A very few days after the events chronicled in the last chapter I became
the victim of a railroad accident which brought me to the threshold of
death and for many months made it impossible for me to follow the events
of the war, or the growing conspiracy against the Sovereigns. At a
little past five o’clock of the afternoon of January 2, 1915, I took the
train at Tsarskoe for a short visit to my parents in Petrograd. With me
in my carriage was Mme. Shiff, a sister of a distinguished officer of
Cuirassiers. We sat talking the usual commonplaces of travel when
suddenly, without a moment’s notice, there came a tremendous shock and a
deafening crash, and I felt myself thrown violently forward, my head
towards the roof of the carriage, and both legs held as in a vise in the
coils of the steam-heating apparatus. The overturned carriage lurched
and broke in two like an eggshell and I felt the bones of my left leg
snap sharply. So intense was the pain that I momentarily lost
consciousness. Too soon my senses returned to me and I found myself
firmly wedged in the wreckage of wood and iron, a great bar of steel
crushing my face, and my mouth so choked with blood that I could not
utter a sound. All I could do in my agony was silently to pray that God
would give me the relief of a quick death, for I could not believe that
any human being could endure such pain and live.
After what seemed to me an interminable length of time I felt the
pressure on my face removed and a kind voice asked: “Who lies here?” As
I managed to breathe my name the rescuers exclaimed in astonishment and
alarm, and immediately began to endeavor to extricate me from my
agonizing position. By means of ropes passed under my arms and using
great care and gentleness they ultimately got me free and laid me on the
grass. In a moment’s flash I recognized one as a Cossack of the
Emperor’s special guard, an excellent man named Lichatchieff, and the
other as a soldier of the railway battalion. Then I fainted. Ripping
loose one of the doors of the railway carriage, the men placed me on it
and carried me to a near-by hut already crowded with wounded and dying.
Regaining consciousness for a moment, I begged in whispers that
Lichatchieff would telephone my parents in Petrograd and their Majesties
at the palace. This the good fellow did without delay, and he also
brought to my corner one of the surgeons summoned to the wreck. The man
gave me a rapid examination and said briefly: “Do not disturb her. She
is dying.” He left to attend to more hopeful cases, but the faithful
soldiers still knelt beside me, straightening my crushed and broken legs
and wiping the blood from my lips. In about two hours another doctor,
this time the surgeon Gedroiz, under whom the Empress, her daughters,
and myself had taken our nurses’ training, approached the corner where I
lay. I looked with a kind of terror into the face of this woman, for I
knew her to be no friend of mine. Simply giving my wounded head a
superficial examination she said carelessly that I was a hopeless case,
and left me without the slightest attempt to soothe my pain. Not until
ten o’clock that night, four hours after the collision which had wrecked
two trains, did any help reach me. At that hour arrived General Racine
from the palace with orders from their Majesties to do everything
possible in my behalf. At his imperative commands I was again placed on
a stretcher and carried to a relief train made up of cattle cars. At the
moment my poor father and mother arrived from Petrograd and the last
things I remember were their sobs and a teaspoonful of brandy mercifully
poured down my throat.
At the end of the journey to Tsarskoe Selo I dimly recognized the
Empress and the four Grand Duchesses who had come to the station to meet
the train. Their faces were full of sympathy and grief, and as they bent
over me I found strength to whisper to them: “I am dying.” I believed it
because the doctors had said so, and because my pain was so great. Then
came the ordeal of being lifted into the ambulance and the
half-consciousness that the Empress was there too, holding my head on
her knees and begging me to have courage. After that came an interval of
darkness out of which I awoke in bed and almost free from pain. The
Empress who, with my parents, remained near me, asked me if I would like
to see the Emperor. Of course I replied that I would, and when he came I
pressed the hand he gave me. Dr. Gedroiz, who was in charge of the ward,
told everyone coldly to take leave of me as I could not possibly live
until morning. “Is it so hopeless?” asked the Emperor. “She still has
some strength in her hand.”
