“It’s Serge!” Ella cried, rushing from the palace and summoning a sleigh to speed her to the scene. As she approached Senate Square, the gathering crowd tried to hold her back but it was too late. Before her in the snow lay a tangled mess of flesh and bone – all that was left of her husband. His head, his leg and his arm had been blown off by a terrorist’s bomb. The blast was so great that, days later, his fingers were found on the roof of the Kremlin.
Scrambling through the gore for Serge’s medals and icons, Ella called to the soldiers for a stretcher from one of her Red Cross ambulances, then, with her own hands, placed what was left of her husband on the palette, which she ordered to be covered with soldiers’ coats and taken to a neighbouring monastery. A silent crowd followed her into the chapel where the stretcher was placed on the altar steps while she knelt and prayed.
“The horror left a deep trace on her countenance, which only passed away when, having learnt the futility of earthly existence, she received the experience of divine beauty, and after this time her eyes seemed to be gazing at a vision of the other world.”[141]
That evening, though obviously still in shock, Ella summoned a carriage to take her to the hospital where Serge’s coachman lay fatally wounded. To avoid causing him further distress, the doctors had told him that his master was only slightly injured and, as Ella neared his bed, he asked for news of the Grand Duke.
She smiled gently, “It was he who sent me to you.”
That night the coachman, passed away in his sleep.
Fearful of further assassinations, the Tsar was prevailed upon to issue an order forbidding the Imperial Family to travel to Moscow for the funeral. Ella’s sister, Victoria, hurried to Russia, and Serge’s sister, Marie, arrived from Coburg with Ella’s young cousin, Beatrice. Constrained in Tsarskoe Selo, Alix could only take comfort from the news that Ella was ‘bearing her terrible grief like a saint.’
Two days later, Ella revealed the depths of her sanctity. Carrying a Bible and an icon of Christ, she set out for the prison where her husband’s killer, Ivan Kalyaev, was being held. In a private meeting, she wept as she told him that she had forgiven him and, without least hint of malice or anger, asked what had driven him to commit such a crime.
Touched as he was by her sorrow and evident sincerity, Kalyaev told her that he felt no remorse as he believed his actions had been entirely justified. As she rose to leave, she told him, “I will pray for you,” and handed him the icon and Bible.
Newspapers later reported that she had petitioned the Tsar for a pardon but, since the assassin failed to repent, her request was refused.
Kalyaev’s execution did nothing to still the tide of unrest sweeping through Russia, and by August it was clear that there was nothing to be gained from prolonging the disastrous Japanese War. In the humiliation of defeat, Alix continued her work for the wounded soldiers, organising schemes to teach the disabled men new trades and providing them and their families with new cottages, but again her efforts passed largely unnoticed and the violence continued unabated. In the Caucasus, rebels attacked and murdered officials, and in Moscow, angry mobs manned barricades in the streets until Nicholas realised he had no alternative but to call a Duma, effectively signing away the three-hundred-year-old autocracy.
With the opening of the Duma in October 1905, a semblance of peace was restored. The barricades were dismantled, the strikers returned to work and the future Russian leader, Lenin, living in some luxury in Switzerland, gloomily observed that the opportunity for revolution had passed. Nonetheless, the Tsar’s reputation had suffered a blow from which it would never fully recover. While Alix was disgusted at the manner in which he had been forced to accept the Duma, anarchists were disappointed that the reforms had not gone far enough. Ella, meanwhile, mourning the loss of a husband she had loved, was about to make a more radical change in her life than even the most extreme Bolsheviks could have imagined.
Chapter 27 – A Sensible Girl Full of Good Intentions
Maud: Princess Carl of Denmark; Youngest daughter of Edward VII
Carl: Maud’s husband; younger son of King Frederick VIII of Denmark
Patsy (Patricia): Younger daughter of Arthur, Duke of Connaught
Ena (Victoria Eugenie): Daughter of Princess Beatrice
In the early months of 1905, while Ella was coming to terms with the horrific murder of her husband, Cousin Maud of Wales was enjoying a peaceful existence in relative obscurity in Denmark. Though she had never lost her nostalgia for England, she was happy with her sailor prince and delighted to spend several months of each year in the haven of Appleton Lodge. It would have suited Maud to remain forever in untroubled anonymity with her husband and their three-year-old son, Alexander, but life was about to take a strange turn for the shy Princess Carl of Denmark.
