by Alan Palmer
A violent sea wind … caused the Gulf of Finland to overflow, and the Neva River was driven back contrary to its natural direction … In the space of one hour the square in front of the Winter Palace, the boulevard and the streets which lead to the Palace showed a terrible sight of a raging sea with waves and eddying water. The Winter Palace appeared to be an island battered by the waves.33
For much of that Friday Alexander himself remained on the balcony of the Palace, overlooking the Neva. He was appalled at the magnitude of the disaster, sending out a huge long-boat from the palace steps in the hope of rescuing people marooned on Vassilevsky Island. Elizabeth, who oddly enough had received on the previous day a letter from her mother describing the flood devastation in Germany, remained with her husband. At half-past two in the afternoon she wrote a note to the Margravine:
We are in the Winter Palace as though in a vessel at sea … Our generation has seen nothing like it … The bridge of boats has been smashed to pieces; barges of hay, overturned at the mouth of the river, are being swept past the Palace … The sight is terrifying because of the destruction which it represents; it is worse than a fire because one can do nothing to check it.34
By nightfall half the city was under water but the wind had begun to subside, and by Saturday morning the flood level, which in places was eighteen feet above normal, was receding. Alexander insisted on visiting the devastated areas, supervising relief work. It was estimated that between twelve and fifteen hundred people had perished in the capital itself, with five hundred workers drowned in the dockyard at Kronstadt (which had never before suffered from flooding) and two hundred more in Peterhof.35
The superstitious and the devout regarded the flood as divine retribution on a city which had given itself too much to gaiety. Even the officially ‘atheistic’ Pushkin, who was later to base his poem The Bronze Horseman on the terrible disaster, wrote at first from exile that ‘it serves accursed Petersburg right’.36 Less sophisticated souls were filled with repentance. As Alexander moved through the wretched mud-caked streets of the poorer quarters on the day after the waters receded, he heard a voice call out, ‘It is a punishment from God the Almighty for our sins.’ At once he answered, bitterly, ‘No, it is a punishment for my sins.’ The obsessive sense of guilt, which had troubled him over every personal tragedy in past years, now dominated his mind as he saw the way in which Nature had chastened the capital of his Empire. The last occasion on which there had been severe flooding in St Petersburg was in 1777, a few months before Alexander’s birth; and he tended to see this fresh inundation of the angry waters as a portent, which he could not understand.37
The immediate effect of the flood was to make life in St Petersburg, never a healthy city, even more uncertain in the months ahead. ‘Owing to the damp and unwholesome state of the lower parts of the houses and cellars, the mortality during the subsequent winter was nearly doubled, from typhus chiefly, as also from affections of the lungs’, wrote one of the city’s principal physicians subsequently, ‘and many dated their rheumatic pains and various other maladies to the sufferings they then underwent.’38 St Petersburg continued to show the marks of the flood long afterwards. Yet, in a strange way, the tragedy won back for Alexander some of his lost popularity in the capital. Too long he had been isolated from his people. Now he emerged from the Palace and they could see him, deeply affected by their tribulation. They remembered his benevolence in those closing weeks of 1824, just as they remembered his fortitude amid the uncertainties of 1812: it was as well to forget the years of hesitation, frustration and withdrawal that had come between these peaks of drama in the life of the capital.39
The Decision to go to Taganrog
It was not only the poorer townsfolk whose health suffered from the disaster. Less than a week later Elizabeth took to her bed with a fever which puzzled the doctors. She herself blamed it, at first, on the cold and damp of that terrible Friday, ‘since we could not risk fires in the chimney that day because of the violence of the wind’.40 But the illness was far more serious than she suspected. For a month she was confined to her bedroom, and it was not until the first week of February that she was allowed briefly out of the Winter Palace. Her four doctors do not appear to have agreed on the nature of her illness. She was never physically strong, and for several years had been longing to take a holiday again somewhere warm, where she could enjoy once more the delights of sea-bathing. But there is no doubt her collapse in the winter of 1824–5 was caused by a particular infection rather than by a general deterioration of her health. Almost certainly, she was suffering from rheumatic fever, which considerably weakened her heart. She never entirely recovered.41
Alexander remained with Elizabeth during the crisis weeks of her illness. He was himself in low spirits. The exertions of his journey to the interior and his efforts after the flood irritated his leg. Moreover, quite apart from his fears for his wife, there seemed that winter nothing but a succession of bad news. Early in the New Year he learnt that Julie von Krüdener had died suddenly on Christmas Day at Karasubazar (Belogorsk) in the Crimean mountains;42 and within a few days Alexander was also mourning the death of General Uvarov, a friend and companion since the days when they were regimental officers together.43 Nor was there any comfort for the Tsar in the political scene; police reports indicated unrest in some of the garrisons of western Russia; and messages from Constantinople predicted a strengthening of Turkish resistance to the Greek patriots with the arrival of reinforcements from Egypt in the Peloponnese, commanded by the redoubtable Ibrahim Pasha.44 It was a bad beginning for the year.
