New ideas opposing autocracy were in ferment; students, radicals, Marxists, anarchists and nihilists loathed the absolute power of the tsar and the extremes of social injustice thriving in his kingdom. One Russian anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin, met Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in London, and believed their communist ideal of a ‘state of the proletariat’ did not go far enough. For Bakunin, any state – whether capitalist or communist – should be abolished altogether in favour of ‘collective anarchism’, which aimed for equality by diffusing power through local independent assemblies or ‘communes’.39 Bakunin’s vision called for a revolution so total – starting in Russia and spreading across Europe – that all of civilisation must go up in flames before a new society, phoenix-like, could spring from its ashes. Russia’s university towns of St Petersburg, Moscow and Kiev became home to a secret, subterranean network of radical anarchist groups fired with such far-reaching ideals.
The Congress of Berlin, in which a hard-won victory appeared to have been snatched from Alexander II, proved to be a flashpoint for discontent. A wave of attacks came in quick succession in the late 1870s. The governor of St Petersburg, General Feodor Trepov, and the district prosecutor in Kiev, M. Kotlyarevsky, were shot at point-blank range; both survived. Not so lucky was the police spy, A. Nikonov, and the governor general of Kharkov, Prince Kropotkin, and the Chief of the Third Department in charge of political security, General N. V. Mezentsov. The tsar, who had already suffered two attacks on his life in 1866 and 1867, was targeted again in April 1879, directly in front of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. Humiliated in front of a large crowd in Palace Square, the tsar was forced to duck and dive to dodge the five bullets that rang out in broad daylight.
Alexander II proclaimed a war on terror. The most reforming tsar in generations now extended police powers. In his efforts to restore order he, in turn, was increasingly held responsible for ‘tsarist terror’ as radicals were hunted down and punished, invariably paying with their lives. In this febrile atmosphere in June 1879, the secret court of the terrorist group People’s Will met at Lipetsk and condemned the tsar to death. Alexander II was an ‘enemy of the people’ and revolutionaries aimed to destroy his rule with terror: ‘propaganda of the deed’. The astonishing scale of their attacks highlights the level of pre-planning and organisation that miraculously took place right in front of the police. When the People’s Will set out to blow up the imperial train in November 1879, they prepared attacks on three possible sites through which the tsar might pass from the Crimea. For the fifth attempt on the tsar’s life a terrorist posing as a carpenter secretly smuggled enough dynamite into the Winter Palace to fill an entire trunk. On 13 March 1881 the sixth attempt on his life finally succeeded, ironically just at a time when the tsar had committed to introducing constitutional reform.
The golden lives of the Romanovs were now ruled by fear, their beautiful palaces invaded by unknown terrors. Yet this was the very family into which Queen Victoria feared her pretty granddaughter, Ella, might be tempted to marry. The queen knew that the older Hessian princesses were fully aware of the horror of Alexander II’s death. The truth of her warnings must have been clear to them. When their father, Louis of Hesse, had set out for St Petersburg to comfort his Russian relatives, the princesses had turned to their grandmother. The tsar’s death was ‘too dreadful – how I pity poor Aunt Marie & the present tsar who can never feel sure of his life’, sixteen-year-old Ella had written to her grandmother. ‘I will be so glad when he [papa] is back from this dreadful Petersburg.’40
Their father had returned with news of the changed lives of the Russian royal family. St Petersburg was a city in fear. Rumours ran wild of further attacks and bombs or torpedoes embedded in the ice. The new emperor, Alexander III, and his Danish wife, Dagmar, now the Empress Maria Feodorovna (the sister of Princess Alexandra), were almost imprisoned by the extensive security of their Anichkov Palace, which was being further fortified against mines with a trench. Queen Victoria had learned further details from her British ambassador. ‘The poor emperor is scarcely allowed out and his only exercise is to walk round a not very large walled garden,’ Lord Dufferin reported to her in March 1881. He found it hard to see ‘any end to these fearful uncertainties’.41 Dufferin was convinced that a reactionary policy ‘was impossible . . . some kind of constitution must be introduced’, a view that was widely shared.42 Sir Henry Eliot, the British ambassador to Vienna, told the queen that the Russian Empire was ‘diseased to the core, financially and politically’. The only thing that could save Russia from revolution was ‘the granting of some sort of constitution’.43
Alexander III disagreed. He was not listening to the foreign ambassadors. Nor to the nihilists who warned him to ‘beware the fate that has befallen his late father’ and granted him a mere three months to introduce a new constitution.44 The first conspirators arrested cockily ‘boasted that though the heads of the conspiracy were taken, the tail would accomplish the object in view’.45 Their chance was swiftly denied them. The new tsar was no intellectual; he saw things clearly and simply and was forceful in getting things done. He deplored the reforms introduced by his father. This had only served to raise expectations that could not be met. Instinctively, he felt it was time to put the genie back in the bottle, dismiss imported foreign notions of a constitution, and re-establish the Russian way of doing things. Autocracy had made Russia great for 300 years. It was time to reassert tsarist control with a vengeance.
