The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II

by Donald Crawford

  Michael had arranged that Natasha had her own money, so that she was financially independent, with enough funds to do charitable works of her own choosing. One of her interests was a hospital in Kiev, funded by her but bearing Michael’s name. A large portrait of her had been hung in the entrance hall, but in June 1916, arriving there unannounced, she found it had been taken down and hidden in a back room. The hospital was expecting a visit by the Dowager Empress, who had moved to Kiev to be near to her daughter Olga and her hospital there and the management had decided that sight of Natasha’s picture was likely to cause offence to her disapproving mother-in-law.

  Natasha was incensed. Not only was it maintained entirely at her cost, but she was constantly sending gifts there both for wounded soldiers, and staff. ’It was extremely disrespectful…for my own part I will complete detach myself from this hospital and if they want more money they can ask the people whose pictures do cover their walls.’7

  Two weeks later she was complaining bitterly to Michael that even his own hospital in Petrograd was the subject of official slights, with attempts to remove his name from it. Natasha blamed Alexandra. ‘She hates you and does all she can to prevent your name even being mentioned. Petrograd is full of hospitals bearing the names of the Heir, Olga, Nikolasha and others — and in your name there is only one, which they are trying to get rid of. And that’s a hospital where the officers’ ward exists entirely on your money, so it is virtually your hospital…’8

  Proof of just how petty and vindictive Alexandra was being came only a few days later. Just before Michael had returned to the front, he and Natasha had gone to the studios of fashionable Boissonnas & Eggler and had a series of pictures together, as well as separately. Later, a leading Petrograd society magazine opted to feature one of her photographs on its front page, together with a glowing description of her hospital work. Encouraged by that, Boissonnas & Eggler decided to mount a window exhibition devoted to Michael and Natasha, using the pictures taken in February. He was a war hero; she was beautiful and increasingly celebrated — in combination the studio thought that would be good business for them.

  Natasha at thirty-five, though it was her good fortune to seem younger than her years, was looking better than ever before. She turned heads wherever she went, as the French ambassador would confirm for himself when he chanced upon her for the first time at Soloviev’s, a bookshop in the Liteiny, near to the apartment in which Natasha had spent so many unhappy months four years earlier, in 1912.

  Paléologue was already in the shop and glanced up as she walked in. Though he did not know who she was, he could not take his eyes off her. Leaving the bookshop he saw a ‘very smart car’ parked behind his. His chauffeur, noting his interest, asked him: ‘Didn’t your Excellency recognise the lady?’ Paléologue shook his head. She is ‘the wife of His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke Michael Aleksandrovich’, said the chauffeur.9 Paléologue needed to hear no more. The woman he had seen in the shop was not only extraordinarily beautiful, but from what he had been told at the dinner tables, dangerous. He would never see her again, but he would never forget her. That night he devoted his diary to her charms.

  As I was examining several fine 18th-century French editions in the back of his empty shop, I saw a slender young woman of about thirty come in and take a seat at a table on which an album of prints was laid out. She was a delight to watch. Her whole style revealed a quiet, personal and refined taste… Her pure and aristocratic face is charmingly modelled and she has light velvety eyes. Round her neck a string of superb pearls sparkled in the light… There was a dignified, sinuous and soft gracefulness about her every movement… 10

  That portrait was precisely the kind that Alexandra was determined to destroy, which was why she was so enraged when told that the exhibition at Boissonnas & Eggler was drawing crowds. Her immediate response was to order Prince Obolensky, governor of the imperial palace, to have the exhibition closed down. On Friday morning, July 15, 1916, he arrived with the police, who then stood by to ensure that the studio cleared the window.

