There may be liberty under a right monarchy: there has come a sort of slavery under the democracies of the modern form where a political oligarchy and a money oligarchy, now in alliance, now in conflict, have brought about grave disorder, social chaos, and the negation of the free and the good life, under the forms of a free commonwealth founded on assumptions that are baseless biologically, philosophically, historically, and from the standpoint of plain commonsense.
—Ralph Adams Cram, Invitation to Monarchy
Although it is less so now, for the better part of my life, the phrase “American Monarchist” has been something of a chimæra, like “dehydrated water.” The very notion of monarchy was consciously or otherwise held in contempt in my native land. If an American expressed a fondness for the institution, he was obviously spitting on the flag, mom, and apple pie. The absurdity of the idea was underscored by the very success of our great nation, a superpower that stalked the planet. Our very national identity, after all, was founded on a revolution against a monarchy portrayed as tyrannical (cf. Schoolhouse Rock’s “No More Kings”). All of our civic holidays—Independence Day, Memorial Day, Washington’s Birthday, Veteran’s Day, Flag Day, Constitution Day, and on and on—celebrated our republican institutions, and disparaged what they had replaced. Every morning, schoolchildren swore the Pledge of Allegiance “to the flag, and to the Republic for which it stands.” As a boy, I certainly partook of all this quite happily.
But while my parents were certainly patriotic—my father was a tail gunner against the Japanese in World War II—their undeniable love of country was nuanced by their backgrounds. Dad was a French-Canadian from New Bedford, Massachusetts, whose first language was French (although his radio-actor’s English was flawless). He loved the Bourbons who had sent our fathers to the New World, and correspondingly hated the revolution which had murdered Louis XVI and so many others. The Chouans and the Vendeens were heroes to him, as well as Quebec’s own Papal Zouaves and their comrades-in-arms who fought for Bl. Pius IX. Paradoxically, he had a certain fascination with the two Napoleons. Moreover, he had a Scots ancestor who had fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden. So it was he loved Scotland, the Stuarts, and the Jacobites. My mother had a fascination with both the Habsburgs and the Romanoffs, which she duly passed onto me as well.
My early boyhood in the Hudson Valley was marked by family explorations of the colonial heritage of Westchester and Fairfield Counties, which gave me an enduring interest in that era. When we moved to Los Angeles, this pastime turned into exploring Southern California’s Spanish heritage—its mission and ranchos. For us, Irving and Cooper were supplemented by Zorro and Ramona. Moreover, we came to know a great many emigres—White Russians, Central Europeans of various kinds, and Balkan folk. Their love for their respective sovereigns (bearing in mind that many were of the World War I generation) made a huge impression on me.
This era was the ‘60s and ‘70s, filled as they were with revolutionary changes in Church and Society, all of which I instinctively disliked. My historical outlook was affected by seeing the parallels with the French Revolution and those other movements which had driven from their homelands so many folk whom we knew—even our own American Revolution, which was responsible for the French affair in so many ways. Certainly, the hatred of the Quebec Act expressed by the Founding Fathers did not sit well with me. My studies of the royal saints of the Catholic Church also had an effect.
Another thing that did not escape me was the willingness of the British Isles’ Charles I, France’s Louis XVI, Russia’s Nicholas II, Austria-Hungary’s Karl I and IV, and others to sacrifice themselves for their respective peoples. By the same token, Spain’s Alphonso XIII, Italy’s Umberto II, Belgium’s Leopold III, Romania’s Michael, and latterly Greece’s Constantine II chose to abdicate rather than visit the horrors of civil war on their subjects, which also made an impact. Finally, the constitutional conflicts of Christian X of Denmark, Gustav V of Sweden, and Britain’s Edward VII with “their” governments—where, in each case, the king was so clearly in the right—added their weight. In a word, all of these incidents spelled out very clearly for me the shabbiness of the political class in contrast to the monarchs whose power they usurped. Franz Joseph’s oft-quoted dictum that his job was to “protect my people from their politicians” made perfect sense to me. Reading such works as Geoffrey Bocca’s Kings Without Thrones and Walter Curley’s Monarchs in Waiting convinced me that the then-current crop of claimants was far superior to the elected creatures on offer in their various countries.
