The tsaritsa remained bedridden until mid-January and the family did not transfer to St Petersburg for the winter season until the following month.34 It was a difficult time to be laid so low by illness for Alexandra was pregnant again – her child probably conceived at Skierniewice – and her illness only exacerbated her anxieties. Xenia was sympathetic when she was finally told the news by Maria Feodorovna on 13 March: ‘It’s become noticeable now, but she, poor thing, had been concealing it as no doubt she was afraid that people would find out about it too soon.’35
Alexandra was saved from further criticism when the St Petersburg season was cut short with the outbreak in January 1904 of the Russo-Japanese War, triggered by Nicholas’s expansionist policies in southern Manchuria, a territory long contested by the Japanese. Many at court believed it to be a direct result of the insidious influence of Philippe, who had assured the couple that a short, sharp war would be a triumphant demonstration of Russian imperial might that would underline the inviolability of their autocracy. But it was an ill-judged conflict for which Russia was not prepared, her troops even less so, and the initial burst of patriotic fervour rapidly faded.
During the war, the little grand duchesses were inevitably susceptible to the racist and xenophobic talk prevalent at court; Margaretta Eagar recalled that it was ‘very sad to witness the wrathful, vindictive spirit that the war raised in my little charges’. Maria and Anastasia were perplexed by images of the ‘queer little children’ of the Crown Prince of Japan that they saw in magazines. ‘Horrid little people,’ exclaimed Maria, ‘they came and destroyed our poor little ships and drowned our sailors.’ Mama had told them ‘the Japs were all only little people’. ‘I hope the Russian soldiers will kill all of the Japanese’, exclaimed Olga one day, upon which Margaretta explained that the Japanese women and children were not to blame. The bright and opinionated Olga seemed satisfied after several of her questions had been answered: ‘I did not know that the Japs were people like ourselves. I thought they were only like monkeys.’36
The war, meanwhile, had galvanized Alexandra’s talent for philanthropic work and despite her pregnancy, she had engaged in war relief, sending portable field chapels to the troops and organizing supplies and hospital trains. For the first time in years she was once again conspicuous in St Petersburg, overseeing groups of women gathered to make clothing and sort linen and bandages for the hospital trains in the ballrooms of the Winter Palace. Just as Queen Victoria and her daughters had sat knitting and sewing during the Crimean War of 1854–6, so Alexandra and her four daughters crocheted caps and knitted scarves for the troops; and young though she was, Anastasia proved herself extraordinarily adept at frame knitting.37 The girls also helped Margaretta Eagar fold and stamp piles of letter-forms for wounded troops to write home to their families on.
As the months passed and the birth of the tsaritsa’s fifth baby approached, the foreign press inevitably was awash with speculation. ‘That great events may hinge on small ones is, unfortunately, a truism’, observed an editorial in the Bystander:
A few days will decide whether the Czarina is to be the most popular woman in Russia, or regarded by the great bulk of the people as a castaway – under the special wrath of God. It is said that she prays night and day that the coming child may prove a son in order that she may win the hearts of her husband’s people by giving an heir to the sovereignty of All the Russias. Just at this minute the Czarina – waiting for the mysterious decision of God and Nature – is one of the most pitiful figures in Europe, all the more so that her position allows her no shelter from the sympathy or curiosity of the world.38
‘Royal and imperial families make themselves very unhappy over matters American families never think of’, observed another editorial commenting on the simple, unspoilt lives of the consistently overlooked imperial daughters. ‘There are four of these little girls. They are bright, intelligent children, but nobody in Russia wants them, unless it be their parents.’ In the midst of so much speculation, there was no doubt how much Nicholas and Alexandra loved their daughters – their ‘little four leaved clover’ as Alexandra described them. ‘Our girlies are our joy and happiness, each so different in face and Character.’ She and Nicholas firmly believed that ‘Children are the apostles of God, which day after day He sends us, to speak of love, peace and hope’.39 But, as Edith Almedingen observed: ‘However beloved by their parents, the four little girls were just four prefaces to an exciting book which would not begin until their brother was born.’40
* * *
The onset of Alexandra’s fifth labour came very quickly indeed, at Peterhof on 30 July 1904. Ella and Sergey had been visiting from Moscow when, over lunch, Alexandra suddenly experienced strong labour pains and quickly retreated upstairs. Barely half an hour later, at 1.15 p.m., she gave birth to a large boy weighing 11½ lb (5.2 kg). She felt extremely well and looked radiant and soon after was happily breastfeeding.41
