an adventurer who was later to be so involved in the forged francs scandal, had left Switzerland at just this moment on his way to Slovensko by way of Prague. He too must have been on some Legitimist mission, for it seems likely, as this was afterwards much talked about, that he had convinced the unhappy king that the Czechoslovak army would rise and declare itself for the Habsburgs. However, Windischgrätz was detained in Prague and was allowed to go no farther. I later had a great deal of trouble to get him released, which did not prove easy101.