Certainly, I was unable to find a country that had done well by replacing its monarchy with a republic, even with countries with former rulers—such as the Qing Emperors or the Ottoman Sultans—under whom I would not have enjoyed living. Commonwealth realms that deposed the Queen inevitably degenerated into banana republics, while the overthrow during this period of Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia, the King of Afghanistan, the King of Laos, and the Emperor of Ethiopia were unmitigated disasters for those countries and for the United States. It was the sleazy ill-treatment of the King of Greece during the 1975 referendum campaign that pushed me into declaring myself a Monarchist, much to the shock of most of my teenaged friends.
Of course, there are monarchies and there are monarchies, ranging from Saudi Arabia to Monaco. In my college years, I studied the various Christian theorists of Monarchy: de Maistre, Chateaubriand, von Kuehnhelt-Leddihn, Molnar, Maurras, Donoso Cortes, Figgis, Stahl, Belloc, Chesterton, and many, many more. I also carefully examined the manifestos of the Cavaliers and Jacobites, the French Legitimists, Spanish Carlists, and Portuguese Miguelists, and so became aware of certain points. The first was that the so-called ‘Absolute Monarchs’ and ‘Enlightened Despots’ of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries—while still better than much of what replaced them, and not nearly so absolute as the current regimes (none of them could have legalised abortion or changed the nature of marriage, for example)—were themselves in a real sense corruptors of a better system which they had inherited. That system was the ‘Mediæval synthesis,’ a ‘mixed government’ of King and Estates. With this in mind, the 19th century featured conflicts between adherents of ‘traditional’ monarchy—such as the aforementioned Legitimists, Carlists, etc.—and ‘liberal’ monarchists, who wanted a figurehead king.
While certain that even such “crowned republics” were superior in their way to what would replace them, I came to realise that their opponents had been seeking a modern, updated version of the mediæval synthesis. This would incorporate the new realities brought about by the Industrial Revolution: the rise of an urban proletariat disaffected from the traditions of Church, State, and culture, that emerged as the largest single challenge to the internal peace of the Western nations in the 19th century. In a word, they were looking at the same issues as Catholic and other Christian social theorists of the time.
From all of this, I teased out five common points, which have since been the core of my own monarchism:
1. The Altar: the Confessional State, wherein the Church acts as the animating principle of society, and confers legitimacy and authority upon the King via the Coronation and other ceremonies of state.
2. The Throne: a monarchy whose God-given authority guides the use of his power, which is sufficient to defend his subjects from each other and from foreign foes.
3. Subsidiarity: local liberties, provincial rights, and the ability of the lesser levels of governance to deal with their own affairs, under the sovereign’s authority.
4. Solidarity: class cooperation rather than conflict, as the various social classes are seen as members of one family, with the monarch as father (this has been described as corporatism, solidarism, distributism, guild socialism, and various other titles, generally dealing with one particular aspect).
5. The res publica Christiana, the Reichsidee, Abendland, Christendom: the idea that all Christian Monarchies somehow belong to a single Commonwealth.
All of this made sense of European—and even Latin American and Commonwealth—history, so that one could see quite clearly how modern Liberalism, National Socialism, Fascism per se, and Communism were all branches of a single tree. It even provided an understanding of Bonapartism, and Napoleon’s two unacknowledged heirs: Bismarck’s Germany and Cavour’s Italy. But it had one major flaw: it had no real reference to American history or contemporary politics. Or did it?
I had joined the International Monarchist League in 1979. Founded in 1943, the League was created to avoid the mistakes of monarchical abolition in 1918, which, as Churchill observed, had paved the way for the second world conflict. In its way, the League attempted to give unity to Monarchists, to defend Monarchy where it still existed, and to work for restorations where it had been abolished. But little of this applied to the United States. What relevance, then, did we American members have?
