Dvorzhitsky, like many other police chiefs, knew of troubling information that was continually reported to the city governor, who ignored it. Did that mean that the governor was also working with the people opposed to the coming reforms?
The information was so terrifying that the police chief was willing to risk his career and go over the heads of his superiors to see Count Perovsky. “Having told the count of the worrying situation in the capital, I asked Count Perovsky to inform Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich [note, not the heir] that in what I perceived the present situation to be, we could not guarantee the safety of the tsar. The count gave me his word to do so that very day.”
So Count Perovsky promised to speak with the tsar’s son Vladimir, even as his niece, Sofia Perovskaya, had turned over the bombs to the throwers. In the meantime, Dvorzhitsky went to the Winter Palace to accompany the tsar to the Mikhailovsky Manege.
At the Winter Palace, the tsar no longer took walks in the morning—the assassination attempts had curtailed them. On March 1, after the service in the Small Church, the tsar had coffee in the lettuce-green dining room with Princess Yuryevskaya and went to his study.
He received Loris-Melikov, who brought a government announcement on the new reform. The tsar commanded a meeting of the ministers to be convened on March 4, because the draft had to be promulgated in the name of the government. He was irritated by the thought that the “opposition would speak in the name of Pobedonostsev” again. But it was done, Alexander had approved the draft. They had started down the road to a constitution. The day would be remembered in history, he hoped.
The tsar was wearing the uniform of the Sapper Battalion, the one that saved his father and the palace during the Decembrist uprising. His father had brought him out to greet them in his child-size uniform.
Now he was wearing their uniform and taking his last trip. He went to say good-bye to his wife. She pleaded with him not to go, she wept, she had a foreboding, not because of the prediction of the gypsy or the letters from TASL, but because she loved him.
He overcame her nervous objections. As the all-knowing Suvorin would record in his diary, repeating what the tsar’s doctor Botkin told him, “Before leaving for the guards parade on March 1…the tsar toppled the princess onto the table and took her. She told this to Botkin herself.”
That was the way a passionate and powerful man of the Romanov dynasty was supposed to calm a woman. Neither of them knew it would be their farewell.
The Winter Palace was not the only place where wives pleaded with their husbands—a similar scene took place at the palace of Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich, Alexander’s brother, at 12:30. He was seen off to the Manege as if he were going to war. “The fact that my father always had to accompany the tsar during these Sunday parades drove my mother terribly crazy. ‘I’m not afraid of the officers or the soldiers,’ mother would say, ‘but I don’t trust the police…. The road to Mars Field is long, and all the local nihilists can see you travel down the streets,’” recalled Alexander Mikhailovich in his memoirs.
But the grand duke went to the Manege.
At the Winter Palace, at 12:45, police chief Dvorzhitsky drove up in a sleigh, in order to accompany the tsar to the Manege. Dvorzhitsky testified: “At a quarter to one I was at the Winter Palace, when Count Loris-Melikov was leaving the palace. When I came into the entry, I met Minister Count Adlerberg, who in conversation with me sadly spoke of the difficult times as a result of the activity of the anarchists. During this conversation we heard a joyous “Health to you, Sire!” from the guards in response to His Majesty’s greeting. After that, the tsar came into the covered entry, greeted everyone there, as was his custom, got in the carriage and told the coachman Frol Sergeyev, ‘To the Manege over Pevchesky Bridge.’”
The tsar was traveling via the Catherine Canal.
Alexander II traveled in a closed carriage. He was accompanied by six Cossacks and a seventh sat on the coachman’s left. The carriage was followed by two sleighs with police chief colonel Adrian Ivanovich Dovrzhitsky and the chief of the tsar’s guards Captain Kokh with policemen.
They reached the Manege, and the tsar was greeted with the guards’ “Hurrah!” The tsar entered the Manege. The battalion of the Life Guards of the reserve infantry regiment and the Life Guards of the Sapper Battalion were in formation. The tsarevich and the tsar’s brother Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich joined the tsar.
