The Race to Save the Romanovs

by Helen Rappaport

  In contrast, the Danish royals, according to Queen Victoria, had always been the ‘one remarkable’ exception to the disharmony among so many of her other European relatives.13 They enjoyed warm relations with their British and Russian relatives, thanks to the marriage into those royal houses of the Danish sisters Alexandra and Dagmar, in 1863 and 1866 respectively. As young parents, Nicholas and Alexandra made a few informal summer trips to ‘amama’ and ‘apapa’ (as they referred to the Danish king Christian IX and his wife Queen Louise) at Fredensborg. It was here that the cousins – Dagmar’s son, Nicholas the Tsarevich, and Alexandra’s son, George, Prince of Wales – had first developed a firm friendship. Indeed, it was as far back as 1883, on a family holiday at Fredensborg that George’s sister Maud had first taken note of the fifteen-year-old ‘darling little Nicky’. Like everyone else, she had noted how enamoured he was of Alix of Hesse and teased Nicholas about the fact that the object of his admiration was taller than him. Nonetheless, when Nicky and Maud were seen together at Prince George’s wedding to Princess Mary of Teck in London in 1893, his father (then still Prince of Wales) had asked his mother-in-law Queen Louise whether there might perhaps be hope of a match between Nicky and Maud. The queen had thought this a bad idea; Maud was ‘very sweet but far too headstrong’.14

  Dynastic alliances were thus as much in the mind of the future King Edward VII as they were in that of the Kaiser, although Wilhelm’s matchmaking ambitions had been part of a grandiose plan for the creation of a powerful new Zollverein – a continental alliance of Germany, Russia and France. Steering Alix of Hesse in the direction of Nicholas of Russia had been one way of shoring this up. Perhaps, in the wilder reaches of his vivid imagination, Wilhelm nursed visions of being another Frederick the Great, the Prussian monarch who had been instrumental in brokering the marriage of his German relative Sophie van Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg, and with it her rise on the Russian throne as Catherine the Great. The new Tsaritsa Alexandra would, however, never demonstrate any of Catherine’s breadth of vision and energy as Empress. If anything, she inherited the prosaic, domestic Victorian values of her mother Alice – of example, duty, morality and a sense of service. But in one thing at least Alexandra would later demonstrate an instinct that she shared with her cousin Wilhelm: an entrenched belief in absolutist autocratic power.

  Wilhelm’s mother, the Dowager Empress Victoria, had certainly hoped that her niece Alexandra’s succession to the Russian throne in November 1894, on the sudden death of Alexander III, might foster improved relations between Russia and Germany. In the years up to 1908 Nicholas and Wilhelm made frequent visits to each other for army manoeuvres, reviews of the fleet or simply to enjoy the shooting at their respective hunting lodges in Prussia and the Russian imperial game reserves in Poland. They had even gone yachting together – the Romanovs on the imperial yacht, the Shtandart, the Kaiser on the Hohenzollern – at Kiel and around the Finnish skerries. But far too often the prickly, meddlesome Kaiser had succeeded in upsetting those around him.15 Despite this, in his letters to Nicky, Willy repeatedly assured him of his love and devotion; after all they shared the same fundamental belief in their divine right as sovereigns. ‘We, Christian Kings and Emperors have one holy duty imposed on us by Heaven,’ he told Nicky. ‘That is to uphold the principle “von Gottes gnaden” [by the grace of God].’16

  The Tsarevich Alexey’s christening in 1904 would be the culmination of a period of rapprochement with Wilhelm, when he was asked to be godfather, in what may well have been an act more of diplomatic flattery than of familial affection. Wilhelm had been impatiently anticipating the birth of a ‘nice little boy’ since Nicholas and Alexandra’s marriage in 1894, but had had to wait almost ten years – interspersed with the arrival of four baby girls – before the longed-for Tsarevich was born.17 He was delighted to be honoured in this way, and hoped that little Alexey would ‘grow to be a brave soldier and a wise and powerful statesman’ and a ‘ray of sunshine to you both during your life’.18

