Crowns in Conflict

by Theo Aronson

  Once again, then, the hopes of a negotiated peace, presided over by the various crowned heads, faded away. It had been, perhaps, the last chance for the monarchs of central Europe to save their thrones. Other feelers were to be put out: through the mediation of the Pope, and of the neutral sovereigns King Alfonso XIII of Spain, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and King Christian X of Denmark, but they, too, were destined for failure. For by that time there would have been a dramatic transformation in the progress of the war.

  The collapse of the Kaiser's peace moves, early in 1917, had given his High Command – Hindenburg and Ludendorff – exactly the excuse they needed for the introduction of unrestricted submarine warfare. They felt certain that this would bring Britain to its knees in six months. But what it did was to bring the United States into the war. On 6 April 1917, after the sinking of several American merchant vessels by German submarines, the United States declared war on Germany.

  And there was another reason for the United States' entry into the war. President Wilson's not quite valid claim – that this was a struggle between democracy and autocracy, between liberal parliamentarianism and monarchic militarism – had been given credence by the removal of one major obstacle: on 15 March 1917, three weeks before the American declaration of war, the autocratic Tsar Nicholas II of Russia had been forced to abdicate.

  'There are rumours of serious trouble at the Russian court,' wrote Queen Marie of Romania in her diary on 8 January 1917, two months before the Tsar's abdication. 'It is said that the much-hated Rasputin has been killed . . . and that the Imperial Family is in revolt against the Empress, clamouring that she should be sent to a convent. She is extraordinarily hated and some event unknown to me must have brought this hatred to a climax. Anyhow, something uncanny and dreadful is going on there . . .'

  Queen Marie was right. Something uncanny and dreadful was indeed going on at the Russian court. On the first day of January 1917 Rasputin's corpse had been found under the ice of one of the tributaries of the frozen River Neva in the capital. He had been murdered three days before by a party of conspirators headed by young Prince Felix Yussoupov.

  The Kaiser, in his convoluted fashion, saw the murder of Rasputin as a deliberate move against his plans for a separate peace with the Tsar. The starets, claimed Wilhelm, had always favoured such a peace. 'Against him was the party of Princes, the nationalistic bourgeoisie organised by parliament and the English will for war incorporated in Ambassador Sir George Buchanan and the military commander, Colonel Knox. As these adversaries recognised Rasputin's influence, they went to work. Rasputin was just murdered and the Tsar's kingdom wiped out by the democratic revolution supported by England.'4

  This was nonsense. Rasputin's murder had been, from first to last, a monarchist act: a desperate attempt by the monarchists to save the monarchy. Both the effete Prince Yussoupov and the other leading conspirator, Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, were members of the imperial family; and if Rasputin's murder did not actually have the sanction of other family members, they were certainly not sorry to see the end of the starets. They hoped that his murder would weaken, and indeed destroy, the Tsaritsa's power, leaving the Tsar free to follow a less authoritarian and less disastrous course.

  That some sort of drastic action needed to be taken in Russia had been apparent for some time. Between them, the Tsaritsa and Rasputin had reduced the government to a mockery. Determined that the principle of autocracy should be upheld and that ministers were there simply to carry out the Tsar's will, they had dismissed – or had insisted that the Tsar dismiss – anyone who disagreed with them. One by one competent ministers had been replaced by nonentities. And even ministers of unquestioned loyalty to the autocratic ideal had fallen from power because of Rasputin's antipathy towards them. In the end, the government consisted mainly of Rasputin's nominees.

  Nor did their combined meddling stop with the appointing and dismissing of ministers. There was no aspect of national life to which the pair did not turn their attention. The starets advised the Tsaritsa on economic and military matters as well. His instructions, coming from God and passed on by Alexandra, reached the harassed Tsar in a steady stream. And if ever Nicholas hesitated to put these instructions into effect, Alexandra would back them up with her hectoring letters.

  'Be firm,' she wrote on one occasion, 'one wants to feel your hand – how long, years, people told me the same – "Russia loves to feel the whip" – it's their nature – tender love and then the iron hand to punish and guide. How I wish I could pour my will into your veins . . . Be Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Emperor Paul – crush them all under you . . .'

