thee, I speak but only the truth."
That same day Samarin was removed from office and disgraced. Everyone
wondered why his appointment had been of such brief duration, but that
same night, the Prime Minister Sturmer and Rasputin drank champagne and
rejoiced together at the house in the Gorokhovaya, while Anna Vyrubova,
the favourite lady-in-waiting, was also with them, laughing at their
great triumph.
Not a person in all the great Empire could withstand Rasputin's
influence. Honest men feared him just as honest women regarded him with
awe. From dozens, nay hundreds, of place-hunters and favour-seekers he
took bribes on every hand, but woe betide those who fell beneath the
blackguard's displeasure. It meant death to them. He was certainly the
most powerful and fearless secret agent of all that the Huns possessed,
scattered as they were in every corner of the globe. Yet it must not be
supposed that there were none who did not suspect him. Indeed, a
certain committee of revolutionaries, to whose action Russia is to be
indebted, were watching the fellow's career very closely, and some of
the secret reports concerning him here as I write form intensely
interesting reading, astounding even for the unfathomable land of
Russia.
Within a few weeks of his triumph over the newly-appointed Procurator of
the Holy Synod he discovered, with the innate shrewdness of the Russian
mujik, that certain secret reports seriously compromising him had been
given into the Emperor's hand. His Majesty, in turn, had shown them to
his wife. Once again, he saw himself in peril, so, before any action
could be taken, he abruptly entered the Empress's room at Tsarskoe-Selo,
and boldly said:
"Heaven hath revealed to me in a vision that the enemies of the dynasty
have spoken ill of me, have maligned me, and have questioned my divine
power. I have therefore come to bid farewell of thee!"
The Empress, who was seated with Madame Vyrubova, and the old Countess
Ignatieff, rose from her chair, pale to the lips.
"You--you--you are surely not going, Holy Father!" she gasped. "You
cannot mean that you will desert us!" she cried. "What of poor little
Alexis?" and the words faded from her lips.
"Yes, truly I am going! Our enemies have, alas, triumphed! Evil
triumphs over good in this terrible war," was his slow, impressive
answer.
"Of Alexis,"--and he shook his shock head mournfully.
"Ah, no!" shrieked the unhappy Empress hysterically.
"Listen!" commanded the deep-voiced Saint very gravely. "I must not
conceal the truth from thee. On the twentieth day of my departure, thy
son Alexis will be taken ill--and alas! the poor lad will not recover!"
Madame Vyrubova pretended to be horrified at this terrible prophecy,
while the Empress shrieked and fainted. Whereupon the Saint crossed
himself piously and, turning, with bent head left the room.
Within half-an-hour he was on his way to his twelve "spiritual brides"
in his sordid house at Pokrovsky.
The Empress lived for the next twenty days in a state of terrible dread.
Alas! true to the Holy Father's prophecy the boy, on the twentieth day,
was seized with a sudden mysterious illness which puzzled the Court
physicians who were hastily summoned from Petrograd. Indeed, a dozen of
the best medical men in the capital held a consultation, but opinions
differed regarding the cause of the haemorrhage, and the Empress again
sent wild telegrams urging her pet Saint to return.
Little did she dream that her favourite lady-in-waiting had six hours
before administered a dose of a certain secret Chinese drug to the young
Tsarevitch and purposely caused the illness which the rascal had
predicted.
Time after time did Her Majesty telegraph, urging her "Holy Father" to
return and save the boy's life, signing herself affectionately "your
sister Alec." Yet the wires were dumb in reply. An Imperial courier
brought back no response. The doctors, as before, could make nothing
out of the poor boy's illness, and were unable to diagnose it. The
charlatan was playing with the life of the Heir of the Romanoffs.
It has, however, been since revealed by analysis that the compound sold
to Rasputin by the chemist--a secret administrator of drugs to Petrograd
society named Badmayeff--was a poisonous powder produced from the new
horns of stags, mixed with the root of "jen-shen." In the early spring
when the stags shed their horns there appear small knobs where the new
horns will grow. It is from these that the Chinese obtain the powder
which, when mixed with "jen-shen," produces a very strong medicine
highly prized in China and Thibet as being supposed to rejuvenate old
persons, and to act as a kind of love-philtre. When used in strong
doses it produces peculiar symptoms, and also induces dangerous
haemorrhage.
