In anxiety almost unbearable we waited until the morning of March 9
(Russian) the arrival of the Emperor. I was still confined to my bed and
Dr. Botkine was making me his first visit of the day when my door flew
open and Mme. Dehn, pale with excitement, rushed to my bedside
exclaiming breathlessly: “He has come!” As soon as she could command
words she described the arrival of the Emperor, not as of yore attended,
but guarded like a prisoner by armed soldiers. The Empress was with
Alexei when the motor cars drove into the palace grounds, and Mme. Dehn
told how she sprang to her feet overjoyed and ran like a schoolgirl down
the stairs and through the long corridors to meet her husband. For a
time at least the happiness of reunion blotted out the suspense of the
past and the gloomy uncertainty of the future. But afterwards, alone,
behind their own closed doors, the emotion of the betrayed and deserted
Emperor completely overcame his self-control and he sobbed like a child
on the breast of his wife. It was four o’clock in the afternoon before
she could come to me, and when she came I read in her white, drawn face
the whole story of the ordeal through which she had passed. With
prideful composure she related the events of the day. I tried to match
her in courage but I am afraid I failed. I, who in all the twelve years
of my life in the palace had but three times seen tears in the eyes of
the Emperor, was entirely overwhelmed at her recital.
“He will not break down a second time,” she said with a brave smile. “He
is walking in the garden now. Come to the window and see.” She helped me
to the window and herself pulled aside the curtain. Never, never while I
live shall I forget what we saw, we two, clinging together in shame and
sorrow for our disgraced country. Below in the garden of the palace
which had been his home for twenty years stood the man who until a few
days before had been Tsar of all the Russias. With him was his faithful
friend Prince Dolgorouky, and surrounding them were six soldiers, say
rather six hooligans, armed with rifles. With their fists and with the
butts of their guns they pushed the Emperor this way and that as though
he were some wretched vagrant they were baiting in a country road. “You
can’t go there, Gospodin Polkovnik (Mr. Colonel).” “We don’t permit you
to walk in that direction, Gospodin Polkovnik.” “Stand back when you are
commanded, Gospodin Polkovnik.” The Emperor, apparently unmoved, looked
from one of these coarse brutes to another and with great dignity turned
and walked back towards the palace. I had been a very sick woman, and I
was now hardly fit to stand on my feet. The light went out suddenly and
I fainted. But the Empress did not faint. She got me back to my bed,
fetched cold water, and when I awoke it was to feel her cool hand
bathing my head. From her calm and detached manner no one could have
guessed that the scene we had just witnessed was part also of her own
tragedy. Before leaving me she said as to a child: “If you will promise
to be very good and not cry he shall come to see you this evening.”
After dinner they came, the Emperor and Empress with our friend Lili
Dehn. The two women sat down at a table with their needlework leaving
the Emperor free to sit by my bed and talk to me privately. I have tried
to show Nicholas II as a human person, with human emotions, and I have
no desire now to represent him, in the hour of his humiliation, as other
than a man feeling keenly and acutely the bitterness of his position. I
had been unable until the day of his return to realize with any degree
of clarity the full extent of his calamity. It was to me almost
unbelievable that his enemies, who had so long plotted and schemed for
his overthrow, had at last succeeded. It was beyond reason that the
Emperor, the finest and best of the whole Romanoff family, should be
allowed to fall under the feet of his decadent, treacherous kinsmen and
subjects. But the Emperor, his eyes hard and glistening, told me that it
was indeed true. And he added: “If all Russia came to me now on their
knees I would never return.”
With tears in his voice he spoke of the men, his most trusted relations
and friends, who had turned against him and caused his downfall. He read
me telegrams from Brusiloff, Alexieff, and other of his generals, others
from members of the family, including a message from Nicholai
Nicholaievitch, in which the writers “on their knees” begged his
Imperial Majesty, for the salvation of Russia, to abdicate. In whose
favor did they wish him to abdicate? The weak and ineffectual Duma? The
great untaught masses of the people? No, to their own blind and
self-seeking oligarchy, which, under a regent of its own choosing, would
rule the boy Alexei and through him the people and the uncounted wealth
of Russia. But this at least the Emperor could and did prevent. Both his
heart and his mind forbade him to abdicate in favor of the Tsarevitch.
“My boy I will not give to them,” he said feelingly. “Let them get some
one else, Michail, if he thinks he is strong enough.”
