“I should die of grief,” she said, “if Roumania were to go to war against England.”
The Kaiser’s reaction in describing her as the ‘English harlot’ was as nothing compared to the criticism Missy suffered from her own family. While one sister, Sandra, was nursing wounded Germans, another, the fiercely anti-German Ducky, was writing from Russia to urge Missy to join the Entente. At the same time, Missy’s mother, the Russian-born Dowager Duchess Marie of Coburg, bitterly criticised the Roumanian Queen for failing to persuade her husband to join the Central Powers. As King Ferdinand’s natural sympathies were more German than British, Missy might well have succeeded in so doing, but she adamantly refused to contemplate going to war against Britain. It was with a sense of relief rather than fear that she greeted the news in August 1916 that her husband had finally allied Roumania to the Entente.
Chapter 33 – Poor Nicky! Poor Russia
In August 1915, weary of following his soldiers’ progress from the side-lines and aware that his cousin, the Commander-in-Chief, was close to a nervous breakdown, Tsar Nicholas made a fateful decision to take over supreme command of his army. Loath as Alix was to part with him, she supported the plan, certain that he would win the respect and admiration of his troops. Our Friend, Rasputin, gave the scheme his blessing and assured the Tsarina that this was God’s will.
The rest of the family was far less confident. Nicholas had no direct experience of warfare and lacked the physical presence of his predecessor, the giant Grand Nikolai Nikolaevich, to inspire confidence in his troops. Moreover, the blame for every Russia defeat could now be laid squarely at the feet of the Tsar, leaving him more vulnerable than ever to revolutionary attacks. What was more, Nicholas could not have chosen a worse time to take on the task. Ammunition was in such short supply that soldiers were left waiting for their comrades to die so that they could take their guns. Morale in the army had sunk so low that officers frequently abandoned their positions to snatch a few moments pleasure in the nightclubs and theatres of the capital. More disastrous still in the eyes of his critics, was the fact that Nicholas left the reins of government in the hands of his wife, which, in their opinion, meant leaving control of all internal affairs to the peasant, Rasputin.
In spite of the widely held view to the contrary, Rasputin’s influence in affairs of state was minimal. Though Alix relied on the peasant’s advice, he had, according to Nicholas’s sister, ‘not a particle of influence’ over the Tsar. Nicholas’ departure for the Front, however, allowed Rasputin greater access to the Tsarina.
Exhausted by stress and her work among the wounded, Alix’s illnesses multiplied:
“The heart trouble that at first had been only a nervous affection then became really serious. She had constant pain and a feeling of suffocation, while almost chronic facial neuralgia had taken the place of the sciatica from which she used to suffer so badly. On account of her heart trouble she had to submit reluctantly to be carried upstairs in the hospitals she visited, though she loathed making a spectacle of herself.”[174]
In Nicholas’ absence, her dependence on Rasputin appeared to increase. Under his insidious influence, able ministers were relieved of office and replaced by Rasputin’s ineffectual and often corrupt cronies. At the same time, ‘intriguers’ and agent provocateurs from abroad were busily working to create chaos and mistrust until Russia was rapidly spiralling into chaos. The transport system broke down, fuel shortages hit the cities, and the dissatisfaction was spreading from the workers through to the aristocracy.
As newspapers openly reported that the Tsarina and Rasputin were working for the enemy, scurrilous leaflets appeared on the streets depicting Alix and her peasant lover in pornographic poses. Even Nicholas was alarmed and urged Alix to be cautious but his warnings had come too late.
With the onset of winter came further fuel and food shortages and rumours spread that the ‘Hessian witches’ in the Imperial Family were deliberately starving the masses. Maurice Paléologue reported that:
“Countess R -, who has just spent three days in Moscow…confirms what I have recently heard about the rage of the Muscovites against the Imperial family: ‘I dined in different circles each evening,’ she said. ‘Everywhere one hears the same indignant outcry. If the Emperor appeared on Red Square today, he would be booed. The Empress would be torn to pieces. The kind, warm-hearted, pure-minded Grand Duchess Elizabeth dare not leave her convent now. The workmen accuse her of starving the people. There seems to be a stir of revolution among all classes.’”[175]
For the Imperial Family the solution was obvious: Rasputin had to go, Alix must stop interfering in politics, and loyal and trustworthy ministers should be immediately appointed. One after another, Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses arrived at Tsarskoe Selo with desperate warnings but the Tsarina dismissed them and added their names to the ever-growing list of enemies of Our Friend.
