Kingdoms Fall - The Laxenburg Message (36 page)

           
“Frankly, James, no one has ever asked me that before. I have never even
considered it.”

           
“Then listen to me, David. As your friend, I am asking that you consider it.”

           
“Alright.”

“And in fairness, I will attempt to put more
faith in those who give us our orders.”

           
“That is why I came to find you, actually. We just received a wire from Dupont.
We are required to go to meet with him at Le Havre in two days’ time to receive
our next assignments from our superiors.”

           
“And who are they, these superiors, I wonder?”

           
“I only know that the top man is called
Control
; at least, he is
referred to as
C,
although I suppose that could be the first letter of
his name.”

           
The next morning, February 21, 1916, as the clouds broke and the Sun emerged
for first the time in weeks, a sound like thunder could be heard coming from
the east. The German bombardment of the French defensive forts around Verdun
had begun. Soon high explosive shells began to fall on the ancient city of
Verdun itself. For ten hours, the Germans shells fell without ceasing. That
afternoon, the German ground assault began. Thousands of elite Brandenburg
troops of the Germany army attacked the villages of Brabant and Beaumont to the
north of Verdun.

In the Bois des Caures near Beaumont, Colonel
Driant was in command of a network of trenches and bunkers that crossed the
forest. After weeks of rain, the trenches were cold and muddy and, in places,
flooded. Many of his soldiers had been killed and their bodies lay scattered
like leaves. Many of the trees in the forest had been felled by the intense
German bombardment and lay in jumbled heaps. By the time the German ground
assault began, only one fifth of Driant’s light infantry was left to defend his
position, but the soldiers loved Driant and stayed by his side.

           
His soldiers fought desperately against the Germans with only rifles, bayonets
and the new British “grenades,” and at the end of the first day, they had held
the Germans back from the French position in the woods. The next morning,
Driant planned to counterattack, but the Germans renewed their assault before
first light. The German infantry emerged from the morning mist, some carrying
gleaming metal tanks on their backs. The French saw to their horror that from
those metal tanks the Germans sprayed jets of flaming oil down into the French
trenches. The oil set the men guarding Driant’s right flank on fire, and the
screams of pain and horror echoed through the forest. Less than eighty men were
finally left to defend the Colonel’s command bunker against the onrushing
German battalions. With his revolver in hand, Colonel Driant joined his weary,
bloodied men in the muddy trench. “
You know well they can never touch me
!”
he shouted defiantly. But a moment later, Driant was shot in the head and fell
dead to the bottom of the trench. The
Poilus
looked on him in despair,
their hatred for the “Boche” burning in their hearts as they vowed to have
their revenge.

In Verdun, Gresham and Wilkins tossed their
bags into the back of a French lorry and climbed in behind. The German
artillery and infantry assaults on the forts north and east of Verdun continued
as the lorry pulled away and began its long slow descent down the
Voie
Sacrée
to the train station at Bar-Le-Duc, where Gresham and Wilkins would
embark for Le Havre. The battle for Verdun had only just begun.

O
n April 11, 1918, the French
Government issued an official note setting forth the text of a letter,
handwritten by the new Emperor of Austria-Hungary, Charles I, and communicated
on March 31, 1917 by his brother-in-law, Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma, to
French President Poincaré:

My
Dear Sixtus:

The
end of the third year of this war, which has brought so much mourning and grief
into the world, approaches. All the peoples of my empire are more closely
united than ever in the common determination to safeguard the integrity of the
monarchy at the cost even of the heaviest sacrifices.

Thanks
to their union, with the generous co-operation of all nationalities, my empire
and monarchy have succeeded in resisting the gravest assaults for nearly three
years. Nobody can question the military advantages secured by my troops,
particularly in the Balkans.

France,
on her side, has shown force, resistance, and dashing courage which are
magnificent. We all unreservedly admire the admirable bravery, which is
traditional to her army, and the spirit of sacrifice of the entire French
people.

