The Alexander Palace was not completely defenseless. That morning, before the arrival of the mutineers, Count Benckendorff had ordered a battalion of the Garde Equipage, two battalions of the picked Composite Regiment of the Imperial Guard, two squadrons of Cossacks of the Emperor’s Escort, a company of the Railway Regiment and a battery of field artillery—in all, about 1,500 men—to take up defensive positions around the palace. By nightfall, their soup kitchens and warming fires were established in the palace courtyard. The Empress was reassured, and her younger daughters, seeing the familiar faces of the marines, declared happily, “It’s just like being on the yacht again.”
The night was spent awaiting an attack. At nine p.m. a telephone call advised that the rebels were on their way. A moment later, a sentry was shot less than five hundred yards from the palace. Through the trees of the park, the sound of firing grew steadily closer. From a palace window, the Empress looked down on General Ressine, commander of the defense forces, standing in the courtyard before his men. On impulse, she decided to go out to speak to the soldiers. Throwing a black fur cloak over her white nurse’s uniform, accompanied by seventeen-year-old Grand Duchess Marie and Count Benckendorff, she walked out into the frigid night.
“The scene was unforgettable,” wrote Baroness Buxhoeveden, who watched from above. “It was dark, except for a faint light thrown up from the snow and reflected on the polished barrels of the rifles. The troops were lined up in battle order … the first line kneeling in the snow, the others standing behind, their rifles in readiness for a sudden attack. The figures of the Empress and her daughter passed from line to line, the white palace looming a ghostly mass in the background.” Walking from man to man, she told them that she trusted them completely, and that the life of the Heir was in their hands. Count Benckendorff, a rigid old soldier, thought that some of the men answered in surly fashion, but the Empress, according to Lili Dehn, returned to the palace “apparently possessed by some inward exaltation. She was radiant; her trust in the ‘people’ was complete…. ‘They are all our friends,’ she kept on repeating. ‘They are so devoted to us.’” She asked that the men, many of whom were stiff with cold, be brought into the palace to warm themselves and be given cups of scalding tea.
During the night, Alexandra lay down, but did not undress. From time to time, she arose: first to bring extra blankets to Countess Benckendorff and Baroness Buxhoeveden, who were camping on sofas in the drawing room; later, appearing in her stockinged feet, she offered them fruit and biscuits from the table beside her bed.
Outside, the night was filled with confusion and occasional skirmishing. Mutinous soldiers had pressed as close as the Chinese Pagoda near the great Catherine Palace. There, hearing rumors that the Alexander Palace was defended by immense forces and that the roof was studded with many machine guns, they lost their nerve and withdrew.
Although the palace was not assaulted, the sound of shooting carried clearly into the children’s rooms. The sick children, still feverish, were told that the shots came from manuevers; Lili and Anastasia, sleeping together in the same room, went to the window. In the courtyard, a big field gun was emplaced, with sentries and gunners stamping their feet around it to keep warm. “How astonished Papa will be,” said Anastasia, staring at the huge gun.
The following morning—Wednesday, March 14—the Empress was up at five a.m., expecting the Tsar to arrive at six. She was told that he had been delayed. “Perhaps the blizzard detains him,” she said and lay back on her couch to wait. Anastasia was instantly alarmed. “Lili, the train is never late. Oh, if only Papa would come quickly.” At eight, Alexandra learned that Nicholas’s train had been stopped at Malaya Vishera. She rose and sent a telegram. There was no reply. Other telegrams followed in an anxious stream. Over the next several days, all were returned marked in blue pencil: “Address of person mentioned unknown.”
During the day, the loyalty of the troops guarding the Alexander Palace began to deteriorate. Standing at the window, the Empress noticed that many of the soldiers in the courtyard had bound white handkerchiefs to their wrists. The handkerchiefs were symbols of a truce worked out between the palace guards and the revolutionary troops in the village: if the Alexander Palace was not attacked, the loyal troops would not intervene against the mutineers in the village. The truce had been arranged by a member of the Duma. Learning this, the Empress said bitterly, “Well, so everything is in the hands of the Duma.”
On the following morning, Thursday, March 15, the Empress had a far heavier blow. Very early that morning, deathly pale, she came up to Lili and said in an anguished whisper, “Lili, the troops have deserted!”
“Why, Madame? In the name of God, why?”
“Their commander—the Grand Duke Cyril—has sent for them.” Then, unable to contain herself, the Empress said brokenly, “My sailors—my own sailors—I can’t believe it.”
In Pskov, on the 15th, the Tsar on his train was amending and signing the instrument of abdication. At Tsarskoe Selo, unaware even of her husband’s whereabouts, Alexandra was coping with new difficulties. Alexis was better, but Anastasia and Marie were beginning to display unmistakable signs of oncoming measles. Both electricity and water had been cut off. Water was supplied only by breaking the ice on the pond. The Empress’s small elevator, running between her rooms and the nurseries upstairs, stopped running. To reach her children, she had to climb slowly up the stairs, supported under the arms and gasping for breath. The lights were out. To visit Anna Vyrubova, whose room was in another wing of the palace, Alexandra was wheeled through the vast, darkened halls, now empty of all servants. Yet, knowing that others were watching for any sign of panic, she said to Lili, “I must not give way. I keep on saying, ‘I must not’—it helps me.”
