Colonel Strutt's Daring Royal Mission

The Secret British Rescue of the Habsburg Family, 1919

Diana Tritton

• Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9781399060448
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'armée et de la marine

Four Empires were extinguished by the Great War 1914-18 – the Ottoman, German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian. This is the story of the rescue of one of these Imperial families – the Habsburgs, who might well have suffered the fate of the Romanovs without the intervention of one British officer sent in secret by King George V of England. In January 1919, Lt. Colonel Edward Lisle Strutt, laden with medals and decorations, was on his way home from the Eastern Front when he was waylaid and ordered to Austria. He was irate when he learned the nature of his mission and tried to refuse. How could they ask him to give aid to the enemy he had just spend four miserable years fighting? To his great surprise he was to change his mind when he met and became enthralled by Zita Empress of Austria-Hungary. Thereafter, he was hers to command despite the danger to his life and career. Fortunately for us he kept a diary of the next three months which was lodged in the Royal archive at Windsor where it lay forgotten for the next 70 years. This is one of the great adventure stories of the Great War and Col. Strutt deserves to be better known.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• toc
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 February 5, 1919 – Salonika
• Chapter 2 February 7, 1919 – Sofia
• Chapter 3 February 9, 1919 – Bucharest
• Chapter 4 February 10, 1919 – Orsova
• Chapter 5 February 12–19, 1919 – Belgrade
• Chapter 6 February 19 Evening – Fiume
• Chapter 7 December 1918 – York House, Windsor Great Park
• Chapter 8 February 21, 1919 – Venice
• Chapter 9 February 24 1919 – Fiume Again
• Chapter 10 February 27, 1919 – Vienna
• Chapter 11 February 27, 1919 – Cuninghame
• Chapter 12 February 27, 1919 – At the Czernins
• Chapter 13 February 28, 1919 – Eckartsau
• Chapter 14 February 28, 1919 – Meeting the Emperor and Empress
• Chapter 15 February 28-30, 1919
• Chapter 16 March 2, 1919
• Chapter 17 March 2, 1919 – The Tyre Incident
• Chapter 18 March 3, 1919 – A Buggy Ride
• Chapter 19 March 4, 1919
• Chapter 20 March 17, 1919 – The First Plan of Escape
• Chapter 21 March 17, 1919 – A Theft and a Confrontation
• Chapter 22 March 17-19, 1919 – First Meeting with Karl Renner
• Chapter 23 March 20, 1919 – The Second Plan of Escape
• Chapter 24 March 21, 1919 – The Bluff
• Chapter 25 March 21, 1919 – Doing the Needful
• Chapter 26 March 23, 1919 – The Last Day
• Chapter 27 March 23, 1919 – On the Train
• Chapter 28 March 24, 1919 – Wartegg
• Chapter 29 March 25, 1919
• Chapter 30 April 1, 1919
• Chapter 31 April 8, 1919 – Farewell
• Chapter 32 What Happened Next
• Chapter 33 Summer 1922 to late Spring 1923
• Chapter 34 A New Life
• Note
• Envoi
• Obituary
• References
• Principal Characters
• Plates