The spring brought Alexander small solace. Elizabeth’s health continued to worry Wylie, who was particularly concerned over the irregularity of her heart-beats, and she was again confined to her room for days at a time. But in the first week of April it was agreed, in conversation between Alexander and Elizabeth, that they would leave St Petersburg before the coming of the autumn rain and mists; they planned to go to Moscow, and then travel further south.45 The details of the journey were not worked out for another four months: Alexander had first to go to Warsaw for the Diet and then to Gruzino to discuss, with Arakcheev, the future of the military colonies. Moreover, the summer months of 1825 witnessed the beginnings of a diplomatic revolution in Russian policy: Metternich’s lack of support over Greece, and some ill-considered boasts he had made during a visit to Paris, aroused in Alexander grave doubts over the value of his partnership with Austria.46 At the same time, a visit home by Dorothea Lieven (whose husband was still Russian ambassador in London) afforded Alexander a new insight into the policy of Canning, whom he had hitherto regarded as a neo-Jacobin.47 By the beginning of August it seemed likely that the Russo-Austrian understanding would be replaced by an Anglo-Russian agreement over the Eastern Question.48 With such a major re-adjustment of policy under consideration, it is small wonder that Alexander had little opportunity to settle his movements for the autumn and winter until August.
Elizabeth herself would have liked to go to Germany, but her physicians did not think a winter in Baden would benefit her. There was talk of Italy, but she did not want to spend several months in a totally foreign land. Moreover she hoped Alexander would accompany her, and the political situation made it impossible for him to contemplate a long absence from Russia. Finally Wylie suggested that she should winter ‘at Taganrog, a port on the sea of Azov’.49 Elizabeth was not at first enthusiastic at the proposal, but she was willing to accept any place recommended by Alexander and Wylie. They had visited Taganrog briefly in the spring of 1818, when the Court had wintered in Moscow: they thought the port had an agreeable climate, and they believed it would be possible to maintain links between the town and the greater centres of the Empire. Elizabeth accordingly agreed with them: for, after all, the choice of Taganrog was, in a sense, an extension of the vague project for going somewhere south of Moscow which she had discussed with Alexander in April. The Tsar himself warmed to the idea: he hoped he would spend some months with
her in the Governor’s residence and then journey eastwards to Astrakhan and the Volga delta, a region no Tsar had visited since the conquests of Ivan the Terrible in the middle of the sixteenth century. And from Taganrog it was not difficult to cross to the Crimea. All in all, a winter by the Sea of Azov began to seem an interesting prospect.50
At first some attempt was made to keep these plans secret. But it was necessary to send an architect, and a small labour force, southwards in order to ensure that the Governor’s house was in a fit state for the Imperial couple. Moreover, doctors and aides-de-camp had to be chosen for Alexander and for Elizabeth, since it had been decided they would travel separately – Elizabeth’s health would never stand the strain of a journey at Alexander’s reckless pace. By the middle of August the diplomatic corps in the capital had picked up rumours of the proposed trip. Lebzeltern, the Austrian ambassador, was frankly puzzled: writing to Metternich on 17 August, he informed him that the decision ‘to move the Court to Taganrog’ had been taken for the sake of the Empress’s health, but he did not hide his surprise that the Sea of Azov, of all places, had been chosen.51 In April 1812, when Alexander left for his army in the field, it had been officially declared that he was going to inspect his provinces; was this sudden announcement of a visit to the southern shores a prelude to war against Turkey? For a month Lebzeltern’s despatches to Vienna, which throughout the summer had concentrated on Greek affairs, showed a rare concern with the Empress’s well-being.52 The British, like the Austrians, also suspected that Alexander was planning eventually to go to war ‘as the only means of compelling Turkey to enter into an arrangement respecting Greece’, as the ambassador later reported to London.53 It was all rather disturbing.
