The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922

by Edmond Taylor

On the same fatal July 27, Berchtold had obtained Francis Joseph’s signature to a declaration of war against Serbia. To overcome the eighty-four-year-old Emperor’s lingering doubts, he had sent a telegram to Bad Ischl reporting a completely fictitious Serbian attack upon an Austro-Hungarian border detachment (though whether the Austrian premier deliberately faked the incident to deceive his master has never been established). Thus, on the morning of July 28, when Berchtold received the British Ambassador — at about the same moment the Kaiser in Potsdam was coming to the conclusion that war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia was both unnecessary and dangerous — it was to tell him that it was now unfortunately too late for any attempts at mediation, since His Royal and Imperial Apostolic Majesty had already signed the declaration of war. It was telegraphed to Belgrade shortly before 1 P.M. the same day — the first time in history that war was declared by wire. (After the Austrian Ambassador had left Belgrade, Berchtold was at a loss for a while as to how to serve the declaration of war. Berlin had refused to let the German legation transmit it on the ground that “it might awaken the impression in the public unfamiliar with diplomatic usage that we had hounded Austria-Hungary into war.”)