serious blow at its adversaries if, just at the time, the children of
the Empress had not sickened from the measles in a serious form. The
mother forgot all her political intrigues in her anxiety; the plot about
to be executed had perforce to be put off until a more favorable day. It
must be here remarked that the Czar, when he heard about his son’s and
daughters’ illness, telegraphed to his wife asking her whether she
wished him to come back to Tsarskoye Selo. This did not suit in the
least the people who were only waiting for a favorable opportunity to
dethrone their Sovereign. Alexandra Feodorowna was easily persuaded to
oppose herself to this desire of her husband and to wire back to him not
to return. By a singular coincidence the presence of Nicholas II. at
Tsarskoye Selo, which would without doubt have given quite another
coloring to events which were going to happen within a few days, was
desired neither by his friends nor by his foes nor even by his family.
They all of them knew that something terrible was about to take place,
but they also felt that, for the sake of everybody, it would be better
he should be absent.
And in the silence of his study at Potsdam the Kaiser was secretly
discounting this Russian Revolution which he saw quite clearly was
approaching with quickening strides. He knew what he was about, and
little did it matter to him if those whom he had used as pawns in the
difficult game he had been playing would perish or not in the storm
which his efforts had contributed to let loose.
XXV
THE NATION WANTS YOUR HEAD
I feel personally sure--and others who were in Petrograd at the time of
the fall of the Romanoffs told me the same thing--that in this whole
history of the overthrow of one of the most formidable powers the world
had ever known there are yet details which we do not know. In fact, no
one knows them, but perhaps they will be explained to us later on. The
catastrophe occurred with such startling rapidity that even those who
were the most concerned in it were hardly able to realize its
importance, even while recognizing its seriousness.
There is also another curious feature connected with the tragedy. All
its principal actors, the men who were really instrumental in bringing
about the change which transformed Russia from an autocratic--the most
autocratic Government in the world, in fact--into a democratic Republic
disappeared before even their task was done. It was the Duma in the
person of its president, Mr. Rodzianko, it was the zemstwos who had
taken up the cause of the liberal movement from the very beginning of
the war, who really were responsible for the abdication of Nicholas II.
And yet the Duma disappeared, melted into space with an unbelievable
rapidity; Mr. Rodzianko has hardly been heard of since the activity of
the zemstwos was suddenly interrupted.
How did all this happen? Who was responsible for the chaos into which
Russia is plunged at the present moment? It is next to impossible to say
to-day, though one may easily guess. All that the world knows is that
chaos has supervened, and that, thanks to this chaos, Germans have once
more re-entered Petrograd, by the back door, perhaps, but still
re-entered it, and what does this detail matter to them! What they
wanted was only to get there again; the rest would adjust itself as time
went on, and the general confusion became even more complete than it was
at the beginning.
Another feature in this extraordinary Revolution was the swiftness with
which the country accepted it and accommodated itself to its
consequences. In the space of a few hours the portraits of the Czar had
disappeared from all public places, the Imperial arms, wherever these
had graced a shop or concern of some kind, had followed suit. Ushers in
the former Imperial theaters had discarded their liveries, sentinels at
the Winter Palace had been removed, and the Red flag had taken the
place of the Romanoff standard on top of the Imperial Residence. All
this had been performed quietly, joyously, and in a perfectly orderly
manner. It seemed almost as if people had been prepared for a long time
for what was to come and had practised beforehand the various
manifestations of their joy to which they gave vent as soon as it became
known that the Guard regiments quartered in the capital had gone over to
the Duma and sworn allegiance to Mr. Rodzianko, its president.
