Dagmar’s plea that Nicholas make haste to get out of Russia was of course futile, for it was already too late. As a prisoner of the Provisional Government, he no longer had any control over his onward journey. At Tsarskoe Selo on the morning of the 21st, General Kornilov (Commander in Chief of the Petrograd Garrison) had arrived to inform Alexandra that she and her family were also under arrest. It was, he explained, for their own safety, as well as to put paid to rumours of any attempt there might be to restore the monarchy.42 (Evidence has since made it clear that the Provisional Government almost certainly put Nicholas and Alexandra under arrest in order to placate the belligerent Petrograd Soviet, which might even then have usurped control of the Imperial Family’s fate, had they not done so.) It was left to Kornilov to reassure Alexandra that ‘As soon as the health of the children allowed it, the Emperor’s family would be sent to Murmansk where a British cruiser would await them and take them to England’, an assumption for which the government had as yet received no confirmation.43 Meanwhile, with all entrances except one securely locked, the Alexander Palace was cut off and heavily guarded.
* * *
When an exhausted Nicholas finally arrived back at the Alexander Palace at 11.30 a.m. on 22 March, he and his family began their new life as prisoners, little knowing that two days previously a message of support from cousin George had been sent to Stavka, only to arrive after Nicholas had left. With his government still prevaricating, King George had taken it upon himself to despatch a personal and private message, addressed to Nicholas, as Tsar and Emperor, c/o Major General Hanbury-Williams, as follows:
Events of last week have deeply distressed me. My thoughts are constantly with you and I shall always remain your true and devoted friend as you know I have been in the past.44
At last, a week after the abdication, a brief but non-committal token of support had arrived from England, although not the expected concrete offer of help, which was a disappointment, given George’s professed deep attachment to Nicky. But at least it was confirmation that Nicholas had not been forgotten. The telegram was forwarded from Stavka to Sir George Buchanan in Petrograd, who, receiving it on the 24th and unable to hand it over to the Tsar, who was now a prisoner at Tsarskoe Selo, delivered it to Foreign Minister Milyukov, asking him to pass it on.45
* * *
This single relatively innocuous telegram has been the source of considerable misunderstanding and blatant misinterpretation over the years. Many subsequent memoirists, including French ambassador Maurice Paléologue, seem to have been under the misapprehension that it contained an offer of asylum, which it patently did not. The King was not in a position to take that kind of executive decision. The misinterpretation was, however, widely disseminated, and without investigation, perhaps leading in part to King George later being made the scapegoat for the failure to get the Romanovs out of Russia. Equally, it has often been claimed that Sir George Buchanan decided not to hand the telegram over, but this was not the case either. It was the Provisional Government that had second thoughts about giving it to its intended recipient. Milyukov had informed Buchanan that they would not pass it on to the Tsar, first because it was addressed to ‘The Emperor’ and Nicholas no longer enjoyed that title, and second because its contents, however innocently expressed, might be misinterpreted ‘as a further argument for the detention of the Imperial Family, and probably augment the severity of [the Tsar’s] imprisonment’. Sir George protested, but was told that it was ‘impossible to deliver the telegram’ because it could be used as evidence ‘of a British plot to rescue the Tsar’.46
* * *
The knock-on effect from this one small independent act by King George was extraordinary. When, on 8 April, the British Cabinet finally heard about the telegram, they asked to see it; the King refused. It was ‘purely a personal one’, his private secretary Lord Stamfordham told them, and he ‘does not feel disposed to communicate its text’. Indeed, George was already regretting that any reference to it had been made in an official Foreign Office telegram. If his personal message to Nicholas had not yet been delivered, then the King now wished Buchanan not to hand it over.47
King George was clearly rattled. The unexpected fuss that his telegram had aroused is recorded in notes of a telephone conversation between Hanbury-Williams and British Foreign Office official Harry Verney. Overlooked till now, this handwritten note can be found in the National Archives file FO 800/205 marked ‘Russia and Siberia’. Observing that Buchanan should not have made an ‘official question’ of this personal matter in his telegrams to the FO, it also notes: ‘The fact that the whole of the Government here seem to have been much intrigued by this natural and harmless telegram has rather annoyed H.[is] M.[ajesty].’48 It might have seemed a storm in a teacup to some, but the official response to the King’s telegram had a clear consequence in his subsequent reticence about engaging further in the Romanov matter.
