The last Catholic emperor in Europe was compelled to withdraw from the exercise of his royal authority after the calamitous “Great War” (World War I). His internal exile to one of his woodland estates was not enough for the leaders of the new “democratic Republic” that now governed Austria.
Eventually the deposed emperor was unceremoniously taken by train to the Swiss border with his wife and small children.
Charles I of Austria, who was declared blessed on October 3, 2004, had ruled the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary from 1916 to 1918. From Switzerland the young monarch made two daring attempts to reclaim the throne of Hungary — the second time traveling incognito with his wife by airplane over the Austrian terrain from which he had been banished. Both times, however, the plan was thwarted by unreliable supporters and outright treachery in high places.
In October 1921, as prisoners of the British Navy, Charles and Zita were being transported by boat down the Danube River to the Black Sea and on to an undisclosed destination. During that voyage the empress recorded a remarkable entry in her diary:
“The emperor had a long discussion with [Captain] Snagge about military affairs. The punishment rate in British naval crews during the war dropped by 80% compared with peacetime — so high were the standards of conduct. There was no mutiny on a single ship. Result of the U-Boat war: a blaze-up of English patriotism.”
During the war, Charles of Austria had urged Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany not to order submarine attacks on the merchant ships of the western powers, arguing that such strikes were inhumane, violated international law, and would turn public opinion worldwide against the Germans. But Wilhelm, convinced by his military advisers that “total victory” was within his grasp, would not listen to reason. Captain Snagge’s statistics proved that Charles had been right.
Although he had been defeated militarily and deposed, even though his ancient empire had been carved up and he himself was being shipped away to permanent exile and an early death on the Island of Madeira, Charles I of Austria was vindicated — not politically, but as a man of principle, as a Christian sovereign.
Even his enemies admitted that the Emperor Charles was a peacemaker. As a young archduke he had had military training and courageously led troops into battle, yet he was firmly against war.
The task of ruling Austria-Hungary as emperor during World War I was thrust upon him suddenly. As an Infantry general and second in line to the imperial throne, he reasonably expected that he would not be crowned until he reached middle age (rather like the current Prince Charles of the United Kingdom). But his uncle, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated at Sarajevo in June, 1914. Given the complicated alliances and exaggerated nationalist sentiments of the day, this disaster set a world war in motion and abruptly placed Charles at center stage in European history.
When the Emperor Franz Josef died in November of 1916, Charles inherited a brutal, hopeless war and an intransigent, menacing ally to the north. His predecessor had cast a long shadow over the nominal parliament during his almost seventy-year reign. Consequently, there was a dearth of qualified statesmen in Austria, and Charles was handicapped in his conscientious efforts to rule as a constitutional monarch.
Nevertheless, Charles von Habsburg was a man of principle. Upon succeeding to the imperial throne, he proclaimed to his subjects on November 21, 1911:
I will do everything in my power to dispel the horrors and sacrifices of the war as soon as possible and to win back for my peoples the blessings of peace which are so dearly missed…. I want to be a just and clement prince for my peoples. I wish to uphold their constitutional freedoms and other rights and to guard carefully the equality of all before the law. It will be my unceasing endeavor to promote the moral and spiritual welfare of my peoples and to protect freedom and order in my countries.
Unlike the other major European powers at that time, the dual monarchy was not a nation, united by a single history, language, and culture, but rather a multi-ethnic empire which had grown mighty, not by conquest, but through intermarriage with other royal houses of Europe. Charles’s own wife was a Bourbon from a noble French line that had been influential in regions of Italy as well.
By virtue of his own lineage and upbringing, Charles viewed Europe, not as a compartmentalized array of political entities, but as a vast, interrelated Christian family. As emperor he immediately began secret peace negotiations with France and England through an intermediary, his brother-in-law, Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma. These promising efforts were ultimately frustrated because the hands of the western powers were tied by a previous secret agreement with land-hungry Italy (about which Charles knew nothing).
Charles’s attempts to restore the monarchy in post-war Hungary were likewise prompted by a sense of duty toward the subjects whom he had sworn to protect, and by the sincere hope of bringing peace and unity to Budapest, where the political scene had become chaotic and the Communist threat was real.
As a man of peace in an age of untrammeled nationalism, Charles von Habsburg was often misunderstood and despised by many of his own subjects. He suffered more than his share of calumny. The white-collar workers in the enormous Viennese bureaucracy tended to be “pan-Germanic,” feeling that they had more in common with their belligerent Protestant neighbor to the north than with their Catholic Hungarian and Slavic compatriots within the dual monarchy. They therefore looked askance at the Empress Zita’s French and Italian connections, and circulated rumors that she was a schemer who manipulated her weak, vacillating husband.
Then there was the notorious hoax in which an actress borrowed a sumptuous necklace from a jeweler and claimed that it was a personal gift from the emperor, whom she accused of being a drunk and a womanizer.
All of these charges were utter nonsense, though many of them persisted in biographies(1) written during the politically tense decades after the war ended. Charles was not a brilliant intellectual, but he was a man of principle. (When he was enrolled as a young man in an ancient chivalric order, he studied the Rule, which was written in Medieval French, so as to be able to carry out the duties entailed in membership!)
He was also a loving and loyal husband. Charles and Zita were the parents of eight children, the youngest of whom was born shortly after his death of pneumonia on the Island of Madeira. The exiled, impoverished emperor spent his final days of suffering in constant prayer and insisted that his oldest son, ten-year-old Otto, should be at his deathbed, so that he would see “how a Christian dies.”
The last words that Charles spoke were to his wife — “Ich liebe dich unendlich,” “I love you endlessly” — and to his Lord, whom he had just received as Viaticum: “Jesus, Jesus, come!” He died at 12:23P.M. on Saturday, April 1, 1922.
Besides the canonized kings and queens of the first Christian millennium and the Middle Ages, no other rulers or statesmen have been raised to the honors of the altar except Thomas More. St. Thomas remains a powerful intercessor for lawyers and government officials, but the moral dilemma which he faced and which led to his martyrdom was more medieval than modern: whether to obey the pope or the king.
Whereas the battle of wits between Sir Thomas More and Henry VIII was played out in an insular setting on the edge of Europe, Charles of Austria had to govern many peoples in the midst of an international upheaval. His faith and his character were tested in the crucible of war and the desolation of exile.
Blessed Charles will be a more fitting patron saint for modern statesmen and politicians, particularly in the European Union, because he ruled a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural empire and had to deal with tangled alliances and conflicting national interests. Yet through it all he remained a man of peace and a man of honor, because he was a man of faith.
Blessed Charles of Austria, pray for world leaders!
1. Reliable biographies of Blessed Charles of Austria, based in part on interviews with the Empress Zita (who died in 1989) are: A Heart for Europe, by James & Joanna Bogle (Gracewing Books, Herefordshire, England, distributed in the US by Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, PA, 1991), and The Last Habsburg, by Gordon Brook-Shepherd (Weybright & Talley, New York 1969).
Michael J. Miller translated the books entitled New Saints and Blesseds of the Catholic Church Vols. 1, 2, 3, and Married Saints and Blesseds for Ignatius Press.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