Those responsible for his father’s murder were hunted down and hanged. Liberals were dismissed or took their leave from the new tsar’s government. Anti-Semitism was rife; the Jews were wrongly blamed for Alexander II’s death, prompting a wave of pogroms. Far from curbing the violence, Alexander III tacitly supported it, introducing tough restrictions on the Jewish community. He also created a new instrument of state security, the notorious Security Bureau, ‘the Okhrana’, a secret police force whose covert operations and double dealings were of such labyrinthine complexity and secrecy that many came to fear its reach. Undercover agents and agents provocateurs sought to infiltrate terrorist and revolutionary groups, and offices were dedicated to perlustration – intercepting the mail of suspects.
Although the tough stance adopted by Alexander III created a semblance of order, Queen Victoria recognised this had required punitive repressive measures. She continued to warn the Hesse princesses of the ‘dreadful state Russia is in’. This was no place for her granddaughter. In her cautionary missives the queen highlighted the ‘very depressed bad state of Society’ and the fears that swirled around the Russian throne and the Romanovs’ stupendous wealth, which she saw as provocative, incendiary, and bound to lead to trouble.46 From grand dukes down, she believed the society was corrupt. ‘Russia, I cd not wish for any of you & dear Mama always said she wd never hear of it,’ she declared to Victoria of Hesse in January 1883.47 By now Ella had turned down several suitors and the queen remained concerned that her granddaughter might fall for one of her Russian cousins, Sergei or Paul, sons of the murdered tsar. Victoria of Hesse tried to abate the queen’s fears. ‘I do not think she cares for one of the Russian cousins,’ she replied disingenuously.48
But during the spring of 1883 Ella succumbed to the attentions of the imposing Russian grand duke and accepted Sergei’s proposal of marriage. Queen Victoria was shocked. Ella was revealing a will of steel behind her apparently compliant manner. It was hard for the queen to settle her mind to the match. She decided on a plan and invited her headstrong granddaughter to come and stay. In the relaxing privacy of the Scottish Highlands, far from worldly pressures, the queen intended to use all her powers of persuasion to turn the young, inexperienced Ella away from this dangerous path.
Elisabeth of Hesse arrived at Windsor Castle on 22 May 1883 and the queen found the very sight of her granddaughter brought back ‘endless dear recollections’.49 It was not long before they were speeding by train towards Balmoral, the queen lifted into her carriage on account of a swol
len foot.
This was an unsettling time for Queen Victoria. It was her first return to Balmoral since the death of her special favourite, John Brown, earlier in the year. Ironically, while the queen was seeking considerable control over her granddaughters’ choice of suitors, she herself had refused to listen to anyone’s objections over the unconventional relationship that had developed between her and John Brown since Prince Albert’s death. Queen Victoria’s biographer, Lytton Strachey, has described this relationship as an extension of her own control. A relationship with her servant, no matter how dominating, never cost her independence. When she succumbed to Mr Brown’s instructions to wear her wrap or step down from the carriage, ‘was she not displaying, and in the highest degree, the force of her volition?’50 Now he, too, had died. His arm was no longer there to support her, the visceral relief of his physical presence close at hand was gone. She had lost ‘the dearest, most devoted and invaluable friend I ever had’, she admitted to Victoria of Hesse. She felt quite ‘deranged’ by his loss, ‘we were so devoted to each other’.51 Although tired from her journey on that very first evening, the queen insisted on visiting John Brown’s grave. Sensitive Ella obliged her grandmother. She understood that his presence had brought her closer to Albert, as though the proximity of his gillie inexplicably reconnected her to the dead, and now it was as if two ghosts walked with them around Balmoral, the queen leaning on two sticks to ease her lameness.
