Moonlight Page 3
Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie drive into the town in a convertible sports car, a Gräf & Stift Tourer, the third in a convoy of four cars. At Franz Ferdinand’s request the soft top of the car has been put down so that the people can see him and he can see the sights (wince). Franz Ferdinand and Sophie sit side by side and Potiorek sits opposite them. In front with the driver is Count Harrach, head of the motor corps. The motorcade’s first stop on the pre-announced (wince) programme is for a brief inspection of a military barracks. According to the programme, at 10:00 a.m., the motorcade is to leave the barracks for the town hall by way of Appel Quay (wince). As the car goes along the quay the Archduke asks for the car to be driven slowly (wince) so that he can have a good look around, receiving some cheers from the thin crowds.
As they approach the central police station a young man called Nedeljko Čabrinović steps out of the now-thickening crowds and throws a hand grenade directly at the car (oh my God!). The driver of the Archduke’s car, seeing a black object flying towards them, accelerates (well done). As a result, the bomb bounces off the folded-back convertible cover into the street. Its ten second delay detonator causes it to explode under the wheel of the next car, putting it out of action. Duchess Sophie tells the driver to ‘Drive on quickly.’ Franz Ferdinand says, very calmly, ‘I always thought something like this might happen.’ The bomb leaves a small crater in the road and wounds the occupants of the car under which it exploded. It also injures members of the watching crowd – in all, a total of twenty people. The Archduke’s driver immediately increases speed in order to get the Archduke and Duchess to the comparative safety of the town hall. The Archduke tells the driver to stop while he checks on casualties. This, despite the fact that the Duchess’s neck had been grazed and that stopping makes the car a sitting duck for any further attacks (wince).
Meanwhile, Čabrinović swallows a cyanide capsule and jumps into the River Miljacka. It is summer, remember – a hot summer in the Balkans. As a result, the river is only five inches deep – something Čabrinović really should have checked out beforehand. In addition, his cyanide capsule is past its best-by date so that it only makes him vomit. Police drag him from the river and he is severely beaten by the crowd before being taken into custody.
The Archduke arrives safely at the town hall. As you can imagine, he is very angry. ‘I come here on a visit and I get bombs thrown at me. It’s outrageous,’ he says to the mayor. As best he can, the mayor makes his speech of welcome. Franz Ferdinand’s own speech, spattered with his aide-de-camp’s blood because it had been in the damaged car, is brought to him. He reads it in his thin, high-pitched voice.
Officials and members of the Archduke’s party discuss what to do next. Franz Ferdinand and Sophie give up their planned programme in favour of visiting the wounded from the bombing at the hospital. Count Harrach takes up a protective position on the left-hand running board of Franz Ferdinand’s car, a drawn sword in his hand. The Count remarks that he is astonished there is no military guard to protect the heir to the throne, no soldiers lining the streets; this, despite the fact that there are two Austrian Army corps in the vicinity for the manoeuvres (wince).
‘Do you think Sarajevo is full of assassins?’ Potiorek replies, dismissively.
(Unbeknown to himself, Potiorek has hit the nail on the head. In all there is a team of seven assassins in Sarajevo that day. There are only a hundred and twenty policemen and no soldiers.)
Potiorek decides that the royal car should travel straight along the Appel Quay to the Sarajevo Hospital. However, he forgets to inform the driver (wince). On the way to the hospital, the royal car takes a right turn into Franz Josef Strasse. At this, Potiorek shouts to the driver that he is making a mistake.
While all of this is going on, another member of the assassination team, Gavrilo Princip is in a deep depression. Having decided that the whole assassination thing has been a fiasco, he has gone to a nearby food shop, Moritz Schiller’s delicatessen, to cheer himself up (in general, probably a good thing to do if you’re having a bad day). As he emerges he is astonished to see Franz Ferdinand’s car drive past, having taken the wrong turn.
