On 28th June 1914 the heir to Emperor
Franz Joseph – Franz Ferdinand – was assassinated by Serbian Nationals and
Austria-Hungary responded by declaring war on Serbia leading to the start of
the First World War on 28th July.
The central powers (including Germany, The Austro-Hungarian Empire and
the Ottoman Empire) and the Allied Powers (Serbia’s allies) declared war on
each other with a loss of more than nine million soldiers.
Emperor Franz Joseph died in November 1916 and he
was succeeded by his grand nephew Karl Franz Joseph who was twenty-nine years
old. He had been married in 1911 and
there were eight children of the marriage within the next decade. He ordered that there should be no banquets
held to mark his accession and Coronation.
In his first royal statement he called for an end to the fighti8ng and
the restoration of peace. He organised
soup kitchens and imposed the same food rationing within the palace as the
general population had to cope with. He
used palace carriages to deliver coal to the people of Vienna and established a
Ministry of Social Welfare to support war orphans, injured soldiers and widows
and to promote labour rights, jobs, unemployment relief and emigrant assistance
– the first world leader to establish such a system. When he came to power he issued a general
amnesty, granting freedom to the Empire’s political prisoners. He forbade the use of mustard gas on the
enemy and the abuse of prisoners and the use of submarine warfare and ordered
that all soldiers, prisoners-of-war and wounded must be treated humanely.
He was relentless in his work for peace. He began secret peace negotiations with the
Allied leaders of France and Britain.
Emperor Charles’ peace plan offered significant territorial gains to the
Allied nations – despite opposition from Germany and his own Empire. Though
those initiatives failed he drew great inspiration from the proposals put
forward by Pope Benedict XV in August 1917.
The Emperor wrote warmly to the Pope expressing gratitude for the Pope’s
plan and promising to do everything he could to make it happen. He wrote: ‘If the nations of the earth were
to enter with a desire for peace into negotiations with one another in the
sense of your Holiness’ proposal, then peace could blossom forth from
them’. Going beyond Pope Benedict’s
proposals, Emperor Charles also offered the region of Alsace-Lorraine to the
Allies.
Allied leaders saw these proposals of Charles as a
sign of weakness. In April 1918 the French Prime Minister, George Clemenceau,
made public the letters of Emperor Charles including his peace proposals and
his promise to support France in its claims over German held Alsace-Lorraine. Germany was outraged by Charles’ proposals
and secret negotiations. Faced with declining
health and with his position undermined he had now lost any hopes of attaining
peace and holding his Empire together.
Most of the political powers came to regard him as a naive and
ineffective leader. A French journalist,
Anatole France, wrote of him’ Emperor Karl is the only decent man to come out
of the war in a leadership position, yet he was a saint and no-one listened to
him. He sincerely wanted peace and
therefore was despised by the whole world.
It was a wonderful chance that was lost.’
November 11th, 1918 – the day the
Armistice was signed – Charles issued a statement relinquishing any claims to
administering the affairs of Austria and Hungary. He released all his officials from their
promises of loyalty to him but he did not relinquish his claim to be the
rightful Emperor. He wrote to the
Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna: ‘I did not abdicate and never will... I see my
manifesto of November 11th as the equivalent to a cheque which a
street thug has forced me to issue.’
In March 1919 he and his family left for
Switzerland. Eventually they were exiled
to the Island of Madeira where they endured privation and poverty. Charles died on 1st April
1922. His wife died there in 1989 at the
age of ninety-six. The family to which
Charles belonged – the Hapsburgs – had ruled Austria and Hungary and much more
beside for nearly seven hundred years.
Charles eldest son and heir, Otto Van Hapsburg finally renounced his
claims to the Hapsburg lands in 1961 allowing him to settle in Austria where he
died in 2012 aged ninety-nine. Once he
was asked who would win an Austria-Hungary football match; he asked ‘who are we
playing?’
I
acknowledge my indebtedness to an article in the Pastoral Review by Giles
Henderson