History gave an answer. Once our lower 48 States were consolidated and Alaska bought from Russia, we began the climb to world power status, which we achieved in the 1890s. The deep antimonarchical prejudice that infects us was at the bottom of our annexing both the Kingdom of Hawaii and the Paramountcy of Samoa. It also fueled our war with Spain in 1898—arguably the most unjust of many unjust wars—which garnered us Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, and doomed Cuba to decades of chaos and misrule. This prejudice guided Woodrow Wilson in insisting on the ejection of the Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns, Wittelsbachs, Wettins, and so on. As I noted earlier, Churchill pithily commented on this move: “This war only came because, under American and modernizing pressure, we drove the Habsburgs out of Austria & Hungary and the Hohenzollerns out of Germany. By making these vacuums we gave the opening for the Hitlerite monster to crawl out of its sewer on to the vacant thrones.”
Unfortunately, this lesson was not learned by FDR. Despite the Archduke’s valuable services to the allied cause and his adherents’ resistance struggle against the occupiers, the U.S. backed Stalin’s occupation of Central Europe against Otto von Habsburg’s vision of a Danubian Confederation; we supported Tito against King Peter II of Yugoslavia; and we helped rig the 1946 referendum against Umberto II in Italy. Of course, over the coming two decades, we did all we could to support the rebels attacking our European Allies in their colonies, often in concert with our supposed Soviet enemies. We assisted in the overthrow of the Kings of Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya, and counselled Diem in South Vietnam to depose Bao Dai (though, to be fair, we were complicit in Diem’s murder some years later). We also played a greater or lesser part in all the overthrows in my time that were mentioned earlier.
If any of this activity had ever brought the United States any kind of benefit, that might be something—but it never has. Nor, despite the hopes of many of us, did that bipartisan policy cease after the fall of the Soviet Union. This was particularly sad, for many of dreamt of restorations not only in Central Europe and the Balkans, but in Russia herself. Alas, it was not to be. President Bush vetoed restorations in Romania and Bulgaria in 1992. When it was pointed out to Secretary of State Albright that the monarchists were the largest opposition to the Milosevic government, whom we were bombing, and that we should, therefore, back the monarchists, she airily replied “We don’t do kings.” Bush Jr. would have his special emissary very publicly forbid Afghanistan’s Loya Jirga from restoring their King, thereby guaranteeing an eventual defeat.
Apart from unsuccessfully attempting to get our foreign policy elite to cease doing these costly things, was there any other point to American Monarchism? I have long said that if you want to hate the United States, study the history of our foreign policy; but if you wish to love us, take a long road trip through our country. Certainly, the kneejerk hatred of Monarchy that characterises so much of our culture had led our leaders over the course of more than a century to make decisions that would cost untold amounts of blood and treasure, both foreign and American. The proper role, then, of an American Monarchist—apart from supporting Monarchy’s retention or restoration overseas—was to show the price that we had paid for continually attacking it in foreign lands, in the hope of introducing a strain of sanity into American foreign policy. But Monarchy had little relevance to our internal conditions—at least, that was how it seemed to me in the 1990s.
The other American Monarchists whom I encountered in those days generally fit into one of four categories: (1) Anglophiles, who simply believed that British institutions were better than our own; (2) Philosophical Monarchists, who, without loyalty to a specific dynasty or nation, felt that some form of Monarchy was the superior form of government; (3) Religious Monarchists, who believe that it was the form of government best suited to their religion, whether Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu; and (4) Emigres or their descendants who retained some lingering loyalty to their ancestral Monarchs. For my part, I was and am a mixture of the last three, much as I respected Queen Elizabeth II and especially the then Prince of Wales (now King Charles III). Having studied his writings and efforts closely, I responded to the various criticisms continually levelled at him due to the scandals of those days by remarking that “He is still far better than the majority of the trash I’ve been asked to vote for or against.” That usually silenced the argument. But I was too aware of the damage done to the British Monarchy both by the defeat of the Jacobites, and by the Loyalist side in our Revolution, to see in it an ideal.
Nevertheless, as the years went by, and the American civic religion so deeply rooted in veneration of our republican institutions began to decay, I looked again at what relevance Monarchy might have to the country I loved so much, and for whose future I feared (and fear). Certain things almost immediately began to emerge, the more I studied and thought.
