betrayal of a small Slavic people. His willingness to go ahead indicated the importance he attached to opening the Strait.
Unfortunately for Izvolsky, before he was ready to betray the Bosnians, he himself was betrayed by Aehrenthal. Three weeks after the secret meeting, long before Izvolsky was ready to press Russia’s demand on Turkey, the Emperor Franz Joseph suddenly proclaimed the annexation of Bosnia to Austria-Hungary. Caught red- handed, without a thing to show for his betrayal, Izvolsky hurried to London and Paris, attempting to get support for a belated Russian move on the Strait. He failed. Nicholas, informed of the bargain after it had been secretly struck, was furious. “Brazen impudence gets away with anything,” he wrote to Marie. “The main culprit is Aehrenthal. He is simply a scoundrel. He made Izvolsky his dupe.” Serbia mobilized and called on Russia for aid. Russian troops began to assemble on the Austrian frontier.
At this point, Germany intervened to save her Austrian ally. The intervention was performed in the bluntest possible manner; the Kaiser himself later described it as appearing in “shining armor” beside his ally. The German government asked Izvolsky whether he was prepared to back down. “We expect a precise answer, yes or no. Any vague, complicated or ambiguous reply will be regarded as a refusal.” Izvolsky had no choice; Russia was unready for war. “If we are not attacked,” Nicholas wrote Marie, “of course we are not going to fight.” Later, he explained the situation to her more fully. “Germany,” he wrote, “told us we could help solve the difficulty by agreeing to the annexation, while if we refused the consequences might be very serious and hard to foretell. Once the matter had been put as definitely and unequivocally as that, there was nothing for it but to swallow one’s pride, give in, and agree.… But,” added the Tsar, “German action towards us has simply been brutal and we won’t forget it.”
Russia’s humiliation in the Bosnia crisis was spectacular. Sir Arthur Nicolson, then the British Ambassador to St. Petersburg, wrote, “In the recent history of Russia … there has never previously been a moment when the country has undergone such humiliation and, though Russia has had her troubles and trials both external and internal and has suffered defeats in the field, she has never, for apparently no valid reason, had to submit to the dictation of a foreign power.”
It was in the depths of this humiliation that Russian statesmen, generals and the Tsar himself had formed their resolve never to withdraw again from a similar challenge. From 1909 onward, the commander of Kiev military district in the Ukraine had standing orders to be ready within forty-eight hours to repel an invasion from the West. Izvolsky left his post in St. Petersburg to become Russian Ambassador to France, where vengefully he worked night and day to strengthen the alliance. In 1914, when war came, Alexander Izvolsky boasted happily in Paris, “This is my war! My war!”
Nicholas recognized that the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia was the feared second challenge to Russia. For years, he had faced the fact that Russia could not back down again. But against this resolution he had balanced a hope that the challenge would not come until Russia was ready.
In 1911, Nicholas stressed this point in an interview with his new Ambassador to Bulgaria, Nekliudov. “The Tsar,” Nekliudov later recalled, “after an intentional pause, stepping back and fixing me with a penetrating stare, said, ‘Listen to me, Nekliudov, do not for one instant lose sight of the fact that we cannot go to war. I do not wish for war; as a rule I shall do all in my power to preserve for my people the benefits of peace. But at this moment of all moments everything that might lead to war must be avoided. It would be out of the question for us to face a war for five or six years—in fact until 1917—although if the most vital interests and the honor of Russia were at stake we might, if it were absolutely necessary, accept a challenge in 1915; but not a moment sooner in any circumstances or under any pretext whatsoever.’ ”
With Russia’s unpreparedness in mind, the Tsar hoped desperately that this new crisis could be negotiated. He instructed Sazonov to play for time. Sazonov’s first move, accordingly, was a plea that the limit on the Austrian ultimatum be extended beyond forty-eight hours. Vienna, determined to let nothing prevent its destruction of Serbia, refused. Next, Sazonov attempted to persuade Austria’s ally Germany to mediate the Balkan quarrel. The German government refused, declaring that the matter was an issue solely between Austria and Serbia and that all other states, including Russia, should stand aside. Sazonov then asked Sir Edward Grey to mediate. Grey agreed, and proposed a conference of ambassadors in London. Sazanov hurriedly accepted Grey’s proposal, but the German government refused. Finally, in reply to Serbia’s appeals for aid, Sazonov advised the Serbian Premier, Pashich, to accept all the Austrian demands which did not actually compromise Serbian independence.
