For two months after the assassination of Rasputine the Emperor remained
at Tsarskoe Selo, but he was by no means idle. In fact his whole heart
and mind were occupied, not so much with the scandal that had reached
its tragic climax in the Yusupoff Palace, but with the War which at that
moment seemed to favor Russian arms. According to our advices the food
shortage in Germany and in Turkey had become acute, and the Emperor
believed that a vigorous spring offensive might bring the War to a
speedy close. In his billiard room were spread out a large number of
military maps which no one of the household, not even the Empress, was
invited to inspect. The Emperor spent hours over these maps and his plan
of a spring campaign, and when he left the billiard room he locked the
door and put the key in his pocket. I had never seen him more completely
the soldier, the commander in chief of a great army. All this time, from
December, 1916, to February, 1917, the Russian front was comparatively
quiet, furious snowstorms preventing the advance either of our own or
the enemy’s forces. Alas! The storms interfered also with railroad
transport and Petrograd and Moscow were beginning to feel the pinch of
hunger, a fact that gave their Majesties constant concern.
Meanwhile the Grand Duke Alexander Michailovitch persisted in his
demand for an interview with the Empress, and as his letters to her
failed of their object he began to write to the Grand Duchess Olga. The
Empress, whose courage was great enough to enable her to ignore any
possible danger to herself, decided to see the man and once for all let
him have his say. In this decision the Emperor concurred, but he
stipulated that he should be present in case the conversation should
become unduly disagreeable. The Emperor’s aide-de-camp for the day
happened to be a spirited young officer, Lieutenant Linevitch, who after
luncheon on the day set for the audience, lingered in the palace,
apparently occupied in an amusing puzzle game with Tatiana. Afterwards
Linevitch told me that so well did he know the extent of the Grand Ducal
cabal, and especially the character of Alexander Michailovitch, that he
had remained on purpose and that his sword had been ready at any moment
to rescue the Empress from insult or from attempted assassination. As we
expected the Grand Duke had nothing new to say to the Empress, but
merely reiterated in more than usually violent terms the demand for
Protopopoff’s dismissal and for a constitutional form of government. The
answer to these demands was as usual--everything necessary after the
War, no fundamentally dangerous changes while the Germans remained on
our soil. The Grand Duke, purple with anger, rushed out of the Empress’s
sitting room, but instead of leaving the palace, as he was expected to
do, he entered the library, ordered pens and paper and began to write a
letter to the Emperor’s brother, Michail Alexandrovitch. No sooner had
he begun his epistle than he perceived standing respectfully in the
room the aide-de-camp Linevitch, whom, after a more or less civil
greeting, he tried to dismiss. “You may go now,” he said, coldly polite,
but the astute Linevitch replied with ceremony: “No, your Highness, I am
on service today and as long as your Highness is here it is not
permitted for me to leave.” In a fury Alexander Michailovitch got up and
left the palace.
Men like Linevitch and many others, as faithful as ever to their
Majesties, saw the threatening tempest more clearly than those within
palace walls could possibly see it. The day after the visit of Alexander
Michailovitch I received a call from one of the finest of the Romanoff
connections, Duke Alexander of Luchtenberg. Painfully agitated, the Duke
told me that he wanted me to help him to induce the Emperor to take a
remarkable, indeed an unprecedented step. At the time of his accession
to the throne every member of the family, it is well known, must make a
solemn vow of fealty to the Tsar, and the Duke of Luchtenberg now begged
me to persuade the Emperor, through the Empress, to exact from all the
family a renewal of this vow. For the lives and safety of the Imperial
Family the Duke believed this to be absolutely essential. “None of them
are loyal, not one,” he said earnestly. “And if the Emperor values the
lives of his wife and children he must force the Grand Dukes and their
families to declare themselves.” Quite staggered, I replied that it was
impossible for me to make such a proposition to their Majesties, but I
added that the Duke himself, as a member of the family, might with
entire propriety do so, and thus the matter was decided. Of the details
of the conversation between the Emperor and his kinsman I know nothing,
but I know that the conversation took place, because later the Emperor
remarked in my hearing that “Sandro” Luchtenberg, in the kindness of his
heart, had made a great matter out of a trifle, and he added, “Of course
I could not ask of my own family the thing he suggested.”