It is evident from evidence I have recently obtained, that on the
twentieth day after Rasputin's departure the high priestess of his cult,
Madame Vyrubova, administered to the poor helpless little lad a strong
dose in his food.
Day followed day; she increased that dose, until the poor little boy's
condition became most precarious, and the deluded Empress was equally
frantic with grief. At any moment he might die, the doctors declared.
One night Rasputin returned quite unexpectedly without having replied
even once to the Tsaritza's frantic appeals.
He made a dramatic appearance in her private boudoir, dressed in sandals
and his monk's habit, as though he had just returned from a pilgrimage.
"I have come to thee, O Lady, to try and save thy son!" he announced
earnestly in that deep raucous voice of his, crossing himself piously as
was his constant habit.
The distracted Empress flew to the boy's room where the mock-saint laid
his hands upon the lad's clammy brow and then falling upon his knees
prayed loudly in his strange jumble of scraps of holy writ interspersed
with profanity, that curious jargon which always impressed his
"sister-disciples."
"Thy son will recover," declared the saint, thus for the second time
impressing upon Her Majesty that his absence from Court would inevitably
cause the boy's death.
"But why, Holy Father, did you leave us?" demanded the Empress when they
were alone together ten minutes afterwards.
"Because thou wert prone to believe ill of me," was his stern reply. "I
will not remain here with those who are not my friends."
"Ah! Forgive me!" cried the hysterical woman, falling upon her knees
and wildly kissing his dirty hand. "Remain--remain here always with us!
I will never again think ill of thee, O Holy Father! All that is said
is by your enemies--who are also mine."
The pious rascal's house in the Gorokhovaya, besides being the
meeting-place of the society women who, believers in "table turning,"
were his sister-disciples, was also the active centre of German
intrigues. It was the centre of Germany's frantic effort to absorb the
Russian Empire.
Twice each week meetings were held of that weird cult of "Believers" of
whom the most sinister whisperings were heard from the Neva to the Black
Sea. The "sister-disciples" were discussed everywhere.
The "Holy Father" still retained his two luxurious suites of rooms, one
in the Winter Palace, and the other in Tsarskoe-Selo, but he seldom
occupied them at night, for he was usually at his own house receiving in
secret one or other of his "friends" of both sexes. His influence over
both Nicholas II and his German wife was daily increasing, while he held
Petrograd society practically in the hollow of his hand. Now and then,
in order to justify his title of "Saint" he would, with the connivance
of a mujik of his Siberian village, who was his confederate, perform a
"miracle" upon some miserable poor person who could easily be bribed and
afterwards packed off to some distant part of the Empire so that he, or
she, could tell no further tales. A hundred roubles goes far in Russia.
The Prime Minister Sturmer, the blackmailer Protopopoff, the dissolute
Bishop Teofan, a Court official named Sabouroff, and Ivanitski, a high
official in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, all knew the absurd farce
of these mock-miracles, yet it was to the interest of them that Rasputin
should still hold grip over the weak-minded Empress and that crowd of
foolish women of the Court who had become his "sister-disciples." Oh!
that we in Britain were in ignorance of all this! Surely it is utterly
deplorable.
The men mentioned, together with half-a-dozen others with high-sounding
titles, were bent upon ruining Russia, and giving her over body and soul
as prey to Germany. All had been arranged, even to the price they were
each to receive for the betrayal of their country. This was told to the
Empress time after time by Count Kokovtsov, the Adjunct-Minister of the
Interior Dzhunkovsky, the Grand Dukes Nicholas Michailovitch, Dmitri
Pavlovitch, and others. But Her Majesty would listen to nothing against
her pet "Saint," the Divine director, that disgracefully erotic humbug
who pretended that he could heal or destroy the little Tsarevitch. When
any stories were told of him, Anna, her favourite lady-in-waiting, would
declare that they were pure inventions of those jealous of "dear
Gregory's" position and influence.
While Boris Sturmer, frantically scheming for a separate peace with
Germany, was with his traitorous gang engineering all sorts of
disasters, outrages and military failures in order to prevent the
Russian advance, Kurloff, another treacherous bureaucrat, sat in the
Ministry of the Interior collecting the gangs of the "Black Hundred,"
those hired assassins whom he clothed in police-uniforms and had
instructed in machine-gun practice.
