Page - 635 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Heir to the Throne 635 he furthermore did not travel back to Vienna with his imperial great uncle, when they would have had time to discuss various matters on the train, but was only permitted to meet with the Emperor for 20 minutes the following day. He was then shunted off to the Army High Command. However, Archduke Karl subsequently requested permis- sion by the Emperor to travel to Vienna on frequent occasions. Karl Franz Josef also used the appointments in Vienna to pay visits to the Foreign Ministry or the Prime Minister. Although in the Military Chancellery of the Emperor, it was assumed that the heir to the throne arranged these meetings because he had too little to do in the Army High Command, and had no real function to perform, this was certainly not the entire reason, since the Archduke always brought the latest news and probably also a large portion of chit-chat to Vienna, and was able to report on events and matters that were excluded from the daily imperial reports. The Emperor may therefore have regarded the visits by the heir to the throne as useful and informative. For this to be so, however, Archduke Karl would have had to have been sufficiently well-informed himself  – and this was frequently not the case. Conrad viewed the Archduke’s visits to Vienna with unmitigated suspicion. There was, however, an additional and relatively simple explanation for these trips. In contrast to the Army Supreme Commander, the Chief of the General Staff and other members of the Army High Command, Karl Franz Josef did not bring his wife Zita to Cieszyn (Teschen). She lived at Schönbrunn Palace. The heir to the throne therefore came to visit her in equal measure. However, in September 1914, for example, Karl came to see the Emperor on eight days, with four visits in October, five in November, as many as 14 in January 1915 and almost daily in May 1915. The frequency of the appointments was clearly connected to current devel- opments, and the meetings could last from just a few minutes to a whole hour. In No- vember 1914, the subject of discussion was a reorganisation of the chain of command as a whole, whereby huge pressure was applied to Archduke Friedrich to accept a German Chief of General Staff. The focus then shifted to the question of Italy. From December 1914 and throughout the spring of 1915, the idea was aired in the Military Chancellery of sending Karl to Rome in order to prevent the Italians at the last minute from start- ing a war against Austria-Hungary.1454 Franz Joseph was vehemently opposed to the plan, although his decision is likely to have been guided less by the view that sending the heir to the throne to the Italians would be of no use in persuading them to change their minds than that precisely in the case of Italy, he wanted to allow matters to take their course. Karl also participated in the Privy Council on 8 March 1915, in which the Emperor gave his agreement to the cession of territories in South Tyrol, although almost throughout, the heir the throne was relegated to the role of listener. At the end, he posed a brief question and was given an equally brief answer. He then only returned temporarily to the Army High Command, and instead was in Vienna almost daily during June and frequently from July 1915. It was only when he took over the