  ‘I cannot tell you how incensed I am at such disgraceful treatment,’ she wrote to Michael. It was humiliation, with ‘the public driving past to witness how the shop was cleared of our pictures with the police being present and all the stir it created…’11

  Michael was equally outraged, and also furious with the palace governor, who had served under him in the Chevalier Gardes, but who still followed the Tsarskoe Selo line that Natasha was unspeakable and a menace to the rightful order. ‘I was greatly appalled’ he wrote. ‘That’s such impudence, such disgraceful lack of tact… it’s not for nothing that I have always despised Petrograd high society… there are no people more devious than they are; with a few exceptions, they are all scum.’12

  To Natasha, his appointment to command the 2nd Cavalry Corps also served to show that Tsarskoe Selo’s aim was to keep him as far away from the capital as they could. ‘None of the other Grand Dukes sits in such a hole as you do, so why should you be worse off than the others?’13 Petrograd was crowded with braided Guards officers stationed only a few hours from the capital, and even Stavka was only a day away. ‘They shove you into the worst possible place’ because, she said, ‘they want to get rid of you.’14

  Michael objected to the idea that he was only at the front because of court machinations. ‘It is a matter of conscience, too. I would be ashamed to be somewhere on the home front, when the Russian people are shedding their blood for their country and for future peace’. If the war had any purpose now, he added, it was as ‘a war for peace’.15

  But even he could not close his eyes to some snubs. There had been no announcement of his appointment to command a Corps, and in July 1916 he found that his name was not included in the list of ADCs to the Tsar. As a Grand Duke it was the convention that on promotion to lieutenant-general he would simultaneously be made an ADC to the Tsar — an adjutant-general. In itself it meant little, but he would have worn different epaulettes, and aiguillettes in gold rather than silver.

  Although privately Michael remained indifferent to such distinctions, he had ordered the gold insignia, because his Corps expected to see him wearing them, and that having been promoted he would then have a ‘formal position in the Retinue’.16 It was only then that he found that he was to be the exception: he had not been made an ADC. That was a public slap in the face; it was also in his mind an insult to his Corps.

  An oversight? Coming as it did at the same time as the police were removing his photographs from the shop window, Natasha thought not. ‘The Tsar is deliberately set against you’, she said.17

  ‘All I will say’, replied Michael tersely, ‘is that it is not a misunderstanding, but was deliberately done that way. Therefore I believe that no one should remind or ask the Sovereign about it, not even in ten years’ time.’18

  MICHAEL’S corps was involved in heavy fighting all that summer. The Brusilov Offensive, so called because it was his south-western armies which launched it, promised to reverse the defeats of the last twelve months, and breakthrough the Carpathians to Vienna — a repeat of the hopes of April 1915. By the end of June, Michael noted that the ‘approximate count of prisoners in the whole offensive was 5,620 officers and 266,000 men, 312 guns, 833 machine-guns’.19 The Austrians had been mauled, but then so had the Russians.

  On both the western and the eastern fronts in the First World War, casualties were horrific; indeed when Michael was recording his statistics, the British had suffered 58,000 casualties, half the men involved, and 20,000 of them dead on just the first day of their offensive on the Somme. In the previous year, the total casualties on the western front — French, British, German — had been two million. In the past few months the battle of Verdun had turned into a bloodbath.

  Michael hated the slaughter on both sides. The sight of a dying Czech prisoner in a field dressing station could sadden him, enemy or not. ‘There are so many such unfortunate heroes who are dying away from their country and wor
se still — away from their nearest and dearest and in strangers’ hands. I was sorry for that poor Czech as much as for anyone else’, he told Natasha.20

  As the summer wore on the casualties on the Russian front continued to mount, but the prize slipped away. Elation was followed by disappointment. Brusilov was one of the best generals in any army in that war, but although the Russian line had been pushed forward, overall there was little to show for the sacrifice. The Guards Army, judged the best troops of all, were wasted by clumsy generalship — one corps ruined by incompetence on the part of its newly-appointed commander Grand Duke Paul ‘whose only failing was that he knew nothing about military affairs’,21 commented Brusilov. Paul had been stricken with gallstones, and was in no condition to go to war. After the mishandling of his corps he was quietly removed from his post and returned unheroically to Tsarskoe Selo, which he would have been better never to have left.