Rasputin and Protopopoff were now the most dominant figures in the
sinister preparations to effect Russia's downfall. Rasputin was busy
taking bribes on every hand for placing his associates into official
positions and blackmailing society women who, having been his
"disciples," had, from one cause or another, left his charmed circle.
Protopopoff, who once posed as our friend and hobnobbed; with Mr Lloyd
George, was a man of subtle intrigue. From being a friend of Britain,
as he pretended to be when he came here as Vice-President of the Duma,
he was enticed away by Germany to become the catspaw of the Kaiser, and
was hand in glove with the holy rascal, with his miracle-working, behind
the throne.
Rasputin, himself receiving heavy payments from Germany, had acquired
already the most complete confidence of the Tsar and Tsaritza; indeed,
to such an extent that no affair of State was even decided by the
weak-kneed autocrat without the horse-stealer's evil counsel. Loyal to
his Potsdam paymaster, Rasputin gave his advice with that low and clever
cunning which ever distinguished him. He gave it as a loyal Russian,
but always with the ulterior motive of extending the tentacles of German
influence eastward.
In the voluminous confidential report here before me as I write, the
disclosures of the rise and fall of Rasputin, I find an interesting
memorandum concerning a certain Paul Rodzevitch, son of a member of the
Council of the Empire. Alexander Makaroff, one of the three private
secretaries of the Emperor, had died suddenly of heart disease, the
result of a drinking bout at the Old Donon, and at the dinner-table of
the Imperial family at Tsarskoe-Selo the matter was being discussed,
Rasputin being present. He was unkempt, unwashed--with untrimmed beard,
and a filthy black coat greasy at the collar, and his high boots worn
down at heel, as became a "holy man."
The Tsar was deploring the death of this fellow Makaroff, a person whose
evil life was notorious in Petrograd, and whose young wife--then only
twenty--had followed the example of the Empress, and had become a
"sister-disciple."
"Friend!" exclaimed the "Saint" with pious upward glance, for he had the
audacity to address the Emperor thus familiarly, "Friend! Thou needst
not seek far for another secretary; I know of one who is accomplished,
loyal and of noble birth. He is Paul Rodzevitch. I will bring him to
thee to-morrow as thy new secretary--and he will serve thee well."
His Majesty expressed satisfaction, for the holy man, the holiest man in
all holy Russia, as was his reputation, had spoken.
Next day the good-looking young fellow was appointed, and into his hand
was given His Majesty's private cipher. None knew, until it was
revealed by the band of Russian patriots united to unmask the spy, that
this fellow Rodzevitch had spent two years in Germany before the war, or
that he was in receipt of a gratuity of twenty-five thousand marks
annually from the spy bureau in the Koniggratzer-strasse in Berlin!
By this means Rasputin placed a spy of Germany upon all the Tsar's most
confidential correspondence.
Madame Vyrubova, and the infernal witchdoctor, were already
all-dominant. Sturmer and Protopopoff were but pawns in the subtle and
desperate game which Germany was playing in Russia. The food scarcity
engineered by Kurloff; the military scandals engineered by a certain
creature of the Kaiser's called Nicolski; the successful plot which
resulted in the destruction of a great munition works with terrible loss
of life near Petrograd; the chaos of all transport; the constant
wrecking of trains, and the breakdown of the strategic line from the
Arctic coast across the Lapland marshes, were all combining to hurl the
Empire to the abyss of destruction.
One day the Grand Duke Nicholas visited Tsarskoe-Selo, where he had a
private interview with the Emperor--Rasputin's creature, the new
secretary Rodzevitch, being present. The Emperor had every belief in
the man's loyalty. His Majesty, weak and easily misled, never dreamed
of treachery within his private cabinet.
The words spoken by the Grand Duke that afternoon were terse, and to the
point.
"The Empire is doomed!" he said. "This verminous fellow Rasputin--the
man contemptuously known in the slums of the capital as `Grichka,' is
working out Germany's plans. I have watched and discovered that he is
the associate of pro-Germans, and that his is the hand which in secret
is directing all these disasters which follow so quickly upon each
other."
"But he is a friend of Protopopoff!" the Emperor exclaimed.