George V was already treading on eggshells. So much so that he did not resend this much-needed gesture of sympathy to his cousin. He had been made only too clearly aware of just how politically sensitive any independent support that he might show the ex-Tsar would be. The British could not risk compromising Russia’s new Provisional Government – their wartime ally. All the British Cabinet felt able to do, at this stage of what was already an extremely delicate diplomatic and political crisis, was to authorise Buchanan’s suggestion that he make a more general humanitarian appeal to the Provisional Government that ‘any violence [done to the] Emperor’ would have a ‘deplorable effect’ and would ‘alienate His Majesty’s Government’s sympathy for [the] present regime’.49
* * *
At the British Embassy on Petrograd’s Palace Embankment on the evening of 21 March, Sir George Buchanan had a visitor. Duke Alexander of Leuchtenberg, a close friend of the Imperial Family, had come specially, as Buchanan’s daughter Meriel later recalled, ‘to implore my father to take immediate action to get the Emperor and his wife and children out of Russia’. ‘They stood in the gravest danger,’ he insisted, ‘and if they were not soon removed to England it would be too late to get them away, too late to save them from possible disaster.’50
The next morning, after another anxious meeting with Milyukov, Sir George telegraphed London yet again ‘urging the necessity of a quick action’.51 He had good reason to keep pushing his government, for ‘the extremists ha[d] been exciting opinion against His Majesty’. ‘I entirely agree that the Emperor should leave before the agitation has time to grow, and I earnestly trust that, in spite of the obvious objections, I may be authorized without delay to offer His Majesty asylum in England.’52 That day a gloomy Milyukov had told him that time was running out: ‘It’s the last chance of securing these poor unfortunates’ freedom and perhaps of saving their lives,’ he had said.53 ‘I have put things very strongly,’ Sir George told his daughter that evening, ‘I think they will have to take action.’54
From Stavka, Major-General Hanbury-Williams was also exerting pressure. General Alexeev was keeping him up to date on events in Petrograd, now that the Romanovs were prisoners at Tsarskoe Selo, and begged him to telegraph at once:
to request that H.M. Government should make strongest possible representation that absolute safe conduct should be given to whole Imperial Family to ROMANOFF [Murmansk] and to England as soon as possible. He fears for safety of their persons if such action is not taken at earliest possible moment.55
Hanbury-Williams could only hope ‘that all steps possible can be immediately taken’.56 But ‘personally and privately’ he considered the Provisional Government’s ‘condition regarding Emperor’s going to United Kingdom unfair and an insult to him’. At the least, the former monarch should be allowed to stay in Russia, as he wished, and under their protection.57
It was not until 22 March, at a meeting held at Downing Street, that Prime Minister David Lloyd George finally sat down with Lord Stamfordham, the King’s private secretary, to discuss the plight of the Imperial Family. After
being joined later in their discussions by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Andrew Bonar Law, and Lord Hardinge, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, they concluded that the British government, like it or not, had an obligation ‘to invite the tsar and empress to take up residence in this country’, in the interests of their ‘personal safety’ and as a gesture of solidarity to a wartime ally. Milyukov’s request ‘could not be refused’.58 But not refusing a request is not the same thing as making a free and unprompted offer. And there were provisos: Milyukov’s government would need to offer assurances on how ‘His Imperial Majesty’ would be supported financially, so that he would have ‘sufficient means to enable him to live here with suitable dignity’.59
These reservations were communicated to Petrograd by their ambassador in London, Konstantin Nabokov, after a ‘friendly and private’ conversation later that day with Hardinge, who had emphasised that the Tsar’s stay in England presented ‘great difficulties’. His government, he told Nabokov, was concerned about the possibility of ‘undesirable agitation’ that might be brought into the UK by the Tsar’s presence there, and that it was down to the Provisional Government to exercise strict control over those coming and going from Russia during the Imperial Family’s stay, to prevent ‘intrigue and agitation for a restoration of the monarchy’.60
