Seite - 371 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Treaty of London 371 the Archbishop of Vienna Cardinal Piffl, had taken action on behalf of the Vatican. Even the services of the companion of the old Emperor, Katharina Schratt, were ap- parently engaged. In short, nothing and no-one was left out in attempts to avoid a war between the Habsburg Monarchy and Italy. During all of this, Italy marked up its price. It made no pretence of the fact that it had a mind to obtain as much as possible for its non-participation in the war.878 At the beginning of March 1915, Italy resumed talks with the Entente in London. Rome’s demands were summarised in several points : the Entente should commit itself to not make any special peace with the Central Powers. A military convention should guar- antee that Austria-Hungary could not concentrate its entire force against Italy. A fleet convention should ensure that the British and the French Fleets would fight with the Italians until the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Fleet in the Mediterranean. Furthermore, the cession of Trentino to Italy and the cisalpine part of South Tyrol, as well as Trieste, the municipalities of Gorizia (Görz) and Gradisca d’Isonzo and the whole of Istria as far as Quarnero, including Volosca in the Kvarner Gulf, were de- manded. Finally, Foreign Minister Sonnino also demanded Dalmatia from its northern border as far as Narenta. In eleven further points, the remaining Italian wishes for entering the war were summarised and contained therein were its share of a war indem- nity and a British guarantee of the independence of Yemen, a neutralisation of the holy Islamic sites and the non-admittance of the Pope to peace negotiations. All this should be negotiated to the end in the strictest secrecy ; this was another of Sonnino’s conditions. In view of developments on the western front and the looming failure in the war with Turkey, where the landing operations in the Dardanelles threat- ened to turn into a debacle on the Gallipoli peninsula, Great Britain and France were ready to pay almost any price for the intervention of Italy. In practice, this meant above all that Great Britain shelved its concerns. This was not the case with Russia, which expected the collapse of the Danube Monarchy following the Battles of the Carpathian Passes in March 1915 and furthermore brought Serbian interests into play. The Ital- ian desire for Dalmatia naturally affected Serbia and its southern Slav ambitions. The Russian Foreign Minister Sazonov therefore attempted to force the Italians towards Albania and to raise Serbia’s hopes of obtaining parts of Transylvania. But this tempted neither the Italians nor the Serbs, who would have had to argue with the Romani- ans over hegemony in Transylvania. Consequently, the Russian Foreign Minister was inclined to no longer pursue Italy’s entry into the war.879 The Entente powers, Great Britain and France, did not believe that they could forego Italian participation in the war and therefore sought another possibility to accommodate the desires of all actual and potential allies. Now everything happened quickly. For the Entente powers, it was not a question of the original core issues, namely the cession of Trentino and Trieste, but exclusively