"Protopopoff has been to England. He has gone over the munition
factories in Scotland that are working for us; he has visited the
British fleet, and when I gave him audience a few weeks ago, he
expressed himself as a firm supporter of our Allies. Read his speech in
the Duma only the night before last!"
"I have already read it," replied the Grand Duke. "But it does not
alter my opinion in the least. He is hand-in-glove with the monk and
with the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Why you continue to have either
of them about you I cannot imagine. If you do not dismiss them, then
the House of Romanoff must fall, I tell you that," he declared quite
bluntly.
His Majesty pandered for a moment and replied--"Then I will give orders
to the Censor that the names of neither are in future to be mentioned
publicly."
This is all the notice the Emperor took of the Grand Duke's first
warning. The people did not dare in future to mention "Grichka," for
fear of instant arrest.
Since the outbreak of war Mother Grundy has expired in every country in
Europe. An unfortunate wave of moral irresponsibility seems to have
swept the world, and nowhere has it been more apparent than in Russia.
This unwashed rascal who posed as a saint, who, by his clever
manoeuvres, his secret drugs and his bribes, had become so popular with
the people, was entirely unsuspected by the simple folks who comprise
the bulk of Russia's millions. To them he was a "holy man" whom the
great Tsar admired and fed at his table. No one suspected the
miracle-worker to be the secret ambassador of the Assassin of Potsdam.
Everywhere he went--Moscow, Kazan, Odessa, Nijni, and other cities, he
was fierce in his hatred of the Kaiser, and while cleverly scheming for
the downfall of his own people, he was yet at the same time urging them
to prosecute the war.
A man of abnormal intellect, he was a criminal lunatic of that types
which the world sees once every century; a man whose physical powers
were amazing, and who though dirty and verminous, with long hair
unbrushed and beard untrimmed for a year at a time, could exercise a
weird and uncanny fascination which few women, even the most refined,
could resist.
The terms upon which Rasputin was with the Empress it has been given to
me to reveal in this volume. They would have been beyond credence if
the German spy who had been placed as secretary to the Emperor, had been
loyal to his unscrupulous employers. But he was not. Money does much
in these war-days, and in consequence of a big payment made to him by
Rasputin's enemies, the patriots of Russia--and they were many--he
intercepted a letter sent by the Empress to her "Holy Father" early in
1916--a copy of which I have in the formidable dossier of confidential
documents from which I am culling these curious details.
The "Holy Father" in hair-shirt and sandals had gone forth upon a
pilgrimage, and the female portion of Petrograd society were in
consequence desolate. The house in the Gorokhovaya stood with its
closed wooden shutters. Sturmer was at the Empress's side, but
Protopopoff--Satan in a silk hat as he has been called--had gone upon a
mission to Paris.
The letter before me was addressed in her Majesty's hand to Rasputin, at
the Verkhotursky Monastery at Perm, whither he had retired in order to
found a provincial branch of his "Believers" and initiate them into the
mysteries of his new religion.
This amazing letter which plainly shows the terms upon which the Empress
of Russia was with the convicted criminal from Pokrovsky, contains many
errors in Russian, for the German wife of the Tsar has never learnt to
write Russian correctly, and reads as follows--
"Holy Father! Why have you not written? Why this long dead silence
when my poor heart is hourly yearning for news of you, and for your
words of comfort?
"I am, alas! weak, but I love you, for you are all in all to me. Oh! if
I could but hold your dear hand and lay my head upon your shoulder! Ah!
can I ever forget that feeling of perfect peace and blank forgetfulness
that I experience when you are near me? Now that you have gone, life is
only one grey sea of despair. There was a Court last night, but I did
not attend. Instead, Anna (Madame Vyrubova) and I read your sweet
letters together, and we kissed your picture.
"As I have so often told you, dear Father, I want to be a good daughter
of Christ. But oh! it is so very difficult. Help me, dear Father.
Pray for me. Pray always for Alexis (the Tsarevitch). Come back to us
at once. Nikki (the Tsar) says we cannot endure life without you, for
there are so many pitfalls before us. For myself, I am longing for your
return--longing--always longing!
"Without our weekly meetings all is gloom.
"Only the everlasting toll of war! Germany is winning--as she will
surely win. But we must all of us maintain a brave face towards our
Russian public. In you alone I have faith. May God bring you back to
us very soon. Alexis is asking for you daily. We are due to go to
Yalta, but shall not move before we meet here. I embrace you, and so do
Nikki and Anna.