There is only a single American republican tradition—albeit with its Confederate regional variant as a sort of Shia response to Yankee Sunnism (hence the presence of Washington on a horse on the CSA’s seal). Born in 1776, it has given birth to Wokism as Calvinism gave birth to Unitarianism. But our colonial roots, laid by different Monarchies, are extremely varied. 12 of our original 13 states were founded under the House of Stuart (albeit with Dutch and Swedish settlements annexed). From the diverse elements of that founding came the Episcopal, Congregational (and Unitarian), Presbyterian, Lutheran, Reformed, Methodist, and Baptist denominations that have dominated so much of our religious history. Thanks to both King Charles I and King Charles II, we Catholics have English colonial footholds in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky.
From those foundations also came our common law, and the sheriffs, mayors, notaries, coroners, and all the rest of county and local government that we inherited from our English and British Kings. Moreover, the division into effective and ceremonial sides of government (King versus Prime Minister; Lords versus Commons; Sheriffs and Lords Lieutenant versus County Council Chairmen; and Lord Mayors, Lord Provosts, Provosts, and Mayors versus Chairmen of town, city, and borough councils) did not occur on our shores. In most States, rather than being a ceremonial figure as in modern Britain, the sheriff is as powerful a figure as ever his mediaeval predecessors were. Quite a number of our National Guard and militia units were founded under the King, which is why the first so-named body claims to be the oldest part of the Federal government, with 1636 as its founding year—140 years before the Declaration of Independence. From the Kings’ efforts also came various local ethnic groups, from New England’s Swamp Yankees and Boston Brahmins to the Conchs of the Florida Keys. Folklorists from the British Isles have rejoiced in the traditions they have found preserved among them.
But predating all of that were the Spanish foundations—starting in 1567—in Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and of course, California. The most obvious gift of the Most Catholic Kings of Spain were the local expressions of the Catholic Church, the missions and presidios they built in various places, and the descendants of their colonists and their various folkways. But in addition, land law in the Southwestern States comes directly to us from Spain. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Northern Marianas are even more steeped in these Iberian foundations.
Their Most Christian Majesties, Henry IV, Louis XIV, and Louis XV of France also contributed a great deal to what would become the United States. As Mexico City was the centre from which Spanish influence came to us, so was Quebec for the French. But the Mississippi and Ohio rivers were the means whereby the French settled the centre of the country. Most of the area was overwhelmed by American and European immigrants after independence, but isolated islands of Francophonie from that time still exist in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama. Louisiana bears most strongly the marks of the French—not only in the language still spoken and the culture enjoyed by Creoles and Cajuns, but in the civil law based upon the Code Napoleon (criminal law is Common Law as in the other States), and in having civil ‘parishes’ rather than counties.
This heritage survives among us in a thousand unacknowledged ways, from the fragments of ‘Kings’ Highway’ and ‘El Camino Real,’ remains of much longer Royal Roads of colonial days, to the ‘Prothonotaries’ of the Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware Courts, to the King’s Bench jurisdiction or King’s Bench power [which] is the extraordinary jurisdiction of an individual state’s highest court over its inferior courts, in some of the states of the union. Indeed, the very concept of the ‘Peace,’ which Justices thereof may bind miscreants over to keep, or punish them for disturbing, is in origin ‘the King’s Peace.’ The eleven Indian Pueblos of New Mexico stand in a feudal relationship with the presidency of the United States, as symbolised by canes of office issued by President Lincoln for each of their governors to wield for his year in office. This was transferred directly from the King of Spain (they also retain the canes he sent, centuries ago). Colonial-era churches treasure whatever royal charters, communion vessels, or the like, which they received from their respective sovereigns long years ago.
In a word, for all our republican zeal, our foundations are monarchical. Nor did this influence end after independence. Thousands of immigrants came to America from Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Their former rulers did not lose interest in them. The Habsburgs founded 400 Catholic parishes throughout the United States, and funded 300 missionaries, including St. John Neumann. Many an Orthodox Church in the United States boasts gifts given by the Tsar, as a goodly number of Lutheran and Reformed parishes and schools received similar tokens from the Scandinavian Monarchs and the Prussian King (later German Kaiser). Today, many ethnic institutions maintain relationships with their respective ancestral crowned heads. Of course, Alaska and the Virgin Islands treasure various presents from Tsars in the first case, and Danish Kings in the second.