The Serbs, no less anxious to avoid a military showdown than their Russian patron, agreed, and replied to the Austrian ultimatum in extravagantly conciliatory terms. So humble was their reply, in fact, that it took Vienna entirely by surprise. Count Berchtold was aghast and didn’t know what to do with the document. Accordingly, for two days, July 26 and July 27, he hid it. When the German Ambassador in Vienna asked to see it, he was told that he would have to wait because of the pile-up of paperwork in the Austrian Foreign Ministry.
By July 28, however, Berchtold and his colleagues had reached a decision. Austria, rejecting the Serb reply, issued a declaration of war. At 5 a.m. the following morning, July 29, Austro-Hungarian artillery began hurling shells across the Danube into Belgrade, the Serbian capital. The bombardment continued all day, in disregard of the white flags fluttering from Belgrade rooftops. In St. Petersburg, Tsar Nicholas gave the order to mobilize all Russian military districts along the Austrian frontier.
How fast and how far the war was to spread now depended on the reaction of Germany. Despite the urgent demands of the Russian General Staff for general mobilization, Nicholas had permitted only partial mobilization against Austria. The long frontier with Germany running through Poland and East Prussia still slumbered in peace. The Tsar believed, as he had said to Paleologue, that the Kaiser did not want war.
Predictably, the Kaiser’s views had changed several times during the crisis. He first assumed that the cringing Slavs could be bullied into backing down before the shining Teutons. In October 1913, William had spoken of just such a situation to Count Berchtold, the Austrian Chancellor: “If His Majesty the Emperor Franz Joseph makes a demand, the Serbian government must obey,” said William. “If not, Belgrade must be bombarded and occupied until his wish is fulfilled. And rest assured that I am behind you and ready to draw the sword wherever your action requires.”
As he spoke, William rested his hand on the hilt of his ceremonial sword. Berchtold was suitably impressed. After Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, the Kaiser’s militancy appeared to increase. “Now or never,” he scribbled on the margin of a telegram from Vienna. “It is time to settle accounts with the Serbs and the sooner the better.” “We could reckon on Germany’s full support,” cabled Count Szogyeny, the Austrian Ambassador in Berlin, after a talk with the Kaiser. “His Majesty [the Kaiser] said … Austria must judge what is to be done to clear up her relations with Serbia. Whatever Austria’s decision may turn out to be, Austria can count with certainty upon it that Germany will stand by her friend and ally.” Having given his pledge, William cheerfully left for Kiel to board the
Wreathed in his own bluster, the Kaiser miscalculated the reactions of each of Germany’s three major antagonists. According to Sazonov’s estimate: “The authorities in Berlin were not convinced that Russia would care to risk a war in order to preserve her position in the Balkans.… In any case, they scarcely believed her capable of carrying on a war. Nor did they entertain a very high opinion of France as a military power. As for the possibility of England siding with their enemies, no one in Germany ever thought of it; the warnings of the German Ambassador in London, Prince Lichnowsky, were derided, and he was indulgently referred to as ‘good old Lichnowsky’ at the Berlin Foreign Office.”
The wisdom of presenting Austria-Hungary with exactly this kind of
“Austria is now going to come to a reckoning with Serbia.… We have not at the present time forced Austria to her decision. But neither should we attempt to stay her hand. If we should do that, Austria would have the right to reproach us with having deprived her of her last chance of political rehabilitation. And then the process of her wasting away and of her internal decay would be still further accelerated. Her standing in the Balkans would be gone forever.… The maintenance of Austria, and in fact of the most powerful Austria possible is a necessity for us.… That she cannot be maintained forever I willingly admit. But in the meanwhile we may be able to arrange
