The Tsar's Doctor

by Mary McGrigor

  Doctor Lee describes in his journal how, following the empress’s funeral, the city of St Petersburg remained in mourning, the carriages draped with black cloth. He called on Sir James Wylie, who had just received a letter from the empress’s personal physician, Doctor Stoffregen, describing his own great sorrow at her death.

  He also gave the results of the post mortem, which confirmed Wylie’s own diagnosis of the causes relating to her death. Elizabeth’s lungs had been found to be sound but her heart was badly diseased. Wylie knew, however, as did Stoffregen himself, that for all her poor physical condition, Elizabeth, without Alexander, had simply not wanted to live.

  On the day after Elizabeth’s funeral Doctor Lee left St Petersburg. A cold north wind was blowing, setting up clouds of dust. Setting off for Moscow at two o’clock in the afternoon, he was accompanied by General and Madame Naryshkin, she who as Alexander’s long-time mistress had caused such grief to his wife. In addition to this strangely assorted party there travelled a Mr Artemieff.

  Reaching Tsarskoe Selo after six hours, at eight o’clock, Lee saw for the first time the palace that had been Alexander’s childhood home and where he and Elizabeth had spent such a happy time together shortly before leaving for Taganrog in the previous September. His presence could still be sensed, particularly in his rooms, spartan in their simplicity, which were kept just as he had left them.

  On a table in each apartment were materials for writing and a small spy-glass. [Alexander, known to have been short-sighted, apparently never wore spectacles.] In his bed-room were his boots, fixed by a hook to his sofa; his two swords, hat, and two pairs of gloves, at the side of a mirror. There was a small table near the side of his bed, on which stood his dressing-case in leather. In a small cabinet adjoining this was his library. Among the books were several on the French Revolution and the Art of War, Sir Walter Scott’s novels and Lalla Rookh. There were several portraits on the walls: one I believed of Madame Narishkin.96 The colonnade of Mr Cameron is a work of great beauty. Around it were placed a great variety of statues; but I had not time to examine them. The walks were in the highest order, and there were clumps of trees precisely like those in our English parks. There was an English farm close to the palace, where was a dairy, merinos, &c.

  Leaving Tsarskoe Selo the party continued via Novgorod, Torzhok and Tver to Moscow travelling along the new road from the new capital to the old on which 12,000 soldiers were working. A great deal of the country being marshland, they were forced to build causeways which were surfaced with broken granite, a method recently devised by the Scottish pioneer of road construction, John Loudon McAdam.

  Until they reached Tver the road was hemmed in with what appeared to be impenetrable forests. They met large herds of oxen being driven towards St Petersburg by men who, in Lee’s words, were ‘the greatest savages I had ever seen. The state of the agriculture was wretched until we reached Torzhok – the earth was merely scraped. The plough was drawn by one horse, a sort of miserable pony.’

  In some places they passed villages belonging to the Crown. Their inhabitants, called Yemshieks, who had more freedom than most peasants, kept the post horses, 1,000 in each place.

  In contrast to the countryside Torzhok was a wealthy city thanks to the production of leather used for boots and shoes together with a multitude of other purposes throughout the whole of Russia. Tver was also a large city on the River Volga, its wealth founded on commerce.

  Finally the party reached Moscow. Count Vorontsov’s house, burnt by the French, was rebuilt, although not yet fully furnished. Lee had another attack of the recurrent Crimean Fever, but once recovered he went to see the Kremlin.

  The Kremlin is, I suppose, more than two versts in circumference. It is entirely surrounded by a wall of brick, with little turrets at the top. It encloses a great variety of churches, the Palace of Justice, the Arsenal, the Imperial Palace, and Public Offices of various descriptions. The whole city, with its number-less palaces and churches, was extended out from this ancient residence of the Tsars. Scarcely any marks were left of the conflagration during the French invasion.