At long last the cannon of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg were able to boom out the 301-gun salute across the River Neva announcing the birth of a naslednik – an heir – the first to be born to a reigning monarch (rather than a tsarevich) since the seventeenth century. People stopped in their tracks to count the number of salutes, which came every six seconds. ‘The aspect of the streets’ suddenly changed, as the St Petersburg correspondent of the Daily Express reported on the paper’s front page: ‘National flags seemed to spring from every quarter, and in five minutes after the 102nd gun had boomed out its glad tidings the whole city was ablaze with flags. Work automatically stopped for the day and the people gave themselves over to public rejoicing.’ That evening the streets were bright with electric illuminations of the imperial twin-headed eagle and Romanov crowns; orchestras played in the parks, constantly repeating the National Anthem. Later, in many of the capital’s best restaurants the champagne flowed freely ‘at the expense of the proprietors’.42
‘We were nearly deafened by the church bells ringing all day’, remembered Baroness Sophia Buxhoeveden, a visitor to court.43 Nicholas and Alexandra’s prayers had been answered; it was ‘an unforgettable, great day for us’, the tsar recorded in his diary. ‘I am sure it was Seraphim who brought it about’, remarked his sister Olga.44 The happy parents blessed the day they had met Maître Philippe: ‘Please, somehow or other, pass on our gratitude and joy … to Him’, Nicholas wrote to Militza.45
The general feeling elsewhere was that ‘the birth of an heir after all these anxious years of disappointed hopes changes the destinies of Russia’; for Nicholas it was certainly a dramatically charged moment that brought renewed optimism in time of war. ‘I am more happy at the birth of a son and heir than at a victory of my troops, for now I face the future calmly and without alarm; knowing by this sign that the war will be brought to a happy conclusion.’46 With this in mind, and as a morale-booster, Nicholas named the entire Russian army fighting in Manchuria as Alexey’s godfathers. An imperial manifesto followed, granting numerous political concessions, abolishing corporal punishment for the peasantry and armed forces and remitting fines for a wide range of offences. A political amnesty was issued to prisoners (excepting those convicted of murder) and a fund set up for military and naval scholarships.47
* * *
With his large blue eyes and head of golden curls the little tsarevich was the most beautiful of babies. They named him Alexey after the second Romanov tsar, Alexey I (who ruled 1645–76), and father of Peter the Great, the name coming from the Greek meaning ‘helper’ or ‘defender’. Russia had had enough Alexanders and Nicholases, said the tsar. Unlike his charismatic son, who had looked to the West for inspiration, Alexey I had been a pious tsar in the tradition of old Muscovite Russia – the kind of traditional monarch that Nicholas and Alexandra wished their son to be. An official announcement was soon published revoking the nomination of Grand Duke Mikhail as successor: ‘From now on, in accordance with the Fundamental Laws of the Empire, the Imperial title of Heir Tsarevich, and al
l the rights pertaining to it, belong to Our Son Alexei.’48 In celebration Nicholas took his three eldest daughters to a Te Deum at the chapel of the Lower Dacha, as hundreds of telegrams and letters of congratulation flooded into Peterhof. Dr Ott and Madame Günst were once more handsomely rewarded for their services; the doctor this time receiving a blue-enamel box by Fabergé set with rose-cut diamonds in addition to his handsome fee.49
Like his sisters Alexey had a Russian wet-nurse and it was Mariya Geringer’s special duty to ensure that she was given plenty of good food. On one occasion she asked the nurse how her appetite was. ‘What sort of appetite can I have,’ she complained, ‘when there is nothing salted or pickled?’ The wet-nurse may have grumbled about the plain food on offer but ‘this did not prevent her from doubling her weight, as she would eat everything on the table and leave not a scrap’. After Alexey was weaned, the nurse received a pension and numerous gifts; her child back in the village received presents too and at Christmas and Easter and her name day a grateful Alexandra would continue to remember her boy’s wet-nurse with money and other gifts.50
On the occasion of Alexey’s christening twelve days later, an enlarged cortège of carriages wound its way a fifth time to the imperial chapel at Peterhof. Mistress of the robes Mariya Golitsyna was once more entrusted with carrying the Romanov baby to the font on a golden cushion, but by now elderly, she feared she might drop the precious boy. As a precaution an improvised gold sling attached the cushion to her shoulder and she wore non-slip rubber-soled shoes. The baby’s older sisters, nine-year-old Olga and seven-year-old Tatiana, were there in the procession – Olga as one of his godmothers – and clearly enjoying their first taste of formal public ceremonial. They looked especially beautiful, dressed in child-size versions of full Russian court dresses of blue satin with silver-thread embroidery and buttons and silver shoes. They also wore miniature versions of the order of St Catherine and blue velvet kokoshniki decorated with pearls and silver bows. The two proud sisters rose to the importance of the occasion: ‘Olga blushed with pride when, holding a corner of Alexey’s cushion, she walked with Maria Feodorovna to the font’ and she and Tatiana ‘allowed themselves to relax into a smile only when they passed a group of still smaller children, their two tiny sisters, and several little cousins, standing near a doorway and gazing open-mouthed as the procession passed’.51