Despite the cultus surrounding the Revolution, there was a lack of American ‘conservatism’ in the European and Latin American sense, something which our neighbours to the north and south did have, with certain repercussions on our side of the border. Both the Jacobites and the influx of American Loyalists to Canada gave a particular flavour to Canadian High or ‘Red’ Toryism—to a great degree lacking even in the current British Conservative Party. Its paladins included Bishop Strachan and the ‘Family Compact’ in earlier days, and George Farthing, Leighton, and the illustrious George Grant closer to our time. The French-Canadians had their own strain, as demonstrated earlier by such as Bishops LaFleche and Bourget, and Francois Trudel, in earlier days; and, more latterly, Msgr. Lionel Groulx and Maurice Duplessis. These would find followers among the French in New England and to a smaller extent in Louisiana. In Mexico, conservatism was expressed as defence of the Catholic Faith and the country’s Spanish identity against various regimes supported by the United States. Sinarquismo, an interwar expression of it, found adherents in America’s Southwest—not least the redoubtable Pedro Villasenor of Los Angeles.
In the early twenty-teens, all of these random facts began to align in my mind. In a sense, there is indeed a ‘Royal America,’ but it is as varied as the peoples that make up the country itself. As the civic religion continued to decline—after a great post 9/11 gasp—I began to wonder how an American Monarchy might have dealt with the two great dramas in our national history: the settling of the frontier and the status of the Indians on the one hand, and the abolition of slavery and resulting racial issues on the other.
By encouraging a EUROPEAN IDENTITY we do not intend to promote a “western culture” which absorbs and dissolves all diversities in a leveling attempt. On the contrary, our aim is to enlarge this identity beyond the European boundaries, thus recovering that large part of our continent “outside Europe”—from Argentina to Canada and from South Africa to Australia—which looks at the old continent not as a distant ancestor but as a real homeland.
—“Manifesto of European Identity,” Associazione Culturale Identità Europea.
In Latin America, after the shock of the conquest, Spanish colonial administration saw the erection of two (eventually four) viceroyalties, which in law were the equal of the Kingdoms of Spain. But they were further divided according to whether an area was mostly Spanish and Mestizo or Indian into the republic of the Spanish and the republic of the Indians. This latter category encompassed autonomous territories ranging in size from the New Mexican pueblos to the Principality of Tlaxcala, ruled by its native princes. All of these autonomies were suppressed by the nascent Latin American republics in the 19th century. The French co-existence with their Indian allies was proverbial, as was the British Crown’s encouragement of their settlers’ rapacity against them. But with the treaty of 1763 giving Canada to Britain, the Crown was as obligated to defend their new Indian subjects’ rights as it was those of its new French Canadian subjects. This was the origin of the Proclamation of 1763 and the Quebec Act, neither of which was popular amongst the oligarchies of the 13 colonies, thereby helping to cause the American Revolution as a result. But in contrast to the settling of the American West—with the exception of the Riel Rebellions—the consolidation of Western Canada was relatively peaceful and equitable. Even those rebellions were not against Queen Victoria: Riel himself led the Metis in the name of the Queen.
As far as slavery went, the Black Codes of the French and Spanish required far more humane treatment of the slaves then prevailed in the British American colonies. Even there, however, during the Revolution, the King emancipated those slaves who joined the Loyalists—hence the presence of their descendants not only in Canada, but in Sierra Leone and the Bahamas. Emancipation by the British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, and Brazilian Monarchs was gradual, and far easier than in the United States. As a result, racial relations in those countries, although not without difficulties, have been nothing as severe as we have had.
All of these historical considerations, alongside the increasing fragmentation leading up to the election of 2016, caused me to think along several different lines. One was the idea of building an American patriotism rooted in the United States as they really are, rather than dependent upon the dying civic religion. The second was an exploration of monarchy in the abstract. The result was my first (and only, so far) attempt at a novel: Star Spangled Crown. Set in a relatively close future, its conceit was an already established and functioning American monarchy, through which I was able to look at all of the aspects of Americana we have discussed here. Although I highly doubt that anything remotely like what is described in the book shall ever happen, it proved an interesting exercise in stimulating thought and debate.