Later on, I do not know exactly when, I opened my eyes quite clearly,
and saw standing beside my bed the tall, gaunt form of Rasputine. He
looked at me fixedly and said in a calm voice: “She will live, but will
always be a cripple.” A prediction which was literally fulfilled, for to
this day I can walk only slowly and with the aid of a stout stick. I
have been told that Rasputine recalled me from unconsciousness, but of
his words I know only what I have recorded.
The next morning I was operated on and for the six weeks following I
suppose I suffered as greatly as one can and live. My left leg which had
sustained a double fracture, troubled me less than my back and my right
leg which had been horribly wrenched and lacerated. My head wounds were
also intensely painful and for a time I suffered from inflammation of
the brain. My parents, the Empress, and the children came every day to
see me, but despite their presence the neglect and unkindness of Dr.
Gedroiz continued. The suggestion of the Empress that her trusted
physician, Dr. Federoff, be brought into consultation was rudely
repulsed by this woman, of whom I may finally say that she is now in
high favor with the Bolsheviki whose ranks she joined in the autumn of
1917. Waited upon by none but the most inexperienced nurses, I do not
know what might have become of me had not my mother brought to the
hospital an old family nurse whom she absolutely insisted should take
charge of me. Things went a little better after this, but happy was I
when at the end of the sixth week, against the will of Dr. Gedroiz, I
left that wretched hospital and was removed to my own home. There in the
peace and security of my comfortable bedroom I enjoyed for the first
time since my accident quiet and refreshing sleep.
It seems strange that the hostile and envious Court circle had deeply
resented the daily visits of the Emperor and Empress to my bedside. To
placate the gossipers the Emperor, before visiting me, used to make the
rounds of all the wards. In spite of it all I had many visitors and many
daily inquiries from the Empress Dowager and others. Very soon after my
arrival home I was examined by skillful surgeons, among them Drs.
Federoff and Gagentorn, who pronounced my crushed right leg to be in a
very bad condition and placed it in a plaster cast, where it remained
for two months. The Empress visited me daily, but the Emperor I seldom
saw because, as I learned indirectly, the War was going very badly on
the Russian front, and the Emperor was almost constantly with the
armies. In the last week before Lent he came to my bedside with the
Empress, in accordance with an old Russian custom, before confession, to
beg my forgiveness for possible wrongs done me during the year past.
Their pious humility and also the white and careworn face of the Emperor
filled me with emotion which later events served only to increase, for
very momentous and trying hours were even then crowding the destiny of
Nicholas II, Tsar of all the Russias.
A soldier of the sanitary corps, a man named Jouk, had been assigned to
duty at my house, and as soon as I was able to leave my bed he took me
daily in a wheeled chair to church, and to the palace. This was the
summer of 1915, a time of great tribulation for the Russian Army, as
every student of the World War is aware. Grand Duke Nicholai
Nicholaievitch was pursuing a policy which rightly disturbed the
Emperor, who constantly complained that the commander in chief of his
armies sent the men forward without proper ammunition, without artillery
support, and with no adequate preparations for safe retreat. Disaster
after disaster confirmed the Emperor’s fears. Fortress after fortress
fell to the Germans. Kovno fell. Novogeorgiesk fell, and finally Warsaw
itself fell. It was a terrible day when the Emperor, white and
trembling, brought this news to the Empress as we sat at tea on her
balcony in the warm autumn air. The Emperor was fairly overcome with
grief and humiliation as he finished his tale. “It cannot go on any
longer like this,” he exclaimed bitterly, and then he went on to declare
that in spite of ministerial opposition he was determined to take
personal command of the army himself. Only that day Krivosheim, Minister
of Agriculture, had addressed him on the impossible condition of Russian
internal affairs. Nicholai Nicholaievitch, not content with military
supremacy, had assumed almost complete authority over all the business
of the Empire. There were in fact two governments in Russia, orders
being constantly issued from military headquarters without the
knowledge, much less the consent, of the Emperor.