  By the end of 1916 it was the Tsaritsa's famous mauve boudoir at Tsarskoe Selo, and not the Tsar's wooden pavilion at Stavka, that had become the nerve centre of the Russian empire. Serenely unaware of her limitations, obsessed by her inaccurate picture of Holy Russia, convinced that everything she was doing was for the good of the country, Alexandra battled on. Not an evil, nor a heartless, nor even an entirely foolish woman, the Tsaritsa was an extremely misguided one.

  Inevitably, she was accused of being Rasputin's mistress. For what other reason, it was argued, would she be so intimate with this coarse-mannered and lecherous moujik? And, just as inevitably, she was accused – this German-born Tsaritsa – of working together with Rasputin for a German victory. No less than other sovereigns was Alexandra paying the price for belonging to Europe's inter-related family of kings. Was not her brother, the Grand Duke of Hesse, fighting with the German army, and one of her sisters married to the Kaiser's brother? Indeed, was the Kaiser not her cousin?

  It was conveniently forgotten that the Tsaritsa was also Queen Victoria's grand-daughter; that, because of the early death of her mother – Queen Victoria's daughter Alice – Alexandra had spent a great deal of her youth at Victoria's court. And surely George V was as much her cousin as Wilhelm II?

  Just as yet another of her cousins, Queen Sophie of Greece, was being accused of being in direct touch with the Kaiser, so was Alexandra. The palace at Tsarskoe Selo was said to have been fitted with secret wireless sets by which the Tsaritsa and Rasputin communicated with the enemy. She even had a direct telephone line to the German Emperor. Military information, nagged out of her husband, was either passed direct to the Kaiser or else sold by Rasputin to the German authorities. How else could Russia's military disasters be explained away? And for what other reason was the populace suffering such serious food shortages than to facilitate the handing over of the country to the Germans?

  As hunger and dissatisfaction spread, so did the cry against the 'traitress' become louder. On the streets they were openly calling the Tsaritsa Nemka – 'the German woman' or, more graphically, 'the German whore'.

  Rasputin's murder, early in January 1917, did little to temper the widespread hatred of Alexandra. Those who had imagined that the death of the starets would put an end to her political influence were soon proved wrong: she played a more active part than ever. To any suggestion that she withdraw from the political scene, the Tsar turned a deaf ear. Nor would he listen to any talk of choosing a government more acceptable to the Duma. Time and again he was warned – by members of the imperial family, by ambassadors, by politicians – that the Tsaritsa's attitude was leading, not only the dynasty, but all Russia, to disaster.

  'Your Majesty,' begged Rodzianko, chairman of the Duma and one of the last to warn the Tsar of the dangers of the Tsaritsa's insistence on autocratic rule, 'do not compel the people to choose between you and the good of the country.'

  For a moment the Tsar seemed to waver. 'Is it possible', he asked, 'that for twenty-two years I tried to act for the best and that for twenty-two years it was all a mistake?'

  'Yes, Your Majesty,' was Rodzianko's frank answer, 'for twenty-two years you have followed the wrong course.'

  But Nicholas's spasm of self-doubt – or rather, of doubt in the autocratic principle – was short-lived. Completely in tune with Alexandra's thinking, he was determi
ned that the autocracy should be passed on, untainted by democracy, to their son.

  With the Tsar refusing to listen to reason, there were mutterings about more drastic methods of getting rid of Alexandra. Once more the imperial family felt that it was up to them to save the monarchy. The Tsar's grand-ducal relations decided to stage a palace revolution: the Tsaritsa would be arrested, the Tsar forced to abdicate in favour of his son, and Grand Duke Nicholas proclaimed Regent. For several weeks, the plot was the talk of the capital.

