October 9, 1917
The Marquise de Fontenoy reports today on the death of Alfred, Prince of Salm-Salm, stating that an eleven-year-old boy, Prince Nikolaus, has succeeded his "septuagenarian grandfather," as head of the great and historical European house of Salm-Salm," once a sovereign state, now mediatized.
Prince Nikolaus is the eldest son of the late Prince Emmanuel of Salm-Salm, who was killed in action in August 1916, and Archduchess Maria Christina of Austria, "who has a young girl was jilted" by the late Archduke Franz Ferdinand "for the sake of her "penniless governess and lady-in-waiting, Countess Sophie Chotek." Franz Ferdinand contracted a morganatic marriage. He and his wife were murdered at Sarajevo, their deaths "the immediate prelude to the present war."
When war broke out, the Archduchess and her husband were traveling in South Africa, where they were arrested and interned by the British government.
At the request of the archduchess' aunt and godmother, Queen Dowager Maria Cristina of Spain, the couple were transferred to Gibraltar and finally released, and allowed to return to their home.
Archduchess Maria Christina's father is Archduke Friedrich, who served as the "Austrian generalissimo in the present war," until Emperor Karl succeeded to the throne.
[There is one problem with the Marquise's story. She got all her facts right but one: the Prince of Salm-Salm did not die until April 20, 1923.]
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