For ninety years the Kings of Sweden had ruled neighbouring Norway but by the turn of century, following a series of political upheavals, the Norwegians were pressing for independence with a separate monarchy. Since there was no ruling House in their country, they asked King Oskar of Sweden to appoint them a sovereign from his own family but, unwilling to yield to such a revolutionary proposal, he refused. The Norwegians then turned to the Danish King Frederick VIII who had no such qualms and recognised that his second son, Carl, was the most obvious candidate.
Neither Carl nor Maud had any desire to reign in a foreign country, particularly when they were told that large groups of Norwegians favoured a republic. For several months, in spite of pressure from his father in Denmark and his father-in-law in England, the prince refused the throne until at length, in November 1905, the Norwegians succeeded in convincing him that he truly was the people’s choice.
A warm reception greeted the new King and Queen on their arrival in the capital, Christiania (now Oslo). Carl’s decision to adopt the ancient Norwegian name of Haakon VII and to change the name of his son from Alexander to Olaf proved popular with his new subjects. Maud, too, made a good impression. She had already begun to master the language, and her regal yet unassuming manner, and determination to take her responsibilities seriously soon earned the Norwegians’ respect and affection.
In wider Europe, however, Carl’s decision to accept the throne did not win universal acclaim. The Kaiser, opposed to any scheme promoted by ‘Uncle Bertie’ – the British King Edward VII – had preferred a Swedish contender, though in a typical about-turn he later assured Carl of his support. Other royalties were not so easily appeased and several complained about the idea of an elected monarch which, they felt, undermined the whole concept of monarchy.
Maud herself had not entirely succeeded in overcoming her shyness and, as the day of the coronation drew nearer, all her old insecurities returned. Nonetheless, she managed to overcome her nerves to rise to the occasion. Even though a recurrence of neuralgia prevented her from walking in the coronation procession, her manner and bearing impressed the enthusiastic crowds that lined the route to Trondheim Cathedral. Throughout the ceremony, she played her part with the finesse that would characterise all her undertakings in Norway.
In spite of her delicate health, Queen Maud, like many of her cousins, involved herself in numerous charitable causes including, to the horror of the more prudish, a refuge for unmarried mothers. Whatever the critics may have thought of her ‘revolutionary throne’, she and Carl proved popular monarchs who endured few of the upheavals that were soon to beset their cousins and other European dynasties.
While Maud was accustoming herself to the idea of a foreign throne, her cousin, nineteen-year-old Patsy Connaught – ‘tall beautiful, gifted and a brilliant artist’[142] – had journeyed to Spain with her parents. Travelling through Madrid, she was horrified to hear the enthusiastic crowds acclaiming her as their future Queen. The shy young princess had no ambition to become the Queen of anywhere and still less to be the wife of the arrogant philanderer King Alfonso XIII, who only a few months previously had been equally taken with her elder sister, Daisy.
Un
daunted by Patsy’s obvious lack of interest, the King was so convinced of his own magnetism that he decided to pursue the match and journeyed to England later that year with a view to making Patsy his bride. His efforts were in vain. Patsy resisted his advances and would remain unmarried for over a decade.
In 1911, she and her parents set sail for Ottawa where her father, Prince Arthur, was to take over as Governor of Canada. As her mother’s health declined, Patsy assumed the responsibility for hosting her father’s receptions and carried out her duties with such graciousness that she was rewarded by having several regiments and a mountain range named in her honour.
Patsy’s refusal did not trouble the fickle Spanish King. As soon as he realised that Patsy was unmoved by his approaches, he quickly switched his attention to her eighteen-year-old cousin, Ena Battenberg.