Although still very young, Olga created a deep impression on one of her Romanov cousins that day. Sixteen-year-old Prince Ioann Konstantinovich – or Ioannchik as everyone called him – was besotted with her, as he told his mother:
I was so enraptured by her I can’t even describe it. It was like a wildfire fanned by the wind. Her hair was waving, her eyes were sparkling, well, I can’t even begin to describe it!! The problem is that I am too young for such thoughts and, moreover, that she is the Tsar’s daughter and, God forbid, they might think that I am doing it for some ulterior motive.
Ioannchik would continue to nurse a deep attachment to Olga and the hope of marrying her (which had first entered his head, he said, in 1900) for several years to come.52
Baroness Buxhoeveden was impressed with the two older girls that day; they remained as ‘solemn as judges’, throughout the four-hour ceremony, during which several noticed that, as he was being anointed with holy oil, the little baby ‘raised his hand and extended his fingers as though pronouncing a blessing’. Such inadvertent religious symbolism did not pass unnoticed by the Orthodox faithful: ‘Everyone said that it was a very good omen, and that he would prove to be a father to his people.’53 The birth of this one precious little boy provided a field day for soothsayers and omen seekers, although some were deeply malevolent. For even now, the worst kind of superstitious nonsense was being put about that the little tsarevich was in a fact a changeling – substituted by Nicholas and Alexandra for an unwanted fifth daughter who had been spirited away.54
A rather more balanced line was taken outside Russia, where Alexey’s was the most talked-about royal birth in a century. Many were relieved for Alexandra’s sake as much as for the tsar’s; ‘the Empress will acquire a prestige that will exalt her influence above that of the Dowager Empress. She is the mother of a man-child!’ wrote one tongue-in-cheek American commentator, pointing up the increasingly difficult position Alexandra had been in – as a granddaughter of Queen Victoria living in a ‘semi-savage’, Asiatic country where rampant superstition prevented any compassion being shown for her misfortune in repeatedly producing girls.55 A former American ambassador to Russia was not alone in repeating the view that such was the bad feeling towards Alexandra up till that point that ‘if the last had been a girl … there would possibly have been demand for the Tsar to take another wife in order to obtain an heir’.56
Some observers abroad objected to the sexual discrimination being exercised against the four Romanov daughters, denigrating the fact that they had merited only 101-gun salutes each, as opposed to 301 for a boy. The US journal Broad Views thought the tsar’s four young daughters more than capable of ‘guarantee[ing] the security of the succession’:
If the present Czar had reverted to the idea of Peter the Great, and had declared the Grand Duchess Olga heiress to the throne irrespective even of any future little brothers … the Russian people might have reflected that in a few years more, for Olga has now attained the advanced age of nine, the Czar would be supported by an heiress old enough to wield the scepter, if he himself should lose his life to the Nihilists. As it is, the birth of the infant who has already, regardless of humour, been made a Colonel of Hussars, will merely guarantee the evils of a long regency in that far from impossible event.57
Within the larger Romanov family not everyone was delighted by the new arrival. The American military attaché Thomas Bentley Mott remembered dining with Grand Duke Vladimir – Nicholas’s eldest uncle – who would be next in line to the throne after the childless Mikhail, and after him, his sons Kirill, Boris and Andrey. On 30 July Mott had joined the grand duke for lunch after attending army manoeuvres. Upon arriving, Vladimir was handed a telegram and immediately disappeared. His guest was left waiting for an hour before the grand duke returned:
We sat down in silence; and as our host did not speak, the rest of us could not do so. The changing of the plates and the constant presenting of a fresh cigarette to the Grand Duke by the tall Cossack who stood at other times immovable behind his chair, alone relieved the stillness.58
After lunch the grand duke once more absented himself. It was only later that Mott learned that the telegram that had cast such a gloom over their lunch had contained the news of the birth of Alexey.
