Odd this day

25 November 1913

It’s the 111th anniversary today of someone almost shooting Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Yes, that one. This is one of those bizarre what-ifs of history that nobody can possibly know the answer to — but upon which it can be fun to speculate.

It happened when the Archduke (Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria of Austria, to be precise) was a guest at Welbeck Abbey (so named because it’s one of those stately homes which used to be a home for holy types before Henry VIII nicked them all and ‘granted’ them to people who were, at least at the time, in his favour).

He was there at the invitation of the even more extravagantly named William John Arthur Charles James Cavendish-Bentinck, 6th Duke of Portland. (Who, to be clear, was not the 5th Duke of Portland, the one who dug holes all over the estate, building huge underground chambers, all painted pink, and a tunnel you could apparently drive two carriages through. The 5th Duke didn’t have any legitimate children, so the estate passed to his cousin. But I digress…)

According to the BBC, Franz and his wife (Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg) had just been to see George V and Queen Mary, and then popped to Welbeck for what I suppose we must now call “a straight forward” shooting party — with others on the guest list including:

the Austro-Hungarian ambassador, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, Lord Curzon, the Marquis of Titchfield, Lord and Lady Salisbury and ex-Prime Minister Arthur Balfour

As historian Nick Hayes told the BBC, the atmosphere in Europe was febrile, but this had yet to affect people’s daily lives all that much — and certainly not those of the moneyed classes.

War wasn’t thought to be inevitable and the great families of Europe had been visiting each other for years. Many of the royal houses were closely related and while the kings and Kaisers had to obey certain rules, others could travel pretty much as they wished.

Welbeck Abbey’s website (PDF) says:

The decades leading up to the First World War were the heyday of the sport of game shooting on great English country estates.

…and, of course, people didn’t yet know that what was coming would be an appalling conflagration which would not only be responsible for millions of deaths (and traumatic injuries both mental and physical), but also be the catalyst for another long and horrific conflict a couple of decades later.

Ralph Lloyd-Jones, a librarian and archivist, told the BBC that

It is highly likely that as well as being a social visit to the UK, there will have been some diplomatic discussions taking place between those important people during that week at Welbeck Abbey as it was such a politically sensitive time across Europe.

So, intriguingly, there may have been attempts made at averting war during this couple of days, as well as what could have been an accidental death — because, yes, we are finally getting to the important bit, which, in the BBC’s telling, comes under the marvellous sub heading: Both barrels.

Back to the Welbeck Abbey’s account first, for some magnificent understatement:

Mishaps occasionally occurred during these shoots.

The [6th] Duke mentions that ‘I have seen a lady struck on the head by a falling pheasant. She was completely stunned, and did not really recover from the blow for three or four months.’

This may seem to be trivialising something serious, but to be fair to the Abbey, Franz Ferdinand wasn’t even hit, so we could even argue that they were overstating it when they said:

A more serious incident occurred when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was a member of a shooting party at Welbeck.

But it was close. In the Duke’s own words:

There was rather deep snow on the ground; and after a rise of pheasants, one of the loaders fell down. This caused both barrels of a gun he was carrying to be discharged, the shot passing within a few feet of the Archduke and myself. I have often wondered whether the Great War might not have been averted, or a least postponed, had the Archduke met his death then, and not at Sarajevo in the following year.

The Duke’s account says this happened in December, but he seems to be misremembering, because the Abbey’s records say it was 25 November:

His account concludes:

It is extraordinary to think how history might have turned on a chance incident such as this.

But we might be forgiven for speculating that — given the stupidity with which the world went to war in 1914 (or at least lack of foresight and/or imagination) — the political situation at the beginning of the century appeared to be heading towards conflict. It does seem probable that if it hadn’t been Franz Ferdinand, on a side street, in Sarajevo, with the FN Model 1910 pistol, some other catalyst would have come along sooner or later, and the 20th century would have been no more peaceful than it in fact was.

Plus, of course, it wasn’t Franz Ferdinand that set it off, anyway…

Odd this day