Born to Rule: Five Reigning Consorts, Granddaughters of Queen Victoria

by Julia P. Gelardi

  That April, Alexei was felled by another hemophiliac attack. As he slowly improved, a further dilemma befell Alexandra, thanks to the actions of militant Bolsheviks. Three hundred miles to the southeast of Tobolsk stood the industrial city of Ekaterinburg. Among the most fanatically radical of the Bolsheviks, the Ekaterinburg Soviet was intent on getting its hands on Nicholas and Alexandra and their children. In April 1918, the leaders in Moscow ordered Nicholas to leave Tobolsk. Bowing to pressure, Nicholas had no alternative. Alexandra was seized with fear for her husband. Wishing to be by his side, but wracked by the fact that Alexei was still very weak, Alexandra, for once, did not know what to do. Tatiana forced the issue, telling her distraught mother, “You cannot go on tormenting yourself like this.” Gathering up her courage, Alexandra chose to accompany Nicholas and leave Alexei in the care of his sisters, Pierre Gilliard, and the few retainers left loyal at Tobolsk. “It is the hardest moment of my life,” the distraught mother and wife told her maid. “You know what my son is to me, and I must choose between him and my husband. But I have made up my mind. I must be firm. I must leave my child and share my husband’s life or death.”40 Sidney Gibbs, the English tutor, who came to share the family’s travails in Tobolsk, recalled that on the evening before the separation, tea was served in Alexandra’s room. According to Gibbs, “there was not much talking and no pretence at gaiety. It was solemn and tragic, a fit prelude to an inescapable tragedy”41 The farewells were heart-wrenching, with Alexandra and her children sobbing. With superhuman effort Alexandra tore herself from the house where her sick son, Alexei, could be heard crying wildly: “Mother, mother.”42

  After several uncertain weeks, the family was reunited at Ekaterinburg. Together, they lived under difficult conditions in the home of the Ipatiev family, commandeered for use by the Bolsheviks as the house of special purpose. Encircled by a high fence, the white brick and stone building housed an increasingly persecuted family. Nearly all the retainers were taken from them, including Nagorny, who had so faithfully helped care for Alexei, carrying him about when the boy could not walk. With the windows whitewashed and simple requests such as opening them during days of stifling heat summarily denied, guarded for the most part by unsympathetic men, the Ekaterinburg experience of captivity descended into nightmare.

  As a concerned mother, Alexandra Feodorovna’s anxiety for her daughters’ safety never abated. After leaving Tsarskoe Selo for Tobolsk, and then Ekaterinburg, the grand duchesses were subjected to varying degrees of humiliation by their captors; but whatever cruelties they suffered, the girls for the most part held up. The children’s high moral standards made an impression on some. Describing Alexandra’s family earlier in their captivity in March 1917, a Russian Orthodox priest who heard their confessions was struck by the children’s innocence, a product no doubt of their mother’s upbringing. The priest recorded: “Lord, let all children be morally as upright as the children of the former tsar. Such mildness, restraint, obedience to their parents’ wishes, such absolute devotion to God’s will…and complete ignorance of worldly filth—either passionate or sinful— amazed me.”43

  Though some of the guards could sometimes detect a trace of pride in the ex-tsarina, Alexandra’s and her family’s comportment in captivity was such that they elicited their share of sympathy. One of the guards at Ekaterinburg, Analoy Yakimov, confessed how his feelings toward the family changed once he took notice of them. “After I had seen them several times I began to feel entirely different towards them,” recalled Yakimov. “I began to pity them. I pitied them as human beings…I kept on saying to myself, ‘Let them escape, or do something to allow them to escape.’ “44

  In their captivity, the family had been comforted by the sporadic visits of priests and the occasional opportunities to hear Mass and partake of confession and holy communion. For this most religious of families, these occasions, precious and sacred as they were, brought the captives closer to God and helped them greatly in coming to terms with their ordeal. On 14 July 1918, a priest came to say Mass at the Ipatiev household, assisted by a deacon; both found the family looking especially worried. A sense of foreboding hung in the room. When the deacon began chanting the prayer, “Rest in peace with the Saints,” the whole family fell to their knees, overcome by emotion—one of the girls sobbing. As the deacon left the house, he remarked to the priest: “You know, Father Archpresbyter, I think something must have happened there.”45

