Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires

by Justin C. Vovk

  The train pulled into Wildpark Station near Potsdam during the predawn hours of April 19; the funeral would take place later that day. So many thousands of people had defied the orders of the German government and paid their respects en route that by the time the coffin reached Potsdam, it was completely covered in wreaths. When the passengers disembarked, they were met by Eitel-Fritz, Auwi, several dozen royals, and former imperial officials. Dr. Dryander recited prayers as each person came to pay his or her personal respects. Once the ceremony was over, the two military regiments that had been Dona’s personal units, the Pasewalker Cuirassiers and the Eighty-Sixth Schleswig-Holstein Infantry, formed an honor guard and stood watch over the coffin for the rest of the night.

  As dawn broke that morning, Augusta Victoria was buried. The funeral cortège was surrounded by hundreds of people in the procession from Wildpark Station to Dona’s final resting place: the Antique Temple, the great domed mausoleum built by Frederick the Great at Sanssouci Park. The pallbearers were four knights of the Order of the Black Eagle, the highest chivalric order in the old Prussian kingdom of which Dona and her mother-in-law, Vicky, were the only female members. Immediately behind the pallbearers came Oscar, Eitel-Fritz, Adalbert, and Auwi, along with Ina and Adelaide, all with heads bowed low. The New York Times wrote that “the most unparalleled crowds” came out to watch the spectacle. Estimates placed the number of spectators between two hundred thousand and three hundred thousand, all of whom stood in respectful silence as the procession moved through the streets. “So intense was the silence that you could hear the plashing of the fountains playing in front of the various palaces,” wrote one witness.1200 Sissy had been kept apprised of the entire spectacle. She wrote of how awe-inspiring the funeral was: “The crowd was immense, more than 200,000 appeared, perhaps a quarter of a million, at the funeral, reverently quiet. No one spoke aloud, there was no noise of any kind, no pushing and shoving. A veritable sea of flowers and wreaths had been laid all round the circular, ivy-covered edifice of the Temple of Antiquity. After the coffin had been placed in front of the altar in the mausoleum, my brothers took over the vigil, their swords drawn, while Pastor Dryander gave the funeral oration.”1201 Dryander praised “the ex-Empress as mother and woman, one who placed duty above everything else.”1202 The funeral service concluded when the pastor read an excerpt from the Gospels. Dona’s casket was then placed in the Antique Temple, next to that of her son Joachim.

  For Wilhelm, the loss of his wife affected him very deeply. The day of the funeral was understandably painful, but he was surrounded by stalwart companions, especially his eldest son, his daughter, and his brother Henry, who came to be at his side. Of the four imperial couples who ruled Germany, Austria-Hungary, Britain, and Russia, Wilhelm held the dubious distinction of being the only husband to outlive his wife. The weeks and months that followed Dona’s death were almost unbearable for him. “My loneliness was indescribable,” he recalled.1203 He was heard repeatedly telling those around him, “It will be quiet in the house,” and that Dona had been such “a splendid person!”1204 He later turned his wife’s bedroom into a shrine devoted to her memory, with a cross of flowers draped across her bed. Once a week, for the rest of his life, he would retire to his wife’s room, mourning her memory and missing her constant, unwavering support.

  At Villa Prangins in Switzerland, Charles was deeply disturbed by Nicholas Horthy’s growing political ambitions. In the months since the emperor’s departure from Budapest, the regent had tightened his grip on power by curtailing the powers of Hungary’s National Council and Parliament. He also began a campaign aimed at convincing the Allies to permanently forbid the Habsburgs from ever reclaiming the Hungarian throne.

  While her husband met with advisors and monarchists, Empress Zita came to the realization that if her family ever had a chance to return to politics, it would not be in Austria.

  She well remembered that in Hungary lay the family’s sole hope for return to royal rank and power, since, despite the Versailles dictum, Hungary remained constitutionally a kingdom without a king. Therefore Karl, Zita and the children must become “Magyarized,” not only in speech but also in habit and manner, against that day when a summons from Budapest would call them back. They must give up their Viennese dialect and study the difficult Magyar tongue.