  'Yesterday evening,' noted the French ambassador, 'Prince Gabriel Constantinovich gave a supper for his mistress, formerly an actress. The guests included the Grand Duke Boris . . . a few officers and a squad of elegant courtesans. During the evening the only topic was the conspiracy – the regiments of the Guard which can be relied on, the most favourable moment for the outbreak, etc. All this with the servants moving about, harlots looking on and listening, gypsies singing and the whole company bathed in the aroma of Moët and Chandon brut impérial which flowed in streams.'5

  But nothing came of it. In the spring of 1917 the Tsar returned to the front and the Tsaritsa continued to rule through the utterly incompetent ministers.

  The storm broke on 8 March 1917. The immediate cause was a drastic lack of food and fuel in the capital. A mob, cold and hungry, broke into several bakeries. During the following days the rioting became more serious and workers came out on strike. On 12 March the soldiers – many of them new, undisciplined, disaffected recruits – began joining the mob, with regiment after regiment rising against its officers. By the following day almost the entire capital was in the hands of the revolutionaries. The imperial government collapsed and power passed to the Duma. A rival assembly – a 'Soviet of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies', created by the fiery Kerensky – took its place beside the more moderate Duma. On 14 March the Tsar's last bastion, the Imperial Guard, pledged allegiance to the Duma. Leading the Marine Guard on its way to support the Duma was the first member of the imperial family to break with the Tsar: his cousin, Grand Duke Cyril. The revolution had triumphed.

  Yet, in triumphing, the revolution had taken not only the monarchy, but the revolutionary leaders themselves, by surprise. The revolution of March 1917 might have been prepared for by the men of the Left, but it was not they who had started it.

  Nicholas had just arrived back at headquarters when the trouble erupted. At first, he refused to take it seriously. The disturbances in the capital, five hundred miles away, were described to him as 'street disorders'; and street disorders were nothing new to the Tsar. His response, on finally appreciating that the situation was more serious than he had imagined, was to send military reinforcements and to suspend the Duma. Only after receiving a telegram from the Tsaritsa and a telephone call from his brother, Grand Duke Michael, did he decide to return to Tsarskoe Selo. He left the front on 13 March, the day after the Duma assumed power.

  His train never reached Tsarskoe Selo. It was obliged to halt, some hundred miles south of the capital, at Pskov. While he waited there, the situation steadily deteriorated. By the morning of 15 March, Nicholas had heard that the Provisional Government had decided that he must abdicate in favour of his son, with his brother Michael acting as Regent. This decision was backed up by a series of telegrams from the generals commanding the various fronts, all urging him to give up the throne.

  Without the support of either the politicians or the generals, Nicholas had no choice. Displaying, in this moment of supreme crisis, his customary blend of dignity, courtesy and fatalism, the Tsar agreed to abdicate. In the hushed drawing-room of the imperial train he renounced not only his own rights but those of his invalid son. He dare not expose the haemophilic boy to the rigours of ruling a country such as Russia.

  'For the sake of Russia and to keep the armies in the field,' he wrote in his diary that evening, 'I decided to take this step.'6

  The imperial crown now passed to Grand Duke Michael. His reign was all too brief. Within hours the ineffectual Tsar Michael had been talked into abdicating.

  In the course of one week, to the astonishment of the world and the consternation of Europe's monarchs, the proud, powerful, three-hundred-year-old Romanov dynasty had collapsed.

  14

  'Thrones at a Discount'

  THE OVERTHROW of Tsar Nicholas II sounded like a death knell through the courts of Europe. No matter how much the monarchs might tell themselves, and each other, that Russia was a special case, that the circumstances of the Tsar's fall had been exceptional, that it was really the Tsaritsa and Rasputin who were to blame, they could not help feeling apprehensive about their own thrones. Might not the overthrow of autocratic rulers – or, indeed, of any rulers – prove infectious?

  The young Emperor Karl certainly thought so. It gave his search for a negotiated peace an added urgency. 'We are fighting against a new enemy which is more dangerous than the Entente,' he warned Wilhelm II, 'against international revolution which finds its strongest ally in general starvation. I beseech you not to overlook this portentous aspect of the matter and to reflect that a quick finish to the war – even at the cost of heavy sacrifice – gives us a chance of confronting the oncoming upheaval with success.'