Very soon after the fall of Warsaw it became clear to the Emperor that
if he were to retain any dignity whatever he would have to depose
Nicholai Nicholaievitch, and I wish here to state, without any
reservation whatever, that this decision was reached by the Emperor
without advice from Rasputine, myself, or any other person. Even the
Empress, although she approved her husband’s resolution, had no part in
forming it. M. Gilliard has written that the Emperor was forced to his
action by bad advisers, especially the Empress and Rasputine, but in
this he is absolutely mistaken. M. Gilliard writes that the Emperor was
told that Grand Duke Nicholai Nicholaievitch was plotting to confine his
Sovereign in a monastery. I do not believe for a moment that Rasputine
ever made such a statement, but he did, in my presence, warn the Emperor
to watch Nicholai Nicholaievitch and his wife who, he alleged, were at
their old practices of table-tipping and spiritism, which he thought to
be a highly dangerous way to conduct a war against the Germans. As for
me, I repeat that never once did I say or do anything to influence the
Emperor in state affairs. I wish I could here reproduce a letter written
to my father by the Emperor in which all the reasons for taking the step
he did were explained. The letter, alas! was taken from me by the
Bolsheviki after my father’s death, and I suppose was destroyed.
On the evening when the Emperor met his ministers to announce his great
decision I dined at the palace, and I was deeply impressed with the
firmness of the Emperor’s decision not to be overborne by arguments or
vain fears on the part of timid statesmen. As he arose to go to the
council chamber the Emperor begged us to pray for him that his
resolution should not falter. “You do not know how hard it has been for
me to refrain from taking an active part in the command of my beloved
army,” he said at parting. Overcome and speechless, I pressed into his
hand a tiny ikon which I had always worn around my neck, and during the
long council which followed the Empress and I prayed fervently for the
Emperor and for our distracted country.
As the time passed the Empress’s anxiety grew so great that, throwing a
cloak around her shoulders and beckoning me to follow, she went out on
the balcony, one end of which gave on the council room. Through the lace
of the window curtains we could see the Emperor sitting very upright,
surrounded by his ministers, one of whom was on his feet speaking
earnestly. Our eleven o’clock tea was served long before the Emperor,
entirely exhausted, returned from the conference. Throwing himself in an
armchair, he stretched himself out like a man spent after extreme
exertion, and I could see that his brow and hands were wet with
perspiration.
“They did not move me,” he said in a low, tense voice. “I listened to
all their long, dull speeches, and when all had finished I said:
‘Gentlemen, in two days from now I leave for the Stavka.’” As he
repeated the words his face lightened, his shoulders straightened, and
he appeared like a man whose strength was suddenly renewed.
Yet one more struggle was before him. The Empress Dowager, whom the
Emperor visited immediately after the ministerial conference, was by
this time thoroughly imbued with the German-spy mania in which the
Empress and Rasputine, not to mention myself, were involved. She
believed the whole preposterous tissue of lies which had been built up
and with all her might she struggled against the Emperor’s decision to
assume supreme command of the army. For over two hours a painful scene
was enacted in the Empress Dowager’s gardens, he trying to show her that
utter disaster threatened the army and the Empire under existing
conditions, and she repeating over and over again the wicked slanders of
German plots which she insisted that he was furthering. In the end the
Emperor left, terribly shaken, but with his resolution as strong as
ever.
Before leaving for staff headquarters the Emperor and his family took
communion together at the Feodorovsky Cathedral and at their last meal
together he showed himself calm and collected as he had not been for
some time; in fact, not since the beginning of the last disastrous
campaign. From headquarters the Emperor wrote full accounts of the
scenes which took place when he assumed personal command, and of the
furious anger, not only of the deposed Nicholai Nicholaievitch but of
all his staff, “Every one of whom,” wrote the Emperor, “has the ambition
himself to govern Russia.”
I am not attempting to write a military history of those years, and I am
quite aware of the fact that most published accounts of the Russian Army
represent Nicholai Nicholaievitch as the devoted friend of the Allies
and the Emperor as the pliant tool of German influences. It is
undeniable, however, that almost as soon as Nicholai Nicholaievitch had
been sent to the Caucasus and the Emperor took command of the Western
Army a marked improvement in the general morale became apparent. Retreat
at various points was stopped, the whole front strengthened, and a new
spirit of loyalty to the Empire was manifest.
I wish to interpolate here, in connection with the Emperor’s personal
command of the army, a word on the immense service he rendered it at the
beginning of the War in suppressing the manufacture and sale of vodka,
the curse of the Russian peasantry. The Emperor did this entirely on his
own initiative, without advice from his ministers or the Grand Dukes.
