Morale among the defending garrison began to erode. Following the dictate of Order Number One of the Petrograd Soviet, the troops began electing their officers. The Cossacks all reelected their former commanders, but General Ressine, commanding the Guard, was voted out. Discipline slackened, the men began to slouch on duty and argue when given a command. Those who remained loyal were frustrated and helpless because of the abdication. One devoted squadron of the Chevalier Guards, stationed at Novgorod, a hundred miles south of Tsarskoe Selo, had set out through the snow to defend tsar and dynasty. They rode for two days through bitter cold, reaching the palace gates, bedraggled and exhausted, to find that they had come too late. There no longer was a tsar or a dynasty for them to defend.
On the morning of March 21, General Kornilov returned to the palace. His mission this time was to place Alexandra Fedorovna under arrest. The Empress, dressed in her white nurse’s uniform, received him in the green drawing room. Apprised of his mission, she stood icily silent and did not hold out her hand to receive him. Kornilov carefully explained that the arrest was purely precautionary, designed to safeguard her and her children from the excesses of the Soviet and the revolutionary soldiery. Her husband, he said, had been arrested at Mogilev and would be returned to Tsarskoe Selo the following day. As soon as the children’s health permitted, he declared, the Provisional Government intended to send the entire family to Murmansk, where a British cruiser would be waiting to take them to England. Kornilov’s reassuring words overcame Alexandra’s reserve. Half an hour later, an aide returned to find the Empress and the General sitting together at a small table. She was weeping and there were tears in his eyes. When she rose to say goodbye, she held out both her hands.
Moving to the Tsar’s audience chamber, Kornilov addressed the assembled officers of the guard and the palace suite. He announced that, as the Tsar and his wife both were under arrest, the officers’ duties at the palace had come to an end and that their men would be relieved by other troops. He told the suite that those who wished to leave were free to go; having gone, however, no one could return. Those who stayed would be placed under house arrest with Her Majesty. At that point, a majority rose and left the hall. Kornilov, disgusted, muttered under his breath: “Lackeys!” Kornilov informed Benckendorff that except for two entrances, the kitchen and the main entrance, the palace would be sealed. Captain Kotzebue, who had accompanied Kornilov, was assigned as palace commander, and the General warned that all in the palace must submit absolutely to the Captain’s orders.
At two in the afternoon, the men of the Composite Regiment were relieved of their posts. “The soldiers of the new guard were horrible to look at,” said Benckendorff. “Untidy, noisy, quarreling with everybody. The officers, who were afraid of them, had the greatest difficulty in preventing them from roaming about the palace and entering every room.… There were many quarrels between them and the household staff whom they reproached for wearing livery and for the attention they paid to the Imperial family.”
As soon as Kornilov left her, the Empress sent for Gilliard. “The Tsar is coming back tomorrow,” she said. “Alexis must be told everything. Will you do it? I am going to tell the girls myself.” Both Tatiana and Anastasia then were suffering from painful ear abscesses as a result of secondary infections. Tatiana temporarily was quite deaf and could not hear what her mother was saying. Not until her sisters wrote the details down on paper did she understand what had happened.
Meanwhile, Gilliard went to the Tsarevich:
“[I] told him that the Tsar would be returning from Mogilev next morning and would never go back again.
“ ‘Why?’
“ ‘Your father does not want to be Commander-in-Chief any more.’
“He was greatly moved at this, as he was very fond of going to G.H.Q. After a moment or two, I added:
“ ‘You know your father does not want to be Tsar any more, Alexis Nicolaievich.’
“He looked at me in astonishment, trying to read in my face what had happened.
“ ‘What! Why?’
“ ‘He is very tired and has had a lot of trouble lately.’
“ ‘Oh yes! Mother told me they had stopped his train when he wanted to come here. But won’t Papa be Tsar again afterwards?’
“I then told him that the Tsar had abdicated in favor of the Grand Duke Michael, who had also renounced the throne.
“ ‘But who’s going to be Tsar, then?’
“ ‘I don’t know. Perhaps nobody now …’
“Not a word about himself. Not a single allusion to his rights as the Heir. He was very red and agitated.… Then he said:
“ ‘But if there isn’t a Tsar, who’s going to govern Russia?’