  This imposed considerable hardship on the family circle where up to then only Austrian—German with a southern accent—had been spoken. But Zita was adamant in her resolve. Having attained a throne by marriage, she did not intend to lose it through sheer negligence.1205

  Zita took it upon herself to teach her six children how to be Hungarian, from the way they dressed to how they spoke. She even started translating their names into Hungarian. This made a lasting impression on Otto, who would develop a deep love and appreciation for Hungary and its people.

  The arrival of summer brought many changes for Zita’s family. Upon the emperor’s return to Prangins, the empress presented him with their seventh child, a daughter she had named Charlotte. Soon thereafter, the Swiss authorities, upset by Charles’s blatant political activity, revoked the family’s visas. There were few countries willing to harbor them. As Empress Zita recalled, “Norway and Denmark could not be considered, as the general feeling in both countries at the time was too hostile. For little Luxembourg we would have been too big a weight. Italy was impossible and Portugal too remote from the Emperor’s lands to be practicable.… From England and Sweden we received firm refusals; from Holland an evasive reply and from Spain only a long silence.” With exile abroad not an option, Charles was granted an emergency one-year lease on an old Swiss castle, Hertenstein, near Lucerne. As Zita noted, “we got an extension of our time in Switzerland, not at our own request, but at that of the Spanish and Hungarian Governments.”1206 For the fifth time in four years, the Habsburgs moved to a new home, but for the first time, a genuine sense of hopelessness crept into their lives. The children—who slept on spartan military cots for lack of better beds—spent their nights listening “in awe to the disconsolate conversations between King and Queen. Presently Otto and his brothers spoke solemnly of a ‘homelessness’ they did not understand, and of their own sacred obligation to protect Papa and Mama against a wicked world.” But in a strange way, their “grief itself served to knit the family more closely together.”1207

  By October, Charles and his legitimist supporters, encouraged by Empress Zita, felt the time was right for a second attempt to reclaim the Hungarian throne. But this time, Zita—who was now at the beginning of yet another pregnancy—insisted on taking an active role in the restoration bid. She planned most of the campaign herself, sending postcards (since letters from the family were forbidden by the Allies) to her brothers Sixtus and René asking for help. She also stated unequivocally that she would join her husband this time, despite her accouchement. When one of the family’s aides tried to dissuade her from going, she responded with her characteristic fortitude, “Do not try to change my mind. I am quite determined to fly as well. Nothing will happen to our children here in Switzerland, as they are in safe hands. But the Emperor faces danger and thus my duty as a wife becomes greater than my duty as a mother.… So do not even attempt to describe those dangers—that would only strengthen me in my decision.… I am the Queen of Hungary and if the King goes back there, my place is at his side.”1208

  After writing and sealing their wills, Charles and Zita left Hertenstein on the morning of October 20. The children were left in the care of their parents’ relatives from both the Bourbon and Habsburg families, but at first they did not know the truth.

  As part of the deception plan, the children had been told that their parents would be returning that same evening, so Otto and the others ran alongside the car as it left the drive[way] as though seeing them off for a family day trip. There was no return that evening nor during any of the evenings that followed. As the days grew into weeks and the mood among the castle staff darkened, it gradually became clear to the
older children that this had been no routine journey, nor was it to have a normal ending. Indeed, everything about this second—and fatally decisive—restoration bid was extraordinary.1209

  Using the names “Mr. and Mrs. Kovno,” the imperial couple traveled to an airfield at Dübendorf outside of Zurich where they chartered a six-seat Junker monoplane bound for Hungary. Never before had either of them ever sat in an airplane. “The Emperor and I were seated right at the back of the plane, behind the wings, and both of us felt somewhat giddy,” Zita recalled. “But neither that, nor the seriousness of the occasion, could take away the novelty of a first flight in such beautiful weather.”1210 As they flew past the Bavarian Alps and over Austria, Charles and Zita looked out the window longingly. “Descend!” Zita cried suddenly over Vienna. “Oh, let me see Schönbrunn.”1211 For their long voyage, the couple traveled with almost nothing in their possession. They had no money, luggage, passports, travel papers—nothing, except the hope of their restoration to the throne. After four hours and a near-death crash over Bavaria when the engine died, the tiny plane landed at Dénesfa in Hungary, the country estate of Count Cziraky, one of the emperor’s supporters. Years later, on the spot where Charles and Zita’s plane landed, Hungarian legitimists erected a chapel with the inscription, “He came to his own and his own received him not.”1212