Of the war there was no longer any question. It seemed to be forgotten
in the excitement of the hour, and somehow a general impression
prevailed that, once the Czar had been overturned, peace was but a
question of days. By one of those strange anomalies such as happen so
often in life, the Czar had been accused of wishing to bring this peace
about; yet when he was no longer there the world rejoiced at the thought
that peace would surely be concluded before any unreasonable quantity of
water had run through the Neva. It is also a singular feature of this
singular time that while Petrograd was in the throes of revolution,
while Ministers with Mr. Protopopoff at their head were being arrested
and transferred to the fortress, the Czar at headquarters and the
Empress at Tsarskoye Selo did not in the least suspect what was taking
place in the capital. It was said later that the Grand-Duke Paul had
forced his way into the apartments of Alexandra Feodorowna and had
acquainted her with the details of the upheaval which was to carry away
her Throne.
I can hardly bring myself to believe this. For one thing, no one in the
Imperial Family cared sufficiently for the Czarina to take the trouble
to warn her of any peril in which she might find herself. And then she
had not been upon good terms with the Grand-Duke Paul in particular; it
is to be questioned if she would, in view of the fact that it was his
son who had helped to slay Raspoutine, have consented to receive him in
general. I think it far more likely that it was only through the
indiscretion of some of her attendants that the Empress heard of what
was taking place. It is probable her first thought was that her friends
had been working in her behalf, and that the insurrectionary movement
which was shaking Petrograd was distinctly in her favor; that its aim
was to make out of her the Regent of the Russian Empire.
It would be difficult, otherwise, to understand her apathy in the
presence of this overwhelming catastrophe, or the resistance which she
opposed to the advice which the few attendants who were still faithful
to her and who had remained at Tsarskoye Selo, gave to her--to telegraph
immediately to the Czar to return home. Up to the last minute she
refused to do so, saying that she felt quite capable of resisting the
mob in case it chose to invade the Imperial Residence. And at last it
was not she, but the officer in command of the troops quartered in the
town, who took it upon himself to inform General Woyeikoff, head of the
Okhrana, or personal police service of the Czar, that it was high time
for the Sovereign to return home, as he could no longer guarantee the
safety of the Empress and of her children. All the regiments under his
orders had gone over to the enemy.
Alexandra Feodorowna was waiting the whole time for Protopopoff and
Sturmer; she was only wondering why they were so long in coming to her.
When at last she was informed that they had been arrested by the mob and
taken to the fortress, whither they had sent so many innocent people,
she began to realize that things were not going so smoothly as she had
fondly imagined, that something quite out of the common had taken place.
Then she remembered certain words which Raspoutine had told her: so long
as he was at her side no harm would befall her, but that, if he were
once removed, misfortune upon misfortune would crowd on the House of
Romanoff and sweep away the Crown to which she had become so attached.
In that acute moment when there flashed across her mind this prediction
of a man in whom she had seen a Prophet of the Almighty, and the Empress
realized the tragedy of her destiny, all the courage of which she had
boasted earlier fell flat to the ground. She no longer thought of
struggling against an implacable fate, and a complete indifference as to
her possible future took the place of her previous energy and
determination. The game was lost, absolutely lost, and she had better
confess herself beaten before any more harm was done.
News of her husband’s abdication reached her, and did not even rouse her
sentiments of revolt at a piece of weakness which, under different
circumstances, would have brought on one of those hysterical attacks to
which she had been subject. She understood that she was alone, quite
alone with the burden of her past sins and mistakes. She accepted with
stoical resignation the decrees of Destiny. Not one single feeling of
pity for the miserable Monarch for whose fall she was so responsible, or
for the children about to lose a glorious inheritance, moved her heart.
She was thinking the whole time of the dead man who had loved her and of
the murdered adventurer who had comforted her in the hours of her
greatest moral agony.
Nothing seemed to make any impression on her blurred mind--not even the
angry crowd when it appeared in the courtyard of the Palace where she
was still staying, carrying before it great banners upon which were
written the ominous words:
“Give us the head of Alexandra Feodorowna! We want the head of that
German woman, Alexandra Feodorowna!”