As one more indication of the gathering storm there came to me at my
hospital from Saratoff an old man so feeble and so deaf that he had to
bring with him a woman relative who through long familiarity was able to
act as an interpreter in his conversations. This old man represented an
organization known as the Union of the Russian People, a large group
devoted to the Empire and to the persons of their Majesties. With
intense emotion he told me that his organization had incontestable
proofs of most treacherous propaganda which was being circulated by the
Union of Zemstvos and Towns, under the personal direction of Goutchkoff
and Rodzianko. He had brought with him documentary proofs of his
assertions and he implored me to help him lay his proofs before the
Emperor. I communicated his message to the Emperor, but as he was that
day importantly engaged he suggested that the Empress might receive him
instead. This she consented to do, but after an hour’s conversation she
sent the old man away, touched by his devotion but unconvinced of the
gravity of the situation as he presented it.
To relieve somewhat the dullness and gloom that had settled on the
palace we organized in those early winter days of 1917 a series of
chamber-music recitals, the performers being Rumanian musicians who had
been playing very beautifully in the convalescent wards of the Tsarskoe
Selo hospitals. At the request of the Empress I arranged for
performances in my own apartments in the palace, inviting, with their
Majesties’ approval, the Duke of Luchtenberg, Mme. Dehn, Count
Fredericks, his daughters, my sister and her husband, and a few other
intimate friends. The concerts were delightful, greatly cheering us all,
including the somewhat lonely young Grand Duchesses and the much
harassed Emperor. But something in the music, perhaps its wild and
mournful tzigane numbers, moved the Empress to the depths of her
sensitive soul. Her beautiful eyes became more than ever filled with
melancholy and her heart seemed heavy with premonitions of disaster.
Partly because of her increased melancholy and partly moved by just
anger against the propagandist press in which our innocent concerts were
described as “palace orgies,” the Emperor for the first time was
awakened to consciousness that the safety of his family was indeed
threatened. At least he became aware of the fact that despite the
dangerous unrest of the times, Tsarskoe Selo and even Petrograd remained
practically ungarrisoned. The capital was guarded by only a few
regiments of reserves, while Tsarskoe Selo, the residence of the
Imperial Family, had no regiments at all outside its peace-time quota of
soldier and Cossack guards. At the command of the Emperor several
additional regiments which had served for some time at the front were
ordered to Tsarskoe for rest and recuperation, and, although naturally
nothing of this was mentioned in the order, to augment if necessary the
inadequate military force at hand. The first order was given for a
strong detachment of naval guards, but after these men were actually
entrained for Tsarskoe they were stopped by a counter order from General
Gourko, who in the illness of General Alexieff was in command at G. H.
Q. This counter order being at once communicated to the Emperor, he
exercised his supreme authority and the regiment once more started for
Tsarskoe Selo. But the audacity of General Gourko had not yet reached
its limit. When the military train reached the station at Tsarskoe it
was met by a telegram from General Gourko to the officer in command,
ordering the regiment back to the front. The bewildered officer for a
few moments was at a loss what to do, but fortunately news of his
dilemma was telephoned to the palace, and the regiment, under the
peremptory command of the Emperor, left the train and went into garrison
at Tsarskoe. The Emperor next commanded that one of his favorite
regiments of Varsovie Lancers be sent to Tsarskoe, but instead General
Gourko left headquarters for the palace, where a long interview between
the Emperor and the commander took place. By arguments of which I have
no knowledge the Emperor was persuaded that the Lancers could not, for
the time being, be spared from their front-line position, and he
recalled his order.