Ella had a secret that challenged her grandmother’s control and that she rather dreaded to disclose: news of yet another marriage. Her oldest sister, Victoria of Hesse, was planning to accept Prince Louis of Battenberg, a brother of Alexander, Prince of Bulgaria. The queen was indeed offended. She felt herself to be a mother to her Hessian granddaughters, but she was not being consulted like a mother. ‘Darling Victoria, I cannot be silent,’ the queen began in protest on 19 June 1883. But her protest was muted. It was hard to object to the charismatic Louis. The queen did not share the arrogance of the Hohenzollerns, who dismissed all the handsome Battenberg princes for not being of royal blood ‘a little like animals’.52 Quite the reverse, the queen decided that her oldest Hessian granddaughter had ‘done well to choose a Husband who is quite of your way of thinking & who in many respects is as English as you are’. The only drawback was the want of ‘the fortune’, she wrote, but ‘I don’t think that riches make happiness, or that they are necessary’.53 While she came round rapidly to Victoria of Hesse’s choice in marriage, when it came to Ella’s grand duke, the queen’s emotions were powerfully engaged.
Alone with her all-powerful grandmother, dressed in forbidding black, projecting, as always, an air of unfathomable wisdom, Ella’s confidence in her choice did indeed begin to waver. Her grandmother’s diminutive height and evident discomfort on account of her foot was no indication of her strength. Her throne was safe; her empire the envy of the world; her advice almost universally respected. Perhaps the state of Russia was too uncertain? Perhaps Grand Duke Sergei was not what he seemed? Days turned into weeks at Balmoral, Ella slowly absorbing her grandmother’s views as they took drives out in the open carriage and turns around the estate, the queen in her pony chair. Inevitably, some of the foreign news that breached the sanctuary of Balmoral created openings to discuss Ella’s future, such as accounts of the coronation of the new Russian tsar, Alexander III, a forceful reminder of the murder of his father. The queen lost no opportunity to reiterate her concerns and Ella was left in no doubt of her grandmother’s astute perceptions.
Windsor was ‘in all its summer glory’, observed the queen when she and Ella returned there in June.54 The queen’s favoured spot was beside Albert’s tomb in the royal mausoleum at Frogmore. She loved to take breakfast under the trees in the grounds with Ella and Beatrice, and long hours could be spent there talking and writing. When the inevitable showers fell, Queen Victoria was carried into the mausoleum, followed by her two companions, where the conversations continued under the nearby influence of the revered Prince Albert. In the third week of July, Ella travelled with the queen to Osborne and it was mid-August before she prepared to return to Germany. ‘Dear Ella, who had been 3 months with me, seemed quite distressed to leave,’ the queen noted on 16 August.55 Within a week of her departure, the visit had the desired effect. Ella broke off her engagement.
Queen Victoria was jubilant. It was not the kind of triumph that she could broadcast too loudly, but nonetheless she wrote at once to Victoria of Hesse. She and Auntie Beatrice, ‘for no one else shall know abt it, are delighted . . . at Ella’s refusal of Serge . . . Anything is better than making an unhappy marriage.’56 Two days later it was still on her mind. ‘I rejoice that she has acted as she has done abt Serge,’ she wrote. Realising that she was blamed by her Russian daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Edinburgh, who was Sergei’s sister, for this ‘insult’, the queen was at pains to deny her role in the matter. ‘I did not set her [Ella] agst Serge,’ the queen protested. ‘But I did tell her to reflect well before she accepted him & to remember the climate and the state of the Country & that (contrary to what she wished . . .) her living out of Russia cld only be the exception to the rule – I shall never deny having said this . . .’57
But a tsar’s son was not about to be thwarted by a British queen. Within days, Grand Duke Sergei arranged to call on Ella in Germany. Queen Victoria heard of his visit and sent a flurry of letters. ‘I am rather distressed that Serge is . . . coming,’ she told Victoria of Hesse on 4 September 1883. ‘I can’t tell you how I dread that marriage for her. Believe me it wld be misery for her as the climate, Society etc are pernicious there – And darling Mama . . . never wld hear of one of her girls going there’.58 Still anxious a few days later, she issued a much stronger warning. If Ella married Sergei, ‘in fact it will be her ruin’.59 Dreading the outcome of his visit, she could not resist writing for the third time in a week to Victoria of Hesse. Ella, she feared, would ‘be taken in – for Heaven and Earth will [be] moved to get hold of her . . . Believe me when I speak so strongly against it’.60
In the presence of her handsome grand duke, eighteen-year-old Ella felt confused. Sergei conveyed the authority of a man seven years older, his forceful presence not lightly dismissed, his grey-green eyes conveying his sensitivity and reserve. Had she treated him badly? She trusted him as a cousin; he shared her passion for music and literature; his character, Ella decided, was ‘true and noble’.61 Such a delightful partner seemed to offer immense security. She accepted him once again, despite the conflict she felt with her grandmother. Grandmama queen was old and a widow of many years: what did she know of romance? Entombed in her isolation, seeking out her constant reminders of grief: how could such a woman understand the irrepressible feelings of youth?
It was left to Victoria of Hesse to be the bearer of this unwelcome news. The response from across the English Channel was swift and strongly worded. A series of cautions were sent to Victoria of Hesse for ‘our sweet but undecided & inexperienced Ella’. The queen warned once again of ‘the very bad state of Society & its total want of principle . . .’ She judged the Russians to be ‘so unscrupulous’ and ‘totally antagonistic to England’.62 A month later she was still worrying that Ella ‘will be quite lost to me . . .’ Ella must set conditions: to live out of Russia as much as possible and not to marry before the age of twenty. The queen was much vexed that Ella was being ‘changeable and unaccountable’.63
Ella summoned up the courage to write on 13 October 1883. She was now convinced her happiness lay with Grand Duke Sergei. Despite the weeks of coaching at Balmoral, Ella wanted to go her own way. The queen could not bring herself to respond immediately. She had received Ella’s letter, she told Victoria of Hesse, ‘but I really do not feel quite able to answer her yet – as I do feel this prospect so very deeply’. Ella should have taken good ‘Fritz of B [Baden] . . . she wld not easily find so good a person’.64 Possibly to shield her sister from their grandmother’s forceful impact, Victoria of Hesse wrote to the queen th
at Christmas to reassure her that on the terms of the marriage ‘nothing is settled decidedly’.65
The Russian groom was in no doubt about how to dazzle his German princess with a flamboyant extravagance that brought a whole new meaning to the word ‘excess’. When Grand Duke Sergei returned to Germany in February 1884 for the public announcement of his engagement to Ella, he brought such a stunning collection of Fabergé jewels that they would have filled a shop window. There were rare and glittering gems to adorn his bride, some once worn by famous Romanov predecessors. In a romantic scene he asked her to try them all, and once her delicate throat and wrists were sparkling with gems he painstakingly decorated her dress, pinning each treasure in place until the very weight was almost a burden. As if this magnificent gift was not enough, millions of pounds were settled on Ella in the form of personal funds from the tsar himself, with an estimated value of some £700 million today. Ella was now richer than Queen Victoria herself. Her younger sister Irene reported to their grandmother, perhaps a little enviously, that Sergei had given Ella ‘most beautiful jewels’, exquisite Indian shawls, as well as the very bracelet that their great-aunt, the Empress Marie, had received from the late Tsar Alexander II on their engagement.66 For young women brought up without extravagance, the Russian grand duke had opened a door through which a seductive world without boundaries was glimpsed, where life appeared to be lived in a more glorious way.
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