The subsequent Trump and Biden administrations; the transformation of the European Union into a secularising superstate; the growing claims of Vladimir Putin to be the defender of ‘Christian values’ while American and Europe appeared to be struggling to make his claims credible; the rise of Viktor Orban and other voices in Central Europe as seemingly lone voices of sanity; and at last the war in Ukraine pushed me along as they did everyone else. Moving to Europe in 2018 also helped crystallise my thinking about America, Europe, and monarchy, as did writing a biography of Bl. Emperor Karl. I became convinced that the answer to America’s spiritual and cultural—and so political—ills lay in the Mother Continent, and there, in the lands of the former Habsburg Empire.
From the time that I was in high school, I corresponded with Archduke Otto von Habsburg, and together with all the reading I described in the first instalment, he was a leading influence on my thought. Standing as he did between two worlds—the Ancien Regime as exemplified by Austria-Hungary; and the post-World War II Europe of Christian Democracy, the Soviet menace, and European Union—he had a wealth of wisdom from which to draw. He was a great one for maintaining one’s ultimate principles while attempting to apply them effectively in the present, yet always remaining mindful that this present would soon pass away and be replaced.
Of the five European Conservative points we considered in our first instalment (altar, throne, subsidiarity, solidarity, and Christendom), restoration of altar and throne would never be permitted by either the Soviets or Americans, and the Catholic hierarchy itself tacitly abandoned the first after Vatican II. Surviving European states accordingly wrapped up subsidiarity and solidarity in vague ‘Christian values,’ and attempted to retool Christendom into what would become the European Union. Rather than pursuing a Habsburg-led Danubian Federation—which notion, originated by Franz Ferdinand, had been espoused by Bl. Karl, Zita during her ‘regency,’ Otto himself before and during World War II, and even Churchill—the Archduke threw himself into creating a European Union that would incarnate the spirit if not the form of the Holy Empire. This was a vision which I came to share, while hoping that better times for Church and State might come.
Unfortunately, when that day seemed to arrive in the form of the fall of the Soviet Bloc, many such dreams were ultimately dashed—not least by the action of my government in vetoing restoration in the Balkans, as mentioned in the last instalment. Both the United States government and the EU itself slowly transformed over the following decades into machines for imposing infanticide, perversion, and latterly euthanasia on their own peoples, the newly freed Central European countries, and the Third World. Having died in 2011, the Archduke was spared the sight of much of this. Two years later, Benedict XVI, who had shown such vision and wisdom in his pontificate, resigned the Papacy and was replaced with a very different sort of pontiff.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin had been presenting himself as the defender of Christian values against the hideous strength rising in the West. Indeed, the current cold war between the United States and Russia stems from the reaction of President Obama in 2012 to Putin’s anti-homosexual proselytisation law—long before the problems in Syria and Ukraine. At that time, given the way in which the Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna was allowed to travel about her homeland and decorate various government officials with dynastic orders, the suspicion rose that Putin favoured restoration as a way of reinvigorating Russia. These hopes reached their apogee in 2015, when Vladimir Petrov, deputy of the Russian Legislative Assembly for the Leningrad Region, proposed as much; because he was a member of Putin’s party, it was widely thought this showed Putin’s approval for the idea. But that was as far as it went. The reemergence with official approval, since the Ukraine war began in 2022, of red flags and statues of Lenin and Stalin leads one to believe that Putin no longer favours restoration, if indeed he ever did.