“[Ducky] spoke to the Empress of the unpopularity of the Government. The Grand Duchess was restrained in her language, and the Empress did not believe that her cousin’s apprehensions were well founded. She always thought that she and the Emperor must know the situation better than anyone; she had the assurance, backed with the authority of the Minister of the Interior, that it was only the desire to frighten the Emperor into granting hasty reforms that caused the spread of these rumours.”[176]
Alix responded to Ducky’s advice by telling her not to meddle in affairs that were not her concern. Exasperated by her refusal to listen, several members of the family believed the Tsarina was insane and called for her to be removed to a convent or asylum, or at least to be banished to her Crimean estate, Livadia, until the end of the war. With some justification, Alix responded by accusing her detractors of treason.
By the winter of 1916, Ella, ‘frightened at the hostility displayed towards her sister,’ determined to make one final effort to remove Rasputin’s influence. Arriving at the Alexander Palace on the 14th December, the thirty-eighth anniversary of the death of her mother on whose prayers she had always relied, Ella broached the subject of the peasant. Alix, standing on her dignity as Empress refused to listen. Infuriated by her blindness, Ella lost her temper, prophetically reminding her of the fate of Marie-Antoinette, but Alix simply dismissed her and drove her away ‘like a dog.’
“Perhaps,” said the heart-broken Ella, “it would have been better if I had not come.”
“Yes,” the Tsarina replied.
They would never see each other again.
Ella left Tsarskoe Selo for the last time and made her way to the Youssoupov Palace where her young friend Prince Felix was waiting.
“Poor Nicky!” she wept, “Poor Russia!”
Within a fortnight of Ella’s meeting with Alix, Rasputin had been murdered. Although intrigue and mystery surround the event and various alternative culprits have been suggested, the fanciful Prince Felix Youssoupov claimed to have carried out the killing. In a last desperate attempt to save the tottering dynasty, he claimed to have enticed Rasputin to his St. Petersburg palace under the pretext that his beautiful wife was unwell and would appreciate a visit from the healer. There, with the support of the Tsar’s cousin, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, he plied the peasant with poisoned wine and cakes before shooting him several times and hurling his body into the frozen Malaya Nevka River. It was three days before the corpse was dragged from the water and the autopsy revealed that neither the poison nor the bullets had killed him. His hands were stretched upwards as though he had been struggling to untie his fetters and scratch his way out of the ice.
For the Tsarina, the death of Rasputin was more than a tragedy; it was a symbol of treachery, a disaster and a portent of doom. Some months earlier, afraid for his life, Rasputin was said to have made an ominous prediction: if he were killed by peasants, the Empress had nothing to fear, but if members of her own family were responsible for his death then neither she, nor the Tsar nor any of the children would outlive him by more than two years. The realisation that Nic
holas’ cousin, Dmitri, and his nephew by marriage, Felix, were to blame made the horror of his murder all the harder to bear. Still more distressing for Alix was her suspicion that her sister, Ella, had participated in the conspiracy – a suspicion which appeared to be confirmed when an intercepted telegram from Ella to Felix’s mother revealed the Grand Duchess’s praise for Felix’s ‘act of patriotism’.
“When the Empress…realised that her nearest and dearest connections were in the ranks of her enemies,” wrote her friend, Anna Vyrubova, “her head sank on her breast, her eyes grew dark with sorrow and her whole countenance seemed to wither and grow old.”[177]
Prince Youssoupov’s ‘act of patriotism’ had none of its desired effects. Isolated even from her own family, Alix withdrew deeper into her seclusion to rely on the peasant’s prayers from heaven.