When asked to leave the window and not to appear before this multitude
clamoring for her blood, she merely shrugged her shoulders and remained
where she was. She certainly was not courageous, but she did not lack
bravery--the bravery born of fatalism or of indifference, which renders
those who are endowed with it impassible before danger, because they
fail to realize its importance or its imminence. This woman is a
historical riddle which only history will be able to unravel, but not so
soon as one imagines, because it is likely that she has not yet come to
the end of her sinister and mischievous career.
While the life of his wife was threatened, while his Ministers were
imprisoned, and while the nation was preparing to claim his abdication,
Nicholas II., at Mohilew, where headquarters were stationed, remained
just as indifferent to the convulsions which were shaking his country as
the Empress watching by the bedside of her sick children. He also did
not understand; he also failed to realize that what was taking place in
Petrograd was the first act of a big game the stakes of which might
easily come to be his own head and those of his family. The thought of
Louis XVI. never once crossed his mind. At least it is allowed one to
suppose so, because, when some officers of his suite remarked to him
that the rebellion (the news of which had by that time reached him) bore
many traits of resemblance to the premonitory riots that had heralded
the introduction of the Terror in France, he simply replied:
“Oh, it is not at all the same thing. Russians are not Frenchmen--and
the Romanoffs are not the Bourbons.”
The Czar might at this early stage of the Revolution have returned to
Tsarskoye Selo if he had only energetically insisted upon doing so. But
he spent three days in complete indecision, and when at last he made up
his mind to go home it was too late. By that time General Aléxieieff had
been won over to the cause of the Duma, which was supposed to represent
the only responsible authority in Russia; he put every possible obstacle
in his way, going so far as to interfere with the arrangements made by
General Woyeikoff for the departure of the Imperial train. It seems also
that he sent telegrams asking for this train to be either stopped or at
least delayed on its way.
No one at this stage wished Nicholas II. to go back to Petrograd, where
it was feared his presence would prevent, if not stop, the establishment
of the new Government; a useless fear, because, even if he had reached
his former capital, he would never have found sufficient courage or
energy to fight against an adverse fate or to do aught else but submit
to the will of the multitude eager for his fall. The man who signed
without one word of protest an abdication against which his whole soul
ought to have protested, such a man was not to be feared, he could only
be despised.
This was also the feeling which the whole nation began to entertain for
him. People had pitied him in the beginning, but as the details of his
conduct at Pskow became known, contempt took the place of any
commiseration which the tragedy of his fate might have provoked. This
opinion was so general that a friend of mine happening to discuss with
one of the Deputies of the Workmen in those Soviets which were being
organized just then the conduct of the former Czar, asked if he thought
it likely the life of the deposed ruler was in danger. He received this
characteristic reply:
“In danger? No. He is not worth a shot.”
It is likely that the Empress, if she had been asked her opinion, would
have agreed with this judgment. Though she had also thrown up her hands
and renounced the game, she would not have given up her rights to the
Crown that had been put upon her brow with such pomp and ceremony at
Moscow twenty-one years before. She would have fought against the
insolence of those who had come to demand it from her. Here I must say
that, according to the words of one of the two Deputies sent by the Duma
to interview Nicholas II. at Pskow, the prestige of the latter’s
personality as the anointed Czar of All the Russias was still so great
that if he had mustered sufficient energy to throw out of the railway
carriage the men audacious enough to claim his abdication, this gesture
of Imperial rage would have brought back to him the allegiance of the
troops. He was living through a terrible drama, and he was accepting it
like a comedy. After having disgraced himself, he was dishonoring by his
attitude the misfortunes which had fallen on his country, on his
dynasty, and on his race.
XXVI
A CROWN IS LOST
The Monarchy of the Romanoffs had fallen like a house of cards which
crumbles on the ground at the slightest touch. It had been considered
one of the strongest, one of the most powerful, in Europe; yet its
collapse had come with an amazing promptitude and there had not been
found in the whole vast Empire over which it had ruled one single man or
woman willing to arrest its downward course toward the abyss into which
it finally disappeared. What the tyranny of Nicholas I., the selfishness
of Alexander II., and the iron rule of Alexander III. had failed to
produce, the weakness, indecision, and incapacity of Nicholas II. had
made easy. What a German Princess, Catherine II., had maintained,
another German Princess compromised and lost forever.