"Your devoted daughter, Alec." Has history ever before recorded such an
astounding letter written by a reigning Empress to a sham saint?
It must not be thought that Rasputin was without enemies. He had hosts
of them, but in an almost incredible manner he seemed to scent danger
wherever it lurked, and eluded the various traps set for him. This was
probably because he had surrounded himself by creatures ready to do any
evil work he ordered. Not only had he earned the most bitter vengeance
of wronged husbands and fathers, but he had against him a small league
of patriotic Russians, men and women, headed by a civil servant named
Vilieff, who had banded themselves together with a view to tear away the
veil and unmask the traitor. The rascal knew this, and was ever upon
his guard, while Sturmer and Kurloff used their great influence for his
protection. At the same time Rasputin had corrupted the Russian Church
in its centres of power and administration until nearly half its high
ecclesiastics were agents of Germany.
In order to exhibit a swift, relentless hand in dealing with any enemy
who should arise against him, Rasputin one evening cordially invited
Vilieff, who had sworn to open the eyes of the people to the mock-monk's
villainy. Indeed, he had travelled to far-off Pokrovsky and collected
much damning evidence concerning Grichka's past. Kurloff was at dinner
to meet the young man, the bait offered by Rasputin being that the
official of the Ministry of the Interior intended to promote him to a
highly lucrative post in his department.
According to a statement made by the monk's wily accomplice,
Yepantchine, who afterwards came forward and made so many revelations,
only the trio sat down to dinner, whereupon the traitorous bureaucrat
openly suggested that the band he had formed against Rasputin should be
betrayed to the Palace police, in return for which he had ready for him
five thousand roubles in cash, and, in addition, would there and then
appoint him to a lucrative position in the chancellerie of the Ministry.
On hearing this, the young man sprang up and angrily denounced both monk
and minister as traitors, declaring that he would at once expose the
effort to purchase his silence.
Without further ado Rasputin drew a revolver and, secretly approaching
him, shot him dead.
His body was found in the snow near the corner of the Kazanskaya early
next morning. The dead man's friends, who knew of his visit to Rasputin
that night, informed the police, but the monk was already before them.
At dawn he sought the Emperor at the Tsarskoe-Selo, and found him in his
dressing-gown. To him he complained that enemies were making a
disgraceful charge against him, and added:--
"I seek thy protecting hand, friend. Wilt thou give orders to the
police to leave me unmolested?"
The Emperor, who believed in him as implicitly as his wife, at once gave
orders over the telephone, and thus the murder was suppressed.
A week later a man named Rouchine, who had, with Yepantchine, assisted
him in his mock-miracles, discovered him with a certain Swede named
Wemstedt, who was chief of the German Secret Service in Stockholm, and
who had come in disguise to Petrograd to obtain certain reports
furnished by Sturmer. His secret visit to Rasputin's house was to get
the documents for transmission to Germany, and to make one of the large
monthly payments to the monk for his services as the Kaiser's agent.
Their meeting was watched by Rouchine, who overheard greater part of the
conversation of the pair ere the "Saint" became aware there was an
eavesdropper. Instantly he scented danger, for he trusted nobody; the
monk made no sign, but when Wemstedt had gone he placed a bottle of
vodka in a spot where he knew that Rouchine would find it.
As he expected, his servant drank a glass, and within half-an-hour he
expired in terrible agony, with Rasputin jeering at him in his
death-throes.
It is computed that during 1916 no fewer than twenty persons lost their
lives in consequence of visits to that sinister house within the shadow
of the Winter Palace. Armed with those secret Chinese drugs, the pious
assassin could administer baneful doses which proved fatal hours
afterwards, with symptoms which completely deceived the doctors.
Knowing his own danger, he one day hit upon a new plan for his own
protection, and when at dinner at the Imperial table he, addressing the
Empress, said:
"A vision of the fixture hath to-day been revealed unto me! It is a
warning--one that thou surely shouldst heed! When I die, Alexis will
live but forty days longer. Surrounded as I am by those who seek my
downfall and death, I know not what plots may be formed against me. I
only know that assuredly Alexis will only survive me through forty days.
If God wills it, my end may be to-morrow!" he added, raising his eyes
piously.