The driver, alerted by Potiorek and realising the mistake, brakes sharply and stops the car (wince). Then he begins to back up (biggest wince of all). In doing so the engine stalls and the gears lock (oh no).
At this point Princip seizes his opportunity and draws a Browning automatic pistol. A nearby policeman spots him and tries to grab his arm but Princip pistol whips him. (How the history of Europe would have been different had that policeman succeeded.) Then, running to within four of five yards of the royal car, Princip fires two shots into it. Blood gushes from the Archduke’s mouth onto his blue uniform and onto Count Harrach’s right cheek. As the Archduke pulls out his handkerchief to wipe the blood away from his mouth, the Duchess cries out to him, ‘In Heaven’s name, what has happened to you?’ With that she slides off the seat and lies on the floor of the car, with her face between his knees.
Count Harrach thinks she has fainted with fright. Then he hears the Archduke say, ‘Sophie, Sophie, don’t die. Live for the children!’ The driver speeds towards the Konak, the government building in the Bistrik district. Count Harrach seizes the Archduke by the collar of his uniform, to stop his head from dropping forward and asks him if he is in great pain. He answers, ‘It’s nothing!’ His face begins to contort somewhat but he goes on repeating, six or seven times, ever more faintly as he gradually loses consciousness, ‘It’s nothing!’ Then, after a short pause, there is a violent choking sound caused by the bleeding. It has stopped by the time they reach the Konak.
The royal couple are carried to a room in the Konak. It is a room next door to the one in which the champagne for lunch is chilling. Sophie is found to be dead on arrival – she has been shot in the stomach. Franz Ferdinand dies ten minutes later from a wound to the jugular vein. Princip is arrested and will end his days in Terezin, a place that will become infamous for entirely different reasons thirty years later.
Things will not go well for Potiorek after this either. After Sarajevo he will lead the Austrian Army in two textbook military disasters at the Battles of Cer and Kolubara. After this he will be retired, a decision which will reportedly make him suicidal. Still, he’ll be in a lot better shape than the 225,000 men of the Austrian Army under his command – half its entire strength – killed, wounded or captured on his watch.
But never mind that now because what matters is that the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife is the event that kicks off the Group of Death.
But what’s the Group of Death, you ask, possibly uninterestedin-sport reader? Read on.
Chapter 4
The Group of Death
As well as being the story of Clara and Henry, Grey and (briefly) the unfortunate Archduke and his wife Sophie, and – as we shall see shortly – some other people, this book is the story of the Group of Death. It is the story of five teams, Britain, France, Germany, Austria and Russia – the Big Five – who played in the Group of Death and how all of them lost.
Ordinarily, the Group of Death is a term used to describe a collection of teams whose quality is exceptional and where qualification from the group will be difficult. In this case, all the teams were exceptional and all of them gave one hundred and fifty per cent. However none of them was particularly well-managed and none of them qualified.
Nobody ever wants to play in a Group of Death. The matches will be hard and qualification doubtful. So it was with this one. All of the matches turned out to be much harder than anybody could ever have believed possible. And who could have anticipated that nobody would qualify?
But wasn’t there a draw, I hear you ask, to decide who would play whom in the Group of Death?
No, there wasn’t. The way to think about it is that the assassination of the Archduke took the place of a draw. And the result was that the first fixture to be played would be between Austria and Serbia.
Between Austria and who
?
Serbia.
Serbia. Who’s Serbia? You said – Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Russia. Who’s Serbia? And how can they play? They’re not even in the Group of Death.
Well, actually – they are.
They are?
They are, poor, confused reader. I’m sorry. I should explain. There is a sixth team in the Group of Death – Serbia. The reason I haven’t mentioned them up until now is that Serbia is a tiny country. In terms of the Group of Death it is the Faroe Islands of its day. Britain, France, Germany, Austria and Russia are all huge countries with great wealth and enormous empires. Serbia is minute. Yet Serbia will play a key part in the Group of Death. It will lose its first game within minutes of starting. Unbelievably, it will win its second one. And that win will have profound implications for the Group as a whole.
