Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty

by Robert K. Massie

  On August 24, a day after their arrival in East Prussia, Hindenburg and Ludendorff decided on a sweeping gamble. Leaving only two brigades of cavalry to face Rennenkampf, whose army still was motionless five days after its victory, they loaded every other German soldier onto trains and trundled them south to meet Samsonov. By August 25, the transfer was complete. Rennenkampf still had not resumed his advance, and Samsonov was now confronted by an army equal in size and vastly superior in artillery. Informing General Jilinsky, commander of the Russian Northern Front, of his predicament, Samsonov was rudely told, “To see the enemy where he does not exist is cowardice. I will not allow General Samsonov to play the coward. I insist that he continue the offensive,”

  In four days of battle, Samsonov’s exhausted troops did what they could. Nevertheless, faced with hurricane barrages of German artillery, enveloped on three sides by German infantry, the Second Army disintegrated. Samsonov was fatalistic. “The enemy has luck one day, we will have luck another,” he said and rode off alone into the forest to shoot himself.

  The Germans named their victory the Battle of Tannenberg in revenge for a famous Slav defeat of the Teutonic Knights near the same site in 1410. At Tannenberg, the Russians lost 110,000 men, including 90,000 prisoners. Blame fell on General Jilinsky, who was replaced, and on Rennenkampf, who was discharged from the army. Grand Duke Nicholas, whose southern armies were winning a great victory against the Austrians in Galicia, met the defeat at Tannenberg with equanimity. “We are happy to have made such sacrifices for our allies,” he declared when the French military attaché at his headquarters offered condolences. In St. Petersburg, Sazonov told Paléologue, “Samsonov’s army has been destroyed. That’s all I know,” and then added quietly, “We owed this sacrifice to France, as she has showed herself a perfect ally.” Paléologue, thanking the Foreign Minister for the generosity of his thought, hurried on to discuss the only thing that truly concerned him: the massive threat to Paris which was mounting by the hour.

  For all the reckless gallantry and foolish ineptitude of the premature Russian offensive, it nevertheless achieved its primary objective: the diversion of German forces from the West. The limited penetration of East Prussia had had a magnified effect. Refugees, many of them high-born, had descended in fury and despair on Berlin, the Kaiser was outraged, and von Moltke himself admitted that “all the success on the Western front will be unavailing if the Russians arrive in Berlin.” On August 25, before the decisive blow against Samsonov, von Moltke violated his supposedly inviolable war plan of ignoring the Russians until France was finished. On urgent orders, two army corps and a cavalry division were stripped from the German right wing in France and rushed to the East. They arrived too late for Tannenberg; they could not be returned before the Marne. “This was perhaps our salvation,” wrote General Dupont, one of Joffre’s aides. “Such a mistake made by the Chief of the German General Staff in 1914 must have made the other Moltke, his uncle, turn in his grave.”

  As France’s generals had foreseen, one key to the salvation of France lay in immediately setting the Russian colossus in motion. Whether the colossus met victory or defeat mattered little as long as the Germans were distracted from their overwhelming lunge at Paris. In that sense the Russian soldiers who died in the forests of East Prussia contributed as much to the Allied cause as the Frenchmen who died on the Marne.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Stavka

  AT the outbreak of war, Nicholas’s first impulse had been to take command of the army himself, assuming the ancient role of warrior-tsar at the head of his troops. He was urgently dissuaded by his ministers, who pleaded that he not risk his prestige as sovereign, especially—as Sazonov put it—”as it is to be expected that we may be forced to retreat during the first weeks.” The supreme command went to Grand Duke Nicholas, who departed with his staff from Petrograd on August 13 to establish field headquarters at Baranovichi, a Polish railway junction midway between the German and Austrian fronts. The camp, called Stavka after an old Russian word meaning the military camp of a chief, was set off the main Moscow-Warsaw track in a forest of birch and pine. Here, surrounded by three concentric rings of sentries, the Grand Duke and his officers lived and worked in a dozen army trains drawn up fanwise beneath the trees. In time, as the encampment became semi-permanent, roofs were built over the cars to shield them from heat and snow, and wooden sidewalks were laid so that officers could walk from train to train without slipping on mud or ice.