In the meantime, Orban’s Hungary—and Poland, until the recent change in government—have appeared as islands of sanity in a world going increasingly mad. Alongside common sense measures in defence of marriage, family, and public morality—and the reining in of their chief opponents, the judiciary and media—the Orban government returned the name of the country to its pre-Communist title, restored the old royal names and officials for counties, began the rebuilding of the Royal Palace in Budapest, and employed two senior Habsburgs as ambassadors. There were echoes elsewhere in the neighbourhood, as similar social measures began to appear here and there in Slovakia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Czechia dropped ‘republic’ from its name and rebuilt the Habsburg Marian Column in Prague. In, with, and under all of these movements, the cultus of the newly beatified Emperor-King Karl spread. One began to hope that perhaps something approaching the old Habsburg-led Danubian Federation might emerge. Perhaps such a grouping could resist the blandishments of both Putin and Soros, and one day act as a catalyst for the emergence of the kind of Europe for which Otto and his collaborators had worked so hard and diligently.
In 2018, I moved to Austria to begin studying for an advanced degree in Catholic theology. I had visited a number of parts of Europe over the years and met with Monarchists in many parts of Europe on their home turfs. Certainly, both in America and Europe, I had partaken of the culture of remembrance—the beatification of Emperor-King Karl in Rome, and veneration of his relics at a number of shrines; attendance at molebens in honour of Nicholas II; the wreath laying at King Charles I’s statue in Trafalgar Square and the following Mass at the Banqueting House; requiems for Louis XVI; the changing of the Guard of Honour at the Savoy Tombs in the Pantheon; and more of the like. But living in Europe would be quite different.
There were the annual audience reenactment in honour of Bl. Karl and Zita at Brandys in Czechia, where reenactment units are reviewed by a senior member of the Imperial House (and the similar Kaiserparade in Korneuburg); the annual requiem for Otto in the Kapuzinerkirche in Vienna, where he rests among his fathers; and the monarchist student fraternities in Austria, with their singing of the Imperial anthem at every function. These and a great many other such functions showed at once a deep Monarchist sentiment that lies near the surface of a great many people—not just for the Habsburgs in Central Europe, but for both of the branches of the House of Bourbon in France, or Duarte in Portugal, and a number of others. But, of course, sentiment is not the same as a burning desire for change, although it does imply a hope of one kind or another.
Beyond that, my travels from Ireland to Ukraine showed how well Deep Europe—that Continent of innumerable local heritages, ways of life, and customs—still survives. The observation of the feasts of the Church year, the many church shrines, the local museums, the old castles and manors in which the old families still dwell or have returned, the local guilds and organisations, re-enactment units, and so much else that are the common built and intangible heritage of all Europeans, together reflect the Church and State under which they were slowly accumulated. The natural environment combines with these to form the ineffable landscapes that make up the Continent.
My theological studies of the Catholic variety reinforced my belief in Christ, His Church, and His Sacraments as the means of Salvation, and of escape from the trap of the Fall of Man. But I learned a few things of strictly political importance. Chief of these was Christ’s union, at the Last Supper, of the Davidic Kingship to which He was rightful heir, with the nascent Communio of the Church—as a result of which, Christian monarchy was seen as a participation in the Kingship of Christ. This was symbolised by His washing of the Apostles’ feet—a reenactment of which became a key element of the Maundy Thursday ceremonies at every Catholic Court in Europe. Practised by the Monarchs of Austria-Hungary and Bavaria until 1918 and Spain until 1931, the sole remnant—sans actual footwashing—is King Charles III’s annual distribution of ‘Maundy Money.’ This tradition began with a law enacted by Theodosius the Great in 380, when baptism became entrance into Roman Citizenship as well as into the Church.
From that time, the Empire—East and West—along with the various Kingdoms that grew up on her soil, and those that followed in formerly barbarian lands, were seen as the ‘matter’ of the Christian body, of which the Church was the ‘form’ or soul. This was why Muslims, Jews, and heretics could not be full members of the body politic. After the Protestant Revolt, this would be turned against those who held on to Catholicism after forms of Protestantism became the Established Churches in various countries. Of course, while accepted in theory by virtually everyone, adventures such as the split between Rome and Constantinople, the Guelph and Ghibelline feuds, and the Investiture controversies in various countries centred on practical application of these ideas to specific contemporary issues. But these were not ideological, as such. Ideology emerged with Martin Luther’s revolt.
