with the Serbs for removing his worst enemy, the Crown Prince; nor did Tisza relish a war in which a victorious Austria would swallow Serbia, thereby increasing the Empire's Slav population and reducing the Magyars to an even smaller minority. Still, nei ther Berchtold (whose main resource in a debate was a small, fine flourish of his cigarette-holder) nor the Calvinist Tisza (who kept quoting I Kings 2:33 on the dangers of bloody vengeance) were a match for General Conrad. For now Conrad's anti-Serb wrath was triumphant. His one tamer, the Crown Prince, lay dead. And the Crown Prince's very death by a Serb documented that Conrad had been right all along. There was a deadly snake hissing at Austria's heels, he now said; it would not do to slap at this serpent. Its skull must be crushed.
Conrad's argument would have overridden all others, had it not been for the German envoy in Vienna, Count von Tschirsky. Von Tschirsky acted in the spirit of his monarch's prudence vis-a-vis the Serbs, the prudence so laboriously inspired in the Kaiser by the late Crown Prince. On June 30, two days after Sarajevo, the German ambassador called on the Austrian Foreign Minister to warn'. with great emphasis and seriousness against hasty measures in settling accounts with Serbia.'
Berchtold made the most of these cautions when he went to his Emperor. Austria, he argued, could not afford to define its stance against Serbia without Berlin's backing. After all, Russia was Serbia's protector; Austria needed the weight of the German army-the world's most powerful-as counterpoise to the Tsar's endless regiments. Only Germany's full support would keep St. Petersburg from meddling. But, as the German ambassador had just shown, only a temperate Austria would earn such support.
The Emperor agreed: Conrad was not to do any Serb skullcrushing, at least not yet. Any decision of the kind must be made shoulder to shoulder with Berlin. Franz Joseph himself would elicit Kaiser Wilhelm's sympathies in a handwritten letter.
Of course Berchtold wanted the sympathies to be low-key rather than inflammatory. He knew that the Kaiser had lost a boon companion at Sarajevo-but that going to war over this loss would mean cancelling the Kaiser's delightful summer cruise to Scandinavia. Berchtold knew that the Kaiser was much better at attitudinizing gorgeously than at thinking cogently or feeling deeply. Being a bit like the Kaiser himself, Berchtold knew that His Majesty's emotions were unsteady, unsure, manipulable. In addressing such a man, Franz Joseph's letter must manipulate accurately.
Berchtold saw to it that in writing the Kaiser, Franz Joseph modulated his phrases a shade closer to restraint than to firmness. Franz Joseph's letter spoke of 'the terrible events at Sarajevo' and of the need to 'neutralize Serbia as a political power factor'; it did not, however, mention military action nor did it preclude purely diplomatic means.
The letter was a discreet invitation to answer circumspectly. All-Highest circumspection from Berlin would reinforce similar circumspection in Vienna; it would work toward an honorable peace rather than an onerous war; it would improve the chances for the Kaiser's Scandinavian cruise and, for Franz Joseph, the prospect of a cloudless sojourn at Bad Ischl.
Foreign Minister Count von Berchtold schemed well. His own chef du cabinet, Count Alexander Hoyos, outschemed him. Hoyos performed no echoing deeds before or after July 1914. But during that one month his intrigues were historic.
Berchtold had chosen Hoyos as his chief assistant because, as an aristocrat, he habitually preferred mode over matter. To the Foreign Minister, Hoyos's politics-as rabidly anti-Serb as General Conrad's-signified less than the Hoyos cachet: Originally of Spanish origin, the Hoyos clan had long been prominent in the inner sanctum of the Court. Indeed the name Hoyos runs scarlet through the final Habsburg decades. In 1889 Count Josef von Hoyos had been invited to Crown Prince Rudolf's hunting lodge at Mayerling on the morning of Rudolf's suicide; he had brought the news to Vienna. Twenty-five years later his young cousin Alexander Hoyos also became a messenger after an Archducal death. The later Hoyos, however, did more than report calamity. He sped it on its way.
On the afternoon of July 4, 1914, twelve hours after Franz Ferdinand's burial, a courier was about to carry Franz Joseph's letter to Berlin. Suddenly Alexander Hoyos volunteered to take it himself. Why? Because, Hoyos claimed, His Majesty's words (and their nuances) would be amplified by the fact that they traveled to Germany with a senior official of the Austrian Foreign Minister's office.
