July 1914: Countdown to War (35 page)

Just at the moment when Russia’s tsar was demanding that the kaiser do what he could to stop his Austrian ally from “going too far,” Willy was promising Nicky that he was “exerting his utmost influence” to do just that. Although neither sovereign was a man of strong will or keen intelligence, each did possess moral imagination. Both men clearly felt a grave responsibility about unleashing a war sure to kill thousands, if not millions, of their subjects. As that war loomed ever more closely on the horizon, Willy and Nicky were searching desperately for a way out. Were their sovereign authority as absolute in practice as it appeared on paper, they might even have succeeded.

It was not. Bethmann, as we have seen, undermined his sovereign’s desire to mediate in Vienna by reconfiguring the kaiser’s
“Halt in Belgrade” proposal into a form sure to be rejected by the Russians. In Petersburg, meanwhile, Sazonov and the military chiefs were proceeding over (or around) the tsar’s head with important decisions that would render his personal mediation efforts dead on arrival. In doing so they had strong French encouragement. Poincaré and Viviani were still at sea on Tuesday, but in their absence France’s ambassador, along with her army chief of staff, General Joffre, and her war minister, Adolphe Messimy, had begun to take matters into their own hands. On Tuesday, even as crowds were milling about Paris awaiting the Mme Caillaux verdict, Russia’s military attaché to France reported to Petersburg that Joffre and Messimy had assured him of France’s readiness to fulfill her alliance obligations. Joffre himself requested (via the Quai d’Orsay) that Ambassador Paléologue “endeavor through all possible means to make sure that, if hostilities broke out,
the Government of St. Petersburg would immediately take the offensive in East Prussia
, as had been agreed upon in our conventions.” Messimy wired similar instructions to Petersburg, “urg[ing] with all my might that, in spite of the slowness of Russia’s mobilization, the tsar’s armies should as soon as possible take the offensive in East Prussia.” Just as then-premier Gaston Doumergue had instructed Paléologue upon his appointment to Petersburg, “the safety of France will depend on the
energy and promptness
with which
we shall know how to push them into the fight
.” It was now up to Paléologue to start pushing.
²⁹

Paléologue did not disappoint Joffre and Messimy. Shortly after Sazonov learned of Austria’s declaration of war at four
PM
Tuesday, Paléologue had returned to Chorister’s Bridge for another audience with the foreign minister. While Paléologue does not discuss this second meeting in his memoirs, the logbook of the Russian Foreign Ministry kept by Schilling confirms that it took place. We do not know everything that was said between the two men, but Schilling’s log gives a capsule summary. “On
the instructions of his Government,” the entry reads, “the French Ambassador acquainted the Foreign Minister with the complete readiness of France to fulfill her obligations as an ally in the case of necessity.”
³⁰

Schilling’s logbook leaves unstated on whose “instructions” this critical declaration was given—they may have been Joffre’s, Messimy’s, or even Poincaré’s, issued informally while he was still in Petersburg. Almost certainly they did not come from Viviani. The log entry also leaves unclear the context, as there is no mention of Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia or of Russia’s response.

There is no doubting, however, the critical nature of Paléologue’s blanket declaration of support for Russia on 28 July. Its significance was confirmed in a telegram Sazonov sent the next morning to Izvolsky in Paris (copied to London, Vienna, Rome, and Berlin), in which Russia’s foreign minister asked his ambassador to pass on “our sincere gratitude for the declaration, which the French ambassador made to me in his government’s name, that we may count in full measure on the support of France under the alliance. In the present circumstances,” Sazonov continued, “this declaration is of especial value to us.”
³¹

Buoyed by Paléologue’s declaration of France’s unconditional support in the wake of Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia, Sazonov moved decisively to speed up Russia’s war preparations. His first stop was Peterhof Palace, where Nicholas II was waiting for him—in order, the tsar thought, to discuss his Hague arbitration idea. At about six
PM
Tuesday, Sazonov informed Russia’s sovereign that Austria had declared war on Serbia. He also requested the tsar’s permission to have Chief of Staff Yanushkevitch draw up two mobilization
ukases
for the Russian army, one for partial and the other for general.

The tsar consented—or at least, so Sazonov claimed Russia’s sovereign had done when he ordered Yanushkevitch to draw up the orders. It may be that the tsar agreed to have the
orders drawn up on the understanding that they would not take effect until he signed them. Whether or not the tsar fully understood what he had consented to, Yanushkevitch promptly drew up two mobilization
ukases
.
³²
Interestingly, the principal documents we have from Tuesday night both mention general, not partial, mobilization, which suggests that Sazonov and Yanushkevitch were already leaning that way. Paléologue, too, was likely in the loop, as the first such document is his own telegram sent off at 7:35
PM
, in which he informed Paris—as if hypothetically—that “in case of general mobilization, two officers will be delegated to be sent to my embassy.” He then named his preferences (Messrs. de Ridder and de Sèze) and suggested that they proceed to Russia via Stockholm, rather than by the more direct route via Germany.
³³
That Russia’s impending general mobilization was more than hypothetical is suggested in a telegram dispatched later Tuesday night by Yanushkevitch to the commanders of all Russia’s military districts, informing them that “30 July will be proclaimed the first day of our general mobilization. The proclamation will follow by regulation telegram.”
³⁴

Even as Willy and Nicky were exchanging their “peace” telegrams, Russia had begun the countdown to European war. The Austrian noose on German necks was now taut. Russia’s generals (although not yet her sovereign) had even determined the date of execution.