And yet, as the plans were completed, the fears of the diplomats seemed groundless. Gradually they came to accept that the reason given for the journey was genuine. Everyone could see that a new affection had developed between husband and wife. It was natural that they should seek a period of rest and recuperation together. Moreover Alexander was taking with him only two aides-de-camp and a small personal staff. The cautious Nesselrode was left in charge of foreign affairs; while the Grand Duke Nicholas was, for the first time, appointed head of the Council of Regency. Had Alexander been planning a dramatic move, then he would have gone into residence at Odessa or Sebastopol and he would certainly have been accompanied by a representative of the Foreign Ministry. A winter of isolation from the politics of the capital seemed, on reflection, a guarantee of calm and continuity. But why, people continued to ask, choose Taganrog? There was no satisfactory answer. Soon other questions were to weave a mystery around these closing months of 1825 until it became impossible to separate fact from fable.
* The Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna became a revered figure in Russian social history. After Michael’s death (in 1848) she helped organize the first service of nursing sisters in Russia, caring for the wounded in the Crimean War much as Florence Nightingale was doing on the British side. She was also a forthright champion of the Russian peasant and his rights. She encouraged her nephew, Alexander II, to emancipate the serfs in 1861, having already set an example of generous treatment on her own estates.
† Sir James Wylie had been principal court physician in St Petersburg since 1798. He accompanied the Tsar to England in 1814 and, at Alexander’s request, was knighted by the Prince Regent on board a warship at Portsmouth during the State Visit to the fleet. He was virtually the founder of the Russian Imperial Academy of Medicine, of which he was for many years the President. At Marie Feodorovna’s insistence he travelled with the Tsar on all his journeys, whether within Russia or abroad, and was held in awe as a figure whose diagnoses one did not challenge. But can erysipelas have been quite such a common complaint?
22
Taganrog
To the Sea of Azov
There was nothing extraordinary about Alexander’s last days in his capital. He attended, as usual, the protracted services in honour of his patron saint, Alexander Nevsky, on Sunday, 11 September, and that night was principal guest at a dinner given by his brother Michael to celebrate the completion of work on his new official residence. After this combined palace-warming and farewell party, Alexander crossed to the villa on Kammionyi Island and completed arrangements for his departure early on the Tuesday morning.1
He set out, unobtrusively, long before dawn on 13 September, riding in a calèche drawn by three horses and with the smallest of escorts. They drove at first across the city to the monastery of St Alexander Nevsky, one of the three holiest shrines in Orthodox Russia and the seat of the Metropolitan Seraphim. It was Alexander’s practice to attend Mass at a cathedral in the capital before beginning any long journey, either in war or peace, and he was expected by the Metropolitan and Archimandrites who met him at the principal entrance to the cloisters wearing their full vestments. He stepped down from his carriage, knelt to kiss a crucifix held before him, was asperged with holy water, and walked in a candle-lit procession to the shrine of the warrior saint, while choristers chanted the Trisagion, seeking the mercy of God on His sinners.2 It is said that Alexander participated in a Pannykhida, or Mass for the Departed; that after the Liturgy he handed the Metropolitan a sealed package; and that he was deeply moved by the private exhortations of a hermit.3 There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of these tales; but they do not, in themselves, necessarily prove that Alexander had intimations of mortality or anticipated any diminution in his status as Tsar and Autocrat. It was natural for a man of his spiritual intensity to prostrate himself at the shrine of his patron in renewed dedication before the start of so exhausting an undertaking. The only unusual feature of the ceremonies was the early hour, and this was made necessary by his resolve to travel as speedily as possible to the staging-posts he had assigned for Elizabeth’s journey in order to ensure that every arrangement had been made for her rest and comfort. One version of his visit to the monastery even records him as having tried politely to cut short the Metropolitan’s farewell with the characteristic explanation, ‘I am already half an hour behind my programme.’4 This is not the comment of a ruler filled with premonitions of disaster.