  A year later, at the time of Russia’s war with Japan, and in light of the 1902 alliance between Britain and Japan, Wilhelm worked hard on Nicholas’s political loyalties. His long-term ambition had always been to keep his Russian cousin preoccupied with war in the East and Central Asia, leaving the way clear for his own ambitious German dominion-building in Europe.19 He had spent years lecturing Nicholas by letter on his political and military options. Now, in July 1905, he took advantage of the Tsar’s low morale at a time when he was worn down by a disastrous war, badgering him into a secret meeting at Björkö in Finland. Here Wilhelm talked the impressionable Nicholas into signing ‘a little agreement’ of their own, a defensive treaty under which Russia and Germany would come to each other’s aid in the event of attack, an act clearly designed to undermine Russia’s 1894 alliance with France. Thankfully Nicholas’s advisers refused to endorse his signature and the treaty was aborted.

  Thereafter, and in the long, slow burn towards the outbreak of war in 1914, it became increasingly evident that Nicholas and Alexandra’s relationship with their German relative was ‘tinged with a measure of latent and almost instinctive animosity’ – a fact that would have a crucial bearing on events later in this story.20 As for Nicholas, it was one thing for the two rulers to refer to each other by their pet domestic names, Willy and Nicky, but quite another for him ‘to bow the Slavic head to German benevolent assimilation’. As the US ambassador to Denmark, Maurice Egan, observed, ‘The Czar might call the Emperor by any endearing epithet, but that did not imply political friendship.’ Neither Nicholas nor Alexandra was impressed by Wilhelm’s brand of bombastic militarism, or by his manic sense of Hohenzollern grandeur.21 Egan’s conclusion was that ‘Germany and Russia will fly at each other’s throats as soon as the financiers approve of it.’22

  In contrast, and much to Wilhelm’s disgust, there had been a marked and growing closeness in recent years between the Russian and British royal families. People had always remarked on Nicholas’s good manners and impeccable English, the result of having grown up with an English tutor, Charles Heath, who had educated him in the traditional public-school values of fair play and gentlemanly behaviour.23 Ever since Nicholas first visited Queen Victoria at Windsor in 1894 he had referred to her with great affection as ‘granny’, writing to his cousin George when the Queen died in 1901, ‘I am quite sure that with your help … the friendly relations between our two countries shall become still closer than in the past … May the new century bring England and Russia together for their mutual interests and for the general peace of the world.’ From now on, the Prince of Wales (and future king George V) made repeated assurances in letters that he was ‘Ever, dearest Nicky, your loving and truly devoted cousin and friend’.24 They had much in common, notably an unostentatious domestic life and a love of the quiet of the countryside.

  In tandem with warmer relations with Russia, a British entente with France was initiated in 1903 after King Edward made a triumphant state visit there. The entente cordiale had followed in 1904, and in 1907 a new Triple Entente of Britain, France and Russia. It was seen as a long-overdue and necessary defensive counterweight to the Triple Alliance that Wilhelm’s grandfather had forged with Italy and Austria–Hungary in 1882. In Queen Victoria’s time Russia had been a traditional enemy, and a country of whose expansionist ambitions in Central Asia she had had a pathological mistrust. By 1908, however, with cousin Willy embarking on an intensive shipbuilding programme and rapid expansion of his German battle fleet, there was clearly a pressing need for political rapprochement between Britain and Russia to counter this. Nevertheless, many in the British government and press perceived Nicholas as a despot and openly criticised the tsarist regime and its draconian prison and exile system.

  It was the pragmatic Edward VII who saw the logic of this new alliance and what he came to call ‘the Trade Union of Kings’. Nicholas, forever a straw in the wind susceptible to the influence of his more politically accomplished and domineering royal cousin
s, drifted increasingly into the British sphere of influence. For the time being, Edward’s form of personal royal diplomacy remained effective. In June 1908 he finally made an official visit to Russia – albeit at sea, for security reasons – meeting Nicholas at the Estonian port of Reval (now Tallinn) in the Baltic, at this time still part of the Russian Empire. Superficially intended as a family affair, the visit added a ‘personal touch of royal friendliness … to clear away any lingering mistrust’ and further cement Anglo-Russian relations. It also gave Edward the opportunity to offer Nicholas the weight of his own considerable political experience.25