The Emperor said at the time: “At least by this I will be remembered,”
and he was, because the condition of the peasants, the town workers, and
of course the army became at once immeasurably better. In the midst of
war-time privations the savings-banks accounts of the people increased
enormously, and in the army there was none of the hideous debauchery
which disgraced Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. As an eminent French
correspondent long afterwards wrote: “It is to the dethroned Emperor
Nicholas that we must accord the honor of having effected the greatest
of all internal reforms in war-time Russia, the suppression of
alcoholism.”
In October the Emperor came to Tsarskoe Selo for a brief visit, and on
his return he took with him to the Stavka the young Tsarevitch. This is
the first time he had ever separated the boy from his mother, and the
Empress was never happy except in the few minutes each day when she was
reading the child’s daily letter. At nine o’clock at night she went up
to his bedroom exactly as though he were there and she was listening to
his evening prayers. By day the Empress continued her tireless work in
the hospitals from which, by reason of my accident, I had long been
excluded. However, at this time, I received from the railroad as
compensation for my injuries the considerable sum of eighty thousand
rubles, and with the money I established a hospital for convalescent
soldiers in which maimed and wounded men received training in various
useful trades. This, it is needless to say, became a great source of
happiness to me, since I knew as well as the soldiers what it meant to
be crippled and helpless. From the first my hospital training school was
a most gratifying success, and my personal interest in it never ceased
until the Revolution, after which all my efforts at usefulness and
service ended in imprisonment and persecution.
Not this action of mine, patriotic though it must have appeared, no
amount of devotion of the Empress to the wounded, sufficed to check the
rapidly growing propaganda which sought to convict the Imperial Family
and all its friends of being German spies. The fact that in England the
Empress’s brother-in-law, Prince Louis of Battenberg, German-born but a
loyal Briton, was forced to resign his command in the British Navy was
used with effect against the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. She knew and
resented keenly this insane delusion, and she did everything in her
power to overcome it. I remember a day when the Empress received a
letter from her brother Ernest, Grand Duke of Hesse, in which he
implored her to do something to improve the barbarous conditions of
German prisoners in Russia. With streaming tears the Empress owned
herself powerless to do anything at all in behalf of the unhappy
captives. She had organized a committee for the relief of Russian
prisoners in Germany, but this had been fiercely attacked, especially in
the columns of _Novy Vremya_, an influential organ of the Constitutional
Democratic Party. In this newspaper and in general society the Empress’s
committee was accused of being a mere camouflage gotten up to shield her
real purpose of helping the Germans. Against such attacks the Empress
had no defense. Her secretary, Count Rostovseff, indeed tried to refute
the story concerning the Empress’s prison-camp committee, but the
editors of _Novy Vremya_ insolently refused to publish his letter of
explanation.
The German-spy mania was extended from the palace to almost every
Russian who had the misfortune to possess a name that sounded at all
German. Count Fredericks and Minister Sturmer were among those who
suffered calumny, although neither spoke a single German sentence. But
the greatest sufferers were those barons of the Baltic Provinces whose
ancestors had bequeathed them names of quite certain German origin. Many
of these men were arrested and sent to die, or to suffer worse than
death in exile. The sons and relatives of many of these very Baltic
proprietors were at the time fighting loyally in the Russian Army. That
there were German spies at work in Russia all during the War I have no
reason to doubt, but they were the men who after 1917 invited in and
exalted Lenine and Trotzky, and not the Empress and her friends, nor yet
the persecuted estate owners of the Baltic Provinces. Did the Emperor’s
family call upon the Germans to rescue them from Siberia? Did any of
the Baltic Provinces at Versailles ask to be united to Germany?
The army and navy still remained loyal to the Sovereigns. On one of his
home visits to Tsarskoe Selo the Emperor brought with him as a proof of
this the Cross of the Order of St. George, the highest of all Russian
military decorations, which none could bestow except the Emperor, or the
chief command of one of the armies in the field. In this case it was the
gallant Southern Army which had voted to bestow it on the Emperor, and
his pride and joy in it were humbly great.