He built a family with Maria Naryshkina, the reigning court beauty;
And, among many mistresses at the Congress of Vienna, he enjoyed the favours of Princess Katya Bagration, known as ‘Naked Angel’ and ‘White Pussycat’.
Alexander learns of the victory at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813, with Austrian Emperor Francis and Prussian King Frederick William – this accelerated the fall of Napoleon.
A rare happy marriage: Nicholas I loved his Prussian wife
Their favourite home was the Cottage,
Mouffy with the future Alexander II and Maria.
Peterhof, but the Great Kremlin Palace better reflected Nicholas’s vision of Russia.
Varenka Nelidova, the beauty of Nicholas’s court, was his favourite mistress whom he visited twice daily.
Nicholas regarded the poet Pushkin as a troublesome if disreputable talent: he censored his poetry, fancied his wife and banned him from fighting his fatal duel – but to no avail.
Alexander II was the most endearing and attractive of the Romanovs. His liberation of the serfs was wildly popular, but it raised expectations that could not be satisfied.
After the disaster of the Crimean War, Alexander’s best friend and swashbuckling paladin Prince Bariatinsky finally defeated the jihadi insurgency in the Caucasus: here Bariatinsky (seated) accepts the surrender of the legendary leader Shamyl.
Nixa, eldest son of Alexander II, was the perfect heir, who fell in love with the perfect consort, Minny of Denmark. His early death ruined his parents’ marriage.
Minny later became engaged to his brother, the galumphing giant, Sasha, later Alexander III.
Alexander II with his dull, ailing empress, Marie, who gave him a bounty of male heirs: (from left) Paul, Sergei, Maria, Alexis, Sasha (leaning proudly over Minny, holding the future Nicholas II) and Vladimir.
Alexander II fell in love with Katya Dolgorukaya, with two of their children when she was a schoolgirl.
They finally became lovers at Belvedere;
Alexander praised Katya’s capacity for sexual pleasure and her luxurious golden hair and body, which he himself sketched.
Diamonds for his American courtesan Fanny Lear, while his next son, KR, became a poet-playwright with a secret sexual life.
After Alexander II’s hedonistic sailor son Alexis impregnated his mistress, he was sent on an American tour, (with General Custer), where he hunted buffalo and showgirls.
Alexander II’s brother, Kostia, helped push through his reforms, but his eldest son Nikola (standing), was a decadent erotomaniac who stole his parents’
Alexander II almost took Constantinople but he was foiled at the Congress of Berlin: in the centre, Prince Bismarck celebrates between the Austrian Count Andrássy and Count Peter Shuvalov (formerly the tsar’s chief minister), as the marquess of Salisbury (bearded,) talks to Ottoman delegates, while, on the left, the senile Prince Alexander Gorchakov sits overshadowed by the British prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli.
Romanov coronations were sacred-political rituals designed to bless and promote sacred autocracy: Alexander III, crowned after the assassination of his father, said his was ‘the happiest day of my life’.
Alexander III, ‘the Colossus’, at his main residence Gatchina, with Nicky, Xenia, Georgy, Olga and (in front) Michael and Kamchatka the dog.
Nicky’s ballerina, ‘Little K’.
The European royal family at the wedding in April 1894 of Ernie of Hesse and Ducky of Edinburgh in Coburg, where Nicky and Alix became engaged: Kaiser Wilhelm and Queen Victoria are seated; Second row: the newly engaged Nicholas and Alexandra stand behind them; her two sisters, Victoria and Irene; Miechen, wife of Grand Duke Vladimir; Alexander II’s daughter, Maria, duchess of Edinburgh/Saxe-Coburg; Bertie, prince of Wales, looms behind Nicky. Back row: Grand Duke Paul (second from left), Grand Duke Sergei (centre, in a bowler hat); Missy of Romania is behind him; Ferdinand of Romania, Ella, Grand Duke Vladimir and, on the extreme right, Alfred, duke of Edinburgh/Saxe-Coburg.
The last court spectacular: the 1903 costume ball. Nicky and Alix dressed as Tsar Alexei and Maria Miloslavskaya.
Moscow governor-general, the strange Uncle Sergei, with Ella, Alix’s sister.
Decadent Uncle Alexis, the general-admiral notorious for his ‘fast women, slow ships’; his mistress Zina,
Duchess of Leutchenberg, ‘would have made her fortune on the screen as a vamp’.
THE IMPERIAL RESIDENCES
1. Winter Palace, St Petersburg
2. The Cameron Gallery, Catherine Palace, Tsarskoe Selo
3. Alexander Palace, Tsarskoe Selo
4. The Little Palace, Livadia, Crimea
5. The White Palace, Livadia, Crimea
6. The Lower Dacha, Peterhof
The massacre of Bloody Sunday sparked the 1905 Revolution;
Nicholas summoned Sergei Witte to negotiate peace with Japan in New Hampshire, with President Teddy Roosevelt (centre) and Japanese delegates. Nicholas conceded a constitution:
opening the Duma at the ceremony in the Winter Palace – grandees to the left, socialists to the right.