  In contrast, Michael would earn his second high gallantry award — the red enamel cross of the Order of St Vladimir with Swords ‘for distinction in action against the enemy’.22 As a corps commander he was, of course, less exposed to personal danger than before, but occasionally there were brushes on the frontline. On August 23, returning from a conference at his old Savage Division headquarters, his driver took the wrong turning and headed straight for the Austrian lines. After half a mile ‘we were bombarded by an Austrian outpost…several bullets whizzed by’. To get them out of it, ‘I took the wheel because I knew how to drive better’.23 Fortunately, unlike most generals, Michael preferred to sit at the front, not in the back, so it was a matter of only a few frantic seconds before he had thrust aside his hapless corporal, and was reversing at high speed back down the road. He made no mention of that to Natasha, but he did admit that ‘there has been very severe and very bloody fighting all this time’.24

  There was then a lull in his sector. He took the opportunity to travel to Mogilev, arriving there on August 31. He had last seen his brother in March when Nicholas came south to Kamanets-Podolsky to inspect units. Michael had told his brother then that when his next appointment came along he would like a transfer to headquarters. Nicholas would have none of it. The two parted on strained terms.

  Afterwards, Nicholas wrote to Alexandra, telling him about his request. ‘Then I began to preach to him about our father, about the sense of duty, example to others and so forth. When I had finished and we had said goodbye to each other, he then asked me coldly and quite calmly not to forget his request, as if I had not spoken at all. I was furious!’25

  Michael, who normally recorded every meeting with Nicholas, made no mention in his diary of seeing him at Kamenets-Podolsky. He would not speak to him for another five months, and when next in Tsarskoe Selo, during a brief trip home in May 1916, he would not trouble to visit the Tsar’s Alexander Palace. However, he did bump into Alexandra. There was no enthusiasm on either side. He stopped for a moment, politely, then hurried on. Alexandra simply reported to Nicholas that ‘going to church, met Misha, stopped, talked a minute, and then he went back to Gatchina’.26

  At Stavka, he and Nicholas met privately in the Tsar’s salon before tea. This time there were no lectures about ‘remembering his duty’ — awkward, given the second high gallantry award on Michael’s chest — and the Tsar this time conceded what he had refused to consider in March: that with his next appointment, Michael could join Stavka. He was also belatedly promoted to Adjutant-General.

  This was not a signal of change in the family war conducted from Tsarskoe Selo. What Michael did not tell his brother was that Natasha, whom he had not seen for three months, had also come to Mogilev and was staying in his carriage. In the four days she was there she kept well away from the headquarters proper, going for walks in the town, and having lunch in the restaurant of the Bristol Hotel. She also went to the cinema, while Michael was dining with his brother.

  It was after Michael had left that Nicholas found out about Natasha. His source was a furious Alexandra. ‘You know Misha’s wife was at Mogilev!!’ she exploded in a letter to him. ‘Georgi (Grand Duke George Mikhailovich) told Paul he sat near her at the cynema (sic). Find out where she lived (perhaps wagon) & how long, & forbid strictly it happening again.’27 It would not happen again. Michael never took up an appointment at headquarters and the next time he saw Nicholas it would be in circumstances so desperate that both had more important matters to worry about.

  WITH the summer offensive having ground to a halt, and stalemate on the south-western front, Michael’s corps would spend that autumn of 1916 refitting and preparing itself for what looked like a long winter. So leaving Mogilev with Natasha, he took her to Brasovo for the start of an extended leave, his first that year. They arrived on September 4, 1916, delighted to be in a place into which the outside world could never intrude. Natasha had worked wonders in the house, decorating it and refurnishing so that it was now better than it had ever been. Michael went fishing on the mill pond, catching 150 fish in one morning in a big sweep-net, and then with his aide Vyazemsky he chopped down thirty-six trees near the house.28 The two children joined them, and leaving Brasovo they went on to Moscow, staying at the National Hotel. After six weeks they were back in Gatchina, with Michael preparing himself to go back to the front.

