Emperor Charles's letter to Prince Sixtus

At 10 a.m. on 31 March 1917 a Belgian artillery officer, Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma, came in secret to the Élysée Palace in Paris. He handed the President of France, Raymond Poincaré, a handwritten letter that his brother-in-law, the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary Charles I, had written to him a week earlier at Laxenburg Castle near Vienna. In it the monarch of an enemy state asked Sixtus to convey to Poincaré, “secretly and unofficially”, his assurance that he would use all means and all his personal influence with his allies to support France’s “just claims” to Alsace and Lorraine. The President first read the letter in silence, then aloud to the diplomat Jules Cambon, who was present at the meeting. According to many historians, it was the most far-reaching peace proposal put forward during the war by the ruler of one of the Central Powers. It went down in history as the Sixtus affair.

The emperor’s brother-in-law

Sixtus and his younger brother Xavier were sons of the last Duke of Parma and brothers of Empress Zita. As Bourbon princes they felt French, but they could not serve in the French Army, so in 1914 they joined the Belgian Army. Three of their brothers were meanwhile fighting in the Austro-Hungarian Army. In August 1914 Charles, by then heir to the throne, helped them leave Austria, even though he knew they would fight on the other side.

From the first days of his reign, which began on the death of Franz Joseph in November 1916, Charles was convinced that a prolonged war would destroy the Habsburg monarchy. A German victory would make it a satellite of the Reich; an Entente victory might mean its partition. As early as December, Zita’s mother, Duchess Maria Antonia, summoned her sons to a meeting in Switzerland through the courts of Luxembourg and Belgium. On 29 and 30 January 1917, in Neuchâtel in Switzerland, she gave them a letter from Zita with a postscript by the emperor, in which both asked for help in making peace. Sixtus replied that talks made sense only if Vienna accepted four conditions: the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France within its 1814 borders without any compensation, the restoration of Belgium’s independence together with its colonies, the restoration of Serbia, and consent to Constantinople being given to Russia.

In February the emperor’s trusted aide, Count Tamás Erdődy, came to Neuchâtel twice. He brought Charles’s reply and a note drawn up on the instructions of the Foreign Minister, Ottokar Czernin. On 5 March Sixtus presented them to Poincaré, who informed the Prime Minister, Aristide Briand, the next day. The French decided that a formal acceptance of the four conditions had to be obtained from Vienna.

A night at Laxenburg

When Sixtus returned to Switzerland in mid-March, Erdődy was waiting for him in Geneva. He passed on the emperor’s words that the constant journeys between Vienna and Switzerland only wasted time, and that an hour’s conversation would do more for peace than twenty letters written over six months. As proof he handed him a letter from his sister. “Think of all the poor people who are in the living hell of the trenches and die by the hundreds every day, and come,” Zita wrote. The princes agreed. On 21 March they secretly crossed the Austrian border, and on the evening of 22 March they reached Vienna.

They waited out 23 March in Erdődy’s house, and after dark, following two days of snowstorms, the count drove them to Laxenburg, where the imperial couple lived. They entered the private apartments by a side staircase. Charles came straight to the point. According to Sixtus’s account, he said that peace had to be made at any price, because the strength of the two sides was now roughly equal, and a moderate peace was better than a crushing victory. The emperor summoned Czernin for about twenty minutes. The minister was cool and reserved. He admitted, however, that Germany would never give up Alsace and Lorraine, and that a break with Germany would sooner or later be unavoidable. The next morning Czernin visited the princes at Erdődy’s house, and on the evening of 24 March the emperor handed Sixtus a letter dated that day, written in French in his own hand.

What the emperor wrote

Charles began by praising the courage of the French Army and the self-sacrifice of the whole French nation. He wrote that no real differences of interest divided his monarchy from France. The most important sentence was the one about Alsace and Lorraine. Belgium was to be restored as a sovereign state, in its entirety and with its African possessions, without prejudice to compensation for the losses it had suffered. Serbia too was to be restored, and as a sign of goodwill Austria-Hungary was ready to grant it “just and natural” access to the Adriatic and broad economic concessions. In return Serbia had to dissolve all associations aiming at the break-up of the monarchy, above all the Narodna Odbrana, and prevent all such agitation, under the guarantee of the Entente powers. On Russia the emperor reserved his opinion until order was established there. No wonder: the February Revolution had swept away the Tsar only a dozen or so days earlier. Charles asked Sixtus, after consulting France and Britain, to pass their position on to him, so that the ground could be prepared for official negotiations.

The letter was silent about Italy. The emperor gave a verbal assurance that he was ready to make concessions, but wanted to discuss them only with the three great Entente powers, not directly with Rome. He also promised to refrain from an offensive on the Italian front as long as peace was within reach.

At the Élysée Palace

The brothers left Vienna on 25 March, were in Neuchâtel on 27 March, and in Paris on the morning of 30 March. France already had a new government: after Briand’s resignation, Alexandre Ribot had become Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. He was to attend the meeting, but at the last moment sent Jules Cambon, secretary-general of the Foreign Ministry, in his place.

According to Sixtus’s report, Poincaré and Cambon first asked about Constantinople. On Alsace-Lorraine the prince assured them that he had clearly stated the demand for the 1814 border. “That is our minimum,” the President replied, adding that France’s losses also called for material compensation. Italy was discussed at length; in the Treaty of London the Entente had promised it large areas of the monarchy. Finally Poincaré summed up that this was not about an armistice but about a separate peace with Austria that would break up the bloc of the Central Powers. It was agreed that Sixtus would take the letter to London, to King George V. Everyone stressed the need for secrecy. The emperor had warned that any indiscretion would force him to send Austro-Hungarian troops to the French front. That same day Poincaré read the letter to Ribot, on whom it made a great impression.

Did Czernin know?

How much Czernin knew about the letter remains disputed. Sixtus claimed that the emperor wrote it with the consent of his minister, after Czernin’s last conversation with the princes. Czernin knew the course of the negotiations and met Sixtus twice, but later denied knowing the sentence about Alsace-Lorraine. Some historians believe that the minister knew about the talks and their general direction but did not see the final text. The details of the talks were not revealed to Germany. Czernin informed Berlin of Austria’s desire for peace, but only selectively, hoping that the threat of a separate peace would push the Germans into concessions.

What followed

Sixtus’s mission long raised hopes. On 11 April at Folkestone Ribot told the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, about the letter, and the British received the Austrian offer with interest. Italy proved the obstacle. Its Foreign Minister, Sidney Sonnino, who had been let into the secret only in general terms, refused any revision of the Treaty of London at the conference of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne on 19 April. In May the emperor handed Sixtus a second letter, but the talks stalled. A year later, in April 1918, after Czernin publicly attacked the new French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, Clemenceau published the letter of 24 March 1917. The emperor had to explain himself to Wilhelm II, Czernin lost his post, and the Habsburg monarchy became even more dependent on Germany.