I regret that I cannot remember every word the Emperor told me of the
scenes in his train when the deputation from the Duma came to demand his
abdication. I was trying too hard to obey the Empress’s injunction to
“be good and not cry.” But I remember his telling me how arrogant and
vain the deputies, especially Goutchkoff and Shoulgin, showed
themselves. On their departure the Emperor’s first words were addressed
to the two tall Cossacks who stood guard at his door. “It is time now
for you to tear my initials from your shoulder straps,” he told them.
The Cossacks saluted and one of them said: “Please your Imperial
Majesty, please allow us to kill them.” But the Emperor replied: “It is
too late to do that now.”
Of his mother, who hurried from Kiev, accompanied by Grand Duke
Alexander Michailovitch, to see him, he said that he was vastly
comforted to have her near him, but that the sight of the Grand Duke was
unendurable. Driving away from the train with the Empress Dowager, the
Emperor had been much moved to see the people along the whole distance
of two versts fall on their knees to bid him farewell. There was a
group of schoolgirls from the institute at Mogiloff who forced their way
past the guards and surrounded their Sovereign, begging his
handkerchief, his autograph on bits of paper, the buttons from his
uniform, anything for a last souvenir. The Emperor’s face grew sharply
lined when he spoke of those brave girls and the kneeling people. “Why
did you not appeal to them?” I asked. “Why did you not appeal to the
soldiers?” But the Emperor answered gently: “The people knew themselves
powerless, and as for appealing to the soldiers, how could I? Already I
had heard threats of murdering my family.” His wife and children, he
said, were all on earth he had left to live for now. Their happiness and
well-being were all his soul desired. As for the Empress, more than
himself the real object of malice, only over his body should any hand be
raised to injure her. Giving way once more for a brief moment to his
grief the Emperor murmured half to himself: “But there is no justice, no
justice on earth.” Then as if in apology he said: “It has shaken me
badly, as you see. For the first few days I was so little myself that I
could not even write my diary.”
As we talked it came over me for the first time in full force that all
was indeed finished for Russia. The army was disrupted, the nation
fallen. I could foresee, to some extent at least, the horrors we should
have to meet, but in a kind of desperate hope I asked the Emperor if he
did not think that the riots and strikes would now be put down. He shook
his head. “Not for two years at least,” he predicted. But what did he
think was to become of him, of the Empress and the children? He did not
know, but there was one prayer he should not be too proud to make to his
enemies, and that was that they should not send him out of Russia. “Let
me live here in my own country, as the humblest and most obscure
proprietor, tilling the land and earning the poorest living,” he
exclaimed. “Send us to any distant corner of Russia, but only let us
stay.”
This was the only time I ever saw the Emperor in the least degree
unmanned, or overcome with the bitterness of grief which I knew must
have filled his spirit. After that first day in the palace gardens he
gave his jailers no opportunity of insulting him. With Prince Dolgorouky
he walked out daily but only along near pathways to the palace doors.
The snow was heavy on the ground and the two men vigorously exercised
themselves shoveling it from paths and roadways. Often the Emperor would
look up from this strenuous work to wave a hand to those of us who were
watching from the windows. In the solitude of my sick chamber I
tormented myself with thoughts of what might be in store for the Emperor
and the beloved family whose happiness and well-being were more to him
than the most exalted throne. They were all prisoners of the Duma now,
and what dark and hapless fate was the ruthless, irresponsible Duma
preparing for them? Not a comforting question to haunt the mind of one
ill in body and soul. From my first waking moment on I lived in
anticipation of the daily visit of the Empress. She who had all at stake
still kept her wonderful courage alive. She came in tall and stately, a
smile on her gentle, melancholy face, bringing me the news of the
nurseries, messages from the children, making me work, doing everything
possible to cheer and to lighten my mind. In the evening the Emperor
usually came, wheeling his wife in her invalid’s chair, for by night her
strength had all but gone. They stayed with me for an hour and then went
on to say good night to the suite in the drawing room. Sadly diminished
in numbers was that suite, but unchanged in fealty and affection for
fallen majesty. Among those devoted friends who appeared almost like the
survivors of a shipwreck were Count Benkendorff, brother of the former
Russian ambassador to Great Britain, and his wife, who had boldly
arrived at the palace when it was first surrounded by mutinous soldiers;
two maids of honor, Baroness Buxhoevden and Countess Hendrikoff; the
faithful Miss Schneider (“Trina”), Mme. Dehn, Count Fredericks, General
Voyeikoff and the Hussar officer, General Groten. The two devoted
aides-de-camp, Lieutenant Linevitch and Count Zamirsky, who had flown to
the palace to be near the Empress after the abdication, had been forced
to leave, or they too would have remained to the end. Of the household
M. Gilliard and Mr. Gibbs, the French and English tutors of Alexei, had
elected to remain. Madeleine, and several other personal attendants,
including three nurses, also stayed. “In good times we served the
family,” said these honest souls, “never will we forsake them now.”