Since the death of Queen Victoria, Ena and her mother had been living peacefully in Kensington Palace from where Princess Beatrice kept her eyes open for suitable candidates for Ena’s hand. Unlike her own mother, Princess Beatrice had no qualms about permitting her daughter to marry, and had encouraged the suit of the Russian Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich, (brother of Ducky’s husband, Kyril) whose name had once been scandalously linked to Cousin Marie of Roumania. The arrival of the Spanish King put paid to the notion of a Russian match and was about to change the young princess’s life forever.
What attracted Ena to the pompous Spaniard, eleven years her senior, remains unclear. Having acceded to the throne before his first birthday, Alfonso was a self-centred, lecherous chauvinist and, if the Russian throne appeared insecure, Spain’s was positively rocking. During the lifetime of Alfonso’s father, the country had briefly been a republic and, even after the restoration of the monarchy, separatist groups were demanding independence. Several attempts had been made on Alfonso’s life and he was so used to anarchists’ attacks that when a car backfired in London his guards assumed it was an assassination attempt and almost shot an innocent bystander. Moreover, Alfonso was a Roman Catholic and, by order of the Spanish parliament, his wife had to be of the same faith.
Perhaps Alfonso’s seductive manner and suave appearance eventually won the heart of the English princess. Throughout the summer he courted her in the fashionable haunt of royalties, Biarritz, and before the onset of autumn, Ena had agreed to convert to Catholicism (after all, her godmother had been the Roman Catholic French Empress Eugenie).
The Bishop of Nottingham, Robert Brindle, instructed Ena in the Catholic faith and, on 7th March 1906, she was received into the Church at San Sebastian. Though the Archbishop of Canterbury was troubled by Ena’s conversion, few members of her family raised any objections but, to Ena’s surprise, the British public was outraged. So great was the general disapproval that Ena’s cousin, George, the Duke of York, felt obliged to warn her mother to keep Ena away from London until the resentment died down.
Nor was the news of the engagement greeted with great rejoicing in Spain. Alfonso’s mother revived the old complaint that the Battenbergs were not ‘of the blood’ and considered Ena unworthy of the Spanish King. In response, King Edward VII elevated his niece from a mere Highness to a Royal Highness and, a month later, in May 1906, amid many tears Ena – ‘a sensible girl…full of good intentions’ – and her mother set sail for Madrid.
On 31st May, royalties from Russia, Germany and England mingled in the sweltering Spanish sunlight for the wedding. The dusty roads and squalid conditions of the capital gave rise to a good deal of muttering among the foreign guests but their complaints might have taken on more significance if they had realised how close they were to death. As the company gathered for the Nuptial Mass, celebrated by the Archbishop of Toledo, the Archbishop of Westminster, and Bishop Brindle, an uninvited guest armed with a bomb was desperately trying to enter the impressive Church of St. Hieronimo, which the couple had selected instead of the expected larger Cathedral of San Franciso. An anarchist, Mateo Morral, almost succeeded in obtaining a ticket when, at the last minute, access was denied him and the three-hour long Mass proceeded without incident. But Morral was not to be deterred.
Amid cheering crowds, the newly-married couple left the cathedral and set off in procession for the short drive to the Royal Palace. As their coach wound its way through the streets, Morral, watching from an upstairs balcony, hurled a bomb concealed in a bouquet of flowers onto the street below. Miraculously, at that very moment, the royal coach paused and the bomb missed the carriage, leaving Ena and her husband unharmed. The King climbed out of the coach only to discover the extent of the horror. One of Alfonso’s equerries and several footmen, soldiers and bystanders had been blown to pieces. Alfonso immediately sent word to Ena’s mother that her daughter was unharmed, and her cousin, Toria of Wales, helped her from the carriage.
Gazing on the terrible scene, Ena, her white wedding-dress splattered with blood, remained rigid in shock until she was led to another carriage and hurriedly returned to the palace. There she threw herself into her mother’s arms, weeping in horror while her unperturbed Aunt Marie, Dowager Duchess of Coburg, and sister of the recently assassinated Grand Duke Serge of Russia, drifted around telling anyone who would listen, “I’m so used to this sort of thing!”
That afternoon, which should have been spent in joyful celebrations, the new Queen toured the hospitals to visit the injured. Later that day, she and Alfonso courageously rode again in an open carriage through the streets of Madrid. In the days that followed, Alfonso attended the funerals of the victims while Ena recovered from the ordeal. Ironically, it later emerged that the bomb had been thrown from the only house in the city owned by the Queen Mother.