  Alexandra and her family had every right to sense imminent danger. The guards watching over them were members of the Cheka, the Bolshevik Secret Police, led by the sinister Jacob Yurovsky On 16 July, after an uneventful day at the Ipatiev house, the family went to sleep. That evening, Alexandra wrote her final entry in her diary: her last written words were, “Played bezique with Nicholas,” and at 10:30 p.m., “To bed. 15 degrees.”4 On the following page Alexandra had already written the date and day, ready for her next entry. It was never filled. Their date with destiny had arrived.

  The method of execution chosen was shooting. In order to keep the sound of gunshots to a minimum, handguns and pistols were employed. Awaking his unsuspecting victims around 2 a.m., Yurovsky ordered them to wait in a basement room for cars which were supposedly to whisk them away from the advancing White Army. Nicholas carried a tired Alexei to the room; Alexandra, meanwhile, protested that there were no chairs. Three were brought in. Alexandra sat on one, Nicholas on another, and Alexei took the third. Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia stood near their mother. Joining the whole family were the maid, the cook, the footman, and Dr. Eugene Botkin. It was now nearly 3 a.m. Outside the house, a truck was placed strategically, its engine running to drown out the sounds that were about to reverberate. Yurovksky’s moment had arrived.

  He returned with his execution squad and announced, “Your relations have tried to save you; they have failed, and we must now shoot you.”47 A stupefied Nicholas cried out, “What does this mean?” Yurovsky took his revolver, showed it to Nicholas, and replied viciously, “This! Your race must cease to live.”48 Nicholas was then shot point-blank in the head. His last act was to try to shield his wife.

  A hail of bullets followed. Alexandra quickly tried to make the sign of the Cross, then was instantly killed by a single gunshot. Her daughters suffered more. When the startled group of executioners shot at them, they saw that their bullets ricocheted. It turned out that diamonds and other precious jewels were sewn inside the girls’ corsets. To dispatch them once and for all, the guards repeatedly stabbed the girls. After some minutes, the shooting stopped. Alexei, still in his father’s arms, somehow managed to show signs of life as his hand began to clutch his father’s coat. Yurovsky took his gun and fired into the young boy’s head. The family’s ordeal was ended. Nicholas was fifty years old; Alexandra forty-six; Olga twenty-two; Tatiana twenty-one; Marie nineteen; Anastasia seventeen; and Alexei thirteen.

  It had taken twenty minutes to carry out one of history’s grisliest political assassinations. So disgusting was the manner in which the family had been killed that Pavel Medvedev, an eyewitness to the murder scene, and a man noted for being “hardened” and “unemotional,” recounted that “the sight of the murder and the smell of blood made me sick. I saw that all the members of the Tsar’s family were lying on the floor with many wounds in their bodies. The blood was running in streams.”49

  Twenty-three

  “MAMMA REGINA”

  “SO THEY HAD REALLY DONE IT! I HAD ALWAYS BEEN AFRAID IT would end thus, but had hoped against hope that in some way they could have been saved,” wrote Marie of Romania of the ghastly deeds at Ekaterinburg. Romania and its royal family did not escape the effects of the Russian Revolution and the ensuing assassination of the Romanovs. In May 1918, King Ferdinand and Queen Marie, still living in Jassy, were the targets of determined assassins who had orders from Russia. Lenin’s seizure of power in Russia also led to pressure on Romania to sue for peace with Germany, angering Romania’s fighting queen. She could not believe p
eople around her were prepared to give up. “The ‘never-say-die’ of my English temperament and upbringing,” as Marie put it, “made the struggle unbearable.”1

  Added to this, a battle-weary populace along with battle-scarred troops left large segments of Romanians vulnerable to spreading Bolshevik propaganda that might well have led to the overthrow of the royal family and the emergence of a Communist Romania in its wake. This was made all the more possible by disintegration of the Russian Army fighting in Romania. Redoubling her efforts to comfort everyone, Marie determined to raise the spirits of her fighting regiments, her wounded and dying soldiers, and the long-suffering civilians. The queen often traveled over difficult terrain to reach her destinations, then disembarked from her automobile and tramped through mud, snow, or parched and dusty ground to battle typhus, depression, and death. The stench and mangled bodies she encountered everywhere were enough to turn the stomachs of the hardiest of men.