The reason Serbia got into the Group of Death at all is this: Austria believes that the Serbians murdered the Archduke. In this, they are more completely spot-on than they could ever have imagined. The people who killed the Archduke are Serbians, but not some disaffected young men or fanatics or nutters. No, they received their orders and weapons from some people very high up in the Serbian military and political establishment. This is because these higher-ups wanted a Serbia independent of Austria, which it wasn’t at the time.
So now Austria demands a match with Serbia. In fact, not that it will make any difference, the match will be Serbia versus Austria – a home match for the Serbs. It will be played in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, at 6 p.m. on Friday, 24 July. Shortly after that, the main group will begin.
On that sunny summer’s afternoon long ago, Austria completely held the moral high ground. The heir to its throne had been murdered. So had his wife. Any country would quite rightly have been justified in considering this an outrage. It was the Pearl Harbour of its time. Austria had the sympathy of the world. And then, just as with George W. Bush after 9/11, Austria would proceed to throw away this moral advantage entirely.
But let’s say no more about that for now. After our visit to exotic Sarajevo – even if under rather unfortunate circumstances – where shall we go next? Well, perhaps now that you know about the Group of Death, well-informed reader, and remembering that the Archduke and his beloved Sophie lie cold in Sarajevo, maybe we should next make the acquaintance of all of the managers in the Group of Death and find out what they think about this turn of events. It’s time to return to London.
Chapter 5
Sunday 28 June 1914
The telegram, when it comes, is delivered by his driver.
Whenever Sir Edward comes down to the cottage, the Foreign Office knows it can contact him via the post office at Itchen Abbas. The post office in turn knows that if a message comes in for Sir Edward, his driver will be around the village somewhere – most likely in the pub. The system all goes like clockwork this afternoon and when Sir Edward hears his driver coming down from the cottage he knows there must be something serious afoot.
Sir Edward is on his canvas folding camp seat beside the River Itchen. He has moved several times since we left him but there is no problem finding him. Four shiny, lifeless trout lie on the grass beside him. The sun is hot – his guess would be that it’s about seventy-four degrees – and there is a gentle, feathery breeze. He hears a bird singing behind him up near the cottage and recognises it as a blackcap. The sound is not continuous though, but rather broken up – singing, then quiet, then singing again. He wonders if the bird is still caring for its young.
Judging by the position of the sun, Sir Edward reckons it to be about five o’clock or so. He would have been getting ready to go soon anyway, so he doesn’t feel too bad as he tears open the envelope and unfolds the paper. It reads:
Consul Jones to Sir Edward Grey.
Serajevo,
June 28, 1914.
According to news received here heir apparent and his consort assassinated this morning by means of an explosive nature.
‘Oh dear,’ he says, re-folding the paper and putting it into his trouser pocket.
The driver says, ‘Back to London, Sir Edward?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ he replies.
On the way back to London, Sir Edward ponders what has happened, but he doesn’t dwell long on the subject. There is always some kind of trouble in the Balkans. And there will probably be more as a result of this. There’ll be plenty of posturing. Maybe some armies will march. There may even be some fighting. But just as in the Balkan Crisis of six years ago, it shouldn’t be anything that can’t ultimately be sorted out at the conference table.
So, if the question we began with is, ‘What does Sir Edward Grey think about the Group of Death?’, the answer is that he probably doesn’t think there will be a Group of Death at all. He believes there will – possibly – be some kind of a match between Austria and Serbia. If there is a match, its nature will be … well, the opposite to a ‘friendly,’ whatever that is. (Would one call it an ‘unfriendly’?) But apart from that there is no issue.
Sir Edward begins to look forward to eating his fish and wonders if he’ll get to see Pamela this evening.
Another person who, if anything, is even less concerned about the dead Archduke – but for an entirely different reason – is the man who will be the Russian manager in the Group of Death. While you may know him as Tsar Nicholas II, his full Sunday name is Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias.