Such reasoning made sense to the Foreign Minister. He thought he was finessing General Conrad through his Emperor's letter to the Kaiser. Actually he was being finessed by General Conrad through Count Hoyos.
Hoyos arrived in Berlin on July 5, just after the German Foreign Minister Gottlieb von Jagow had left for his honeymoon in Lucerne. The timing, while accidental, served Hoyos well. As mere chef du cabinet he would have had no easy access to von Jagow, a personage of full ministerial rank in Berlin. But the German Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs who acted for the Minister in his absence was a different matter.
While the 'Wrinkled Gypsy' (the Kaiser's name for Szogyeny-Marich, Austria's aged ambassador to Germany) was at Potsdam Palace, presenting Franz Joseph's letter to the Kaiser, Hoyos sat in the Under Secretary's office 'interpreting the letter's unofficial essence.' He explained that Franz Jo seph's phrase 'neutralizing Serbia as a political power factor' meant nothing less than the detoxification of Serbia by full force. Hoyos also 'interpreted' an implication that, he said, Franz Joseph was too diplomatic to spell out, namely, that the time had come for Germany to prove herself a full-blooded and reliable ally at long last, and that furthermore, only Germany's outspoken willingness to place its unique might behind Austria's action would prevent reprisals by other powers. Berlin's courage would do more than buttress the brotherEmpire; it would ensure the peace of Europe.
The German Under Secretary listened and took fire. He telephoned the Kaiser's Chancellery at Potsdam Palace to ask, urgently, for an audience.
Next morning the Kaiser strolled the Palace gardens with his Chancellor and the Under Secretary. Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, the German Chancellor, 'Lanky Theo' (in the Kaiser's badinage), was eager to return to his country estate, wary of Balkan complications yet also too weary to interrogate the Under Secretary who was aflame with Hoyos's 'oral elaboration' of the letter from Vienna. The Chancellor let the Under Secretary spout.
And the Kaiser lent his ear. His stroll became a strut. He heard that between the lines Franz Joseph was appealing to his, Wilhelm's, valor as Germany's first soldier, to Wilhelm's chivalry as a Prussian knight who would not fail his venerable fellow-sovereign in Vienna. Then and there Wilhelm swore not to fail him. And since, by not failing him, Wilhelm at the same time was ensuring the peace of Europe, he could take off safely for his Scandinavian cruise.
On July 6, at 9:15 A.M., Wilhelm's train steamed for the port of Kiel where his yacht Hohenzollern rode anchor. 'This time,' he told the industrialist Gustav von Krupp at an on-board dinner that night, 'this time I haven't chickened out.'
Austria-Hungary saw proof of that the following day. Berchtold in Vienna and Tisza in Budapest received telegrams from Berlin. They were identical and both were signed by the Wrinkled Gypsy, the Habsburg ambassador to Germany. However, both had been drafted by the victorious Hoyos. 'His [German] Majesty,' the cable read, 'authorized me to convey to our august sovereign… that we may count on the full support of the German Reich. He quite understands that His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty [Franz Joseph], with his well-known love for peace, would find it hard to march into Serbia, but if we [Austrians] really recognize the necessity of military measures against Serbia, he [Kaiser Wilhelm] would deplore our not taking advantage of the present moment which is so favorable to us.'
This, of course, was drastically different from previous German advice on the subject. It almost mandated the occupation of Serbia. An astonished Berchtold began to telephone long distance. He discovered the turn of events in Berlin. In vain he reported to the Vienna cabinet that Hoyos had overstepped his authority. That Hoyos had not been empowered to meet substantively with the German Under Secretary. That Hoyos had expressed his personal opinions, not those of the Emperor or the Austrian government. That Hoyos's distorted account of the Habsburg position had distorted the Kaiser's response.
All in vain. All too late. Hoyos had maneuvered irrevocably well. The Kaiser himself had been recruited in General Conrad's cause. Who dared unrecruit the Kaiser-especially a Kaiser away on his Norse cruise? Who dared resist Conrad's imperative to crush the Serb skull, now that Prussia's spiked helmets were massing behind the General?
No one in Vienna. Wafflers in the cabinet, like Finance Minister Bilinski, came around to General Conrad's side. After a while even Tisza relented. And Berchtold? Berchtold caved in quickly, easily, even lithely. No deep convictions encumbered the Count. The wind had veered and he veered with it, making the movement into ballet.