The country continued to slide deeper towards anarchy and, in the freezing cold winter 1916-17, hungry crowds gathered in the streets burning effigies of the Tsar and Tsarina and demanding an end to the monarchy. Frantic ministers and cousins beseeched Nicholas to implement immediate reforms and grant a constitution but Nicholas, absorbed in the military campaigns, was unable to realise the seriousness of the situation until it was too late.
In early 1917, while her husband was away at the military headquarters in Mogilev, Alix was preoccupied with nursing her children, all of whom had succumbed to an outbreak of measles. Flitting from bed to bed, she paid little heed to reports of mounting dissention in nearby St. Petersburg. As a lack of coal had virtually paralysed the railways, supplies could barely reach the soldiers at the Front let alone the famished civilians. Bread shortages in the capital led to rioting and, when troops were ordered to disperse the mob, they refused to shoot the starving civilians and turned their guns instead on their officers.[¨] In rapid succession, other regiments followed suit, seizing government buildings and even the Winter Palace.
On 13th March, prompted by urgent telegrams from the capital, the Tsar set out for Petrograd but his train was stopped en route; revolutionaries had blocked the track ahead. Diverted to Pskov, Nicholas received a petition from the Duma and several telegrams from his generals, warning him that his only hope of saving the dynasty was to abdicate in favour of his son. Seeing that the only alternative was to lead his loyal troops into the capital and spark a civil war, the Tsar signed the declaration of abdication handing over his authority to the twelve-year-old Tsarevich Alexei. Within hours, however, Nicholas reconsidered the situation. Bearing in mind Alexei’s fragile health and realising that the boy would be separated from his parents, Nicholas amended the abdication manifesto to include his son, and appointed his brother, Misha, as his successor. The following day, without ever having accepted the crown, Misha, too, abdicated and the three-hundred-year rule of the mighty Romanovs came to a pitiful end.
Unaware of events in Pskov and oblivious of the hostile crowd marching towards Tsarskoe Selo demanding her blood, Alix nursed her children and entrusted her safety to the Imperial guard. Calmly she carried out trays of cocoa to the freezing soldiers, most of whom she had known personally for many years, but within a few hours they had vanished. Fearing for his own safety, their Commander-in-Chief, Ducky’s husband, Grand Duke Kyril, pledged his allegiance to the Duma and, hoisting a red flag over his palace, ordered his troops to withdraw from Tsarskoe Selo, leaving Alix and her children defenceless.
Fortunately, the crowd stopped short of entering the Alexander Palace. Instead, Nicholas’ uncle, Grand Duke Pavel, arrived to break the news of the abdication.
“Abdiqué!” Alix murmured in horror, convinced that had she been at her husband’s side he would never have yielded to the pressure. Yet, her love for Nicholas remained unshaken and, without a hint of reproach, she wrote to him at once, addressing him as ‘beloved of my soul’ and assuring him of her support.
When Nicholas was eventually permitted to return to Tsarskoe Selo under house arrest, Alix met him with dignity and unconcealed devotion, regardless of the scoffing revolutionaries lounging around the state rooms of the Alexander Palace. Only when they were alone did Alix and Nicholas weep in each other’s arms.
On 16th March, as news of events in Petrograd filtered through the country, a group of angry mutineers and released prisoners arrived at the gates of Ella’s House of Martha and Mary, demanding to see the German spy who was hiding weapons in her hospital.
Ella ordered her terrified nuns to retreat to the back of the convent before going out to meet the aggressors at the gates. When told that they had come to arrest her, she calmly requested permission to finish her prayers. An armed posse followed her into the chapel where, surrounded by weeping nuns, she knelt to kiss the crucifix before inviting the soldiers to do the same.
“Under the spell of her calm, they followed her and kissed the cross, too. ‘Now go and seek for whatever you think you will find.’ The priest Mitrophanes accompanied them, and they soon came back to the howling mob outside, saying, ‘It was a convent, nothing more.’”[178]
Shortly afterwards a second convoy arrived and, having searched the convent, the soldiers were so moved by the care shown to the patients that they promised there would be no further disturbances. According to a telegram sent from the American Consulate to the U.S. Secretary of State the following day:
“Colonel Gruzinoff has detailed a guard of cadets to guard the nunnery against future intrusion. Nobody but representatives of the Staff of the Moscow Military Circuit is allowed to approach the Grand Duchess…
When informed of the abdication of Nicholas II, the Grand Duchess said, “It is the will of God.’”[179]
She would need the same firm faith to sustain her through the unimaginable horrors of the coming months.