  If the monarchs of the Central Powers were not able to conclude peace during the next few months, he added, 'the peoples will go over their heads and the waves of the revolutionary flood will sweep away everything for which our brothers and sons are fighting and dying.'1

  Whether all their 'brothers and sons' were fighting to preserve the monarchical system was debatable, but more enlightened monarchists were coming to the realisation that the days of even semi-autocracy were numbered. President Wilson's peace aims, ringingly announced on the entry of the United States into the war, strengthened this realisation. Eyes gleaming with idealistic fervour, Wilson claimed that Americans were fighting 'for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government, for the rights and liberties of small nations . . .'

  His pronouncement was not lost on the Kaiser's chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg. Three days after Wilson's speech, Bethmann, who was also prime minister of Prussia, proposed an immediate introduction of universal suffrage to replace the present elitist suffrage in the Prussian parliament. His proposal was backed up by an Easter Message from the Kaiser to the effect that 'after the massive contributions of the entire nation in this terrible war, I am sure that there is no room left for Prussia's class suffrage. '

  But Hindenburg and Ludendoff were having none of it. First they engineered Bethmann's dismissal and then, having assured the appointment of a more amenable chancellor, saw to it that the 'class suffrage' remained unchanged. Nor would they have any truck with the Reichstag's proposal for a compromise peace; not, at least, until it had been couched in the most innocuous terms.

  The Emperor Karl was finding it equally difficult to introduce constitutional changes. If his first reaction to the Tsar's overthrow had been to urge the Kaiser to make peace, his second was to give his regime some semblance of democracy. The Austrian parliament, which had been suspended at the beginning of the war, was hastily recalled. Nor did Karl intend to leave it at that. Already this humane and sensible monarch had amnestied many political prisoners; now he planned to take an even bolder step. He would grant national autonomy to all the peoples of his empire. But his conservative politicians would not hear of it. And lacking both the strength to push through these sweeping changes himself and a sympathetic prime minister to do it for him, Karl was obliged to give way. His constitutional project was shelved.

  Like the failure of his peace plan, Karl's inability to reform his empire meant that a splendid opportunity had been missed. Seldom has a road to hell been paved with better intentions.

  Other monarchs, such as Ferdinand of Romania, acted, or were encouraged to act, more resolutely. To forestall any revolutionary uprising by the Romanian peasantry, the King made a 'historic' promise to his troops. Standing in the chill spring w
ind on the plains beyond Jassy, he assured the assembled soldiers that after the war there would be a more equitable distribution of land. The great estates would be broken up and divided out among the peasants. They would also be allowed to take 'a larger part' in public affairs.

  It was a bold move, especially for a Balkan monarch. By risking the wrath of the wealthy, landowning classes, the monarchy was loosening its close ties with its natural supporters. Yet it was a step that had to be taken. And it had to be taken, not only by the King of Romania, but by all monarchs. Only by distancing itself from the conservative aristocracy and by developing into a supra-national institution, could monarchy hope to ride out the storms already breaking about its head. Where a sovereign, such as the Kaiser, relied too heavily on the support of the military and civilian élite, he was doomed. For it was usually the monarchists themselves who undermined the monarchy by refusing to allow it to broaden its base.

  'Most of the monarchies of Europe', claimed Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in later years, 'were really destroyed by their greatest and most ardent supporters. It was the most reactionary people who tried to hold on to something without letting it develop and change.'2

  Even that apparently unassailable sovereign, George V, was experiencing a distinct feeling of apprehension. As early as 1915, Lord Esher, the eminence grise of Edward VII's reign, had warned Queen Mary 'that after the war thrones might be at a discount'. Now, with the Russian throne having been well and truly discounted, Esher's warning took on an added significance. A mass meeting, held in the Albert Hall to celebrate the fall of Tsardom, seemed, to some, to herald the birth of revolutionary republicanism in Britain. It was followed by a letter to The Times in which the celebrated H.G. Wells claimed that the moment had come to 'rid ourselves of the ancient trappings of throne and sceptre' and for the setting up of republican societies.