Friday, March 16, another blizzard roared in, rattling the windows and piling the snowdrifts deeper in the park. Through the storm, more unsettling reports and rumors began to seep into the palace. At 3:30 a.m., a member of the Duma committee had telephoned Dr. Botkin, asking for news of the Tsarevich’s health. During the afternoon, household servants making their way back from Petrograd on foot said that leaflets announcing the Tsar’s abdication were being distributed in the capital. The Empress refused to believe them. At five p.m., the printed sheets announcing Nicholas’s abdication, the renunciation of the throne by Grand Duke Michael and the establishment of a Provisional Government reached the palace. Officers of the Guard and members of the suite read them with tears in their eyes. At seven, Grand Duke Paul, the Tsar’s uncle, arrived and went straight to the Empress. Grand Duchess Marie and Lili Dehn, waiting in the next room, heard agitated voices.
Then, wrote Lili, “the door opened and the Empress appeared. Her face was distorted with agony, her eyes were full of tears. She tottered rather than walked, and I rushed forward and supported her until she reached the writing table between the windows. She leaned heavily against it and taking my hands in hers, she said brokenly: ‘Abdiqué!’ I could not believe my ears. I waited for her next words. They were hardly audible. ‘The poor dear … all alone down there … what he has gone through, oh my God, what he has gone through … And I was not there to console him….’”
That night, wrote Gilliard, “I saw her in Alexis Nicolaievich’s room. … Her face was terrible to see, but with a strength of will which was almost superhuman, she had forced herself to come to the children’s rooms as usual so that the young invalids … should suspect nothing.”
The same evening, Count Benckendorff, Baroness Buxhoeveden and others went to see the Empress to assure her of their personal loyalty. “She was deadly pale,” wrote Baroness Buxhoeveden. “… When the Empress kissed me, I could only cling to her and murmur some broken words of affection. Count Benckendorff held her hand, tears running down his usually immobile face…. ‘It’s for the best,’ she said. ‘It is the will of God. God gives this to save Russia. That is the only thing that matters.’ Before we shut the door, we could see her sinking into her chair by the table
, sobbing bitterly, covering her face with her hands.”
Painful as it was, the Tsar’s abdication improved the immediate situation at Tsarskoe Selo. The virtual state of siege surrounding the palace ended as officers and men of the palace guard, absolved by the abdication from their oath to the Tsar, swore allegiance to the Provisional Government. Communication between the deposed sovereigns, no longer a danger to the revolution, was restored. On March 17, upon his arrival at Headquarters, Nicholas was allowed to telephone his wife. Word of the call was brought by an aged servant, trembling with excitement. Oblivious of etiquette, he stammered: “The Emperor is on the phone!” Alexandra stared at him as if he had taken leave of his senses; then, realizing what he was saying, jumped up like a girl of sixteen and rushed to the telephone. Knowing that other people were listening in at both ends of the line, Nicholas said only “You know?” Alexandra answered nothing more than “Yes,” before they went on to discuss the health of their children.
After ten o’clock at night on March 18, Count Benckendorff was startled to hear that Guchkov, now Minister of War in the Provisional Government, and General Kornilov, a regular soldier who had come from the front to take command of the Petrograd garrison, were on their way to Tsarskoe Selo to see the Empress. Guchkov was an avowed enemy—a former President of the Duma, an early antagonist of Rasputin, just back from overseeing the Tsar’s abdication at Pskov. His coming, plus the lateness of the hour, seemed to indicate imminent arrest. Benckendorff informed Alexandra, who sent for Grand Duke Paul. The Grand Duke got out of bed and hurried from his house in Tsarskoe Selo. At eleven, Guchkov and Kornilov arrived, accompanied by twenty members of the new revolutionary council of the village of Tsarskoe Selo. While the Empress and the Grand Duke received the two envoys, these men, mostly workers and soldiers, wandered through the palace, abusing the servants and addressing the suite as “bloodsuckers.”
As it happened, Guchkov and Kornilov had come only to investigate the state of affairs at the palace and to offer the protection of the Provisional Government to the Empress and her children. Guchkov respectfully asked whether the Empress had what she needed, especially medicines. Alexandra, relieved and grateful, replied that their own supplies were adequate, but she asked Guchkov to look into the supplies for the numerous hospitals around Tsarskoe Selo. In addition, she asked, for the children’s sake, that order be maintained around the palace. Guchkov promised to arrange both of these matters. The first interview between the Empress and her captors had gone well. Returning home after the interview, Grand Duke Paul told his wife that he had never seen Alexandra more “beautiful, tranquil and dignified.”
Nevertheless, the future still seemed precarious. During the days which preceded the Tsar’s return, the Empress began burning her diaries, bound either in white satin or leather, and much of her private correspondence. All of her letters from Queen Victoria and her own letters to the Queen, which had been returned from Windsor after her grandmother’s death, were destroyed. “A fierce fire was burning in the huge grate in the red drawing room,” wrote Lili Dehn. “… She reread some of them…. I heard stifled sobs and … sighs. … Still weeping, [she] laid her letters one by one on the heart of the fire. The writing glowed for an instant … then it faded and the paper became a little heap of white ash.” There were some letters which Alexandra did not burn. With rumors flying that one or both of them would be placed on trial, she carefully saved all of her letters to Nicholas and his to her to use as evidence of their patriotism.
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 and 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….’
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family Page 55