Without wishing to add to the faults and mistakes of Alexandra
Feodorowna, it is nevertheless quite impossible to acquit her of blame
in the catastrophe which finally wrecked poor, unfortunate Russia.
Without her it is likely that the Crown would have kept some prestige,
at least in the eyes of those whose family traditions were linked with
the fate of the Monarchy in their country. She destroyed this prestige
by the singularity of her conduct, the want of balance of her mind, and
her proud, haughty, and totally false conception of the Russian
character. She firmly believed that nothing she could do would be
criticized and that even those who disliked her, whose number was
legion, as she knew very well, would never dare to question her right to
do whatever she pleased, or to choose her friends no matter in what
circles or among what kind of people.
This woman, whom misfortune associated with the fate of the House of
Romanoff at the very time when the latter ought to have had the aid of
an intelligent, well-intentioned, and unselfish Princess to help it face
the dangers which were threatening it, had never known how to put
herself at the level of the persons by whom she found herself
surrounded. She lacked not only tact, but also generosity, and she never
could hold broad views about anything or about anybody. She was as
scathing as she was hasty in her judgments. From the very first day she
was raised to the Throne of Russia she abused the privileges which her
position conferred upon her, and either through stupidity--or
willingly--because of her dislike for the nation whose Crown she wore,
she applied herself to wound those whom she ought to have spared and to
propitiate persons whom it would have been imperative for her to keep
away as far as possible from her person and from that of her husband.
Of course she was in a certain sense a strong character, in so far, at
least, as she never would yield to reason or accept any compromise. She
had principles of her own, which, however, did not help her to win
respect for herself or esteem for her conduct. Without ever allowing
herself to be led by impulse, she failed to perceive that in most of her
actions she was influenced by superstition of a most foolish kind. The
fact that insanity existed in her family may excuse her to a certain
point, but should not blind us to faults which might easily have been
corrected had she only realized their existence.
She was a blameless wife; about this there cannot be any doubt. But she
never loved her husband and she only cared for his position. She was a
tender mother, at least to her son, whatever may have been her feelings
in regard to her daughters, whom she most unjustly blamed for their sex,
if we are to believe all that we have been told on the subject. But she
lacked sympathy, which she never could give to others or win for
herself. She was a cold, ambitious, stern creature, so convinced of her
own perfection that she never could be brought to see good in anything
with which she was not connected in some way or other. Her life
certainly had tragedy entwined with its course. Perhaps the most cruel
blow, until the final catastrophe that wrecked all her hopes, had been
her unfortunate affection for the dashing officer, Colonel Orloff, who
had died to save her honor and good name, whose post-mortem influence
had been so cleverly made use of by unscrupulous adventurers in order to
win her confidence. Alexandra had always at heart despised the weak man
to whom she was married, but she had loved the high position which,
thanks to her union with him, she had acquired; she would have liked to
remain alone in control of it and to revenge her supposed wrongs at the
hands of the Russian nation, by delivering it into the power of that
German Fatherland of hers to which she had always remained attached. Her
desire for peace was sincere (at least we must hope so), and everything
we know about her and about her conduct during that momentous time when
she kept working toward its conclusion points to the truth of this
supposition. It had all along been a terrible trial for her to find the
land of her birth at war with that of her adoption, and to this initial
agony was added the superstitious terror which Raspoutine had inspired
in her, thanks to the hypnotic practices in which he had induced her to
participate--terror which ended by completely wrecking her already
badly balanced mind.