  Despite rumblings from Labour MP Ramsay MacDonald that the King should not be ‘hobnobbing with a bloodstained creature’ Edward made the grand gesture at Reval of creating Nicholas an admiral of the British fleet, and Nicholas returned the compliment by making Edward an admiral of the Imperial Navy.26 By the end of the two-day PR exercise, designed, so The Times noted, ‘to establish the world’s peace’, the atmosphere between the ‘sovereigns of the two greatest empires under the sun’ was one of ‘cordial trust’, a fact that infuriated the Kaiser when the news reached him.27 Privately Edward had grave reservations about Nicholas’s competence as a monarch, thinking him ‘deplorably unsophisticated, immature, and reactionary’, but Edward was a skilful and tactful diplomatist who made his point by example and not by lecturing (unlike his nephew, the Kaiser), and the following year he invited the Romanovs to Britain.

  August 1909 witnessed the last lovely imperial summer that the Romanovs would enjoy with their English relatives before war changed things irrevocably. Nicholas, Alexandra and all five children had sailed to the Isle of Wight to spend time with ‘dear uncle Bertie’ and his family. But such was the security nightmare of entertaining the Tsar of Russia that the four-day visit had to be conducted almost entirely at sea. Meetings, meals and receptions between the two families were held away from public view, on the two royal yachts, the Shtandart and the Victoria and Albert, anchored in the Solent outside Cowes harbour. The Romanovs were accorded a perfunctory tour of Osborne House, and afternoon tea with the Prince of Wales and his family at nearby Barton Manor, but at least the Romanov children had enjoyed a day ashore. They had taken great pleasure in visiting the royal family’s private beach near Osborne House, where they dug sandcastles and collected seashells like any other children. On a shopping trip to west Cowes, with a bevy of detectives keeping a discreet distance, it was, however, the two eldest Romanov sisters, Olga and Tatiana, who had attracted the most attention and admiration. They seemed so natural, so modest and charming, and had shown such delight at their simple purchases of postcards and gifts for their parents and entourage.*

  King Edward had been eager to organise this visit as an important gesture of support for the Anglo-Russian entente, at a time of increasing political tension. It was, he argued, ‘politically of the highest importance’.28 But in 1909 growing hostility from Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour Party was reflected in a widening public hostility towards Russia’s ‘Nicholas the Bloody’, which reached its zenith when the imperial yacht arrived at Cowes. This change had been coming ever since the brutal repressions of peaceful protesters in St Petersburg (from 1914 Petrograd) in January 1905 by Cossacks and other troops from the Imperial Guard, which was loyal to the government. Edward was accused of fraternising with a ‘common murderer’ and the Labour Party issued a formal protest. Nevertheless the atmosphere was in marked contrast to the stiff and uncomfortable visits made to the Kaiser by Nicholas at Swinemünde in 1907, and by Edward to Berlin six months before the Cowes visit, neither of which had done anything to mitigate deteriorating relations with Germany. Cowes, 1909, despite the anti-tsarist protests and worrying signs that Edward VII was now seriously ailing, reinforced the burgeoning new Anglo-Russian alliance. The Tsar’s attendance at a naval review at Cherbourg en route to the Isle of Wight also further endorsed the Russian union with France in a power bloc against a now highly militant Germany.

  Despite the wish to promote closer family relationships in the run-up to what seemed an inevitable European war, after 1909 Nicholas and Alexandra were increasingly forced to stay at home. The threat of revolutionary violence against them in Russia, as well as Alexandra’s rapidly declining health, frequently made trips across the country, and beyond, untenable. With this heightened danger pressing inwards, the Imperial Family retreated within the protected walls of their palace at Tsarskoe Selo, fifteen miles south of St Petersburg. Journeys by rail were particularly open to attack, and the Romanovs now only travelled to visit relatives by sea. Even on a low-key visit to the Swedish king and queen in Stockholm in 1909 there had been rumours of an attempted attack on Nicholas, and for their protection the family had remained on board their yacht, with the Swedes coming to them. Such highly constrained visits allowed very little significant time in which the imperial children might enjoy the company of their young cousins, aside from precious trips to Wolfsgarten in Hesse.29

  * * *

  On 6 May 1910, Edward VII, the monarch at the heart of the old European royal order, died, his overweight body finally giving up on him after years of heavy smoking, drinking and eating. Edward might have begun his reign with the reputation of a self-indulgent playboy, but he ended it as a model constitutional monarch and one who had been universally loved and admired at home and abroad. Sadly, his good example had not rubbed off on his most stubbornly autocratic nephews – Wilhelm and Nicholas.

