The memory of the visit was a consolation, and the empress sought consolation often, finding it when with her children, when visiting the wounded – her illness prevented her from doing any real nursing any more – and when praying before an icon of Christ in the small dark chapel adjacent to her bedroom.
‘Faith, love and hope are all that matter,’ she was fond of saying. These were what sustained her, along with her Veronal and her iron self-discipline. She knew where her duty lay, and she was doing it, day after wearying day. She knew that she had to ‘take things personally in hand’, as she wrote to her sister Victoria. That she had to continue to write to her husband, upholding him and advising him, so that he could do the work God had called him to undertake.
For, after much persuasion, he had at last taken on himself the command of the armed forces, relieving the ‘traitor’ Nikolasha of his responsibilities. It had taken her nearly two months, from June to August 1915, to convince Nicky to do this, months of strain during which, to add force to her arguments, she had summoned Father Gregory from Pokrovsky to talk to Nicky.
It had been an uphill battle, for everyone had opposed the prospective shift in command. There had been a terrible scene between Nicky and his mother in the garden of the Anitchkov Palace, with Olga, Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia present. For over two hours Minnie had argued with her son, trying to persuade him that if he took command, it would be assumed that Father Gregory had forced the decision on him – which would so outrage all Russia that the monarchy would come under fatal attack. He had faltered under his mother’s barrage of argument, he had blushed and stammered, and had emerged shaken, but in the end he had held firm. The fall of Warsaw to the Germans had helped to stiffen his resolve.
She herself had made him see how important it was that he take command, though she knew that he was ill and frightened, not of battle – for he was a staunch and courageous soldier – but of the responsibility itself, and the mental labour it was certain to impose. He had never been a man to think things through, to analyze a situation creatively and find solutions to problems. He had always turned away from complexity; it bewildered him and left him mentally prostrated.
But of course, as she told him, there was no need to exhaust himself in thought. All he had to do was listen to her advice, and Father Gregory’s divinely inspired wisdom, and all would be well. He had to listen, and then he had to be forceful, decisive, and fearsome. He had to be angry, even violent, thumping his fist on the table, swearing and making threats. He had to be formidable, as his immense, commanding father had been, the father whose messages from the other world were brought to her by Father Gregory.5
She had convinced her wavering husband that he was not alone, that he could call on irresistible psychic forces whenever he needed them. He carried an icon of St Nicholas blessed by Father Gregory, a magic stick from Mount Athos also blessed by the starets, a talisman once touched by Monsieur Philippe, and a special little comb with which to comb his hair before all important meetings and decisions, which would make him strong and ensure that his will would prevail. He was surrounded by divine magic. He could not fail.
Sitting by the warm hearth listening to the gypsy orchestra on that autumn night, her face pale against the harsh black of her gown, Alix had the severity of an ascetic. She had reached a point in her life where she was living her principles, fully and without compromise. Insofar as she could, she had left behind the trivia and dross of daily existence, to expend her energy in pursuit of a noble purpose. She was completely dedicated, completely engaged. Melancholy, depressed, weary and ill she might be, but she was fulfilled.
When in the autumn of 1915 Nicky assumed command of the armed forces from the newly designated command headquarters in the small town of Mogilev on the hills above the Dnieper River, the Russian army was in full retreat. German forces were advancing along the coast of the Baltic Sea, moving without resistance through Lithuania, intent on capturing Riga. Once they took Riga, they would be only three hundred miles from Petrograd.
The Russian forces were in disarray, severely beaten, demoralized, still some six million strong but no longer an army of young, vital soldiers; many of the men were middle-aged, others raw and frightened young conscripts – among them Father Gregory’s simpleton son Dimitri – led by mediocre and inexperienced officers. Even six million were not enough men, for Serbia was being overrun as well as Lithuania, and the Russians, perpetually short of weaponry, were reduced to fighting with sticks and stones, and with their fists. Casualties continued to be very high.
The War Minister Sukhomlinov, tainted by scandal, had been dismissed in June and his successor was inept. No one was attending to the desperate need for efficient transport and adequate food supplies; even though it was harvest season, men and horses alike were growing thin from deprivation, the men tempted to eat the horses’ greatly reduced rations of oats and hay. No one, least of all the tsar who believed that the peasants were loyal and patriotic, was forcing peasant speculators to disgorge the crops they withheld from the market in hopes of driving up food prices.
The army needed a strong leader, just as Alix said. But Nicky, however sincere in his dedication, was not that man.
‘In the moment of danger the duty of a sovereign is to be with his army,’ he said, ‘and if need be perish with it.’6 No one doubted his sincerity, but the senior officers, knowing him as they did, and aware that he had no experience of large-scale command and no knowledge of strategy or weaponry, had no faith in him. They knew that he was an essentially passive, weak-willed man, lacking in initiative, resigned rather than defiant or aggressive. With the soldiers, one of his generals wrote, ‘he did not know what to say, where to go, or what to do’. The men felt his awkwardness. Far from heartening them, filling them with courage and hope for victory, he filled them with dismay.
The strains of recent years had coarsened the emperor physically, and made him mentally rigid, preoccupied with his health. He deliberately locked himself into comforting routines that took up much of his time and shut out unpleasant interruptions.
