Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires
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With Olga and Tatiana now in their late teens, they began to replace the tsarina at court functions. The empress had become so insular that, when she appeared in Saint Petersburg in 1913 for the Romanov tercentennial celebrations, it was her first official public appearance since 1905. “They must get accustomed to replace me,” Alexandra wrote to her old governess, “as I rarely can appear anywhere, and when I do, am afterwards long laid up—over-tired muscles of the heart.”721 Her health continued to get worse, making it far more difficult for her to appear in public. Alexandra’s children were consumed with worry over their mother’s worsening health. “O, if you knew, how hard Mama’s illness is for us to bear,” Tatiana told Rasputin in 1908.722 Alexandra reiterated this in a letter written in 1913: “My children are growing up so fast & are such real little comforters to us—the older ones often replace me at functions & go about a great deal with their father—they are all 5 touching in their care for me—my family life is one blessed ray of sunshine excepting the anxiety of our Boy.”723
Russia’s imperial family lived in unimaginable wealth. Exact numbers differ depending on the source, but it is generally agreed that the tsar and his family were worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Nicholas was, more or less, the wealthiest monarch in the world. That wealth was not purely in money alone; it also came from copious assets. The imperial family owned “huge timber and mineral reserves in Siberia and the Caucasus; five yachts and two private trains; hundreds of horses, carriages, and new motorcars; accounts stocked with gold bullion in Moscow, London, and Berlin; thousands of works of art, including important paintings by Van Dyke, Raphael, Rembrandt, Titian, and da Vinci; crowns, tiaras, necklaces, and a fortune in jewelry; and a priceless collection of objets d’art and Easter eggs by famed jeweler Peter Karl Fabergé.”724
Along with these assets, Nicholas, Alexandra, and their family divided their time among more than thirty breathtaking palaces. In Saint Petersburg, they stayed at the Winter Palace. Designed in the classical Baroque style, its interiors contained more than fifteen hundred rooms. During the reign of Tsar Nicholas I between 1825 and 1855, the palace could accommodate four thousand occupants. Its interiors were dazzling, with “polished marquetry floors, crystal chandeliers, marble and granite pillars and staircases, gold-inlaid ebony door, huge vases of spectacular green malachite, and lapis lazuli decorated furnishings.”725 In the summer, the Romanovs moved their court to Livadia, their Crimean palace on a remote peninsula on the north coast of the Black Sea. Livadia was much more exotic in design than many of the other imperial estates. Built from white Crimean granite, its unique neo-Renaissance design looked more Arabian than European, though its overall idea was inspired by the buildings Nicholas and Alexandra had seen on a state visit to Italy. The palace grounds included patios in both Middle Eastern and Italian designs, a Florentine tower, and a chapel modeled after the Byzantine style. It was here at Livadia that the imperial family was truly in their element. Alexandra’s daughter Olga once remarked, “In St Petersburg we work, but at Livadia we live.”726
One of the family’s lesser-used homes was Spala, an old hunting lodge in Poland. Anna Viroubova described it as one “of the dampest, gloomiest palaces I have ever seen.”727 It was here that a simple accident threatened Alexei’s life, cementing the tsarina’s relationship with the insalubrious Gregory Rasputin. Alexei was playing when he slipped and fell. At first, the swelling seemed to go down, and life returned to normal. Two weeks later, when the family was out for an automobile ride, Alexei shrieked in pain with every bump in the road. “Every movement,” Anna Viroubova recalled, “every rough place in the road, caused the child the most exquisite torture, and by the time we reached home, the boy was almost unconscious with pain.”728 An examination revealed a hemorrhage in his leg, causing blood to seep into his body. Alexei’s sufferings multiplied when the swelling began pressing on nerves in his upper left thigh and abdomen, causing excruciating pain. Upon examination, doctors discovered a tumor that showed signs of becoming septic as well. Ordinarily, surgery would have been the only answer, but Alexei’s hemophilia made that impossible.