  From his private railway car spread with bearskins and Oriental rugs, the Grand Duke dominated the life of the camp. On the wall of his sleeping compartment, crowded between the windows, were more than two hundred icons. Over the doors of all the rooms frequented by the Grand Duke, small pieces of white paper were affixed to remind the six-foot-six-inch Nicholas Nicolaievich to duck so as not to bump his head.

  General Sir John Hanbury-Williams, British military attaché in Petrograd, arrived at Stavka on Grand Duke Nicholas’s train and remained there until the Tsar’s abdication. His diary of these two and a half years gives a vivid portrait of Imperial Russian Headquarters during the First World War: “We all attended the little wooden church in the camp. All the headquarters troops were drawn up at the entrance to the church, Guards and Cossacks of the Guard … all in khaki with long, grey overcoats reaching to their feet—still as rocks—looking almost like a line of statues against the pine forests. Here we waited till suddenly a fanfare of trumpets rang out and in the distance, coming along a road from the train, there marched, stern-faced and head erect, that great and to the army he loved so well, almost mystical figure, Grand Duke Nicholas.… He reached the line and swung around facing his men … looking them absolutely straight in the eye, and called out to all ranks the customary ‘Good day.’ With the rattle of presenting arms came the answering shout from every man in reply … and so we all slowly filed into church.”

  It was to this vigorous, masculine atmosphere that the Tsar came often as an enthusiastic visitor. When the Imperial train, its long line of blue salon cars emblazoned with golden crests, glided slowly under the sunlit foliage onto a siding alongside the Grand Duke’s, the Tsar stepped happily into the routine of army life. He loved the disciplined sense of purpose at Stavka, the clear-cut giving and taking of orders, the professional talk at the officers’ mess, the rough, hardy, outdoor life. It called back memories of his days as a junior officer when his heaviest responsibility was getting out of bed in time to stand morning parade. It was a release from government and ministers and a change from Tsarskoe Selo, where, no matter how devoted he was to wife and children, the world was small, closed and predominantly feminine.

  Nicholas was careful during his visits to Headquarters not to intrude on the authority of the Grand Duke. Sitting beside the Commander-in-Chief at morning staff conferences, the Tsar played the part of the interested, honored guest. Together, the two men listened to reports of the previous day’s operations at the front; together, they bent over the huge maps of Poland, East Prussia and Galicia, studying the red and blue lines which marked the positions of the opposing armies. But when the moment came to issue commands, the Tsar was silent and the Grand Duke spoke.

  It was when the Tsar was in this relaxed, happy mood at Headquarters that General Hanbury-Williams first met him. “At 2:30 I was summoned to meet the Emperor,” he wrote. “On arrival, I found two huge Cossacks at the door of His Imperial Majesty’s train.… The Emperor received me alone. He was dressed in perfectly plain khaki uniform, the coat being more of a blouse than ours, with blue breeches and long black riding boots, and was standing at a high writing desk. As I saluted, he came forward at once and shook me warmly by the hand. I was at once struck by his extraordinary likeness to our own King, and the way he smiled, his face lighting up, as if it were a real pleasure to him to receive one. His first question was one of inquiry after our King and Queen and the Royal family.… I had always pictured him to myself as a somewhat sad and anxious-looking monarch,
with cares of state and other things hanging heavily over him. Instead of that I found a bright, keen, happy face, plenty of humor and a fresh-air man.”

  Meals at Headquarters were hearty and masculine: plentiful zakouski, roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, vodka and wines. The vodka, wrote Hanbury-Williams, “went down my throat like a torchlight procession.” At the table, surrounded by men he considered his fellow officers, Nicholas spoke freely without the inhibitions imposed at court. Once he offered an analysis of the difference between Russia and the United States:

  “At dinner tonight, H.I.M. [His Imperial Majesty] talked about empires and republics. His own ideas as a young man were that he had a great responsibility and he felt that the people over whom he ruled were so numerous and so varying in blood and temperament, different altogether from our Western Europeans, that an Emperor was a vital necessity to them. His first visit to the Caucasus had made a vital impression on him and confirmed him in his views.