However, it was clear that the Emperor was at last awake to the
appalling menace of disaffection which was closing in like black cloud
banks on every hand. The War was going badly, as every student of the
times must remember. Brusiloff’s brilliant offensive of the summer and
autumn of 1916 had indeed made it plain that Russia was by no means out
of the struggle, but although this famous drive had netted the Russians
a gain of territory even larger than that which was yielded in the great
Battle of the Somme, it had finally stopped leaving us with much lost
territory still unredeemed. The Emperor knew this and it tormented his
heart and soul. The intriguers knew it and resolved to use it as a
weapon to get the Tsar away from his capital and from his family. It was
on the 19th or 20th of February (Russian Calendar) that the Emperor’s
brother, Grand Duke Michail Alexandrovitch, visited the palace and told
the Emperor that it was his immediate duty to return to the Stavka
because of grave threats of mutiny in the army. Very reluctantly the
Emperor consented to go. Mutiny in the army was a serious enough matter
and demanded the presence of the commander in chief. But other things
were at the same time occurring to cause keen anxiety. The Empress had
acquainted me with the nature of these disquieting events, but because
of the international character of the most serious I dislike even now to
put them in writing. However, I am here repeating only what was then
told me and I have no firsthand information to offer in verification of
their truth. Their Majesties had been informed and finally from a source
which they believed to be absolutely reliable, that the center of
intrigue against the throne was not in any secret garret of disaffected
workingmen but in the British Embassy, where the Ambassador, Sir George
Buchanan, was personally aiding the Grand Dukes to overthrow Nicholas
II and to replace him by his cousin Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovitch. Sir
George Buchanan’s main purpose, it was said, was not so much to further
the ambitions of the Grand Dukes as it was to weaken Russia as a factor
in the future peace conference. Unable fully to believe that an
ambassador of one of the Allied Powers would dare to meddle maliciously
in the internal affairs of the Empire, the Tsar had nevertheless decided
to communicate his information in a personal letter to his cousin King
George of England. The Empress, deeply indignant, advised a demand on
King George for the Ambassador’s recall, but the Emperor replied that he
dared not, at such a critical time, make public his distrust of an
Ally’s representative. Whether or not the Emperor ever wrote his letter
to King George I never knew, but that his anxiety and depression of
spirits persisted I can well testify. On the evening of February 29, the
day before the Emperor’s departure, I gave a small dinner to some
intimate friends among the officers of the Naval Guard, Mme. Dehn
helping me in my duties as hostess. A note from the Empress summoned us
all to spend the end of the evening in her sitting room, and as soon as
I saw the Emperor I knew that he was seriously upset. During the tea
hour he spoke little, and when I tried to catch his eye he turned his
head aside. The Empress murmured in my ear that all his instincts warned
him against leaving Tsarskoe Selo at that time, and as this coincided
exactly with my own judgment I ventured to tell him, on saying good
night, that I should hope to the last moment that he would not go away
until the worst of the uncertainties in Petrograd were removed. At this
he smiled, almost cheerfully, and said that I must not allow myself to
be frightened by wild rumors and idle gossip. Go he must, but within ten
days he expected to be able to return.
The next morning I went to the door and watched his motor car drive out
of the palace grounds, the Empress and the children going with it as far
as the station. As usual on such occasions, there was a display of
flags, of guards standing at salute, and bells from the churches pealing
their farewell. Everything appeared the same, yet in that hour the
flags, the soldiers, the pealing bells were speeding the Tsar of all the
Russias to his doom.
I felt ill that morning, ill physically as well as mentally, yet as in
duty bound I went to my hospital, where a soldier in whose case I took a
special interest was to undergo an operation which he dreaded and at
which he had implored me to be present. While the anesthetic was being
administered I stood beside the poor man holding his hand, but at the
same time I realized that I was becoming feverish and that my headache
was almost unbearably increasing. Returning to the palace, I lay down in
my bedroom, after writing a line to the Empress excusing myself from
tea. An hour later Tatiana came in, sympathetic as usual, but troubled
because both Olga and Alexei were in bed with high temperatures and the
doctors suspected that they might be coming down with measles. A week or
two before some small cadets from the military school had spent the
afternoon playing with Alexei, and one of these boys had a cough and
such a flushed face that the Empress had called the attention of M.