Chapter 34 – Have I Not English Blood in my Veins?
News of events in Russia sent shock waves through every palace in Europe. Not only did the Entente powers fear the loss of a vital ally but, as socialist and republican ideas threatened to take hold of war-weary peoples, kings and princes feared for their thrones. If mighty Tsardom could be toppled so easily, there was a strong possibility that other nations would follow suit and depose their monarchs. In a hasty effort to prevent such an outcome, King Ferdinand of Roumania immediately promised reforms as soon as the war was won.
Even in faraway England, King George V sensed that his throne was not quite as stable as it had once appeared. After all, one of the chief charges levelled against half-English Tsarina was that she was German; and the British royal family came from the same Coburg stock. Queen Victoria’s letters had been filled with German expressions and, although they had been raised in England, both Edward VII and Princess Beatrice spoke with a slight German accent. English palaces echoed to the sound of Germanic names: Battenberg, Schleswig-Holstein, Saxe-Coburg and Teck. Even the King, the son of the fiercely anti-Prussian Queen Alexandra, could not shake off the fact that he was the grandson of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
For King George V there was a simple solution. He reduced the number of royal personages entitled to the style ‘prince’ and insisted that his kinsfolk must change their names to demonstrate their Englishness. The Russians had set a precedent, renaming the Germanic sounding St. Petersburg, Petrograd at the outbreak of war. After much consideration, the King adopted the very English-sounding name ‘Windsor.’ His brother-in-law, until now Prince Alexander of Teck, husband of the King’s cousin, Alice of Albany, was created Earl of Athlone. Much to his chagrin, Princess Beatrice’s son was no longer a Prince of Battenberg but the Marquis of Carisbrooke, while the rest of the Battenbergs anglicised their name to Mountbatten. Louis and Victoria Battenberg were now styled the Marquis and Marchioness of Milford Haven. As for Lenchen’s daughters, Thora and Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein, the King declared that henceforth the name would be dropped and they would simply be known as Princesses Helena Victoria and Marie Louise.
The Christians lost more than their name in 1917. A year after celebrating his Go
lden Wedding Anniversary, their German-born father died in London at the age of eighty-four. Kaiser Wilhelm sent sincere messages of condolence to his aunt and cousins, via neutral Sweden.
The spring of 1917 brought sorrow too, to the Connaughts. Shortly before the outbreak of war, the Duke and Duchess had been due to return to England, handing over the governorship to Prince Alexander of Teck. The opening of hostilities thwarted the plan and the Connaughts remained in Canada until 1916. By the time they returned to England, the Potsdam-born Duchess was seriously ill and died at Clarence House on 14th March 1917. Her body was cremated at Golder’s Green crematorium and her ashes were buried at Frogmore on the Windsor estate.
While other kings feared for their crowns, the Russian Revolution brought a brief but dramatic rise in status for Vicky’s daughter, Mossy, and her husband Fischy of Hesse-Kassel. The Finns declared their independence from Russia and elected Fischy as their king. His reign was short-lived. Within two months of his accepting the crown, communism took hold of Eastern Europe, sweeping monarchies aside.
That summer the Russian question lay heavily on the mind of King George V. He had received a request from the Provisional Government in Petrograd asking him to grant safe haven to his Romanov cousins.
In the early days of the revolution, a lawyer, Alexander Kerensky, was appointed Minister of Justice and he prevented the mob from tearing the hated Tsarina limb from limb. Having discovered the truth of the Tsarevich’s haemophilia and having satisfied himself that the stories of Alix’s collaboration with the Germans were pure fabrication, he began negotiations with the British Ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, with a view to arranging for the transferral of his Imperial prisoners to the safety of England. For Alix, who recalled so many happy days in her grandmother’s court, the prospect was agreeable and both she and Nicholas felt sure they could count on the support of their English cousin, ‘Georgie.’
Queen Victoria's Granddaughters 1860-1918 Page 28