  “The United States of America, he said, was an entirely different matter, and the two cases could not be compared. In this country [Russia], many as were the problems and the difficulties, their sense of imagination, their intense religious feeling and their habits and customs generally made a crown necessary, and he believed this must be so for a very long time, that a certain amount of decentralizing of authority was, of course, necessary but that the great and decisive power must rest with the Crown. The powers of the Duma must go slowly, because of the difficulties of pushing on education at any reasonably fast rate among all these masses of his subjects.”

  As for the personal role of the Autocrat, Nicholas admitted that, while he could give any order he liked, he could not ensure that it was carried out. Often, when he found that something he had asked had not been properly done, he said wistfully to Hanbury-Williams, “You see what it is to be an autocrat.”

  At Headquarters, the Tsar took long afternoon walks along country roads thoroughly scouted in advance by Cossack patrols. In warm weather, he rowed on the Dnieper, often removing his blouse so that the sun could tan him. Occasionally, for variety, he challenged other officers to a race. Nicholas liked to win, but he would row only against men who had a chance of beating him.

  In November 1914, the Tsar left Headquarters for a long journey to the southern Causasus, where his troops were fighting the Turks. “We are passing through picturesque country,” he wrote to Alexandra, “… with beautiful high mountains on one side and the steppes on the other. At each station, the platforms are crowded with people … thousands of them.… We are running along by the Caspian Sea. It rests the eyes to look on the blue distance, it reminded me of the Black Sea … not far off are the mountains, beautifully lit by the sun.” In Kuban province, passing Cossack villages, he admired the people and their rich orchards. “They are beginning to be wealthy, and above all they have an inconceivably high number of small infants. All future subjects. This all fills me with joy and faith in God’s mercy. I look forward in peace and confidence to what lies in store for Russia.”

  On trips, when outdoor exercise was impossible, Nicholas solved the problem by rigging an apparatus inside the train. “My hanging trapeze has proved very practical and useful,” he wrote. “I swung on it many times and climbed it before meals. It really is an excellent thing for the train, it stirs up the blood and the whole organism.” From this description arises a piquant image of the Imperial train rolling through dusty villages, past platforms crowded with curious and worshipful peasants, while inside, hidden from view, the Little Father hangs by his heels, swinging back and forth on his trapeze.

  In the autumn of 1915, the Tsar brought his son, the eleven-year-old Tsarevich, to live with him at Army Headquarters. It was a startling move, not simply because of the boy’s age but also because of his hemophilia. Yet, Nicholas did not make his decision impetuously. His reasons, laboriously weighed for months in advance, were both sentimental and shrewd.

  The Russian army, battered and retreating after a summer of terrible losses, badly needed a lift in morale. Nicholas himself made constant appearances, and his presence, embodying the cause of Holy Russia, raised tremendous enthusiasm among the men who saw him. It was his hope that the appearance of the Heir at his side, symbolizing the future, would further bolster their drooping spirits. It was a reasonable hope, and, in fact, wherever Alexis appeared he became a center of great excitement.

  Perhaps more important, the Tsar was thinking of the distant future and the day his son would sit on the throne. Alexis’s education, up to that point, had been anything but normal. As a prince, he lived in a restricted world; because of his illness, it was primarily a world of adoring women. By taking his son from the muffled, silken-pillowed atmosphere of the palace and bringing him into the bracing air of beards, leather and uniforms at Stavka, Nicholas proposed to broaden the education of the future tsar.

  It was enormously difficult for the Empress to let Alexis go. During his entire lifetime, he had not been out of her sight for more than a few hours; whenever he was gone, she imagined dangers which others would never dream of. On his trips to Headquarters, the Tsarevich was surrounded with protection by his personal retinue: Fedorov and Derevenko the doctors, Gilliard the tutor, Derevenko and Nagorny the sailor bodyguards. Yet real risks were involved and the Empress was acutely aware of them. In traveling on the Imperial train, there was danger of stumbling and falling in the corridors as the carriages lurched. Bouncing in automobiles over dirt roads, traveling in a zone where German airplanes might appear, walking long distances and standing for hours as thousands of men marched by—no doctor would permit this activity for any other hemophiliac. While he was away, Alexandra’s letters to the Tsar were filled with concern for him: “See that Tiny [Alexis] doesn’t tire himself on the stairs. He cannot take walks.… Tiny loves digging and working and he is so strong and forgets that he must be careful.… Take care of Baby’s arm, don’t let him run about on the train so as not to knock his arms.… Before you decide, speak with Mr. Gilliard, he is such a sensible man and knows all so well about Baby.” Every night at nine p.m., the Empress went to Alexis’s room as if he were there saying his prayers. There, on her knees, she prayed to God that her son would come home safely.