Not once, after the very first of our conversations, and not at any time
I believe to others in the palace did the Emperor or the Empress make
the smallest complaint of their captivity. They seemed to suffer for
Russia rather than for themselves, for they knew, and said so, that the
army, suddenly in the midst of war released from all discipline, would
soon cease to fight efficiently, or perhaps to obey orders at all. This
of course the world knows is precisely what did happen. The Emperor, I
must admit, sometimes betrayed a gruesome kind of humor over the
fantastic blunders of the self-styled statesmen who were so rapidly
making general shipwreck of their revolution. In every way they showed
their weakness and bewilderment. Whether or not they feared to trust old
officers of the Empire with the custody of the Imperial Family I cannot
be sure, but the men they sent to Tsarskoe were a constant source of
ironic mirth to the suite. Most of these men were young, raw, underbred,
and inexperienced, the best of them being junior officers promoted since
1914. One day one of the guard officers, just to show how democratic
Russia had become, swaggered up to the Emperor and offered to shake
hands with him. Unfortunately, as he afterwards told me, the Emperor was
so busy shoveling snow that he could not take advantage of the man’s
condescension.
The newly appointed commandant of the palace was a young man named Paul
Kotzebou, before the War an officer of the lancers, but for some piece
of misconduct cashiered from the service. I had long known Kotzebou and
aside from his doubtful army record I was not sorry to see him in the
palace, for I knew that if weak of character he was at least kind of
heart. Kind indeed he proved himself, for he visited my sickroom in
friendly fashion, risked arrest by consenting to smuggle letters to my
parents in Petrograd, and was the first to warn me that the Provisional
Government was contemplating my arrest. Many of the old friends and
advisers of the Emperor were already in prison, but the proposal to
arrest a woman whose sole crime had been devotion to the Empress and her
children gave us all an uncomfortable, premonitory shock. The distress
of the Empress was greater almost than her pride. The mercy she would
have scorned to ask for herself she was ready to beg for me, and she did
most earnestly implore Kotzebou to intercede in my behalf. “What
possible good will it do them to arrest one helpless woman?” she urged.
“Parting with her would be like losing one of my own children.”
Kotzebou, whatever his feelings, could only reply: “If I could,
Madame--but there is nothing I can do, nothing.”
The Emperor alone refused to believe my arrest at all probable, but the
others were badly frightened at the prospect. The sister of mercy who
had worked in my hospital and was taking care of me, almost went on her
knees to the Emperor and Empress. “Now is the time to show your real
love for Anna Alexandrovna,” she cried. “Take her into the rooms of your
own children and never let anybody touch her.” Cooler counsel came from
Count Benkendorff, who advised the Emperor and Empress not to oppose my
arrest if it were ordered. The only result of opposition, he pointed
out, would be more arrests and perhaps increased hardship for the
Empress. “I do not think they will detain her, unless it is in one of
the rooms of the Tauride,” he said, meaning that I might only be
isolated for a time in the palace where the Duma held its sessions.
Count Benkendorff was later to learn what kind of justice was being
prepared by the criminal lunatics who were at Russia’s throat.
One morning towards the 20th of March I had a hurried note from the
Empress, the contents of which were enough to make me forget all my own
troubles. Marie, who had been very ill and who now she feared was dying,
was calling constantly for me. The servant who brought the note told me
that Anastasie also was in a critical condition, lungs and ears being in
a sad state of inflammation. Oxygen alone was keeping the children
alive. Kotzebou was calling on me at the time, and as I sat up in bed
wildly demanding to be dressed, he begged me not to leave my room. “They
are only waiting until you are well enough to be arrested,” he assured
me. But though I feared arrest I feared still more letting the child I
loved die with one single wish unfulfilled, and as soon as I could be
sufficiently clothed it was Kotzebou himself who wheeled my chair
through the long corridors to the nurseries. It was the first time in
weeks that I had seen the children and our meeting was full of tears. We
wept in each other’s arms and then without wasting any time I went on
into Marie’s room. The child indeed seemed to be at the point of death,
but when she saw me the suffering in her eyes turned to something like
joy. Her weak hands fluttered on the bedclothes and with a feeble cry,
“Annia, Annia,” she began to weep. Long I sat beside her holding her hot
and wasted body in my arms, and when I left her she was asleep. Shaken
though I was with that experience, I had one more agony to bear. When my
chair was being wheeled back along the corridor I passed the open door
of Alexei’s room, and this is what I saw. Lying sprawled in a chair was
the sailor Derevanko, for many years the personal attendant of the
Tsarevitch, and on whom the family had bestowed every kindness, every
material benefit. Bitten by the mania of revolution, this man was now
displaying his gratitude for all their favors. Insolently he bawled at
the boy whom he had formerly loved and cherished, to bring him this or
that, to perform any menial service his mean lackey’s brain could think
of. Dazed and apparently only half conscious of what he was being forced
to do, the child moved about trying to obey. It was too much to bear.