At this point, of course, no one had any idea how sizeable an entourage the former sovereigns would wish to bring with them. Where would they live, and who would pay for it? Perhaps one of the royal residences could be made over to them? But Sandringham, Windsor and Buckingham Palace were all in regular use by the royal family, and Osborne House had become a convalescent home for injured officers. Balmoral was the only privately owned royal residence that could possibly serve, but Stamfordham insisted that it was not suitable in winter.61 (When Nicholas and Alexandra had visited Queen Victoria there in 1896, their Russian entourage had all complained of how miserably cold the castle was.) As for the Romanovs’ financial ability to support themselves, Milyukov agreed that his government would make ‘a liberal allowance’ to this effect, but ‘begged that the fact that the Provisional Government had taken the initiative in the matter should not be published’.62 In reality, as the Tsar had confided to the former Grand Marshal of the Court, Count Benckendorff, after his return to Tsarskoe, he no longer had any financial resources in England; ‘all the monies he had deposited there had been sent to Russia’ (to help the war effort) and ‘if he went to England he would have to fall back on the charity of his relatives’.63
Milyukov was becoming increasingly nervous, as British officials noted, fearing that in ‘pressing for the asylum issue for the ex-Emperor in England’ he had gone ‘beyond the wishes of some of his colleagues’.64 Be that as it may, late in the afternoon of 22 March, Buchanan in Petrograd was informed by Lord Hardinge that the British government had agreed to his request to receive the Tsar and his family. On 23 March – the day that the ambassadors of France, Italy and Britain announced their governments’ formal recognition of the new regime in Russia – the British offer was finally made. But contrary to Milyukov’s request to Buchanan, David Lloyd George’s government insisted that any public announcement about this offer of sanctuary must make it absolutely clear that it had been made not by them, but specifically at the request of the Russians.65
In Madrid, where he had been monitoring events in Russia closely, King Alfonso was equally fearful that time was running out and had asked Russian ambassador Kudashev to come and see him. A telegram quickly winged its way to Milyukov in Petrograd:
Urgent and Highly Confidential. Having just returned today from Andalusia, the King summoned me. His Highness is very concerned about the fate of the Imperial Family, but also, by the same token, fears that the continuing presence in Russia of His Majesty, having renounced the throne, might inflame revolution and a great deal of bloodshed. Although our conversation was a private one, and the King asked me not to report it, I consider it my duty nevertheless to warn you that the Spanish ambassador [in Petrograd] will be urged to appeal to the Provisional Government concerning the future fate of the Imperial Family. The gist is unknown to me, but the King stresses the fact that events in Russia impact upon Spain. There are already signs of revolutionary ferment in working districts. In Barcelona there have been disturbances involving casualties that they are trying to conceal.66
Having finally reached a deal with the British to send the Romanovs out of Russia, the Provisional Government saw no need to pay much attention to King Alfonso’s appeals for ‘guarantees of the future fate of the Tsar’ and discounted them as ‘superfluous’.67 But it is clear from this message that the Spanish king’s survival instinct had now kicked in. He was worrying not just about the safety of the Romanovs, but about how their remaining in Russia would affect his own throne, in the light of extremist republican and anarchist sympathy for the Russian Revolution. As one newspaper presciently noted on the situation in Russia: ‘What affects one throne may react on another. History shows that all important revolutions in one country have shaken the position of rulers in others.’68
One wonders, even at this early stage, whether such thoughts might already have been in the mind of King George. England had once been the favourite place of refuge for banished monarchs, especially French ones like Charles X, Louis-Philippe and Louis-Napoleon, who had all taken advantage of British hospitality when they lost their thrones during the previous century. But the international repercussions of the Russian Revolution went far deeper, and already an outburst of popular left-wing sympathy for the revolutionary cause was spreading in Europe, as King Alfonso was discovering. Does this perhaps explain the puzzling absence of appeals from King George for the British government to take action on behalf of his cousins, even though his mother, the Dowager Queen Alexandra, was already lobbying the Foreign Office for news of her sister Dagmar? As a constitutional monarch, King George had no power to order his government to act, which begs this question: had Milyukov, backed up by urgent and repeated representations from Buchanan and Hanbury-Williams, not persisted in his request for the British to take in the Romanovs, would King George and his government ever have seized the initiative and offered to do so?