The situation quickly became perilous. A heartrending drama unfolded on October 21 when Alexei developed a dangerous fever as the blood filled his tiny body. Bloodcurdling screams pierced the long halls of Spala as Alexei lay curled up on his bed, writhing in agony. The torturous screams became so horrific that the lodge’s staff begged for something with which to cover their ears. The heavy doses of morphine Alexei was given a few days later barely dulled the pain. His suffering was made especially poignant by the feigned jovial atmosphere at Spala during the daytime. It was the middle of the hunting season, and aristocrats came from miles around expecting to be entertained by the tsar. Nicholas played the role of the dutiful host admirably, never allowing any of his guests to fathom the internal grief he was experiencing. Alexandra made only fleeting appearances at the dinner table. She relied heavily on her sister Irene, who was visiting with her son Sigismund, to act as hostess and offer apologies to the guests for her absence. With the exception of Nicholas, Princess Irene was the only person who truly understood Alexandra’s pain. She too was a hemophilia carrier and had passed the disease to two of her sons, Waldemar and Henry. “Like Alexandra,” wrote one Romanov historian, Irene “had endured the agonies of uncertain days and nights, watching helplessly as her sons suffered without relief.… This shared pain, this maternal guilt, created a bond between Alexandra and Irene that came to the fore at Spala that autumn, providing the desperate empress with an ally who shared her agony.”729
When Alexandra was required to appear before the guests, she could not even fake a smile. It was as if her very soul was being wrenched from her body. She was forced to watch helplessly as her exhausted little boy wailed and thrashed in his bed, his forehead covered in sweat, slipping in and out of delirium. Workers at Spala were so moved that they begged the local priest to hold daily masses to pray for him. For eleven days, Alexandra sat at her son’s bedside, going with almost no sleep for five of those days. Her dark hair became tinged with noticeable streaks of white. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she looked at his face, “absolutely bloodless, drawn and seamed with suffering, while his almost expressionless eyes rolled back in his head.” For Nicholas, it was all too much to bear. When he came into the room, “seeing his boy in this agony and hearing his faint screams of pain, the poor father’s courage completely gave way and he rushed, weeping bitterly, to his study.”730
In Alexei’s few rare moments of lucidity, Alexandra could hear him begging, “Mamma, help me!” It devastated the empress that there was nothing she could do but wait and pray. It broke her heart when he asked her, “When I am dead, it will not hurt anymore, will it, Mama?”731 Eventually, Dr. S. P. Fedorov, the attending physician, pulled Nicholas and Alexandra aside to give them the grave news that Alexei’s stomach was hemorrhaging, increasing the already high risk of blood poisoning and peritonitis. Fedorov had little recourse but to prepare them for the possibility that Alexei would soon die. Two bulletins were issued, each one day apart, preparing the public for the awful news that Alexei had passed away. Both notifications were carefully worded to give no indication of how he died. An Orthodox priest came to perform the last rites. Witnesses recalled the heartrending sight of what they believed to be Alexei’s final hours: “It was as if he had already passed from life into another realm at the threshold of death, his body already corpselike in its whiteness, his breath already beginning to cease as, lacking the energy to scream or cry, he murmured his prayer for divine mercy and whispered his mother’s name.”732
In her desperation, Alexandra could think of only one thing to do. She asked her friend Anna to send a telegram to Father Gregory. Why she waited so long before contacting him remains uncertain, but faced with the imminent death of her son, the tsarina was willing to try anything. After all, had not Alexei been a divine answer to prayer? And was not Father Gregory the answer to the question of Ale
xei’s hemophilia? Alexandra’s faint hope in Rasputin can be traced not to her faith in him as a man but to her faith in God. The Russian Orthodox Church believes in the existence of staretz (“a holy man”). The modern interpretation is that a staretz is a venerated elder of the Russian Orthodox faith sent by God to advise and teach. Some were known to do miracles, most were ascetics, and all knew the Holy Scriptures inside and out. A staretz was never officially appointed but is recognized by the people as being imbued with the power of the Holy Spirit. In general, there is little doubt that Gregory Rasputin was a charlatan. He drank, caroused with women, and was more lecherous than even the most pernicious aristocrats. Yet he also had a believable quality and managed to convince many, including Alexandra Feodorovna and Anna Viroubova, of his God-given ability to heal, prophesy, and guide. That this supposed staretz was a man of the world was no secret to anyone, including the tsar and tsarina, but they faithfully believed he was a repentant sinner. According to Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, “to Nicky and Alix he remained what he was—a peasant with a profound faith in God and gift of healing.”733
Because of all these factors, when Alexandra received a reply at Spala from Rasputin, it was all she needed. Rasputin stated, “God has seen your tears and heard your prayers. Do not grieve. The Little One will not die. Do not allow the doctors to bother him too much.”734 Telegram in hand, a pale and exhausted Alexandra entered her son’s room and declared “in a calm voice” to the people gathered, “I received a telegram from Father Grigory and it has reassured me completely.”735 As if it had all been planned, Alexei began to recover almost instantaneously. There was not a single face that was not shocked—and relieved. Olga Alexandrovna recalled how “within an hour my nephew was out of danger.”736 Although his life was spared, it would be a long time before Alexei was back to normal. It took almost a year before he could walk properly again, and even that was accompanied by a leg brace.