But the supreme misfortune of the last Empress of Russia, a misfortune
for which she was not responsible, was the fact of her having been
married to a being who was too weak to lead her, too selfish to
understand her, too cruelly inclined to sympathize with her; who at the
same time did not acquire sufficient authority over her to inspire her
with respect for his individuality as a man and for his position as a
Sovereign. Had she been the wife of Alexander III., it is likely that
she would have turned out entirely another woman from the one which she
ultimately became; on the other hand, had Nicholas II. had for Consort a
person different from the one to whom destiny had linked him, it is also
probable that he would have contrived to avoid some of the mistakes into
which he fell. He might have shown himself more plucky and more human in
the different moments of crisis which made his reign such a sad and such
an unfortunate one.
One of the most tragical things with which a student of history finds
himself confronted when he analyzes any of the great catastrophes that
come to change the fate of nations is the total insufficiency of the
people who have to meet them or to handle them. There is no more pitiful
spectacle than the vacillations of Louis XVI. during the first days of
the great Revolution which sent him to the scaffold. Witness the want of
character of the miserable Czar who is meditating at present in Tobolsk
over the misfortunes that have landed him into exile; it is another of
those sights one should have liked to see spared to posterity. During
the twenty-two years he occupied the Russian Throne Nicholas II.
constantly opposed himself to the wishes of his people, even the most
reasonable ones, when he thought that they implied any diminution of his
personal prerogatives or power. He sent hundreds of thousands of
innocent people to the gallows or to horrible Siberian prisons under the
slightest of pretexts. He had no hesitation at spilling the blood of his
subjects either on the battle-field or on the scaffold. He allowed the
detestable police system, which became, under his rule, stronger than it
had ever been before, to interfere with private liberty and private
opinions to an extent that had never been witnessed in his country even
in the times of Nicholas I. or of Paul. While he reigned no one felt
secure in his home or could go to bed with the consciousness that he
would not be wakened in the middle of the night by an army of police
agents come to search his drawers, or to arrest him under the most
futile of pretexts or simply because he had refused to pay a bribe. And
yet that man in whose name the most terrible injustices had been
committed, who did not admit any resistance to his will, who believed in
his unlimited power over one hundred and eighty millions of human
beings--that man did not find sufficient courage to resist the only
demand, among the many which were addressed to him during the course of
his nefarious reign, that he ought never to have granted; and without
one single thought of the future of his country or of his son he gave up
without a murmur the Crown of which he was the bearer, when two
determined men came to claim it from him, and he did so without even
noticing that they were far more awed by the solemnity of the scene in
which they found themselves unwilling actors than he was himself.
There never was a Throne relinquished with less dignity, there never was
an act of abdication accomplished with less consciousness of the
importance of its meaning. When one recapitulates all the details of the
drama which was performed at Pskow, one can, when one is a Russian, feel
but one passionate regret--that no one was found by the side of the last
crowned Romanoff to drive a knife into his heart or put a bullet through
his brain, and thus spare this haughty dynasty the shame of having been
dragged into the gutter by its Head.
It is scarcely to be doubted that if Nicholas II. had only given more
thought to the importance of the act he was invited to perform he might
at least have saved his dynasty, if not himself. His brother, the
Grand-Duke Michael, who could easily renounce the Crown for himself,
would hardly have been able to refuse the Regency on behalf of his
little nephew. A man with the slightest political knowledge would have
put the interests of his country before his own selfish feelings of
paternal affection, and the Czar ought to have abdicated in favor of his
son, and not have put forward this stupid pretext of lacking the courage
to part from him. This very remark proves how little he understood the
situation in which he found himself. It also shows us how utterly
helpless he was when confronted by any difficulties of an overpowering
and potential character. When one considers his whole conduct during
those eventful hours when he lost not only his own, but his posterity’s,
Crown, it is impossible not to wonder as to whether or not there was any
truth in the rumor that the Empress had been giving him drugs of some
kind with the purpose of annihilating his will. It seems almost
incredible that any man should have so quietly and so spontaneously lent
a hand to his own degradation.