‘Today I was able to take a close look at him,’ an observer wrote in October of 1915. ‘The tsar is not handsome, the colour of his beard and moustache is tobacco-yellow, peasant-like, his nose is fat, his eyes stony.’7 Others saw in his eyes a unique blend of melancholy, sweetness, resignation and tragedy, and noted that in conversing he was alternately vague and evasive, never looking anyone directly in the eye for very long. Instead he gazed out of the window, or into the distance – anywhere but at the person he was speaking to. Father Gregory told his friend the moneylender Simanovich that the tsar was ‘afraid of everyone’. ‘When he talks to me in his study,’ the starets said, ‘he looks around to see if anyone is eavesdropping.’8
Despite the escalating dangers and urgent exigencies of the war, Nicky settled into the governor’s mansion at Mogilev as if into a safe oasis, a retreat from burdens and tensions. He felt calm, never read the newspaper or saw any war footage in newsreels. He set up fresh routines for himself, taking long afternoon drives in his Rolls-Royce or walks in the woods with his English setters, his aides trailing along behind, unable to keep up with his vigorous stride.
He rose late, listened to the reports from the front, attended briefings for officers, gave out medals, and read his wife’s long letters – letters which, with their abundance of chatty, homely anecdotes, their passionate declarations of undying love, made his eyes fill with tears.9 In the evenings, after dining with his officers, he watched American movies and played cards and dice and dominoes.
He liked the rustic quiet of Mogilev, the picturesque groves of beech and chestnut, the orchards and meadows where cows and sheep grazed, the flowing river and sleepy small town. He brought Alexei to live with him there, in his spartan rooms in the governor’s mansion. Together they reviewed troops, went to church, watched films, said their prayers before lying down next to one another in narrow camp beds. Alexei played sentinel, in much the sam
e way as he and his friends played war with toy guns at the Alexander Palace. Amid the serenity of the forest, the tranquil meadows, the real war seemed remote indeed.
And in fact, shortly after Nicky took command, the intensity of the German push eastwards diminished. Activity shifted to the western front; the eastern front became a rearguard. Nicky had stumbled into a period of relative quiescence; from the autumn of 1915 on, Russian assaults resulted in large-scale casualties for the Russian army, but there were no German assaults, nothing on the scale of the previous spring’s advance.
Alix redoubled her letter-writing efforts when Nicky moved to Mogilev. ‘My pen flies like mad over the paper and the thoughts tear through my head,’ she told him. ‘I long to poke my nose into everything (Ella does it with success) – to wake up people, put order into all and unite all forces.’10 The elderly premier Goremykin called the empress ‘Madame Energy’ as she dashed off letter after letter, throwing herself with relish into the attempt to harden her husband’s resolve and make him a stern ruler.
‘You are master and sovereign of Russia,’ she wrote him. ‘Almighty God set you in place, and they should all bow down before your wisdom and steadfastness.’ If only Nicky would model himself on his mighty predecessors. ‘Be Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Emperor Paul – crush them all.’11 She complimented him on ‘showing his mastery, proving himself the Autocrat without whom Russia cannot exist’, but in reality, as she said, it was she herself who ‘wore the trousers’ and longed to ‘show her immortal trousers to those poltroons’ in the ministry of defence and at staff headquarters.12 Alix liked to say that she had the heart of a soldier’s daughter and a soldier’s wife. She liked to think herself formidable; it amused her that Prince Orlov (‘Fat Orlov’, she called him), head of the military chancery, was so ill at ease at the thought of meeting with her that he had to take large doses of valerian drops in order to steady his nerves before coming to see her. He always ‘reeked of valerian’, she told Lili Dehn.13
Alix was beginning to nourish a dangerous delusion: the delusion that, if necessary, she could rule effectively. That she had the will, the courage, the discernment to decide and carry out policy, while standing up to the ministers and others in the government – men she considered to be, most of them, either stupid, treasonous or both. Encouraged in her conviction by the increasingly wayward Father Gregory, who did not want power for himself, but feared prosecution for a range of misdeeds from assault to bribery, Alix imagined herself on a path to greater and greater authority.
She imagined that she saw clearly what needed to be done, guided by her narrow view and her confidence that God was speaking to her through Father Gregory. She was even confident that, should the starets be removed from the scene entirely, another divine spokesman would appear, for had it not been so when Monsieur Philippe died?
Lili Dehn noticed that Alix, who was ‘greatly addicted’ to card games, ‘never liked to lose’.14 She not only disliked losing, she expected to win, in whatever situation she found herself. She was coming to see herself as locked in an increasingly sinister contest with those in her husband’s government, and was becoming contemptuous of her opponents’ power, which she consistently underestimated. When, the day after the tsar took command of the military, eight of the thirteen cabinet ministers signed a joint letter of resignation, she was undismayed. Let them make disloyal gestures – it only proved what she had always said, that it was all but impossible to find truly capable men.
