Engel-Janosi, Die Friedensgespräche Reverteras mit Armand (1965)

This 1965 Austrian Academy lecture/article is an archival diplomatic-history essay on the secret Freiburg peace conversations between Count Nikolaus Revertera, a former Austro-Hungarian diplomat, and Comte Abel Armand, a French officer attached to military intelligence, in 1917–18. Its scope is narrow but strategically chosen: Engel-Janosi treats the talks as one link in the continuous Austrian search for peace after December 1916, alongside Burian’s official initiatives, Emperor Karl’s personal channels, and the Sixtus affair. The governing thesis is cautious: the conversations show a real opening and a real Austrian desire to test peace terms, but they do not prove that a practicable settlement was within reach.

Doch nicht nur europäische, sondern wahrlich Weltgeschichte wäre anders verlaufen, wenn es gelungen wäre, den Weltkrieg im Jahre 1917 zu beenden.

English translation: Yet not only European but truly world history would have taken a different course had it proved possible to end the World War in 1917.

The essay is structured as a movement from historiographical framing to source criticism and then to a two-phase narrative of the talks. Engel-Janosi’s principal materials are French documents published in L’Opinion and Revertera’s family-archive notes, described as written during or immediately after the meetings. His core conceptual move is to read the episode through contradictions rather than to harmonize the record: who initiated contact, what authority Armand had, whether France sought only a sounding or something closer to negotiation, and how much Vienna actually knew.

Die österreichische und die französische Quelle stehen in einer Anzahl von Punkten miteinander in Widerspruch; wir werden im folgenden uns vor allem mit jenen Punkten beschäftigen; die entweder unbekannt oder unbeachtet geblieben sind.

English translation: The Austrian and the French sources contradict each other on a number of points; in what follows we shall concern ourselves above all with those points which have either remained unknown or been left unnoticed.

The first phase begins in summer 1917 through the Swiss physician Dr. Henri Reymond, who functions less as a passive intermediary than as an active midwife of contact. On the Austrian side, Revertera understood the approach as potentially opening a path toward peace with France, perhaps even against Britain; on the French side, Armand’s mission was officially only a sondage. Revertera refused a separate peace and sought terms that could be carried to Berlin. Emperor Karl appears willing to forward and support discussable Entente proposals, while Czernin remains wary of both Germany and Karl’s readiness for concessions. The Entente programme was severe for Germany—Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, and wider settlement aims—yet Engel-Janosi stresses that Armand’s oral comments softened its apparent rigidity.

In der Diskussion aber — und dies ist unbekannt — gab der französische Offizier ohne weiteres zu, daß seine Aufstellung ein Maximalprogramm darstelle.

English translation: In the discussion, however—and this is not known—the French officer readily conceded that his outline represented a maximum programme.

That distinction between maximal written demands and negotiable oral signals is central to the article. It explains why Revertera believed an honorable peace might still be possible if Germany could be moved, while also showing why the channel failed: Berlin rejected the proposals, and Czernin sent no clear reply to France. The second phase, in February 1918 under Clemenceau, is still less promising. Armand remains in contact but is instructed only to listen; the talks soon deadlock after Czernin insists that France renounce annexations.

Engel-Janosi then turns to the explosive aftermath: Czernin’s 2 April 1918 speech to the Vienna municipal council, where he implied that Clemenceau had made a peace offer blocked by Alsace-Lorraine. The speech triggered Clemenceau’s denial, the publication of the Sixtus letters, and Czernin’s fall.

An Czernins Rede ist so ziemlich alles verwunderlich, beginnend mit dem Forum, dem Wiener Gemeinderat, das er sich für sie wählte.

English translation: About Czernin's speech, virtually everything is astonishing, beginning with the forum he chose for it—the Vienna Municipal Council.

The explanation offered is psychological and informational rather than conspiratorial. Czernin may have believed Armand’s report that Clemenceau’s position was shaky and hoped to expose him as both seeker and spoiler of peace; Revertera saw at once that an attack from Vienna would rally France around its premier. The essay’s relevance lies in this anatomy of wartime secret diplomacy: imperial initiative, ministerial caution, German military dominance, French domestic politics, and unreliable channels all intersect.

Engel-Janosi closes by bracketing Revertera’s retrospective belief that peace chiefly depended on Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, and German military intransigence. The possibility mattered, but the evidentiary basis remains insufficient.

Aber diese Erwägungen gelten doch nur, wenn wir mit Revertera annehmen, daß Armand im Sommer und Herbst 1917 Vollmacht hatte, im Namen der französischen Regierung und nicht nur des Kriegsministeriums und der Generale zu sprechen und wenn wir für das Frühjahr 1918 auch seine weitere Annahme teilen, daß ‚Clemenceau ebenso wie Painlevé es war, bereit (war), mit (Österreich) zu verhandeln‘. Diese beiden Annahmen aber scheinen uns heute nicht — oder noch nicht erwiesen.

English translation: But these considerations hold only if we assume, with Revertera, that in the summer and autumn of 1917 Armand had authority to speak in the name of the French government and not merely of the Ministry of War and the generals, and if, for the spring of 1918, we also share his further assumption that 'Clemenceau, just as Painlevé had been, was prepared to negotiate with [Austria].' These two assumptions, however, do not seem to us today to be proven—or not yet proven.