Alexandra was never the same after the Spala episode. In a letter to the bishop of Ripon, she expressed some deeply candid feelings about what her family had just experienced.
I have been so ill again with my heart—the months of phisical [sic] & moral strain during our Boy’s illness brought on a collapse—for some years I suffer from the heart & lead the life [of] an invalid most of the time. Thank God our Darling is getting on so well he has grown very much & looks so strong, & we trust before long to see him on his legs again running about.
It was a terrible time we went through, & to see his fearful suffering was heartrending—but he was of an angelical [sic] patience & never complaining at being ill, he would only make the sign of the cross & beg God to help him, groaning & moaning from pain. In the Orthodox Church one gives children Holy Communion, so twice we let him have that joy, & the poor thin little face with its big suffering eyes, lit up with blessed happiness as the Priest approached him with the Holy Sacrement [sic]. It was such a comfort to us all & we too had the same joy,—without trust & faith implicit in God Almighty’s great wisdom & ineffable love, one could not bear the heavy crosses sent one.737
Those who were detractors of Rasputin were dismayed at the level of credibility the Spala episode brought him. This latest incident solidified indefinitely in Alexandra’s mind the importance of Rasputin to the survival of her son. He was destined by God, she reasoned, to save Alexei’s life. Olga Alexandrovna admitted that “never did my brother or Alicky believe that the man was endowed with any supernatural powers. They saw him as a peasant whose deep faith turned him into an instrument of God to use—but only in the case of Alexis.” She also sharply pointed out, “Alicky suffered terribly from neuralgia and sciatica, but I never heard that the Siberiak helped her.”738 This was not entirely true. Alexandra and Nicholas did receive temporary relief from their headaches upon first meeting Rasputin.
Dr. Fedorov, one of the most preeminent physicians in Russia, was at an utter loss to explain how Rasputin effected Alexei’s miraculous healing. When discussing the phenomenon, he once admitted that Alexandra could hardly be blamed for believing in the staretz. “Rasputin would come in, walk up to the patient, look at him and spit,” he said. “The bleeding would stop in no time.… How could the empress not trust Rasputin after that?”739 For nearly a century, experts have tried to debunk Rasputin’s abilities. In the words of one historian,
the secret or source of Rasputin’s ability to “cure” the tsarevitch has been examined relentlessly. There appears to be no real consensus as to how he came about his “miracles.” Explanations range from coincidence at Rasputin’s timing to mysterious Tibetan herbs used on the imperial family to palace accomplices effecting his work, and also to his ability to calm the tsarina and so, by extension, Alexei. Then there is the theory that some sort of hypnotic ability might have been the root of his “powers.” Rasputin’s magnetic eyes play a major role in promoting this idea. But there is little doubt that people privy to the imperial family’s troubles were mostly at a loss to explain how the monk from Siberia managed to pull off his conjuring tricks.740
Whatever the explanation may be, Rasputin’s influence with Alexandra Feodorovna was undeniable. In the course of only a few short years, that influence would help destabilize one of the most powerful monarchies in history, with tragic consequences for Alexandra, her family, and Russia.