  Unlike his first attempt in March, Charles had no intention of meeting with Nicholas Horthy. Instead, he and Zita headed directly for the town of Sopron, near the Austro-Hungarian border. When they arrived, the emperor immediately formed his own provisional government complete with prime minister and ministers of the interior, foreign affairs, finance and industry, defense, and education. On October 21, Charles and his supporters prepared a group of armored trains to ferry their army of two thousand soldiers to Budapest, 120 miles away. Zita looked on the date as a good portent. It was their tenth wedding anniversary.

  The journey to the capital was insufferably slow. Instead of plowing forward at full speed, the train plodded along, making stops at every village along the way so that the citizens could take the oath of loyalty to the king-emperor. Though it was touching to see so many people still loyal to Charles and Zita, this cost them precious time. On the first day alone, it took nearly ten hours to cross fifty miles. The time delay notwithstanding, everything seemed to be going swimmingly at first. Towns all along the train’s route joined the loyalist side. In Budapest, the army began deserting Horthy’s government en masse. Within two days, almost none of the regent’s generals were willing to lead an army against Charles, and enough soldiers from outside Budapest could not reach the city in time. Signs that the Horthy regime may be crumbling emerged when, out of desperation, one of his supporters formed a ragtag army of four hundred university students, who were told that it was the much-hated Czechs, not their own countrymen, who were en route to the capital.

  A Hungarian civil war seemed inevitable by October 23. Martial law was declared in Budapest. With Charles and his loyalists a mere twenty miles from the capital, the international community took action. The Allies declared they would never acknowledge a Habsburg restoration. The Little Entente—Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia—all announced that Charles’s return to the throne was a casus belli. They later signed an agreement to take any action necessary to prevent the Habsburgs from ever returning to the throne. Thomas Hohler, the British envoy to Hungary, sent a telegram to London stating that “all is lost” for the Horthy regime.1213 Holher later sent Horthy a message insisting that he “proclaim without delay the dethronisation [sic] of the ex-King Karl.”1214 When word reached Budapest that the Czechs were ready to invade the moment Charles was restored, the tide turned against the royalists. Riding on horseback in his black admiral’s uniform with gold tassels and glittering medals, the broad-faced Horthy made a dramatic speech to his small band of troops. He warned them that a restoration of Charles and Zita would revive the old empire, ending forever the notion of Hungarian independence.

  When Charles and Zita’s train arrived on the outskirts of Budapest, it came under heavy fire from the newly reenergized Hungarian army. Their move toward the city came to a halt when the troops under the emperor’s command were forced to fortify their position. Once the fighting began near the suburb of Budaörs, Horthy’s generals—the same ones who only days before refused to fight against their legitimate king—sprung into action. In what became known as the Battle of Budaörs, fourteen Hungarian soldiers and five loyalist officers were killed. By the end of the day, it was obvious to Zita that she and her husband would never reach Budapest. Determined never to shed any of his people’s blood, Charles agreed to a cease-fire with Horthy’s troops. “I’ll have no massacre of Hungarians,” he declared. “For or against me, they must be compelled to lay down arms.”1215 When negotiations started at a nearby train station the next morning, it was clear that Charles had lost. The regent demanded that he order his troops to stand down and surrender all equipment and weapons. In return, everyone except the emperor, empress, and their “agitators and ringleaders” would be granted amnesty. He also offered a personal guarantee for the imperial couple’s safety. The negotiations nearly exploded a few moments later into another firefight when a stray bullet whizzed past Charles’s ear and pierced the armor of the royal train. Believing they were betrayed, the emperor’s military commanders called for a “last stand” and “a fight to the last drop of blood.” But like Nicholas II, Charles would never consider plunging his country into a civil war. “I forbid any more fighting!” he declared. “It’s all quite senseless now.”1216 He ordered an immediate surrender of all his troops.