  It was not to be. Suddenly he succumbed to a fever and no sooner had he recovered than he went down again with a new attack of his ‘damned stomach pains’; a week later he was still ill. After being examined by a team of specialists in Petrograd he was advised to go to the warm Crimea and rest. A month of sitting doing nothing and he would feel a different man; if he ignored their advice and returned to the army, he would not be doing either the army or himself a favour.

  Given that, he had little choice. But before he departed there was one thing he had to do, and that was to write to Nicholas. His weeks back from the front had exposed him to the reality of public opinion in Russia and what he had heard and seen had alarmed him greatly. In the months he had been at the front, the mood had darkened much more than he had realised. He had known enough to have warned his brother face to face about the political risks he was taking; now, having heard so much more in these past weeks on the home-front, for the first time he did so in writing. On November 11, 1916, he went into his study at Nikolaevskaya Street, to tell his brother that time was running out.

  ‘A year ago…you invited me to share my thoughts with you candidly whenever I felt it called for. The time has come… I am deeply concerned and worried by what is happening around us. There has been a shocking alteration in the mood of the most loyal people; on all sides I observe a way of thinking which fills me with the most serious apprehension not only for you and for the fate of our family, but even for the integrity of the state order.

  ‘The public hatred for certain people who allegedly are close to you and who are forming part of the present government has, to my amazement, brought together the right, the left, and the moderate; and this hatred, along with the demands for changes are already openly expressed at every opportunity. Please don’t think that I am writing this under someone’s influence (he meant Natasha): these impressions I have tried to verify in conversations with people of various circles — level-headed people whose loyalty and devotion are beyond any doubt and, alas, my apprehensions have been confirmed.’

  Having underlined the fact that he was speaking from his own experience, not merely repeating what Natasha and her ‘bad set’ had told him — though he could have no doubt that Alexandra would blame her anyway — he did not mince his words thereafter:

  ‘I have come to the conviction that we are standing on a volcano, and that the least spark, the least incorrect step could provoke a catastrophe for you, for us all and for Russia… it seems to me that, by removing the most hated persons and replacing them with unblemished people, towards whom there is no evident mistrust on the part of society (which now means Russia as a whole), you will find a good way out of the situation in which we now are; and for such a de
cision you will certainly find support both in the Council of State and the Duma… It seems to me that the people who are urging you to follow an opposite course are concerned far more with keeping their own posts than with protecting you and Russia. Half-measures in this case are only prolonging the crisis and thus making it more acute.

  ‘I am deeply confident that everything that is said in this letter will be confirmed by all those among our relatives who are at least slightly familiar with the moods pervading the country and society. I am afraid these moods are not so strongly felt and perceived at Stavka… the majority of those who come with reports will never tell you the unpleasant truth, for they are protecting their own interests… I cannot help feeling that if anything happens inside Russia, it will be echoed with a catastrophe as regards the war. That is why, painful as it is for me to do it, my love for you has urged me to share all my worries with you without keeping anything back.’29

  He could hardly be clearer; and it was not necessary to mention Alexandra. He had done that often enough before. Would Nicholas pay any heed? Everything Michael had written was true, his advice sound, and his forecast of the catastrophe which awaited if nothing was done was to prove tragically accurate. In the event, Nicholas never replied.

  Six days later, on November 17, Michael and Natasha set off to stay at his sister Xenia’s house on the shores of the Black Sea, twelve miles from Yalta. They would be there a month, before returning to Brasovo for Christmas and a houseful of guests invited to join them. They arrived in Brasovo on December 20, shortly before the children, staff and their house party arrived from Petrograd.

  Of their guests, only one — Grand Duke Dimitri — failed to turn up. As they would discover, he had been arrested.