Alexander and Elizabeth had given up the original plan of travelling by way of Moscow. The route he mapped out avoided all cities where there might be long and fatiguing ceremonies: it went due south from St Petersburg to Velizh, in Vitebsk Province, then turned south-eastwards by way of Dorogobuzh, Roslavl and Novgorod-Severskiy to Belgorod, a town on the road from Kursk to Kharkov; and finally it went on through the Don Cossack country to Bakhmut (now Artemovsk) and so down to the headwaters of the Sea of Azov. It was, all in all, a journey of rather more than twelve hundred miles. Given good weather, Alexander hoped to cover the distance in less than a fortnight.5
He did; and with time to spare. The calèche reached Taganrog on the evening of 25 September, having therefore taken thirteen days on the road from northern to southern sea. At almost every halting-stage, Alexander wrote a note to Elizabeth, giving her details of the route, with advice on where she should stop, although he left supervision of her journey to his old friend, Volkonsky, whom he had appointed principal aide-de-camp to the Empress. Elizabeth, too, made good progress in the fine weather. She had set out three days after her husband, and Volkonsky took care not to tire her. Even so, she reached Taganrog in the afternoon of 5 October and Alexander rode out to accompany her over the last stage of the long journey. They went first to give thanks to God for their safe reunion, Alexander insisting that they should go to the church of the Greek monastery rather than to the cathedral ‘which seemed too cold to him’. He was full of kind attention to his wife, and she was delighted.6
‘My apartments’, she wrote to her mother, ‘are pretty and homely, the Tsar having gone into every detail with great solicitude.’7 It was not the most exciting of houses, merely a long and low building on the outskirts of the town. On one side there was a view of the sea and, on the other, a view of the six spires and two domes which r
elieved the monotony of the Taganrog skyline. There was a garden, well-protected from the wind, with natural sun-traps which delighted the Empress as she remembered how winter was creeping down on St Petersburg.8 Accommodation was cramped, although there were plans for making use of more rooms once the Imperial couple had settled their routine of life. Elizabeth had a bedroom, a dressing-room and a small sitting-room, while Alexander managed with a combined study and bedroom and a dressing-room opening out of it. The principal reception room ran along the whole front of the house; it was used for dinners and the small gatherings of local worthies over which Alexander and Elizabeth presided in their first weeks of residence. ‘There is a club here’, Elizabeth wrote, ‘where they have balls once a week, which I understand are not very showy but where we must go once at least.’9 Taganrog was indeed a long way from St Petersburg. Yet it is clear from her letters to the Margravine that Elizabeth was happy. Never before in their married life had husband and wife enjoyed such quiet domesticity. Alexander told her on 20 October that he certainly had no intention of retu ning to St Petersburg before the New Year, and the later the better.10
But he soon became restless. After four weeks of Taganrog he began to take drives deeper and deeper into the surrounding countryside. In the last week of October he went on a four-day journey eastwards to Cherkask. His uite, too, were becoming bored with the gentle delights of Taganrog. General Diebitsch, his principal military aide, encouraged Alexander to make a journey to the Crimea before the roads became impassable. The Tsar, who had spent a few days in the peninsula in May 1818, was inclined to postpone the visit to the following spring, when he hoped Elizabeth might accompany him. He was interested in seeing Bakhchisarai, where Potemkin had once solemnly enthroned his grandmother in the Khan’s former palace, and he wanted to inspect Sebastopol and the growing Black Sea Fleet; but he was in no hurry to undertake so extensive a journey. The prospect of a round tour of seven hundred miles by carriage, boat and horse did not excite him, and he was only persuaded to agree on crossing to the Crimea by Count Michael Vorontsov, the Governor of ‘New Russia’, who had come to visit him in Taganrog and who told the Imperial couple of the delights to be found along the southern coast of the peninsula.11 ‘The Tsar, who returned on Thursday from his trip to Cherkask, leaves tomorrow for the Crimea’, Elizabeth wrote on Monday, 31 October. ‘He would rather stay here but it is necessary and then he wishes to see for himself if it would be possible to go and spend the winter in the Crimea. Everyone has invited us there and insists that the climate is even better there than here … He will not be back for seventeen days.’12 Diebitsch had, in fact, already had two proposed itineraries rejected on the grounds that three weeks away from the Empress was far too long.13