Born in
1866, Prince Sixte was one of the many children of
Duke Roberto I of Bourbon-Parma, the last duke of
Parma before the
unification of Italy in
1860. In fact, he wasn't the sixth child at all, but royalty are evidently allowed to be
illogical.
Sixte himself was the unwitting protagonist of one of the more bizarre intrigues of
World War I, an aspect of the period which is little known beside the more
familiar images of the conflict.
Sixte was related through his younger sister
Zita to the
Austro-Hungarian Archduke
Karl, the heir to the throne after the assassination of
Archduke Franz Ferdinand on
June 28, 1914, which had
triggered the war.
Succeeding the octogenarian Emperor
Franz Joseph, supposed to be a symbol of the Monarchy's unity, on
November 29, 1916, Karl attempted to take the opportunity to revitalise the country by following up his brother's idea of turning it into a
federation and satisfying Austria's plethora of ethnic groups. As if this wasn't ambitious enough for a leader struggling against
Russia,
Italy and - for a week or two more -
Romania, he also schemed throughout
1917 to make peace with the Allies.
Karl's negotiations, conducted through intermediaries both obvious (trusted Austro-Hungarian
counts) and less so (a
Copenhagen industrialist or two) required the strictest secrecy so as not to offend
Germany, his far stronger ally, or the domestic hawks who were already suspicious of Zita's loyalty for her links to the old Italian enemy. (Zita can't have had
Marie Antoinette far from her mind.)
The overture through Sixte, then serving as an officer in the
Belgian army, aroused most interest from the Allied leaders, arriving in the spring of 1917 when the
Nivelle Offensive on the
Western Front had collapsed and French troops along the
Chemin des Dames were disobeying orders rather than be sent to their deaths.
Karl and Zita entrusted Sixte with a letter to the French president,
Raymond Poincaré, in which Austria undermined German war aims by pledging her support to France's effort to regain
Alsace-Lorraine, annexed by
Prussia in
1870 as the last stage of
German unification.
The British prime minister
David Lloyd George, more open than were many of his colleagues to novel ways to prosecute or conclude the war, was clued in by his French counterpart
Alexandre Ribot and handled the talks without even informing his own
Foreign Office. However, as with the other Austrian peace feelers, discussions eventually foundered on the question of whether the peace would be separate or, as Karl preferred, general.
With hindsight, Karl might have been better advised to leave his brother-in-law alone; the damning 'Sixtus letter' resurfaced twelve months later when
Kaiser Wilhelm II heard rumours of the offer to France and forced the Austrian foreign minister
Ottokar Czernin, who had never been informed of the letter, to deny it.
Ribot's replacement,
Georges Clémenceau, published the documents in April
1918; the outraged Kaiser summoned Karl to Germany and made him sign the
Spa Agreements which subordinated Austrian foreign policy to German aims. In the light of Spa, Britain and France were finally persuaded that it would serve the war effort better to encourage Austria-Hungary's various nationalists and provoke her collapse and disintegration, which was complete by the end of the year.
With an admirable sense of family loyalty, if not quite as much political realism, the deposed Emperor and Empress relied on Sixte to sound out the successor states and
France about their attitude to a Habsburg restoration. There seemed most chance in
Hungary, where Karl was helicoptered into
Budapest in October
1921, only to be fought back by right-wing students and packed off to
Madeira.
Sixte wisely left dynastic politics alone after the Hungarian débacle, and died in
1934 after writing a book on the
Etrurian Kingdom, a short-lived satellite statelet created by
Napoleon for the Dukes of Parma in an era of palace
diplomacy that would have been much more the Prince's style.