Hiding my face in my hands, I begged them to take me away from the
sickening spectacle.
The next day, my last in the palace, I went again to the children, and
for a few hours at least was a little bit happy. The Emperor and Empress
had luncheon served in the nurseries, and we were all able to eat in
some comfort because both Marie and Anastasie were showing signs of
improvement. Still we were troubled because Kotzebou, as a reward for
his too kindly treatment of the captives, had that morning been removed
from the palace, and the doctors when they came brought with them
newspapers, fair samples of the new “free” press of Russia, bristling
with frightful stories, especially about me. For the first time I began
to realize, with a sick heart, what an arrest might mean, what grotesque
charges I might be called upon to face. For the first time, in these
newspapers I read the amazing tale of how I had conspired with Dr.
Badmieff to poison the Emperor and the Tsarevitch. Dr. Badmieff, that
half mad old Siberian root and herb doctor, who never in his life had
been admitted to the palace as a physician or even as a friend! It was
too absurd to resent. Even the Empress who at first had shown anger,
burst into mocking laughter. “Here, Annia,” she cried, “keep this story
for your collection.”
The next day I was arrested. I awoke in a morning of storm and howling
wind and in my soul a feeling of dread and foreboding. Immediately after
my coffee I wrote a note to the Empress asking her not to wait until
afternoon to see me. Her reply was kind and cheering, but she was busy
in the nurseries and could not leave until after the arrival of the
doctors. With luncheon came Lili Dehn, and scarcely had we finished the
meal when we were aware of great noise and confusion in the corridor
outside. An icy hand seemed to seize my heart. “They are coming,” I
whispered, and Mme. Dehn, springing from her chair cried: “Impossible.
No--no--” and panic-struck fled the room. The door flew open to admit a
frightened servant with a note from the Empress. “Kerensky is going
through our rooms. Do not be frightened. God is with us.” Hardly had the
man retired when again the door opened and another frightened servant, a
palace messenger in a feathered cap, announced in a drowned voice the
arrival of Kerensky. In a moment the room seemed to fill up with men and
walking arrogantly before them I beheld a small, clean-shaven,
theatrical person whose essentially weak face was disguised in a
Napoleonic frown. Standing over me in his characteristic attitude,
right hand thrust into the bosom of his jacket, the man boomed out: “I
am the Minister of Justice. You are to dress and go at once to
Petrograd.” I answered not a word but lay still on my pillows looking
him straight in the face. This seemed to disconcert him somewhat for he
turned to one of his officers and said nervously: “Ask the doctors if
she is fit to go. Otherwise she must be arrested and isolated in the
palace.” Count Benkendorff, who stood in the back of the room near the
door, volunteered to see the doctor, and when he returned it was with
the message that Dr. Botkine gave them permission to take me. Afterwards
I learned that the Empress reproached the doctor bitterly, saying over
and over through her tears: “How can you? How can you? You who have
children of your own.” But Dr. Botkine was by this time a victim of
craven fear, and he was incapable of refusing any request of the
Provisional Government.