Therefore
it is a special pleasure to me to note that, although for the moment
adversaries, no real divergence of views or aspirations separates many of my
empire from France, joined to that which prevails in the whole monarchy, will
forever avoid a return of the state of war, for which no responsibility can
fall on me.

With
this in mind, and to show in a definite manner the reality of these feelings, I
beg you to convey privately and unofficially to President Poincaré that I will
support by every means, and by exerting all my personal influence with my
allies, France's just claims regarding Alsace-Lorraine. Belgium should be
re-established in her sovereignty, [and] Serbia should be re-established . . .
.

Having
thus laid my ideas clearly before you, I would ask you in turn, after
consulting with these two powers, to lay before me the opinion first of France
and of England, with a view thus to preparing the ground for an understanding
on the basis of which official preliminary negotiations could be taken up and
reach a result satisfactory to all.

Hoping
that thus we will soon be able together to put a limit to the sufferings of so
many millions of men and families now plunged in sadness and anxiety, I beg to
assure you of my warmest and most brotherly affection.

CHARLES

           
Although this novel is a work of fiction, the story is inspired by historical
persons and incorporates true historical events. True historians, both professional
and amateur, will hopefully understand and appreciate how I have attempted to
weave those persons and events together into the narrative, albeit with some
artistic license.

Gavrilo Princip’s role in sparking the Great
War is often underappreciated today: To many, it is almost ridiculous that the
shooting of an aristocrat in Sarajevo could have set off the chain of events
that resulted in such a devastating global conflict (especially when one
considers that the assassination might only have been possible because the
Archduke’s driver made a wrong turn). Indeed, many factors likely made the war
inevitable. Yet Archduke Franz Ferdinand was more than just an Austrian
aristocrat. With Franz Joseph’s health deteriorating, Ferdinand was about to
become ruler of one of the oldest empires and most important dynasties in
Europe. His death was not only a threat to both specifically, but was symbolic
of the threat to the established monarchical power structure of Europe as a
whole.

           
The Mediterranean Expeditionary Force’s landing at Suvla Bay was intended to
break the deadlock at Gallipoli and failed in large measure because the
surprise attack was suspended for several days by commanding General Stopford.
During the delay, the Turkish army was able to draw up reinforcements,
rendering the initial plan to encircle the Turkish forces impossible. Among
those reinforcements was a brilliant young officer who later became the founder
of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The Tenth Manchester Regiment
did make tremendous progress advancing up the Kiretch Tepe ridge during the
first day of the Suvla Bay landing, only to be held back there by their
commanders.

The story of the Fifth Norfolk Battalion is the
stuff of myth. The battalion crossed the Anafarta plain and turned in the
direction of the small village, passing into the mist or smoke, and that was
the last anyone ever saw of them. Stories of the “Lost Sandringhams” have been
quite overblown as it appears in the end that the members of the battalion were
killed not far from the village; their remains were not located until some
years after the war. I have tried to treat the experiences of these men with
respect, although some of the details of these engagements were obviously
adjusted or invented for the sake of the story.

Eventually, the attack at Suvla Bay ground down
into another entrenched stalemate, and it became immediately clear to most that
the allies would never force their way through the Turkish lines and gain
Constantinople. General Sir Ian Hamilton was replaced by General Monro for the
sole purpose of evacuating the peninsula. The evacuation began in December
1915, only eight months after the first landings at Gallipoli. The last British
troops were taken off on January 9, 1916 and the Gallipoli campaign concluded.

An enemy officer from Damascus named Muhammed
Sharif al-Faruqi crossed the lines at Gallipoli to provide the British with
information about a secret society of Arab officers in Damascus. The society,
called
al-Ahd
, favored Arab independence from the Ottoman Turkish
Empire. Some historians have given al-Faruqi credit for inspiring, or at least
nurturing, Great Britain’s support for the Arab Revolt of 1916-1918, including
the efforts of T.E. Lawrence, known to most as “Lawrence of Arabia.”