“I explained that a Provisional Government had been formed.…”
At four that afternoon, the palace doors were locked. That night, the first of their imprisonment, a bright moon came up. From the park came the sounds of rifle shots; this time, it was the soldiers of the new guard killing the tame deer. Inside, the private wing of the palace was silent; from elsewhere in the building came sounds of laughter, broken by occasional snatches of song and drunken shouts.
Lili Dehn offered to sleep outside the Empress’s door: “I went quietly downstairs to the mauve boudoir,” she wrote. “The Empress was waiting for me and as she stood there, I thought how girlish she looked. Her long hair fell in a heavy plait, down her back, and she wore a loose silk dressing gown over her night clothes. She was very pale, very ethereal, but unutterably pathetic. As I stumbled into the boudoir with my … sheets and blankets, she smiled.… As she watched me trying to arrange my bed on the couch, she came forward, still smiling. ‘Oh Lili, you Russian ladies don’t know how to be useful. When I was a girl, my grandmother, Queen Victoria, showed me how to make a bed. I’ll teach you.…’
“Sleep for me was impossible. I lay on the mauve couch—her couch—unable to realize that this strange happening was a part of ordinary life. Surely I was dreaming; surely I would suddenly awake in my own bed at Petrograd, and find that the Revolution and its attendant horrors were only a nightmare! But the sound of coughing in the Empress’s bedroom told me that, alas! it was no dream.… The mauve boudoir was flooded with moonlight.… All was silent save for the footsteps of the Red sentry as he passed and repassed up and down the corridor.”
The morning of March 22, the day scheduled for the Tsar’s return, was cold and gray. Alexandra, both excited and worried that her hopes might be disappointed, went to wait with her children. Alexis, like his mother, in a state of nervous agitation, kept looking at his watch and counting aloud the minutes until his father arrived.
Nicholas’s train arrived on schedule and pulled into the private siding at Tsarskoe Selo station. On the platform, the representatives of the Duma turned their prisoner over to the newly appointed palace commander. As the Tsar was taken away, the members of his suite peeked out the windows of the train and, seeing that the coast was clear, quickly scuttled across the platform in all directions. Only Prince Vassily Dolgoruky, Count Benckendorff’s son-in-law, chose to accompany his former sovereign to whatever awaited him at the Alexander Palace.
At the palace gate, about a hundred yards from the entrance hall, Nicholas faced another humiliation. The gates were locked when his car drove up. The sentry asked who was inside and telephoned an officer, who came out on the palace steps and again asked in a shout “Who is there?” The sentry bawled back, “Nicholas Romanov.” “Let him pass,” cried the officer. “After this offensive comedy,” wrote Benckendorff, “the motor arrived at the steps and the Emperor and Dolgoruky descended.” They entered the antechamber, which was filled with people, most of them soldiers crowding to catch a glimpse of the Tsar. Some were smoking, others had not bothered to remove their caps. By habit, as he walked through the crowd, Nicholas touched the brim of his cap, returning salutes which had never been given. He shook hands with Benckendorff and left for the private apartments without saying a word.
> Upstairs, just as the Empress heard the sound of the arriving automobile, the door flew open and a servant, in a tone which ignored the events of recent days, boomed out: “His Majesty the Emperor!”
With a cry, Alexandra sprang to her feet and ran to meet her husband. Alone, in the children’s room, they fell into each other’s arms. With tears in her eyes, Alexandra assured him that the husband and father was infinitely more precious to her than the tsar whose throne she had shared. Nicholas finally broke. Laying his head on his wife’s breast, he sobbed like a child.
PART FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY
Citizen Romanov
IN the afternoon, the Tsar reappeared, walking alone through the hushed rooms of the palace. In the red drawing room, he met Lili Dehn. Taking her hands in his, he said simply, “Thank you, Lili, for all you have done for us.” She was shocked to see how much he had changed. “The Emperor was deathly pale,” she observed. “His face was covered with innumerable wrinkles, his hair was quite grey at the temples, and blue shadows encircled his eyes. He looked like an old man.” Nicholas smiled sadly at Lili’s expression. “I think I’ll go for a walk,” he said. “Walking always does me good.”
