Germany and Austria-Hungary conclude the Dual Alliance

On 7 October 1879 in Vienna the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, Count Gyula Andrássy, and the German ambassador, Prince Henry VII Reuss, signed the treaty that went down in history as the Dual Alliance. It was a secret defensive alliance: if Russia attacked one of the two empires, the other would come to its aid with its whole armed strength. The pact, which the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had to force on his own emperor, lasted until the end of the Hohenzollern and Habsburg monarchies and became the core of the later bloc of the Central Powers.

After the Congress of Berlin

The alliance grew out of a conflict with Russia. After their victorious war with Turkey, the Russians had to give up a large part of their gains at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, while Austria-Hungary received the right to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina. St Petersburg blamed Bismarck, who had presided over the congress. In the summer of 1879 the Russians complained that the German delegates on the Balkan commissions kept voting with the Austrians against them, and the press of both countries waged a war of words. On 15 August Tsar Alexander II wrote to his uncle, Emperor Wilhelm I, a letter accusing Bismarck of acting out of personal resentment against the Russian chancellor, Gorchakov, and warning that “the consequences may be disastrous for both countries”.

Bismarck concluded that Russia could no longer be trusted and decided to bind Germany to Austria-Hungary. He was in a hurry, because Andrássy had announced his resignation. On 27 and 28 August the two statesmen talked at Bad Gastein. Bismarck proposed a general defensive alliance against any aggressor, but Andrássy refused: a pact aimed at France as well would alienate Great Britain. He was ready, however, to conclude an alliance directed against Russia.

The emperor’s resistance

The hardest opponent proved to be Wilhelm I. The eighty-two-year-old emperor was attached to the friendship with Russia, which he called a “sacred legacy”. On 3 September he met the Tsar at Aleksandrów, just across the border in the Kingdom of Poland. Alexander explained his letter and admitted that he had made a mistake, and Wilhelm came back convinced that an alliance against his nephew would be an act of perfidy. He declared that he would rather abdicate than take such an act upon himself. Bismarck meanwhile went to Vienna, where on 24 September he and Andrássy signed a protocol with a draft treaty that was close to the Austrian version and contrary to the emperor’s instructions.

The Chancellor reached for his strongest argument. On 28 September he assembled the Prussian ministers, who backed his intention to resign if the emperor did not give way. Wilhelm was also pressed by the Crown Prince and by Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke. The emperor gave ground step by step, saying that Bismarck was more necessary to Germany than he was himself. He still demanded that the Tsar be informed before the signing, but Andrássy would not allow it. Wilhelm gave his final consent on 5 October.

The terms of the treaty

The preamble called the agreement “purely defensive”, and the two monarchs promised never to give it an aggressive character. Article I stated: “Should, contrary to their hope, and against the loyal desire of the two High Contracting Parties, one of the two Empires be attacked by Russia, the High Contracting Parties are bound to come to the assistance one of the other with the whole war strength of their Empires”. They could make peace only together. If the aggressor was another power, in practice France, the ally was to observe at least a benevolent neutrality, unless the aggressor was supported by Russia. In that case full assistance applied again.

The treaty was concluded for five years, with provision for renewal. It was to remain secret, and should Russian armaments prove menacing, the allies intended to warn the Tsar confidentially that they would regard an attack on either empire as an attack on both. According to documents in the Vienna archives, Franz Joseph I ratified the treaty on 17 October, and the ratifications were exchanged on 21 October. On 4 November Wilhelm I informed Alexander II of it in a private letter.

The Dual Alliance was renewed in 1883, and in 1902 it was agreed that it would extend itself automatically every three years. In February 1888 Bismarck, wishing to prove its defensive character, had its main articles published. In the summer of 1914 it was this alliance that made Austria-Hungary’s quarrel with Serbia Germany’s affair.