While Enver Pasha is given the discredit of
having been one of the chief instigators of the Armenian Genocide, it is purely
speculative to assert that the massacre of Armenian civilians motivated the
Arabs to rebel. The total number of Armenians killed in the Ottoman Turkish
Empire during World War I is a matter of dispute, but a December, 15, 1915
article in the
New York Times
claimed that, as of that date, over one
million Armenians had been either deported or executed by the Turkish government.

It is unlikely that a British intelligence
agent played any role getting al-Faruqi safely across the lines at Gallipoli.
However, there were British intelligence officers on the island of Imbros
nearby, including a recent volunteer, Compton Mackenzie, who before the war was
a popular author residing at Oxford. Mackenzie eventually became the chief of
the Aegean branch of Great Britain’s fledgling Secret Intelligence Service (now
popularly referred to as “MI-6”), which was established in 1909 under the
direction of Mansfield Smith-Cumming. The S.I.S. at the time of the Great War
was still a fairly new organization and its structure and its place in the
government were still evolving. In the early years, it appears that most S.I.S.
agents (there were many women in the Service as well as men) were primarily
information collectors, although in many instances at the risk of their lives.
By World War II, the S.I.S. had agents who were more proactive on the
government’s behalf.

After the Great War, Mackenzie ended up in
Athens. He was an ardent “Venizelist,” that is, a proponent of the democratic
reforms in Greece advocated by Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos. The
political crisis in Greece in September and October 1915, brought about by the
impending Bulgarian invasion of Serbia, was a key initiator of the “National
Schism” that eventually resulted in King Constantine’s departure from the
throne in 1917 and chaos in Greece for decades.

The British and French landings at Salonika,
the city now known as Thessaloniki, were indeed too little and too late to stop
the occupation of Serbia by Austro-Hungarian, German and Bulgarian military
forces. One intrepid British Nurse, Flora Sandes, made her way to Serbia and
served the Serbian Red Cross at Prilep. She joined in the great retreat over
the mountains into Albania and, for her own protection, enlisted in the Serbian
army where she reached the rank of Sergeant Major (after the war she was
promoted to the rank of Captain). The retreat through Albania to Corfu itself
was planned by Premier Nikola Pashitch, Marshal Putnik, King Peter, and Prince
Regent Alexander at a conference at Petch in November 1915. Massive numbers of
Serbian civilians and soldiers died during the winter retreat, but the Serbian
army was saved and returned in 1916 to fight for Serbian independence until the
end of the war.

Archduke Charles, who became Emperor of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire when Franz Joseph died in November 1916, was
ill-prepared to take over as leader of the House of Hapsburg. He had not had
the same opportunities as Archduke Ferdinand to learn the role or duties of
Emperor nor to gain the insights of a grand statesman nor to form the political
alliances needed to rule such a complex multi-ethnic nation. Soon after
ascending the throne, he secretly proposed peace terms to end the war by
sending personal letters through his brother-in-law, Prince Sixtus of
Bourbon-Parma, to political leaders in France, Great Britain, Italy and perhaps
other nations. Two of the letters were made public by French Prime Minister
Clemenceau, and the “Sixtus Affair” became an embarrassment that disgraced the
new Hapsburg ruler. Soon after publication of the letter, Charles’ Imperial
Foreign Minister resigned and a political party was formed in Austria that was
dedicated to the removal of Emperor Charles from the throne. In addition, the
peace initiative seriously undermined Germany’s support for the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, whom the Kaiser thereafter regarded as an unreliable
ally. Emperor Charles relinquished the throne at the end of the war and died at
Madeira in 1922. In 1949, the Catholic Archdiocese of Vienna began a campaign
to canonize Charles as a Saint in the Roman Catholic Church, citing his efforts
to find a peaceful resolution to the Great War. In 2004, he was beatified by
Pope John Paul II, and his canonization is still under consideration by the
Vatican.