  General Naryshkin told Lee that when taken prisoner by the French an officer had told him that orders had been given to blow up the Kremlin, and that the report of a cannon would be the signal for the explosions. A very short time afterwards the report of a cannon had been heard, to be followed by three tremendous explosions. The arsenal, totally destroyed, was still being rebuilt when Lee’s party arrived.

  On the following day Lee went again to the Kremlin, this time with General Naryshkin, to see the preparations for the new tsar’s coronation. Within the palace they entered the great hall, built in the Gothic style with a large pillar supporting the roof. The walls were covered with crimson velvet. The throne, in a corner, stood beneath a curtain of purple velvet lined with ermine.

  Continuing through the palace, refurbished since French occupation, in the south-west angle they were shown the room occupied by Napoleon, where, from a window with a wonderful view of the city, he had watched Moscow burn.

  Next they visited the cathedral, where the walls and even the doors were completely covered with paintings. Sacred among the relics was a nail said to have come from the Holy Cross, and a bit of the Virgin’s skirt. Also in the sacristy was the testament of the late Emperor Alexander kept in a box of gold and platinum, under a glass case on top of which was painted a human eye.

  Much of the gold and silver in the cathedral had been taken by the French but many of the pictures were still surrounded with emeralds and other precious stones. Cleaning was in progress and such was their veneration that Lee saw people in front of the pictures placing their heads on the ground, then rising and crossing themselves ‘with a fervour that was quite astonishing; they went on doing so until exhausted by fatigue’.

  It was in this same Cathedral of Assumption, so well described by Robert Lee, that on 3 September, on a brilliantly hot day, the coronation of the new emperor took place.

  For James Wylie, attending in his dual official capacity as doctor to the court and director of the medical services, the ceremony must have evoked memories of Alexander’s coronation, almost twenty-five years before to the day.

  Once again Moscow was en fête, guns thundered, bells pealed and crowds cheered in adoration at the sight of their handsome new tsar, but no one knew better than his doctor of the sadness dogging Nicholas’s mind

  Only twelve days had passed since five leaders of the Decembrists had been hanged. Nicholas had had no option other than to order their death as convicted traitors. Yet all were known to him, Prince Troubetzkoy, in particular, having been a personal friend.

  Those spared capital punishment were banished to Siberia, yet, just as the coronation was over, Nicholas ordered that their fetters be released. Many were to spend years in exile, it would appear in a reduced, but nonetheless, comfortable style.

  The new tsar returned to St Petersburg, just as his brother had done a quarter of a century before, to find himself faced with a national crisis. Alexander had come back to his capital to confer with King Frederick William over the threat of Napoleon. Now, Nicholas was told that hordes of Persian soldiers had invaded the Caucasus.

  And so it was war once more. Three months later the Russian army triumphantly captured Erivan (Yerevan) and by October was threatening the shah’s capital of Tehran. On 22 February 1828, the Treaty of Turkmenchay was signed, by which Russia gained the provinces of Erivan and Nakhichevan, together with the exclusive right to keep a fleet of warships in the Caspian Sea.

  War then broke out again with Turkey. On 15 March 1828, Nicholas ordered his army to occupy the principalities of the Danube. On 8 June the Russian troops crossed the great river and Nicholas, who had joined his army, found himself being fired at by Turkish guns. He survived unscathed, but the war did not prove to be the easy victory that had been predicted. Terrible epidemics soon ravaged the Russian troops. Devastated by typhus and cholera the army lost fewer men
from fighting than from disease. At last the port of Varna, on the coast of the Black Sea, fell to the Russian army. But still the struggle continued, with appalling loss of life.

  The campaign of 1829 began quietly, with the Turks still making a stubborn defence. Then at last General Diebitsch, the Silesian who had travelled with Alexander throughout the Crimea, achieved an outstanding victory at Kulevchi on 11 June. On 30 June Diebitsch won another great victory in Silistria and on the same day General Paskévitch, the erratic and ruthless commander who was one of the tsar’s most trusted friends, defeated the Turkish army in the Caucasus.