Had he known then what Nicholas and Alexandra already knew, the grand duke might well have been less gloomy. It has generally been accepted that it was not until 8 September, nearly six weeks after Alexey was born, that the baby first experienced ominous bleeding from the navel. But bleeding had in fact occurred almost as soon as the umbilical cord was cut, and it had taken two days for the doctors to bring it under control. On 1 August, Nicholas wrote at length to Militza, on behalf of Alexandra, telling her that:
Thank God the day has passed calmly. After the dressing was applied from 12 o’clock until 9.30 that evening there wasn’t a drop of blood. The doctors hope it will stay that way. Korovin is staying overnight. Feodorov is going into town and coming back tomorrow … The little treasure is amazingly placid, and when they change the dressing he either sleeps or lies there and smiles. His parents are now feeling a little easier in their minds. Feodorov says that the approximate amount of blood loss in 48 hours was from 1/8th to 1/9th of the total quantity of blood.59
The bleeding was frightening. Little Alexey had seemed so robust – he had ‘the air of a warrior knight’ as Grand Duchess Xenia remarked when she had first seen him.60 Militza had no doubt from the start. With their exclusive access to Nicholas and Alexandra at the time, she and Grand Duke Petr had driven over to the Lower Dacha the day Alexey was born to congratulate his parents, as t
heir son Roman later recalled:
When they returned in the evening to Znamenka, my father remembered that when he had bidden farewell, the Tsar had told him that even though Alexey was a big and healthy child, the doctors were somewhat troubled about the frequent splatters of blood in his swaddling clothes. When my mother heard this, she was shocked and insisted on the doctors being told about the cases of haemophilia that were occasionally passed down in the female line from the English Queen Victoria, who was the Tsaritsa’s maternal grandmother. My father tried to calm her and assured her that the Tsar had been in the best of spirits when he had left. All the same, my father did indeed phone the palace to ask the Tsar what the doctors had to say about the blood splatters. When the Tsar answered that they hoped that the bleeding would soon stop, my mother took the receiver and asked if the doctors could explain the cause of the bleeding. When the Tsar could not give her a clear answer, she asked him with the calmest of voices she could manage: ‘I beg you, ask them if there is any sign of haemophilia’, and she added that should that be the case, then the doctors of today would be able to take certain measures. The Tsar fell silent on the phone for a long time and then started to question my mother and ended by quietly repeating the word that had staggered him: haemophilia.61
Mariya Geringer later recalled how Alexandra had sent for her soon after Alexey was born. The bleeding, she told Mariya, had been triggered by the midwife Günst swaddling the baby too tightly. This was traditional Russian practice but the pressure of the tight binding over Alexey’s navel had provoked a haemorrhage and had caused him to scream out in a ‘frenzy’ of pain. Weeping bitter tears, Alexandra had taken Mariya’s hand: ‘If only you knew how fervently I have prayed for God to protect my son from our inherited curse’, she had told her, already only too aware that the blight of haemophilia had indeed descended on them.62 Nicholas’s first cousin, Maria Pavlovna, had no doubt that he and Alexandra had known almost immediately that Alexey ‘carried in him the seeds of an incurable illness’. They hid their feelings from even their closest relatives, but from that moment, she recalled, ‘the Empress’s character underwent a change, and her health, physical as well as moral, altered’.63
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