Nevertheless, as I have written elsewhere in these pages, it also became obvious to me that Catholics, Orthodoxy, and the state churches of Northern Europe had each retained an awareness of certain important elements of that Res publica Christiana. We Catholics were certainly aware of the necessity of an independent religious leader for Christendom—the Pope; we also remembered well that the Church in each country must not only be independent, but attempt to shape the countries in which it found itself. This reality is encompassed in the devotions to the Sacred Heart, the Kingship of Christ, and the Queenship of Mary, and symbolised by national consecrations thereto. The Orthodox, despite the Russian Revolution in 1917, retain in their liturgy a clear ideal of the place of the Imperium and Monarchy in the Christian State. Despite the doctrinal problems attendants upon becoming governmental departments, the Protestant state churches of Northern Europe had at least held on more or less to the position in government and society once held by Christianity—albeit lost to the Catholics and Orthodox via many violent revolutions, and now through the passage of time virtually forgotten by them.
Looking at all of this, I came to agree with Fr. Aidan Nichols: “Catholicism, as Orthodoxy, has, historically, regarded the monarchical institution in this light: raised up by Providence to safeguard the natural law in its transmission through history as that norm for human co-existence which, founded as it is on the Creator, and renewed by him as the Redeemer, cannot be made subject to the positive law, or administrative fiat, or the dictates of cultural fashion. Let us dare to exercise a Christian political imagination on an as yet unspecifiable future.” He also speaks of a revived Imperial institution “ensouling” the EU, as it were: “The articulation of the foundational natural and Judaeo-Christian norms of a really united Europe, for instance, would most appropriately be made by such a crown, whose legal and customary relations with the national peoples would be modelled on the best aspects of historic practice in the (Western) Holy Roman Empire and the Byzantine ‘Commonwealth.’” In short, a Christian, Imperial and free European monarchy made up of constituent monarchies was what he had in mind—and ultimately, this is the vision I have come to hold.
But in all of this, what of the land of the Stars and Stripes, my homeland? Where, in such a vision, do America and the other settler lands fit? In days of yore, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and various parts of Asia and Africa received the most adventurous, cantankerous, eccentric, or just bizarre elements of the European population. Whether as initial pioneers or later immigrants, they were the folk who, to a lesser or greater degree, did not fit in. Those who stayed behind were either content with their lot or not terribly adventurous. Ironically, although the outgoers had to deal initially with indigenous resistance, with the hardships of a far-less civilised environment, and in many places with ongoing racial issues, they were spared the horrors that befell their more sedentary cousins in the Mother Continent in the form of the Two World Wars and—for half of them—life in the Soviet Bloc. For all of that, as Otto von Habsburg once remarked, “Europe really extends from San Francisco to Vladivostok.”
This reality was for long obscured by distance, but globalisation is a fact of life today. It struck me a couple of years ago, having flown from Austria to the United States and back twice within a week and a half, that for my fathers, one trip either way was usually a life sentence. Thanks to the speed of travel and the internet, the two sundered halves of the Christian European people interact more and ever more. The evil effects of that reality are all about us, from Antifa burgeoning in the United States to BLM chapters arising in Europe. But it is also true in a more positive sense. More and more young Americans are discovering the untapped riches of European Christian and Conservative thought; more and more young Europeans are discovering the energy and organisational ability endemic to the former colonials. Together, despite the darkness of the hour, what may they not accomplish?
At 63, I have far more yesterdays than tomorrows. But if history has taught me anything, it is that, normally, accomplishment of any great task can take a number of lifetimes. I am content to spend whatever time I have left in helping to-day’s young people in accomplishing the realisation of the ideals we have been examining in these articles, knowing that I am unlikely to see the results. But by the same token, Lenin, of all people, was quite correct when he said, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” On that note, I shall leave the last word to Archduke Otto:
Sometimes, like the Jewish people of the Old Testament, we think of everything in an overly earthy way. They were waiting for the Messiah as a king in the political sense, and we believe that the empire should be expressed in the forms known in history. In reality, however, the Christian empire is more the spirit of solidarity, the Pax Christi thought, the practical implementation of gospel principles, the cooperation of free peoples who acknowledge the Kingdom of Christ.