At the cheese store on Malaya Sadovaya Street, at 1:00 P.M., according to the plan developed by the Executive Committee, Bogdanovich and his “wife,” Yakimova, prepared to leave the cheese store. They would be replaced by an experienced dynamiter, Frolenko. He had volunteered to join the wires. Frolenko would most likely die under the ruins of the building from the blast he would create. “When he came to the store,” Yakimova recounted, “I was surprised to see him take out a sausage and a bottle of red wine from the package he had with him, put it on the table, and get ready to eat. ‘What is this?’ I asked, almost in horror, seeing the materialistic intentions of a man doomed to certain death under the collapsed building. ‘I have to be strong,’ [he replied] and Frolenko calmly set about eating.”
He and the bomb throwers had already said good-bye to life.
Frolenko could see through the window that gendarmes on horseback had appeared at both ends of Malaya Sadovaya in preparation for the tsar’s carriage. At both ends of the street, mixing with passersby, were the four bombers. It was time for the tsar to leave the Manege.
Yakimova left the cheese store with only Frolenko in it. The last thing she saw was Frolenko at the table by the window. Before him on the table was a vessel with the solution that would conduct electricity, and one wire. All he had to do was lower the other wire into it.
The guards parade ended at the Manege. “The guards parade went very well. The tsar was pleased by everything and was, apparently, in a good mood, joking…. When it was over, he spoke a bit with the persons around him and then left the Manege,” Milyutin recalled.
Alexander got into the carriage with its convoy and commanded, “To the Winter Palace, by the same route.”
At the cheese store, Frolenko saw the gendarmes leave, which meant that the tsar was taking the other route. He realized that he would live. Frolenko quickly left the store. The four bomb throwers also left their posts at Malaya Sadovaya. They went down Mikhailovskaya Street in the direction of the Catherine Canal.
Sofia Perovskaya was waiting for them on Mikhailovskaya Street and gave them the signal that meant they should head to the Catherine Canal.
On the way home to the Winter Palace, the tsar stopped at Mikhailovsky Palace. His cousin Grand Duchess Ekaterina Mikhailovna (with the same name as his wife) lived here. She was the daughter of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, who was the tsar’s associate in his reforms, and of the martinet Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich. She took after her father and did not approve of either his reforms or his wife.
The tsar’s brother, Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich, pulled up in his carriage right after the tsar. The two brothers tried yet again, unsuccessfully, to bring peace between the two Ekaterina Mikhailovnas. Tea was served in the formal reception room of the palace. It was the last tea of the tsar’s life.
The bomb throwers took their places on the canal. Perovskaya later related that at 2:00 P.M. the student Grinevitsky, “passing her, headed for the fatal place, smiled quietly at her, barely noticeably…. He did not exhibit a shadow of fear or agitation and went to his death with a completely calm mind.”
“Don’t consider sacrifice a sacrifice, and live only for the sacrifice,” wrote the Decembrist Alexander Yakubovich, who had planned to kill Alexander II’s father, Nicholas I.
Most of them sought a joyous death. But only three bomb throwers took their places at the canal. The one who was to meet the carriage first, the worker Timofei Mikhailov, had vanished. He “felt that he could not throw the bomb and he went home without even reaching the place.” Now, Rysakov was first.
While the men took their places, Perovskaya had crossed the Kazansky Bridge to the opposite side of the Catherine Canal. She waited for the denouement, a grateful spectator of bloodshed.
At 2:10 P.M., the tsar said good-bye to Grand Duchess Ekaterina Mikhailovna, after spending his customary half hour with her. Apparently, he had not persuaded her, so Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich stayed on.
At 2:15 P.M., Alexander went to the carriage. It turned onto the canal, followed by two sleighs carrying Dvorzhitsky, Captain Kokh, and the policemen.
The coachman whipped the horses and the carriage speeded up along the street—a fence and narrow sidewalk on the left and on the right, the wall of the grounds of the Mikhailovsky Palace and the sidewalk. There were not many people on the street: a boy with a big basket with meat, two young apprentices carrying a couch, and a young woman.