The only photograph of Rasputin with Alexandra and the children – Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexei – with their nurse Maria Vishnyakova. The girls were still wearing his amulets when they were murdered.
Rasputin’s sexuality was feral – here he is with female adepts including Anna Vyrubova (standing, third from left), the empress’s best friend and her link with Rasputin.
Nicky and the girls escort Alexandra, with Alexei on a tricycle.
His haemophilia meant he could not play like other children, while Alexandra was constantly ill. She and Alexei out in their wheelchairs;
Nicholas, the diligent autocrat, reads his ‘bothersome papers’ at Alexander Palace.
At a family picnic in Crimea, a strange triangle – Alexandra watches Nicholas next to Anna Vyrubova, who played footsie with him under the table.
Nicholas hiking in Crimea with key courtiers in 1908, including his best friend General (‘Thin’) Orlov (centre), the only man to flirt with Alexandra, and Prince Vladimir (‘Fat’) Orlov (second from right), who later plotted against Rasputin.
With his daughters in 1914, (from left) Tatiana, Anastasia and Olga.
‘If only she could be well’, said Nicky: Alexandra’s hysteria and illness were almost as stressful for the family as Alexei’s haemophilia.
Alix hugs her son in the mauve boudoir, Alexander Palace; but she needed constant nursing herself by Anna Vyrubova and her daughters.
The familiar sight of the family escorting the empress in her wheelchair, Crimea.
Encouraged by Fat Orlov, Nicholas started to collect motor cars: in Crimea in 1913, the empress arrives in a Delaunay-Belleville; Nicholas’s Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost (right), was one of two Rolls he owned at Livadia.
The Shtandart yacht was the family’s favourite holiday: in June 1909 they were joined by Kaiser Wilhelm II (top left) who constantly canvassed Nicholas to leave the French alliance and join Germany.
Above and below right Livadia and the Shtandart were places of freedom and fun:
In September 1911 the older daughters, Olga and Tatiana, flirt with their favourite Shtandart officers including Pavel Voronov (with whom Olga was in love); and dance around the deck with the officers.
Summer 1912, in a secluded Finnish fjord, Nicholas, a believer in hydrotherapy, bathes naked;
while down in Livadia, he lets Anastasia puff on a cigarette.
The family entertainer, mischievous and intelligent Anastasia takes possibly the first selfie.
Alexandra, photographed in her nightgown by one of her daughters.
As Alexandra and the girls arrive at Kiev Station in 1911, Nicholas is met by his prime minister, the great statesman of his reign, Peter Stolypin, while the bewhiskered Baron Frederiks checks his medals. Alexandra believed God had withdrawn protection from Stolypin – and she was soon proved right.
Alexei
(top left, guarding a picnic during a Shtandart cruise) longed to be a soldier.
Father and son in uniform at the Alexander Palace.
In 1912, the family were hunting at their estate Spała in Poland when Alexei suffered his worst attack.
As his mother kept vigil, Rasputin sent word: ‘The little one will not die.’
But the boy still could not walk and was carried at the tercentenary celebrations in Moscow 1913.
Summer 1914: at Peterhof, Tatiana, Anastasia, Maria and the tsar balance backwards (left), watched by Anna Vyruboba.
First World War headquarters: at Mogilev, Supreme Commander Nicholas and Alexei review their cavalry;
and at Baranovichi, Nicholas with Supreme Commander Nikolasha and Count Frederiks.
At Tsarskoe Selo, during the war, Alix and the eldest girls served as nurses: here they enjoy a swordfight on the ward with their wounded soldiers.
Nicholas took supreme command but allowed Alexandra to run the government in Petrograd, advised by Rasputin. In May 1916, she visited him at his Mogilev headquarters to insist on sacking more minsters.
The influence of Alexandra and Rasputin outraged society:
Prince Felix Yusupov, bisexual playboy married to the tsar’s niece Irina, and Grand Duke Dmitri (with Alexandra) decided to kill Rasputin. Yusupov’s memoirs were melodramatic but in fact Rasputin was effectively executed.
When the body was found (below left), the fatal shot was clearly visible – point blank in the middle of the forehead.
The family on the roof of the governor’s house in Tobolsk;
After the revolution: Nicholas in the woods at Tsarskoe Selo;
and one of the last photos ever taken of Nicky and Alix, together at Tobolsk (below right) before they were moved to Ekaterinburg. ‘A revolution without firing squads,’ said Lenin, ‘is meaningless.’
COPYRIGHT
A W…N ebook
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Weidenfeld … Nicolson
This ebook first published in 2016 by Weidenfeld … Nicolson
Copyright © Simon Sebag Montefiore 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher.
The right of Simon Sebag Montefiore to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 9781474600279
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