  Diebitsch then crossed the Balkans and took Adrianople. It seemed that Constantinople must now fall. The sultan was at his mercy but Nicholas, in consultation with a committee, concluded that it was better to keep Turkey as a country within Europe rather than totally annihilate it as a power. Talking to the Austrian ambassador he said, ‘The Ottoman Empire is a state falling into decay . . . but I do not want to overthrow it, I do not need to . . . I only wish for peace.’

  Subsequently, on 14 September 1829, the Treaty of Adrianople was signed. By its terms the sea routes of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles were secured for Russian ships. Turkey ceded fortresses and agreed to pay reparation, and while affirming the rights of the Wallachian principalities, proclaimed Greece a vassal state. Diebitsch and Paskévitch were made Field Marshals and throughout the empire bells rang out in joyful celebration of the victory.

  The fact that Sir James Wylie is not named as being present with the emperor on this campaign suggests that, at the age of sixty, he now confined himself to administrative work. Nonetheless, despite increasing age, he is known to have remained as Director of the Russian Military Services until 1838, when, at the age of seventy, he retired.

  He was certainly still in office when, on 8 September 1830, the news that a group of dissidents in Poland had risen in rebellion reached St Petersburg. Resentment against the tsar had been gradually increasing as it was felt that the privileges granted by Alexander were being undermined by his brother’s autocratic rule. However, it was the report that the Polish army was to join the Russian in suppressing a rising in the Belgian provinces of the Netherlands, aimed to give Belgium independence, which finally set the fuse alight.

  Poland had been ruled by the Grand Duke Constantine, appointed by Alexander as governor general of the country of which he himself was king. Constantine, whose second wife was Polish, believed that the army, largely his own creation, was loyal to him, as indeed some regiments proved to be. Nonetheless, on the night of 29 November, a party of revolutionaries broke into his palace, the Belvedere, in Warsaw. They killed the Prefect of Police but Constantine, who was small and snub-nosed like his father, escaped through a secret door, dressed, it is said, in women’s clothes.

  On 25 December the members of the Polish Diet announced their decision to abolish Nicholas and his descendants as emperors of Poland. Following this the United Chambers of the Diet proceeded to elect a national government under the leadership of Prince Adam Czartoryski, the man of saturnine countenance who, while a great admirer of Elizabeth, had once been Alexander’s closest friend.

  On 5 February, even as the new constitution was still under discussion, Field Marshal Diebitsch, as he had become, led an army into Poland. On the 19th he reached the walls of Warsaw, but suddenly, and true to the pledges given by his brother that Russia would not attack Poland, came the order from Constantine to cease fire.

  However, the fighting continued and the dread disease of cholera once again took its deadly path through the soldiers of both armies. Field Marshal Diebitsch, survivor of so many battles, was among the victims this time, and Grand Duke Constantine also died of the virulent infection, only four hours after the symptoms first appeared.

  From Poland the cholera spread north through Russia to reach the capital of St Petersburg. A letter written by his niece reveals that Sir James Wylie, although already fully involved in the endless administration of the medical department of the army, was asked by the emperor to take on the extra responsibility of control of the disease throughout the city.

  Somehow, he was successful. The drastic but necessary treatment, involving the rigorous isolation of areas where cholera sufferers were known to be, proved to be effective.

  Field Marshal Paskévitch, in command of the Russian army, then led another campaign against Warsaw in August 1831. Overcoming desperate resistance, he entered the capital in triumph on 8 September. ‘Warsaw is at the feet of Your Majesty’ was the message that Nicholas received.