Before going out, Nicholas spoke to Count Benckendorff, who explained the arrangements made with General Kornilov. At first, Kornilov had wished to keep the Imperial family locked inside the palace, but Benckendorff, knowing the Tsar’s intense need for outdoor exercise, had arranged for a small section of the park to be used. Nevertheless, it was required that every excursion be arranged in advance so that sentries could be posted. On this first afternoon, none of these arrangements had been made, and Nicholas was forced to wait for twenty minutes before an officer appeared with a key. When at last he did go outside, the Empress, Lili and Anna Vyrubova were watching from an upstairs window.
They saw Nicholas marching briskly across the park when a soldier stepped up and blocked his path. Surprised, the Tsar made a nervous gesture with his hand and started in a different direction. Another sentinel appeared and ordered him back. A moment later, Nicholas was surrounded by six soldiers armed with rifles. Anna was horrified: “With their fists and with the butts of their guns they pushed the Emperor this way and that as though he were some wretched vagrant they were baiting on a country road. ‘You can’t go there, Gospodin Polkovnik (Mr. Colonel).’ ‘We don’t permit you to walk in that direction, Gospodin Polkovnik.’ ‘Stand back when you are commanded, Gospodin Polkovnik’ The Emperor, apparently unmoved, looked from one of these coarse brutes to another and with great dignity turned and walked back to the palace.” In the window above, Alexandra said nothing, but reached out and tightly clutched Lili’s hand. “I do not think that until this moment we had realized the crushing grip of the Revolution,” said Lili. “But it was brought home to us most forcibly, when we saw the passage of the Lord of all the Russias, the Emperor whose domains extended over millions of miles, now restricted to a few yards in his own park.”
Still, the long, tumultuous day was not over. At dusk, three armored cars packed with revolutionary soldiers from Petrograd burst through the palace gates. Leaping from the steel turrets, the soldiers demanded that Nicholas be given to them. The Soviet had unanimously resolved that the former Tsar be removed to a cell in the Fortress of Peter and Paul; this detachment had come to seize him. The palace guard, surly and disorganized, made no move to resist, but their officers hurriedly mustered to defend the entryway. Rebuffed, the invaders backed away and agreed not to take the Tsar if they were allowed to see him. Benckendorff reluctantly agreed to arrange an “inspection.” “I found the Emperor with his sick children,” recalled the Count, “informed him of what had happened, and begged him to come down and walk slowly along the long corridor.… He did this a quarter of an hour later. In the meantime, the Commandant, all the officers of the Guard … and myself, stationed ourselves at the end of the corridor so as to be between the Emperor and … [the invading band].… The corridor was lit up brightly, the Emperor walked slowly from one door to the other, and … [the leader of the intruders] declared himself satisfied. He could, he said, reassure those who sent him.”
Even when the armored cars had rumbled off into the night, Fate was to add a lurid epilogue to this extraordinary day. Sometime after midnight, another band of soldiers broke into the tiny chapel in the Imperial Park which had become Rasputin’s tomb and exhumed the coffin. They took it to a clearing in the forest, pried off the lid and, using sticks to avoid touching the putrefying corpse, lifted what remained of Rasputin onto a pile of pine logs. The body and logs were drenched with gasoline and set on fire. For more than six hours, the body burned while an icy wind howled through the clearing and clouds of pungent smoke rose from the pyre. Along with the soldiers, a group of peasants gathered, silent and afraid, to watch through the night as the final scene of this baleful drama was played. It had happened as Rasputin once predicted: he would be killed and his body not left in peace, but burned, with his ashes scattered to the winds.
The small group which had ignored the offer to leave and remained with the family in the palace seemed, in Anna Vyrubova’s words, “like the survivors of a shipwreck.” It included, besides Anna herself and Lili Dehn, Count Benckendorff and his wife; Prince Dolgoruky; two ladies-in-waiting, Baroness Buxhoeveden and Countess Hendrikov; the tutors Pierre Gilliard and Mlle. Schneider; and Doctors Botkin and Derevenko. The two doctors were coping as best they could with Marie, who had developed pneumonia on top of measles. Dr. Ostrogorsky, the Petrograd children’s specialist who for many years had made regular visits, had declined to return, informing the Empress that he “found the roads too dirty” to make further calls at the palace.