  On one such visit, Queen Marie was moved to tears by the sight of hundreds of emaciated men lying outdoors near a church under a scorching sun. Carefully,she moved among the “parade of skeletons,” as she called them, touching them as they cried out for her, bony hands thrust forth to grasp her. Marie was deeply moved when one of these “emaciated phantoms” pulled himself to his feet to thank his queen for “coming down” from her palace “towards their misery, on this Easter Sunday”2 As she left, grateful villagers ran up to her, pressing cowslips into her hands.

  Marie also paid her respects to the many health care workers who died tending the ill. Doctors, nurses, nuns—nearly all of them volunteers—were felled. One contemporary recorded how “Social events in the shape of funerals follow one another with depressing rapidity. To-morrow six victims are to be buried at once. They comprise the best Roumanian typhus expert, the nurse who looked after the last French doctor to die, a sister of charity, a colonel and two young officers.”3

  As her reputation for bravery and generosity spread among her people, Romania’s queen became a living symbol of hope and determination. Often dressed in her simple white Red Cross uniform with wimple, Marie became an instantly recognizable icon. “Patriotism is taking the heroic form” in the queen, wrote Maurice Paléologue admiringly. “There is a fiery and warm-hearted ardour about her, an enthusiastic and chivalrous ardour, something of the sacred flame. So she has already become a figure of legend, for her proud and winning loveliness is the very incarnation of the soul of her people.”4

  Queen Marie understood clearly that her role as queen was intertwined with her role as mother of her people—“Mamma Regina,” as she was called. Even old men of seventy called Marie mother. Accordingly, she created “Regina Maria” ambulances, “Regina Maria” decorations for those who gave much to the people, and “Regina Maria” hospitals. In one of these hospitals, her portrait, conspicuously displayed, was decorated with flowers; over the men’s beds, the words “Regina Maria” were attached to the walls.

  Queen Marie was justifiably touched and proud of her popularity. Nevertheless, with her characteristic magnanimity and selflessness, she felt equally proud of King Ferdinand. “We are happy and touched to see the immense popularity Nando has to-day attained, in spite of the ill-success of the War,” Marie wrote in her diary in May 1917. “He is now loved and appreciated by his people. They have at last understood how honest, unselfish and loyal he is. The way he has uncomplainingly shared all their misfortunes, has made him dear to their hearts…their attitude has undergone a veritable transformation.”5

  Ferdinand and Marie celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in January 1918. Marie recorded that “to-day Nando and I, hand in hand, confess to each other that at this hour, in spite of our misfortunes, or should I say because of them, we have become the firmest possible friends, attached to our country in a way not often given to sovereigns.” Prince Stirbey made a gallant speech on the anniversary, saying Marie had fulfilled magnificently old King Carol’s prediction that she would be the anchor of her country.

  Queen Marie’s work took on other forms than merely visiting the sick and wounded. The indefatigable queen also made every effort to obtain help for her country from the outside world. Not content with trying to gain sympathy with the various foreign legations still in Jassy, Marie tried her hand at writing, in the hope that help for Romania might pour in. Articles for American magazines were published. She produced My Country, a book about Romania, in English; profits from the sales were to be used by the British Red Cross Society for work in Romania. Queen Marie found she enjoyed writing. Characteristically, her style was flamboyant and her efforts paid off, as Marie’s work awakened outsiders to Romania’s plight. In My Country, Marie summed up the evolution she had undergone in her quest to understand Romania: “At first it was an alien country…I had to learn to see its beauties—to feel its needs with my heart…little by little I learnt to understand this people, and little by little it learned to understand me. Now we trust each other, and so, if God wills, together we shall go towards a greater future!”7

  Romania’s plight was not ignored by the outside world. Volunteers came, some from as far away as America, such as members of the American Red Cross and the YMCA. But despite the help and devotion displayed by Marie and countless others, it was oftentimes not enough, and a feeling of frustration swept over the queen. “Everything is so complicated,” she confessed in the latter part of 1917, “as no material is to be found anywhere, no food to be bought in large quantities; in fact nothing is to be had.”8