They gave me time to dress warmly, and I had a moment in which to reply
briefly to a note from the Emperor and Empress, in which they enclosed
small pictures of Christ and the Virgin, signed with their Majesties’
initials, N. and A. When at last I was ready to go it suddenly surged
over me that this might be the end of my long association with these
dearly loved friends, my Sovereigns, whose intimate lives I had shared
for twelve years. Ready to fall on my knees before him if necessary I
made a final appeal to Colonel Korovitchinko, the new commandant of the
palace, begging him to let me see them for one moment, just long enough
to say good-bye. Colonel Korovitchinko, who afterwards died a cruel
death at the hands of the Bolsheviki, at first refused, but moved by my
tears he relented a little. The Emperor, he said, was outside and could
not be summoned, but he would exert his authority far enough to send me
under guard to say good-bye to the Empress. Under escort of two officers
I was taken to the apartment of Mlle. Schneider, and very soon the pale
Empress was wheeled into the room by her devoted attendant Volkov. We
had time for only one long embrace and the hurried exchange of two
rings. Then Tatiana, who came with her mother, embraced me, weeping, and
as she too begged for a last memory gift I gave her the only thing I had
to give, my wedding ring. Then the soldiers tore us apart but I saw that
the man who gave the order did it with tears in his eyes. The last I
remember was the white hand of the Empress pointing upward and her
voice: “There we are always together.” Volkov, weeping, cried out
courageously: “Anna Alexandrovna, God will surely help.”
They carried me downstairs to the motor, for I could neither walk nor
stand, even with the help of my crutches. At the door stood several
soldiers and Court servants, visibly distressed, but by this time I felt
nothing, heard nothing. I was turned to stone. When I was lifted into
the car I was startled to see there another woman, like myself swathed
in wraps and veils. It was Lili Dehn, whose arrest had not before this
day even been threatened. Dazed as I was, it was some comfort to hear
her whisper that we were to travel to Petrograd together. I recovered
myself a little, enough at least to recognize the frightened face of
the servant who closed the door of the car. Killed a few months later,
this good man had been for a long time a sailor on the Imperial yacht.
“Take care of their Majesties,” I managed to say to him. Then the motor
car shot forward, and I left the palace at Tsarskoe Selo forever. Both
Lili and I pressed our faces to the glass in a last effort to see those
beloved we were leaving behind, and through the mist and rain we could
just discern a group of white-clad figures crowded close to the nursery
windows to see us go. In a moment of time the picture was blotted out
and we saw only the wet landscape, the storm-bent trees, the rapidly
creeping twilight. In another few moments we were at the station, the
dear, familiar station of Tsarskoe, where so many, many times I had
waited to greet or to say a short farewell to the Emperor and Empress.
Ready for us was one of the small Imperial trains, now the special train
of Kerensky. Our guards hurried us into a carriage, and the train
immediately began to move. At the same time our carriage was invaded by
Kerensky and a group of soldiers. Without even a pretense of decent
politeness the new Minister of Justice began to shout at us: “Give your
family names,” and because we did not speak quickly enough the little
man became insulted. “You will learn that when _I_ ask a question you
must answer promptly.” We gave our names and Kerensky, turning
triumphantly to the soldiers, ejaculated: “Well! Are you convinced now?”
Apparently some of the men had expressed doubts as to whether they had
bagged the right criminals. Sick and half fainting, I sank back into the
cushions and closed my eyes on their departing figures. Lili bent over
me with her salts bottle and soon I was able to sit up with some show of
courage. It was the first time I had left the house since my illness and
I was still very weak.
Arrived in Petrograd, Kerensky paraded us before his officers like
barbarian captives of some Roman emperor, but this did not affect us
seriously. Our eyes were busy gazing at the changed aspect of Petrograd,
soldiers swanking around the streets proud of their slovenly appearance,
the badge of their new freedom; mobs of people running aimlessly about,
or pausing to listen to street-corner orators; and everywhere on walls
and buildings masses of dirty red flags. An old-fashioned coach belong
to the Imperial stables had been sent for us and still closely guarded
we drove to the Ministry of Justice. There we climbed a long and very
steep staircase--how I did it on my crutches I do not yet
understand--and were shown into a room on the third floor, empty even of
a wooden chair. Silently we stood and waited, and after a time men came
in carrying two sofas. On one of these Lili sat down and on the other I
lay prone. Again we waited, no one near us save the unkempt soldier who
guarded the door. The evening lengthened and finally Kerensky honored us
with another brief visit. He did not look at me at all but asked Lili if
they had built us a fire. It was an unnecessary question, for he must
have felt the icy chill of the room. A few minutes later, however, a
servant did build a fire in the tiled stove, and another brought in a
tray with eggs and tea. Left alone with the unkempt soldier, the man
suddenly amazed us by breaking into a volley of speech in which he
cursed most eloquently the new order of things. Nothing good would come
of it, nothing, was his opinion. Somewhat reassured because we had a
guard who was not at heart a Revolutionist, we lay down, but the night
brought to neither of us any anodyne of sleep and rest.