Walking toward the carriage from Konyushenny Bridge came a very young man, blond, short, and wearing a black overcoat, holding a white package the size of a box of chocolates. It was a bomb wrapped in a white handkerchief. He swung his arm.
Rysakov went on: “After a moment’s hesitation, I threw the bomb. I sent it under the horses’ hooves in the supposition that it would blow up under the carriage…. The explosion knocked me into the fence.”
There was a deafening blast, and a cloud of white smoke enveloped the carriage. When it cleared, the carriage was past the bomb, which had blown up behind it. Only the back of the coach had been damaged. The imperial cavalcade stopped. One of the Cossacks lay dead behind the carriage. The man who had sat on the coachbox with the driver had a concussion and was convulsively clutching at the empty air. On the sidewalk, the dying boy groaned, his basket of meat next to him. A few steps away, a wounded pedestrian leaned against the fence and a wounded policeman struggled to his feet.
It was a street scene previously unknown in St. Petersburg.
Rysakov started to run, shouting, “There he goes! Get him!” pretending to be chasing the criminal. But they were after him already. A workman who was doing some repairs nearby threw his crowbar at his feet, tripping him. The police and Cossacks forced his head down, holding him tight in a crouching position. Rysakov must have seen a familiar face in the crowd and shouted, “Tell my father they got me!”
They disarmed him: He had a pistol and a dagger under his coat.
As soon as the carriage had stopped, the emperor opened the door and climbed out, with the help of one of the Cossacks. Colonel Dvorzhitsky was already out of his sleigh and he ran up to the tsar.
Dvorzhitsky recalled, “The tsar crossed himself; he was a bit unsteady and understandably upset. When I asked him about his health, he replied, ‘Thank God, I am not wounded.’ Seeing that the tsar’s carriage was damaged, I decided to offer His Majesty a ride in my sleigh to the palace.”
Dvorzhitsky heard Rysakov shout at someone in the crowd and realized that there was someone else nearby, also with a bomb. He asked the tsar to leave without delay. The coachman understood, also, and made the same request. “The coachman Frol also asked the tsar to get back in the carriage and go on.” Only the back wall was damaged.
The tsar understood, too, but…“But His Majesty, without a word in response to the driver’s request, turned and headed for the sidewalk on the Catherine Canal side. He walked along the sidewalk; I was to his left, behind him was the Cossack who had been on the coachbox and four convoy Cossacks who had dismounted and led their horses. They surrounded the tsar. After a few steps, the tsar slipped on a cobblestone, but I helped to steady him.”
The tsar was headed toward Rysakov. The would-be assassin was about twenty paces from the site of the explosion; he was held by four soldiers, and Captain Kokh, chief of the bodyguards, was there. A junior lieutenant, who did not recognize the tsar at first, asked, “How is the tsar?” and the tsar, approaching Rysakov, replied, “Thank God, I’m fine, but look…” and he pointed to the dead Cossack and the dying boy. Rysakov replied immediately, “Is it thanks to God?”
The tsar approached Rysakov. Relieved to learn that he was from the bourgeoisie and not a nobleman, the tsar berated him: “A fine one!” He shook his finger at Rysakov and walked back toward the carriage.
Colonel Dvorzhitsky once again pleaded with the tsar. “Here I permitted myself a second time to speak to the tsar with a request to get in the sleigh and leave, but he stopped, thought for a bit, and then replied, ‘All right, but first show me the site of the explosion.’”
A platoon of the Eighth Naval Equipage, returning from the guards parade, approached. Completely surrounded by the guards and the Cossacks, the tsar headed on the diagonal toward the hole in the street. He was pacing the canal, apparently waiting for something. “Obeying the tsar’s will, I turned at an angle toward the explosion site, but I had not taken three steps when…” A young man who had stood sideways by the canal fence had waited for the tsar to draw near. He suddenly turned, lifted both arms, and threw something at the tsar’s feet.
That was Ignati Grinevitsky. The tsar and the officers and Cossacks surrounding him, the young man who threw the bomb, and the people nearby all fell at once, as if mowed down. Above their heads a big white cloud of whitish smoke formed and, swirling, dissipated and settled.