The Tsar is another man who is neither particularly suited to nor happy with the job he has been handed. When the Tsar was a teenager, and before he came to power, his father organised some lessons for the young Nicky to explain the workings of the Russian state. A sensible enough thing to do, I think you’d agree, for the young man who would one day assume such vast powers. Nicky’s teacher would later fondly recall, ‘I could only observe that he was completely absorbed in picking his nose.’
Today the Tsar is doing what we would now call, spending quality time with his family. Of course, while for us that might constitute going out to a pizza restaurant or the beach or the movies or for a bike ride, if you’re Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, quality time is probably going to be pretty different. And in fact, it is.
The British First Battle Cruiser Squadron is moored in Kronstadt harbour just down the coast from St Petersburg, so the Tsar, his wife and four daughters are paying a visit. The weather was rainy earlier as the Imperial yacht Alexandria left the landing stage at Peterhof Palace, the Tsar’s seaside retreat, with the Imperial party on board. But happily now the sun has come out, irradiating, as the Times will later report, ‘the roadstead with the ships of the Squadron dressed in honour of the august visitors.’
The Tsar loves this kind of thing. First, he just loves being with his girls. There is his wife, the German-born Alexandra, and then his four beautiful daughters – ‘OTMA,’ as they call themselves – Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. They are all so different. Olga, the eldest, who will be nineteen in November, is a young woman. Then at the other end, there is Anastasia, still a child at thirteen. He loves everything about them. But mainly he loves the fact that they are female. As Tsar, Nicholas gets to meet lots and lots of men. Without exception he finds them a dull, uninspiring lot. Perhaps it is because of the nature of the work they do. They are politicians, diplomats, bureaucrats, generals, admirals. Maybe if they were simple working men or writers or engineers or actors, things would be different, but as it is, he is appalled at how much time he has to spend in their company and how wearying, without exception, they are.
Women by comparison – well, they sparkle. They know what’s important in life. His five girls, as he thinks of them, all have their own views. They talk endlessly about all manner of things. They discuss what to wear and how they look and whether dinner was nice and how they’ll spend today. In other words, they’re concerned with the simple things, the simple things that life should be about – not wars and the grindingly dull stuff of economics and the endlessly subtle (and
generally nasty) machinations of politics. The men Nicholas meets every day talk about war and revolution, strikes and riots, traitors and starvation, budgets and geopolitics. In contrast, women inhabit a far softer, gentler world.
And the Tsar, too, thinks of himself as a simple man. That’s if you can call a man whose wealth, in 1916, was valued at nearly three hundred billion dollars in today’s money, simple. But in many ways, he does live a simple life. He eats simple food and wears clothes until they are worn out.
He is very much what would be called these days a ‘new man.’ He loves to spend time with his family. He is really not cut out for leadership. He has one of those traits that are particularly disturbing in a leader. Having no real vision of where he is going, he tends to act based on whom he last spoke to.
The Tsar and his party spend a couple of hours touring one of the battle cruisers, including the engine room and the gun turrets. Now this is something to get interested in. The previous evening, Nicolas read about this ship in preparation for his visit. He knows about its maximum speed – 27 knots – its main armaments – eight 13.5 inch guns – the thickness of armour on the turrets and barbettes, and a host of other technical details. He finds the tour fascinating. The astonishing technology of the engine room. The ghastly power he can only sense when he is given a tour of one of the turrets. He asks questions and the officers are delighted to explain, for example, how the bags of cordite explosive are brought from the magazine to the turret and how the system is completely safe. (In this they will turn out to be very far off the mark but it will be almost two more years, off Jutland in the North Sea, before they find this out.) Nicholas runs his fingers along the paint-coated steel and breathes in the aroma of oil and salt air. The newspaper reports will say that he was in splendid spirits and that he never enjoyed himself more. The Tsar’s party has lunch and then leaves in the afternoon to rousing cheers from the British sailors.