  Humiliated and dispirited, Charles and Zita withdrew from Budapest, dismissing the officers, ministers, and ordinary citizens who remained loyal to them. They relocated to the town of Tata, forty-three miles northwest of Budapest, at the home of their old friend Count Moric Esterhazy. On the evening of their arrival in Tata, Zita and Charles spent a tense, dismal night at Esterhazy’s palace; Count Moric kept a twenty-four-hour vigil, watching over them. All was still and calm until a group of marauders broke into the palace in the middle of the night in a fit of bloodlust, determined to kidnap Charles. Only the quick thinking of Esterhazy, who threw one of the attackers off a second-story balcony, saved the emperor’s life.

  In the days that followed, Admiral Nicholas Horthy reasserted his control over the country with a vengeance. At the end of October, Zita and Charles heard the shocking news that several of Hungary’s most respected royalists were arrested. They were equally stunned when armed guards arrived at the Esterhazy Palace a few days later with orders from Horthy to take them into military custody. They were held at the monastery at Tihány while the regent decided what to do with them. Charles and Zita were confined to two narrow rooms on the second floor. The monks at Tihány made every effort to make their stay as easy as possible by donating furniture and warm clothes. Their internment at Tihány showed unmistakable echoes of the last days of Tsarina Alexandra and her family. The emperor and empress were watched by a regiment of guards who were ordered to keep them under surveillance at all times. Indignant at the way he and his wife were being treated, Charles uncharacteristically goaded his captors, “Why don’t you finish your task? Why don’t you put me in chains?”1217

  The Allies were now determined to send Charles and Zita into permanent exile; returning to Switzerland was now out of the question. The Swiss authorities washed their hands of the emperor and his meddling. The decision was made to exile the couple off continental Europe to the Portuguese island of Madeira, though Charles and Zita were never told of their final destination until they were near Gibraltar.1218 After nearly two weeks of incarceration at Tihány, they left for the port of Baja, a Renaissance-era city with a small port on the Sugovica River, where a British ship would take them to the Danube and out to the Mediterranean. Groups of peasants waited all night in the bitter cold to say good-bye. Once there, the emperor and empress were treated to scenes of sma
ll devotion with bouquets of flowers. Zita had to ask permission from her escort to collect the flowers, which she was allowed to do. The chauffeur who had driven them said of the emperor, “Whatever people say, he’s a very pleasant gentleman.”1219 Zita boarded the British monitor Glow-Worm first, followed by her husband, who was dressed in a fur coat to guard against the cold morning.

  The Glow-Worm traveled down the Sugovica into the Danube. After a week, the ship made a rendezvous with the five-thousand-ton cruiser HMS Cardiff, onto which the emperor and empress were transferred for the remainder of their voyage. Zita wrote in her diary, “We transferred ship at eight in the evening for supper on the Cardiff. I was given the Admiral’s cabin, the Emperor that of the Commander.”1220 A British officer on board recalled seeing the couple for the first time: “a strong military escort lined the way from the train to the vessels. Then came the ex-King in Field Marshall’s uniform, and Queen Zita in a blue costume.… as he went on board the ex-King showed a cheerful countenance and was extremely gracious to everybody.” But the observer also added, “He set his face from the beginning against receiving any representative of the Hungarian government on the grounds that the government was in rebellion against him.”1221 During the voyage, they were told the ship would not be sent to retrieve their seven children back at Herteinstein. Zita nearly collapsed when she was told: “The children! Are we to be carried off without our children?”1222 A few days later, she was able to report, “Joyous news this afternoon: I received a telegram from Colonel Strutt in London that all is well with the children. Our first news of them for eighteen days.”1223 Zita’s pregnancy made the journey especially hard on her, and Charles suffered from seasickness. “The Emperor and I are both dreadfully sea-sick,” Zita wrote in her diary. “I go over twice to his cabin to see how he is – and pay dearly for it. The Emperor also comes twice over to me – and removes himself hastily.”1224