  The fall of Warsaw proved to be the end of the rising, which, as Prince Czartoryski claimed, might well have succeeded had it taken place earlier while the Russian army was embroiled in the Turkish campaign. Nicholas was merciless in his treatment of Poland, the country to which his brother Alexander, following the Treaty of Vienna, had given a statute of independence, with himself proclaimed as king. Then it had been acknowledged as one of the most advanced countries in Europe. Now the Organic Statute of 1832 put Poland once again under Russian dictation at the will and disposition of the tsar. A new prison, built at the gates of Warsaw, symbolized the constitution of an autocrat who ruled with despotic might.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The Winter Palace

  Sir James Wylie was no longer a young man. Gone were the days when he and Alexander travelled the length and breadth of Russia at breakneck speed. Nonetheless, despite his more static circumstances, he remained one of the most powerful men in Russia, as contemporary records prove. As Chief Army Medical Inspector, he was also influential in the administration of the medical academies he had founded early in Alexander’s reign, in addition to which, together with Alexander Crichton, he became an honorary member of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences.

  For some time previously the framework his regulations provided for the operation of the Medico-Chirurgical Academy had begun to seem too narrow for him. From the 1820s, a panel under his supervision had been working on a revised version of the Regulations, which was approved in December 1835. It provided for an increase in the faculty, broadening of clinical training and larger funds to maintain the institution. Three years later, on 8 December 1838, Wylie resigned as the president of the academy, which essentially owed its reputation to his service.

  Wylie continued to live in his suite of rooms in the Winter Palace until, along with the royal family itself and the rest of the inhabitants, he was forced to move out into temporary accommodation following a disastrous fire.

  In 1833 the French architect Auguste de Montferrand was commissioned to redesign the eastern state rooms and create the Field Marshal’s Hall and the Small Throne Room. De Montferrand, who had already designed the magnificent St Isaac’s Cathedral, the golden dome of which dominates the skyline of St Petersburg today, was also the creator of the Alexander Column in the Palace Square. This single monolith of red granite, over eighty-three feet in height, surmounted by an angel holding a cross – the face said to be modelled on Alexander’s – was a tremendous feat of engineering erected to commemorate Alexander’s victory over Napoleon in the war with France.

  The architect, pressed by Tsar Nicholas to complete the job of modernizing the Winter Palace in a short space of time, in some places had substituted wood for stone. Somehow a fire started and the chimneys of unused fireplaces, covered by newly made wooden partitions, acted as flues for the flames which spread undetected from room to room until the whole building was ablaze. Heroically the palace guards and the servants managed to save many priceless treasures, which were piled up in the snow outside in Palace Square.

  Most of the treasures within the Winter Palace were saved but then came new terror as it was realized that the Hermitage, the world-famous museum attached to the palace, was also at risk from the devouring flames. This building, founded by Catherine the Great in 1764, housed Voltaire’s library of 6,780 volumes in all, an immense number of histories, and even a collection said to have b
een made by the empress for her valets to prevent idleness.

  More famously, the museum held the unique collection of 225 European paintings by western European artists, including Raphael, Titian, Leonardo da Vinci, Murillo, Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck and Nicolas Poussin among many others. All had been obtained by the empress from the Berlin merchant Gotzkowsky as the foundation of collection, since enhanced by her grandsons, tsars Alexander and Nicholas, who followed her reign.

  Now it was the younger of those who, as the Winter Palace burned, avoided what might have been a still greater calamity with great presence of mind. Knowing the value of the irreplaceable works of art in the Hermitage he ordered that the three passages leading from the palace itself to the building be destroyed to create a fire break. By his prompt action he saved what was then, and has continued to be, one of the greatest art collections in the world.

  Nonetheless his palace was all but destroyed by the fire. The poet Vasily Zhukovsky called it ‘a vast bonfire with flames reaching the sky’, which continued to burn for several days.

  Even as the palace was smouldering, the tsar ordered it to be rebuilt within a year, with almost unbelievable results. With the temperature still well below freezing, work began and no fewer than 6,000 men were employed. Some died as they laboured, either from accidents, illness, or sheer physical fatigue. Nonetheless others immediately replaced them and the rebuilding was completed within the allotted time.