Gilliard to the child, fearing illness. The next day we heard that he
was ill with measles, but because our minds were so troubled with many
other things none of us thought much of the danger of contagion. As for
me, even after Tatiana had told me that Olga and Alexei were suspected
cases, it did not at once occur to me that I was going to be ill. Still
my temperature went on rising and my headache was unrelieved. I lay in
bed all the next day until the dinner hour when Mme. Dehn came in and I
made a futile effort to get up and dress. Mme. Dehn made me lie down
again, and looking me over carefully she said: “You look very badly to
me. I think you will have to have the doctor.” The next instant, so it
seemed to me, the doctor was in the room and I heard him say: “Measles.
A bad case.” Then I drifted off into sleep or unconsciousness.
That same day Tatiana fell ill, and now the Empress had four of us on
her hands. Putting on her nurse’s uniform, she spent all the succeeding
days between her children’s rooms and mine. Half conscious, I felt
gratefully her capable hands arranging my pillows, smoothing my burning
forehead, and holding to my lips medicines and cooling drinks. Already,
as I heard vaguely, Marie and Anastasie had begun to cough, but this
news disturbed me only as a passing dream. I was conscious of the
presence of my mother and father and of my younger sister, and still as
in a kind of nightmare I understood that they and the Empress spoke in
hurried whispers of riots and disorders in Petrograd. But of the first
days of Revolution, the strikes in Petrograd and Moscow, the revolt of
the mobs and the hesitancy of the half-disciplined reserves to restore
order, I know nothing except what was afterwards related to me. I do
know, however, that through it all the Empress of Russia was completely
calm and courageous, and that when my sister, hurrying to the palace
after witnessing the wild scenes in Petrograd, had cried out to the
Empress that the end had come, her fears were quieted by brave and
reassuring words.
It was the devoted old Grand Duke Paul, as the Empress afterwards told
me, who brought her the first official tidings, and made her understand
that that most calamitous of all blunders, a political revolution in the
midst of world war, had been accomplished. Even then she lost none of
her marvelous courage. She did not call upon the Ministers or upon the
Allied Ambassadors to protect her and her children. With dignity,
unmoved she witnessed day by day the cowardly desertion of men who for
years had lived at Court and who had enjoyed the faith and friendship of
the Imperial Family. One by one they went, General Racine, Count
Apraxine, officers and men of the bodyguard, servants the oldest and the
most trusted, all with smooth excuses and apologies which translated
meant only _sauve qui peut_.
One night came the noise of rioting and the sharp staccato of machine
guns apparently approaching nearer and nearer the palace. It was about
eleven o’clock and the Empress was sitting for a few minutes’ rest on
the edge of my bed. Getting up hastily and wrapping herself in a white
shawl, she beckoned Marie, the last of the children on her feet, and
went out of the palace into the icy air to face whatever threatened. The
Naval Guard and the Konvoi Cossacks still remained on duty, although
even then they were preparing to desert. It is altogether possible that
they would have gone over to the rioters that night had it not been for
the unexpected appearance of the Empress and her daughter. From one
guard to another they passed, the stately woman and the courageous young
girl, undaunted both in the face of deadly danger, speaking words of
encouragement, and most of all of simple faith and confidence. This
alone held the men at their posts during that dreadful night and
prevented the rioters from attacking the palace. The next day
the guards disappeared. The Naval Guards, led by Grand Duke Cyril
Vladimirovitch,[4] marched with red flags to the Duma and presented
themselves to Rodzianko as joyful revolutionists. The very men who in
the previous midnight had hailed the Empress with the traditional
greeting, “_Zdravie Jelaim Vashie Imperatorskoe Velichestvo!_” Health
and long life to your Majesty! So loud had been their greeting that the
Empress, not wishing me to know that she had left the palace, sent a
servant to tell me that the Guards were waiting to meet the Emperor.
There was now in or about the palace practically no one to defend the
Imperial Family in case the mob decided to attack. Still the Empress
remained calm, saying only that she hoped no blood would have to be
shed in their defense. A telegram from the Emperor revealed that the
crisis had become known to him, for he implored the Empress to join him
with the children at headquarters. At the same hour came an astounding
message to the Empress from Rodzianko, now head of the Provisional
Government, notifying her that she and her whole family must vacate the
palace at once. Her answer to both messages was that she could not leave
because all five of the children were dangerously ill. Rodzianko’s reply
to this appeal of an anguished mother was: “When the house is on fire it
is time for everything to be thrown out.” Desperately the Empress
consulted doctors and nurses. Could the children possibly be moved?