  Once when Gilliard had returned alone to Tsarskoe Selo, leaving Alexis at Headquarters, the Empress explained to him why she had let her son go at all. “After the meal, we went out on the terrace,” wrote the tutor. “It was a beautiful evening, warm and still. Her Majesty was stretched on a sofa and two of her daughters were knitting woollen clothing for the soldiers. The other two Grand Duchesses were sewing. Alexis Nicolaievich was naturally the principal topic of conversation. They never tired of asking me what he did and said … with a candor which utterly amazed me [the Empress then] said that all his life the Tsar had suffered from his natural timidity and from the fact that, as he had been kept too much in the background, he had found himself badly prepared for the duties of a ruler on the sudden death of Alexander III. The Tsar had vowed to avoid the same mistakes in the education of his own son.” Suppressing her own terrible fears, the Empress agreed with her husband.

  Alexis himself was longing to escape from the Alexander Palace. For months, his greatest excitement had been a series of afternoon automobile drives taken within a radius of twenty miles of Tsarskoe Selo. “We used to start out immediately after lunch,” wrote Gilliard, who arranged the excursions. “[We] often stopped at villages to watch the peasants at work. Alexis Nicolaievich liked questioning them, and they always answered him with the frank, kindly simplicity of the Russian moujik, not having the slightest idea whom they were speaking to. The railway lines of the suburbs of St. Petersburg had a great attraction for the boy. He took the liveliest interest in the activities of the little stations we passed and the work of repair on track and bridges.… The palace police grew alarmed at these excursions which took us beyond the guarded zone.… Whenever we left the park, we were certain to see a car appear and follow in our track
s. It was one of Alexis Nicolaievich’s greatest delights to try and throw it off the scent.”

  For a lively, intelligent eleven-year-old boy, the chance to visit Army Headquarters was a promise of high adventure. On an October morning in 1915, the Tsarevich, dressed in the uniform of an army private, delightedly kissed his mother goodbye and boarded his father’s train. Even before reaching Headquarters, Alexis saw his first review of front-line troops. As the Tsar walked down the ranks, Gilliard wrote, “Alexis Nicolaievich was at his father’s heels, listening intently to the stories of these men who had often stared death in the face. His features, which were always expressive, became quite strained in an effort not to lose a single word of what the men were saying. His presence at the Tsar’s side greatly interested the soldiers … they were heard whispering their ideas about his age, size and looks. But the point that made the greatest impression on them was the fact that the Tsarevich was wearing the uniform of a private soldier.”

  A series of German victories in the summer of 1915 had forced relocation of Stavka from Baranovichi to Mogilev, a Russian town on the upper Dnieper River. Here, the trains had been abandoned and Headquarters established in the house of the provincial governor, a mansion on the crest of a hill overlooking a bend in the river. As the building was crowded, Nicholas reserved only two rooms for himself—a bedroom and an office. For Alexis, a second cot was placed in the Tsar’s bedroom.

  “It is very cosy sleeping side by side,” Nicholas wrote to Alexandra. “I say prayers with him every night.… He says his prayers too fast and it is difficult to stop him.… I read all [your] letters aloud to him. He listens lying in bed and kisses your signature.… He sleeps well and likes the window left open.… Noise in the street does not disturb him.… Yesterday evening when Alexei was already in bed, a thunderstorm broke out; the lightning struck somewhere near the town, it rained hard after which the air became delightful and much fresher. We slept well with the window open.… Thank God he looks so well and has become sunburnt.… He wakes up early in the morning between 7 and 8, sits up in bed and begins to talk quietly to me. I answer drowsily, he settles down and lies quietly until I am called.”