After such a horrific reception, it came as relief for Ena to escape from Spain in August to spend part of her honeymoon in the remote tranquillity of Scotland in the company of Uncle Arthur, Duke of Connaught. The Scots were delighted to welcome the Scottish-born Queen and the news reports were effusive in their praise. She was, they said:
‘So fair and placid and majestic, such a solemn contrast to her boyish, nervous-looking, energetic husband.’[143]
Sadly, the differences between Ena and Alfonso would become more apparent once they returned to Madrid.
The death of more than thirty people on her wedding day marked only the beginning of the Queen’s unhappiness in Spain. Her plans ‘to do good there’ were thwarted time after time and, like Cousin Sophie of Greece, she soon found herself an outsider in her husband’s country. In the family tradition, she worked hard to improve the medical services but, rather than appreciating her efforts on their behalf, the Spaniards, believed it demeaning for a woman, and still more a princess, to take an interest in nursing. Even the Church objected to her interference, accusing her of usurping the work of established Religious Orders. On a personal level too, her temperament proved ill-suited to the Spanish culture; her English reserve earning her ‘a reputation of frigidity.’
Most wounding of all for Ena was the treatment she received from her blatantly unfaithful husband. When their eldest son was diagnosed with haemophilia[·], Alfonso cruelly blamed his wife for the boy’s condition and carelessly returned to his mistresses.
Three years after her wedding there came a glimmer of hope. One of Ena’s cousins was about to marry into the Spanish Royal Family and her arrival in Madrid might have eased the young Queen’s loneliness. As it turned out, the appearance of Baby Bee (Beatrice) of Edinburgh, merely added to Ena’s woes.
Described by Queen Victoria, as ‘a pretty girl with a very pretty figure’ Baby Bee had, like her elder sister, Ducky, made the unfortunate mistake of falling in love with a Russian Orthodox first cousin. As histrionic as her sisters when it came to romance, Baby Bee was in her late teens when she began a correspondence with the Tsar’s younger brother, the attractive and charming Grand Duke Mikhail (Misha). For several months, she and Misha poured out their feelings for each other with adolescent fervour, but Misha knew that there could be no future in their relationship. He need
only look at Ducky and Kyril to realise how unbending the Orthodox Church would be when it came to marriage between first cousins. He knew, too, that in his case there was even less chance of obtaining a dispensation than there had been for Kyril, since he was, at the time, the heir to the Russian throne. Baby Bee, however, blinded by love, remained optimistic.
When the Dowager Empress Marie of Russia realised that her son was on the verge of creating a scandal, she desperately tried to arrange a more suitable marriage and dropped several strong hints that he intended to marry Patsy Connaught. London newspapers went so far as to print announcements of the forthcoming wedding until the distraught and much-courted Patsy, who hardly knew the Grand Duke, insisted on an immediate correction.
By the end of 1903, under sustained pressure from his family, Misha conceded defeat and wrote to Baby Bee from Denmark, urging her to break off their correspondence. Beatrice was devastated and, as she cried constantly and refused to eat, her mother packed her off to Egypt to recover. In her absence, Ducky attempted to save face by announcing that her sister had never entertained any thoughts of marrying the Grand Duke and her reaction was due to the shock she had received at being so misunderstood. No one believed the excuse, particularly when Beatrice returned from Egypt appearing sicklier and more lovelorn than ever. To further her recuperation, her mother took her to the villa in Nice where Ducky was staying and from where in January 1904, the Tsar’s sister, Xenia, reported that she looked so unwell that her family feared she would lose her mind.
Two years’ later, as Misha formed an equally dangerous attachment to his sister’s lady-in-waiting, Beatrice, her sanity intact, accompanied her mother to Madrid for Ena’s wedding. All thoughts of the Grand Duke now banished, she met and fell in love with the Spanish King’s cousin, Infante Alfonso of Bourbon-Lyons, Duke of Galliera.
Queen Victoria's Granddaughters 1860-1918 Page 23