Could Anna? What was to be done in case the Provisional Government
proved altogether pitiless?
Into this soul-racking dilemma of the mother came to the wife of the
Emperor the terrible news of his abdication. I could not be with her in
that hour of woe, nor did I even see her until the following morning. It
was my parents who broke the news to me, almost too ill and too cloudy
of mind to comprehend it. Mme. Dehn, who was with the Empress on the
evening when Grand Duke Paul arrived with the fatal tidings, has
described the scene when the broken-hearted Empress left the Grand Duke
and returned to her own room.
“Her face was distorted with agony, her eyes were full of tears.
She tottered rather than walked, and I rushed forward and supported
her until she reached the writing table between the windows. She
leaned heavily against it, and taking my hands in hers she said
brokenly: ‘_Abdiqué!_’
“I could hardly believe my ears. I waited for her next words. They
were scarcely audible. At last [still speaking in French, for Mme.
Dehn spoke no English] ‘Poor darling--alone there and suffering--My
God! What he must have suffered!’”
In that hour of supreme agony there was not a word spoken of the loss of
a throne. Alexandra Feodorovna’s whole heart was with her husband, her
sole fears that he might be in danger and that their boy might be taken
from them. At once she began to send frantic telegrams to the Emperor
begging him to come home as soon as possible. With the refinement of
cruelty which marked the whole conduct of the Provisional Government in
those days these telegrams were returned to the Empress marked in blue
pencil: “Address of person mentioned unknown.”
Not even this insolence nor all her fears broke the sublime courage of
the Empress. When next morning she entered my sickroom and saw by my
tear-drenched face that I knew what had happened her only visible
emotion was a slight irritation that other lips than her own had brought
me the news. “They should have known that I preferred to tell you
myself,” she said. It was only when gone her rounds of the palace and
was alone in her own bedroom that she finally gave way to her grief.
“Mama cried terribly,” little Grand Duchess Marie told me. “I cried too,
but not more than I could help, for poor Mama’s sake.” Never in my life,
I am certain, shall I behold such proud fortitude as was shown all
through those days of wreck and disaster by the Empress and her
children. Not one single word of bitterness or resentment passed their
lips. “You know, Annia,” said the Empress gently, “all is finished for
our Russia. But we must not blame the people or the soldiers for what
has happened.” Too well we knew on whose shoulders the burden of
responsibility really rested.
By this time Olga and Alexei were decidedly better, but Tatiana and
Anastasie were still very ill and Marie was in the first serious stage
of the disease. The Empress in her hospital uniform moved tirelessly
from one bed to another. Perceiving that from my floor of the palace
practically every servant had fled, even my nurses and my once devoted
Jouk having yielded to the general panic, she found people to move my
bed upstairs to the old nursery of the Emperor. We were now almost alone
in the palace. My father’s resignation having been demanded and of
course given, my parents were detained in Petrograd.
Days passed and still no word came from the Emperor. The Empress’s
endurance had almost reached its breaking point when there came to the
palace a young woman, the wife of an obscure officer, who threw herself
at the feet of the Empress and begged to be allowed the dangerous task
of getting a letter through to the Emperor. Gratefully indeed did the
Empress accept the offer, and within an hour the brave woman was on her
way to Mogiloff. How she managed to reach headquarters, how she passed
the cordon of soldiers and finally succeeded in delivering to the
captive Emperor his wife’s letter we never knew, but all honor to this
heroic woman, she did it.
The palace was now full of Revolutionary soldiers, quite drunk with
their new liberty. Their heavy boots tramped through all the rooms and
corridors, and groups of dirty, unshaven men were constantly pushing
their way into the nurseries bawling out hoarsely: “Show us Alexei!” For
it was the heir who most of all aroused the interest and curiosity of
the mob. Meanwhile, behind closed doors and anxiously awaiting the
arrival of the Emperor, the Empress and her few faithful friends were at
work forestalling the coming of Kerensky by burning and destroying
letters and diaries, intimate personal records too precious to be
allowed to fall into the ruthless hands of enemies.