  With Romania’s future at the mercy of both the Central Powers and Bolshevik Russia, Queen Marie went through a maelstrom of emotions, trembling one moment and fired with a desire to fight it out at others. “The situation remains awful,” she lamented. “We have simply begun to speculate in which way we are going to die. Whichever way we turn we are sold, we are betrayed…there seems no way out.”9 The American ambassador to Romania, in Jassy at the time, pointed out that “the situation in Roumania is hopeless. It should be realized that Roumania is actually between two enemies, and that yielding to one would at least restore peace and order, and permit return to their homes; while acknowledgment of the other, and recognition of its theories, would result in treason, anarchy and famine.”10

  Romanians lived through weeks of uncertainty and fear as plots against the royal family continued to be uncovered. Finally, King Ferdinand personally met with the Austrian minister to Romania about peace terms in the hope of mitigating the Central Powers’ wrath. But his efforts were in vain. When the king, resigned to defeat, confronted the Crown Council about what to do next, Marie was beside herself with rage. Though well aware that Romania risked annihilation should it refuse to accept peace on the Central Powers’ terms, Marie could not bring herself to have Ferdinand and the government acquiesce. In one of the most violent arguments in their tumultuous twenty-five-year marriage, Marie fired off a tirade against her husband, evoking memories of Carmen Sylva: “If we are to die, let us die with heads high, without soiling our souls by putting our names to our death warrant. Let us die protesting, crying out to the whole world our indignation against the infamy which is expected.”11 Even her own Barbo sided with the king on the matter, eliciting a stinging rebuke from Marie, who cried out that there were “no men in this country,” feeling as she did “ashamed of being the Queen of nothing but cowards!”12 Better to abdicate, implored the queen, than sign the armistice. But no amount of desperate pleading worked. Romania signed a tentative agreement, and a final one—the Treaty of Bucharest in May 1918, to which King Ferdinand refused to affix his signature. Romania acquiesced to the harsh terms imposed upon it, which included turning over the country’s oil to the enemy for ninety years, ceding the Dobruja region, and the immediate dismissal of all Allied Military Missions from Romania.

  When the time came to say good-bye to the Allied Missions, tears were shed. Still unresigned, Marie cringed at the thought of her country’s future. “My English blood refuses to accept dis
aster,” she said defiantely “If there remains the smallest, most meagre fighting chance, I shall still fight,—a losing battle no doubt, but I would consider myself unworthy of my own ideals were I to give in before I am completely convinced that all is lost.”13 At a farewell dinner on 23 February 1918, the exhausted queen threw herself on a sofa and asked the great Romanian violinist, George Enescu, to play. Listening, the queen heard the death throes of Romania. Among the guests that night was an enigmatic Canadian adventurer by the name of Joe Boyle—“Klondike Boyle,” as he was sometimes known. Boyle would become indispensable to Queen Marie and to Romania.

  Colonel Boyle’s appearance by Marie’s side worked as a much-needed tonic on the queen. His devotion to her and Romania, evidenced by his acts of daring and bravery, appealed greatly. The fact that he was middle-aged, of heavy build, and not particularly attractive did not tarnish the glowing light in which Marie saw him. She never forgot Boyle’s promise to her. On the night of the farewell dinner for the missions, gripping her hand strongly, Boyle told Marie that he would not forsake her; and true to his word, he delivered on that promise. When a group of Romanian deputies were taken prisoner in Odessa by Bolsheviks, who wanted to kill them, Boyle boarded the ship where they were held, and despite not being able to speak a word of Russian, through sheer force of personality managed to get the Russians to leave the frightened prisoners in a Romanian port after two weeks. In gratitude, the families of the rescued prisoners presented Boyle with an exquisite illuminated address with the inscription: “God bless Canada and her noble son.” So incredulous were people that they asked, “are all Canadians like Colonel Boyle?”14 This feat also earned Boyle Marie’s gratitude and admiration, and she awarded him the Cross of the Regina Maria. Here at last, in the chaotic and defeatist atmosphere, was a real man who fought against all odds to do something heroic for Romania.