“I saw how the tsar fell forward, leaning on his right side, and behind and to the right of him fell an officer with white epaulets. That officer tried to stand up, but rising slightly, he pulled the tsar over on his back and looked into his face,” an eyewitness reported.
The officer with white epaulets was Dvorzhitsky, who said, “I was deafened by the new explosion, burned, wounded, and thrown to the ground. Suddenly, amid the smoke and snowy fog, I heard His Majesty’s weak voice: ‘Help!’ Gathering what strength I had, I jumped up and rushed to the tsar. His Majesty was half-lying, half-sitting, leaning on his right arm. Thinking that he was merely wounded heavily, I tried to lift him, but the tsar’s legs were shattered, and the blood poured out of them.
“Twenty people, with wounds of varying degree, lay by the sidewalk and on the street. Some managed to stand, others crawled, still others tried to get out from beneath bodies that had fallen on them. Through the snow, debris, and blood you could see fragments of clothing, epaulets, sabers, and bloody chunks of human flesh.” The cap had fallen from the tsar’s head; his tattered coat slipped from his shoulders; his pale face was bloodied and bruised. In a weak voice, he repeated: “Cold, I’m cold.” His head was covered in wounds. One eye was shut and the other stared ahead without expression. Not far from the tsar, Grinevitsky lay dying in a puddle of blood. “The explosion was so strong that all the glass was blown out of the gas light and the post itself was bent,” an eyewitness said.
A crowd had gathered around the tsar, dying on the bloody street, in dirty snow and tatters of clothing. They were Junkers from the Pavlovsk school, passersby, police, and the surviving Cossacks. Colonel Dvorzhitsky stood, swaying, above him. Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich came racing up in his carriage. He had heard the explosion in the Mikhailovsky Palace and hurried to the scene. The grand duke kneeled on the street. He heard his brother say, “Take me home quickly!”
The tsar lost consciousness as the blood pulsed out of his body.
If they had taken him to the military hospital nearby, they might have stopped the bleeding and saved his life. But in a panic, without binding his wounds, they took him to the palace.
It was impossible to carry the bleeding body into the carriage, so a dozen hands carried the emperor to Dvorzhitsky’s open sleigh. Among the helpers was the third bomb thrower, Ivan Emelyanov. He had a briefcase under his arm, with the bomb he would have used to kill the tsar if the first two had failed.
The sleigh moved toward the palace. The horse pulling it was the f
amous Barbarian that had long served the People’s Will. The police had confiscated him and now he worked for the police. Once upon a time Barbarian had helped Stepnyak-Kravchinsky and Barannikov escape after killing Mezentsov. Now he was bringing the dying tsar to the palace. The Cossacks stood in the sleigh and supported the unconscious body. Their coats were drenched in his blood.
They brought him to the Saltykov Entrance. The doors were too narrow for the crowd to carry him in. There was no stretcher in the palace. They broke down the doors and all carried Alexander II up the steps of the marble staircase to his study, where twenty-five years earlier he had signed the emancipation proclamation and where that day he had laid the path to the Russian constitution. The marble steps and the hallway were covered in his blood.
This was how the seventh attempt on his life ended.
Doctor F. F. Markus said, “When I ran into the study, I found the tsar in a semirecumbent position on the bed, which had been brought out from the alcove and placed almost next to the desk, so that the emperor’s face was turned to the window. He was wearing a shirt without a tie, he had a Prussian order around his neck…his right hand was in a suede glove, splattered in blood. Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich, in tears, stood at the head of the bed in full parade uniform. When I ran up to the bed the first thing I noticed was the terrible disfigurement of the lower limbs, especially the left leg, which from the knee down was a shattered bloody mass; the right leg was also damaged, but less than the left. Both shattered limbs were cold to the touch…. I started pressing as hard as possible on both femoral arteries, where the pulse was almost imperceptible, thinking this way to preserve at least some of the blood. The tsar was completely unconscious. All the efforts of the doctors who came after me were in vain—the tsar’s life had been extinguished.”
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