Inside the palace, the little band of captives was entirely isolated. All letters passing in and out were left unsealed so that the commander of the guard could read them. All telephone lines were cut except one connected to a single telephone in the guardroom. It could be used only if both an officer and a private soldier were present and the conversation was entirely in Russian. Every parcel entering the palace was minutely examined: tubes of toothpaste were ripped open, jars of yogurt stirred by dirty fingers, and pieces of chocolate bitten apart. When Dr. Botkin visited the ill Grand Duchesses, he was accompanied by soldiers who wanted to come right into the sickroom and hear everything that was said. With difficulty, Botkin persuaded the soldiers to wait at the open doorway while he examined his patients.
The attitude and appearance of the guards grated on Nicholas’s precise military sensibilities. Their hair was shaggy and uncombed, they went unshaven, their blouses were unbuttoned and their boots were filthy. To others, such as Baroness Buxhoeveden, this crumbling discipline offered moments of comic relief. “One day,” she remembered, “the Grand Duchess Tatiana and I saw from the window that one of the guards on duty in front of the palace, struck evidently with the injustice of having to stand at his post, had brought a gilt armchair from the hall and had comfortably ensconced himself therein, leaning back, enjoying the view, with his rifle across his knee. I remarked that the man only wanted cushions to complete the picture. There was evidently telepathy in my eye, for when we looked out again, he had actually got some sofa cushions out of one of the rooms, and with a footstool under his feet, was reading the papers, his discarded rifle lying on the ground.” In time, even Nicholas saw the humor in this behavior: “When I got up,” he told Alexandra one morning, “I put on my dressing gown and looked through the window.… The sentinel who was usually stationed there was now sitting on the steps—his rifle had slipped out of his hand—he was dozing! I called my valet, and showed him the unusual sight, and I couldn’t help laughing—it was really absurd. At the sound of my laughter the soldier awoke … he scowled at us and we withdrew.”
Off duty, the soldiers wandered freely through the palace. Baroness Buxhoeveden awoke one night to find a soldier in her bedroom, busily pocketing a number of small gold and silver trinkets from her table. Alexis attracted the mo
st attention. Groups of soldiers kept tramping into the nursery, asking, “Where is Alexis?” Gilliard once came on ten of them standing uncertainly in a passage outside the boy’s room.
“We want to see the Heir,” they said.
“He is in bed and can’t be seen,” replied the tutor.
“And the others?”
“They are also unwell.”
“And where is the Tsar?”
“I don’t know; but come, don’t hang about here,” said the determined Swiss, at last losing patience. “There must be no noise because of the invalids.” Nodding, the men tiptoed away, whispering to each other.
Gilliard became even closer to the Tsarevich at this time because Alexis had just been abruptly and cruelly deserted by another of the key figures in his small, intimate world. Derevenko, the sailor-attendant who for ten years had lived at the boy’s side, catching him before he fell, devotedly massaging his injured legs when he could not walk, now saw his chance to escape this life which apparently he had hated. He did not leave without an act of petty but heartless vengeance. The scene was witnessed by Anna Vyrubova: “I passed the open door of Alexis’s room and … I saw lying sprawled in a chair … the sailor Derevenko.… Insolently, he bawled at the boy whom he had formerly loved and cherished, to bring him this or that, to perform any menial service.… Dazed and apparently only half conscious of what he was being forced to do, the child moved about trying to obey.” Derevenko immediately left the palace. Nagorny, the Tsarevich’s other sailor-attendant, was outraged by the betrayal and remained.
In the long imprisonment that followed, Alexis found happy distraction in a movie projector and a number of films given him before the revolution by the Pathé film company. Using the equipment, he gave a number of “performances,” inviting everyone to come to his room, where with grave delight he played the role of host. Count Benckendorff, a guest at these soirees, found himself thinking, “He is very intelligent, has a great deal of character and an excellent heart. If his disease could be mastered, and should God grant him life, he should one day play a part in the restoration of our poor country. He is the representative of the legitimate principle; his character has been formed by the misfortunes of his parents and of his childhood. May God protect him and save him and all his family from the claws of the fanatics in which they are at present.”
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty Page 56