Eight days after Nicholas’s abdication and at the end of what had seemed like an agonisingly long wait, a formal communication from British ambassador Buchanan was received at the Russian Foreign Ministry:
Monsieur le Ministre,
Referring to the conversation which I had the honour to have with Your Excellency on Monday last, I have the honour to state that the King and His Majesty’s Government are happy to offer asylum to the late Emperor and Empress, and trust that their late Majesties will take advantage of it for the duration of the war.69
‘Alas I fear it is too late,’ sighed Milyukov when Buchanan’s letter finally arrived.70 Russia’s Foreign Minister had good reason to think this, for he knew full well that a far more belligerent political force had already swung into action to ensure that the Romanov family would encounter great difficulty in getting out of Russia, whoever offered them a refuge.
For days Sir George Buchanan had been pressing his government to make a decision, warning that ‘the power of the Soviet was growing daily’.71 He was right to do so, for it would be the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies that ultimately controlled the fate of the Imperial Family in the spring of 1917 – and not the Provisional Government.
Chapter 4
‘Every Day the King Is Becoming More Concerned’
Within days of the revolution, the former members of the old Imperial State Duma in Petrograd had scrambled to pull together some kind of caretaker government. It was hoped this would be sufficient to impose order until elections to a Constituent Assembly later in the year could be organised. But instead this so-called Provisional Government had found itself increasingly in conflict with a rival political body – the Petrograd Soviet. This council of militant revolutionary workers and soldiers had c
ome together to press for the declaration of a republic and nothing less than the establishment of a new socialist state, controlled by the people and for the people. Many of the members of the Soviet held sway over the workers in key sections of Petrograd’s industry, its postal and telegraph services and the strategically crucial railways. One further essential in the balance of power was also increasingly under their control: the army. Until October 1917, when Lenin’s Bolsheviks finally took over, the country would be governed by the dual powers of the regional and city Soviets, often in direct conflict with the Provisional Government.
While the Provisional Government under Prince Lvov, with its mix of old monarchist landowning and bourgeois elements, might have wished to see the former Tsar allowed to depart from Russia with his life and some dignity intact, the hardliners in the Petrograd Soviet had no intention of letting Nicholas II walk quietly away from the wreckage of the old corrupt tsarist system that he had headed. There was a price to pay for centuries of imperial despotism. On 19 March 1917, as soon as the Soviet got word that the Provisional Government was planning to send the Romanovs abroad, an urgent meeting of its Executive Committee was called. So alarmed were the Soviet’s deputies by rumours that a special train was preparing to take the family out of Russia that they sent troops to occupy all railway stations, as well as telegraphing along the lines, instructing stationmasters and railway workers ‘that the Romanovs and their train must be detained wherever they were found’.1 The Petrograd Soviet had in fact sent out messages to get the Tsar’s train stopped on its way back from Stavka, and for him to be arrested immediately after the abdication, but their telegrams had not arrived until after Nicholas had arrived at Tsarskoe Selo.2
The Race to Save the Romanovs Page 8