She was feeling her power, yet exhaustion nagged at her, for the struggle drained her and left her weak. In the long autumn evenings, she lay on her couch, surrounded by her daughters. Olga played the piano, the others took turns reading aloud. Anna Vyrubov (whom Alix in her letters referred to as ‘The Cow’), alternately clinging, critical, and sulky, occupied a chair, a perennial guest. On Thursdays the Rumanian orchestra played; once in a while a concert was given at the hospital. On other evenings, the family played cards, put puzzles together. Alix knitted and embroidered.
Olga was doing too much, and was looking ‘nervous and anaemic’. She had had to stop nursing, and could only supervise the work in the wards. Tatiana, thin and fragile-looking, was sturdier. She continued to work in the hospital, and to meet with her relief committees. She imitated her mother’s austerity; she sold the pearl necklace her father had given her on her eighteenth birthday and gave the money to the relief fund. Marie and Anastasia, now sixteen and fourteen, kept up their nursing work and, with the older girls, took their mother’s place at hospital openings and charitable bazaars.
They brought their mother news from Petrograd, which, that autumn, had become a city of grey uniforms and black mourning gowns. Under dark skies full of rain-laden clouds, anxious pedestrians walked up and down Nevsky Prospekt, looking for the telegrams posted in the shop windows, telegrams with news from the front and lists of casualties. There were soldiers everywhere, young boys on their way to the war, truckloads of wounded being taken to hospitals, amputees begging in the streets. Nurses hurrying to work, red crosses on their white aprons, Duma deputies driven past in cars, workers on strike milling in dozens in the wide squares, shoppers in the markets dismayed at the high prices of bread, meat and fuel: such was Petrograd in the late months of 1915.
Although society congregated in the capital and entertainments were offered, the socializing was subdued. There were no balls, no lavish parties. Gowns from Paris, delicacies and fine wines – apart from those already in the cellars of the elite – were hard to come by; imported flowers and greenery from the south of France for decorating the grand rooms of mansions were not to be had at all. Besides, so many of the guests were in mourning that they lacked the zest to enjoy themselves. They were apprehensive. Like the other citizens of the capital they gathered in nervous groups, exchanging war news, the latest rumours about German spies. There was said to be a spy at Mogilev, one of the generals. The emperor and empress were both suspected of carrying on secret peace discussions with the Germans. And Rasputin, as always the favourite topic of gossip, was said to be the most notorious spy of all, passing on the secrets he heard at court to his paymasters in Berlin.
The news was bleak, and beyond all her other concerns Alix was faced, in November, with a personal sorrow. Her long-time friend and former maid of honour Sonia Orbeliani, for years an invalid living in the palace, was dying. Sonia had been courageous, fighting her disabilities and remaining as active as possible despite being unable to walk. She was a political creature, the niece of a former liberal prime minister, and she had been blunt in her assessments of the various Russian regimes – indeed in all her opinions. Sonia had told Alix what she thought of the current state of affairs and, though they often differed, Alix had listened to her views, admiring the spirit Sonia displayed as an ‘undaunted Georgian’ who never gave up. At Sonia’s request, Alix remained with her in her last days and, when the end came, Sonia died in her friend’s arms.
‘One more true heart gone to the unknown land!’ Alix wrote to Nicky afterwards.15 She arranged the funeral, took it on herself to carry out Sonia’s last wishes, and wrote to all the Orbeliani relatives – in itself a sizable task. When she went to the memorial service, she did not go dressed as the empress, but in her plain nursing gown. ‘I hate the idea of going into black for her this evening,’ Alix told Sophie Buxhoeveden, ‘and feel somehow nearer to her like this, like an aunt, more human, less empress.’16 Later on, after the long service had ended, she lingered near the coffin, sitting down beside it and stroking Sonia’s hair, as she might have stroked the hair of a sleeping child. She wept for the loss of her friend and ‘true heart’, for the honest voice that had been stilled.
But there was no time to indulge her grief, for a worrying crisis was at hand. On the very day of Sonia’s funeral, Alexei was brought home from Mogilev, his lower face swathed in bloody bandages. His nose had been bleeding without stopping for two days. The doctors had cauterized the nostril repeatedly but the bleeding wo
uld not cease, and the boy had lost so much blood that his skin was dead white.
‘Above the blood-soaked bandages his large blue eyes gazed at us with pathos unspeakable,’ Anna Vyrubov remembered. The doctors continued to cauterize him – a painful process – but he was growing very weak, and could hardly talk.
Alix watched in agony as her son reclined against his pillows, unable to lie flat lest the blood flow increase. Sophie Buxhoeveden noticed that she was, as usual, ‘calm on the surface’, but knew that she was remembering the terrible attack of bleeding Alexei had endured three years earlier at Spala, when it had seemed certain that he would die.17 Then Alix had waited for days before contacting Father Gregory. Now, however, she was prompt to send for him.
She put in a call to Petrograd, and sent a car to Father Gregory’s apartment.
He came into the sickroom, his long hair lank above his silk peasant blouse, a gold cross that the empress had given him around his neck. As usual, he was assured. If he stank of Madeira, none present recorded it.
He walked to Alexei’s bed and looked down into his chalky face. He made the sign of the cross over the bed, and reached down and touched the boy’s face briefly.
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