13
The Gathering Storm
(May–June 1914)
At Hetzendorf, Archduchess Zita enjoyed a measure of tranquility interspersed with public functions and royal duties. As the wife of the heir presumptive and being born of royal blood, she was expected to accompany Franz Joseph on occasions that, had circumstances been different, would have fallen to Franz Ferdinand’s wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg. Zita attended state dinners, her hair coiffed up and covered in diamonds. In her iconic white muslin dress and wide hat, she inspected the troops on the arm of the emperor. On other occasions, with her son in tow, she made visits around Vienna. Wherever she went, Zita’s grace and simplicity charmed the people she met.
In the two brief years that Zita and Charles had been married, the couple grew closer together, strengthening their loving bond. They “shared the same deep faith, the same simple tastes, the same love of home and—not so far behind these three in enduring value for a marriage—the same sense of humour.”741 Zita’s popularity grew again on January 3, 1914, when she gave birth at Hetzendorf to her second child, a little girl called Adelhaid. Like Alexandra of Russia, Zita considered her family life to be truly blessed. She and her husband passed many hours together in the company of their young children. They took long walks in the parks around Hetzendorf, played games with the children, prayed together, and visited the sick and poor.
So amiable was the young couple that they became frequent companions to Franz Ferdinand and Sophie. Zita and the Duchess of Hohenberg were a study in contrasts. Where Zita was quiet and demure, Sophie was driven and ambitious. But even a decade after her controversial wedding to Franz Ferdinand, tensions over their union remained high. Conservatives labeled the archduke and duchess as pariahs, who held their own little court at their Vienna home, Belvedere Palace. Few high-ranking individuals associated with the couple for fear of earning the emperor’s enmity, but rank never mattered much to Zita or her husband, who enjoyed spending time in the company of “Uncle Franzi” and “Aunt Sophie.” But in the early months of 1914, Zita noticed a change in Uncle Franzi. The normally gregarious archduke became withdrawn and pensive. This change came about when, after a heated audience, the emperor decided to send him and Sophie to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo to preside over troop maneuvers in June. On the surface, it should have been just another military exercise, since Franz Ferdinand was the inspector-general of Austria’s armed forces, but “the archduke was gripped by [such] an inexplicable unease about the journey … that he even considered tackling the emperor to have it cancelled.”742
Franz Ferdinand’s anxiety over the upcoming Bosnia trip was not unfounded. Over the pa
st thirty years, the Balkans, nicknamed the powder keg of Europe, had become a hotbed of revolutionary, antimonarchist sentiments. Countries like Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Albania had fought long, bloody struggles for their freedom from the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century. But now, they found to their horror that Austria-Hungary’s borders were encroaching on their own like a gathering storm. Desperate to never again be oppressed by any foreign power, terrorist groups popped up across the southern Balkans in droves, stretching from Belgrade to Sarajevo. They were determined to liberate the Slavs living under the Habsburgs—approximately 60 percent of Austro-Hungarian subjects were ethnic Slavs. Attacks on royals and government officials became bolder and bolder with each passing year. Imperial gubernators were attacked or even assassinated, buildings were bombed, and demands were made for total Austrian withdrawals from the Balkans.
All this and more was racing through Franz Ferdinand’s mind in the days leading up to the long, hot summer of 1914. In the meantime, he prepared for the worst. In an interview held years later, Zita recalled a particularly tense evening.
At the beginning of May 1914, we were in Vienna and uncle Franz Ferdinand rang up one evening asking us to come over to the Belvedere for supper. It was just a small family meal with the heir-apparent, his wife and children, and ourselves as the only guests.
Everything passed off normally – indeed quite gaily – until after supper, when the Duchess of Hohenberg went to take the children up to bed. After his wife left the room, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand suddenly turned to my husband and said: