a desire for a "peace without annexations. This led to the 1918 Austro-Hungarian January Strike in which Czernin had to personally intervene. On 24 January 1918, he announced he accepted Wilson's Fourteen Points. He then negotiated a separate peace treaty with the newly created Ukrainian People's Republic that was signed on 9 February 1918 and in which he agreed to cede Chelm. The so-called bread peace did not solve the Dual Monarchy's food supply problem, but it did earn Count von Czernin the loathing of Austrian Poles, who also had claimed Chelm. He reached the highlight of his career by subsequently signing peace treaties with Russia on 3 March and Romania on 14 April and was considered the leading diplomat of the Central Powers. The Sixtus Affair, however, led to Count von Czernin's downfall. Emperor Karl I, using his brother-in-law Prince Sixte of Bourbon-Parma as his intermediary, had secretly assured French President Poincaré by a letter dated 24 March 1917 that he would support France's "just demand" for the return of Alsace-Lorraine. Although his role in the affair remains unclear, he was aware of the secret negotiations, although not of the exact wording of the letter. When French Premier Clemenceau published the letter a year later Count von Czernin, feeling himself betrayed by Emperor Karl I and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, tendered his resignation on 14 April 1918. Count von Czernin has been relatively harshly judged by historians. While he was arguably more imaginative and energetic than either of his predecessors, Count von Berchtold or Baron Burián von Rajecz, he was at the same time more unpredictable and volatile, giving in to sudden impulses. This gave his foreign policy an element of instability, which possibly did not inspire confidence to the other side with which he was seeking a compromise peace. Despite being celebrated at the time as a "peace minister", his diplomatic efforts to disengage his country from World War I failed to prevent the dissolution of Austria-Hungary. Post-war career After the war, the Czechoslovak agrarian reforms deprived him of his lands in Bohemia and he withdrew to Salzkammergut in Austria. From 1920 to 1923, he served as a deputy of the Demokratische Partei in the National Council of the Republic of Austria. In 1917, he was bestowed with the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Stephen and invested as a Knight of the Order