  A great, solemn and dignified state funeral was arranged, but first the King’s coffin lay in state in Westminster Hall for three days, in order to allow almost 250,000 members of the public – in a queue that was seven miles long on its final day – to file past and pay their respects. A cavalcade of royals in full rig – gold braid, feathers and cockades ablaze in the hot sunshine – processed on horseback behind the gun carriage carrying the King’s coffin through the streets of London, to say farewell to this monarch, ‘the most kingly of them all’.30

  King Edward’s funeral, larger even than that for his mother in 1901, undoubtedly marked the apotheosis of European monarchy. Among the dignitaries gathered from all over the world to pay their respects were nine reigning monarchs: eight kings and one emperor, aged from twenty-one to sixty-six years old. They sat together at Windsor Castle for a now-famous portrait: the new British king, George V; Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany; Frederick VIII of Denmark; George I of Greece; Haakon VII of Norway; Alfonso XIII of Spain; Manuel II of Portugal; Ferdinand I of Bulgaria; and Albert I, King of the Belgians – all related to the dead monarch either by blood or marriage. As too were most of the forty-five princes and seven queens in their entourages.31

  Yet one monarch was conspicuous by his absence. Where was Nicholas? It was no surprise to anyone that he was unable to attend, being represented instead by his younger brother, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, and his mother the Dowager, who was the dead king’s sister-in-law. No official explanation was offered, but it is likely that the security nightmare of the Tsar of Russia marching in the funeral procession, where any political assassin could take a shot at him, was one that neither Nicholas’s advisers nor British Special Branch had wished to take on. Cousin Wilhelm, however, was not slow to take advantage of Nicholas’s absence and clasped George’s hand in a moment’s commiseration as they stood together by the King’s coffin in Westminster Hall. The genuine sympathy that Wilhelm displayed that day prompted an invitation to return to England to attend the unveiling of a new statue of Queen Victoria – the grandmother he had revered as ‘the creator of the greatness of modern Britain’ – the following February.32

  Even as people talked of an inevitable war between Britain and Germany, the Kaiser remained hopeful that he and his English cousin could still be best friends. But behind his back, George was already aligning himself firmly with his Russian cousin, exchanging letters of solidarity with Nicholas in which he reassured him that he hoped ‘we shall always continue our old friendship to one another’ and insisting
that ‘I have always been very fond of you’.33 ‘If only England, Russia and France stick together,’ wrote George not long after his father’s funeral, ‘then peace in Europe is assured.’ His correspondence with Nicholas over the following years became regular, frank and friendly. He was sure the Tsar shared his sentiments, for they were both by now convinced of the need to strengthen the entente in the face of increased German aggression. ‘I know you don’t mind me writing quite frankly what I think, as we have always been such good friends, I like to tell you everything,’ George assured Nicholas a year later.34

  As things turned out, 1910 also marked the last time Nicholas and Alexandra were able to make the journey to their German relatives in Hesse. A prolonged stay at Friedberg Castle provided a rare opportunity for all five Hesse siblings – Alexandra, Ella, Irene, Victoria and their brother Ernie – to be reunited. Friedberg, located between Darmstadt and Frankfurt, was perhaps the most unroyal venue of all the royal homes Nicholas and Alexandra visited. Here the Romanovs enjoyed a reduced entourage, no parades or ceremonies, relaxed etiquette and, for Nicholas, an escape into civilian clothes. He was able to go out, incognito, with his brother-in-law Ernie, and could sit and drink a glass of beer in a café and browse in the local shops.35 But Alexandra was by now in serious physical decline, suffering from chronic sciatica, heart trouble, headaches and facial neuralgia, made worse by the constant mental strain of having a haemophiliac son. She had already undergone treatment at a spa in Bad Nauheim prior to their visit, and kept mainly to her rooms, spending much of her time in a wheelchair. Her five children, who had long since learned to be self-sufficient during their mother’s frequent bouts of illness, enjoyed being left to their own devices and made the most of the time with their cousins.