WEDNESDAY, 29 JULY

J
UST AFTER MIDNIGHT
on Wednesday, 29 July, Britain’s First Fleet left Portland harbor, heading south at first before proceeding along a “middle Channel course” to the Straits of Dover. The squadrons, First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill had instructed, were “to pass through the Straits without lights during the night and to pass outside the shoals on their way north.” As Churchill himself imagined the scene as the fleet steamed slowly out of harbor, “scores of gigantic castles of steel wending their way across the misty, shining sea, like giants bowed in anxious thought. We may picture them again as darkness fell, eighteen miles of warships running at high speed and in absolute blackness through the Narrow Straits, bearing with them into the waters of the North the safeguard of considerable affairs.”
¹

On the other side of the English channel, at eight
AM
the battleship
France
sighted land after more than five days at sea, interrupted only briefly by stopovers at Stockholm and Christiana (Oslo). Prime Minister Viviani, who had been reluctant to go to
Russia in the first place, was ecstatic. “At last!” he remarked, “a twinkling light beneath a roof, a house, dockyards, masts, a gradually emerging skyline—Dunkirk!”
²

After their ship laid anchor in the harbor, Viviani and President Poincaré were transferred onto a smaller steamer and piloted into port, where they were surprised by crowds shouting, “
Vive la France!
” and “
Vive Poincaré!
” While he ordinarily enjoyed such displays of patriotism, Poincaré was surprised by the intensity of the public mood. “What struck me,” he recalled later, “was that many people here seem to think war imminent.” Crowds showed up at every station along the three-hour train trip to Paris and at many points in between. “We saw the inhabitants massed on both sides of the way,” he observed, “shouting without ceasing the same public greetings, the same cheers, the same vows of peace, the same promises of courage and res-ignation.”
³
If war would come, it seemed that the French people were ready, whether or not France’s government had decided what to do.

Poincaré and Viviani were a bit behind events because of the vagaries of wireless communication at sea. There remains some controversy as to whether the German Admiralty deliberately jammed the
France
’s signals while it was off Germany’s Baltic coast, as the French always claimed.
*
⁴
Poor signal strength, along with interference among wireless messages transmitted at similar frequencies across well-trafficked sea channels, may account for the difficulties of reception aboard the
France
. Still, it is clear that not all messages from Paris and Petersburg got through. On Tuesday evening, 28 July, Ambassador Paléologue had told Foreign Minister Sazonov that he could not reach the
France
—with the corollary that, because his superiors were out of touch, “they cannot send me any instructions.” He thus left the Russians in doubt about whether his endorsement of the acceleration of Russia’s mobilization measures that day (“the complete readiness of France to fulfill her obligations as an ally”) really had been given “on the instructions of his Government,” as he told Sazonov.
⁵
To this day, we do not know for sure whether Paléologue was acting on orders from his president or premier, or exceeding them.

Almost certainly, Poincaré and Viviani knew less than did their ambassador in Petersburg when they returned to France. Still, they knew more than they made out in postwar memoirs. Viviani’s latest communication from on board the
France
to Bienvenu-Martin, acting director of the Quai d’Orsay, on Tuesday, had taken up British foreign secretary Grey’s three-days-old proposal for a four-power conference, not the more urgent recent ones for direct Austrian-Russian talks on the basis of Serbia’s reply.
⁶
This suggests he was running behind on mediation efforts. Poincaré and Viviani probably had not heard yet of Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia on Tuesday (although they would learn of it after docking at Dunkirk), nor of the drawing up of mobilization
ukases
in Petersburg on Tuesday night. They may or may not have known about the inauguration of Russia’s Period Preparatory to War: the Paléologue and Laguiche telegrams discussing it were sent directly to Paris, and there is no proof that these messages ever reached the
France
.

Still, as against their later claims to have known nothing of Russian war preparations, we can confirm that Viviani was informed by Bienvenu-Martin on Sunday, 26 July, that Russia planned to “partially mobilize” thirteen army corps against Vienna “if Austria were to bring armed pressure to bear on Serbia,” and that “Russian public opinion affirms its determination not to let Serbia be crushed.”
⁷
In response to this telegram, Viviani
had instructed Paléologue, on Monday, 27 July, to tell Sazonov that France was “ready . . . wholeheartedly to second the action of the [Russian] imperial government” (although Viviani, significantly, had inserted the clause “in the interests of general peace” to the original Quai d’Orsay draft, in between “ready” and “wholeheartedly”).
⁸
Neither Viviani nor Poincaré was up on all the latest developments. But they had left Russia in no doubt as to French resolve and support.

On the train to Paris, Poincaré and Viviani were further debriefed by Abel Ferry, the French undersecretary of state, who had assembled “an enormous pile of telegrams” for them. They learned, among other things, that French Algeria and Morocco had been mobilized: a hundred thousand “crack troops” were assembling on the coast, ready to be shipped to the French mainland. French and other European civilians were being evacuated into the African interior for safety. Even Poincaré was taken aback by this news. Still, Ferry did not know everything. He informed the president neither of Russia’s far-reaching Period Preparatory to War, underway by now for four days, nor that Joffre, Messimy, and Paléologue had urged the Russians to go further still.
⁹

Poincaré would not remain ignorant for long. Messimy met him as soon as the president’s train pulled into the capital. “Monsieur le Président,” the minister of war said by way of greeting, “you are going to see Paris; it is magnificent.” Indeed it was. Only the previous day the Caillaux trial had concluded, after dividing the French public for months. It was a kind of exorcism: France’s inner demons seemed to have dissolved into a nationalist frenzy against the Germans. “As I came out of the station,” Poincaré recalled,

For a man himself involved in the affair on the side of the nationalist publisher murdered by Caillaux’s wife, who had legitimate concerns that Russian subsidies routed via Ambassador Izvolsky to his presidential campaign in 1913 would be exposed, Poincaré saw the outpouring of patriotism as something of a personal vindication.