With his soldiers retreating, the Tsar’s intense feelings about being with the army were revived. On July 16, walking restlessly in the park at Tsarskoe Selo with the Tsarevich and Gilliard, he said to the tutor, “You have no idea how depressing it is to be away from the front. It seems as if everything here saps energy and enfeebles resolution.… Out at the front men fight and die for their country. At the front there is only one thought—the determination to conquer.”
Nicholas’s strong feelings about the army were constantly stimulated from another, less noble source: the personal animosity of the Empress against Grand Duke Nicholas. Alexandra had never liked the fiery, impetuous soldier who towered over her less colorful husband. She had never forgotten that it was his melodramatic threat to blow out his brains in the presence of the Tsar and Witte which had forced the signing of the 1905 Manifesto, creating the Duma. At the front, she knew that “Nikolasha’s” heroic size gave him the aura of the warrior grand duke, the real strong man of the Imperial family. There were rumors that among his intimates the Grand Duke did nothing to correct the stories that he would one day be crowned as Nicholas III. Worst, she knew that Nicholas Nicolaievich had sworn implacable hatred against Rasputin. Once Rasputin, hoping to regain favor with the man who had been his most prominent patron and had first introduced him at the Imperial palace, telegraphed the Grand Duke offering to come to Headquarters to bless an icon. “Yes, do come,” replied Grand Duke Nicholas. “I’ll hang you.”
Against this powerful, dangerous enemy Rasputin fought back skillfully. He quickly discovered the arguments to which the Empress was most susceptible, and whenever he was in her presence, he used them with poisonous effect against the Commander-in-Chief: The Grand Duke is deliberately currying favor in the army and overshadowing the Tsar so that one day he can claim the throne. The Grand Duke cannot possibly succeed on the battlefield because God will not bless him. How can God bless a man who has turned his back on me, the Man of God? In all probability, if the Grand Duke is allowed to keep his power, he will kill me, and then what will happen to the Tsarevich, the Tsar and Russia?
As long as the Russian army continued to advance, Grand Duke Nicholas’s command remained secure. But once his soldiers began to retreat, his position became increasingly vulnerable. Through the summer, Alexandra’s letters to the Tsar maintained a steady drumfire of criticism against the Grand Duke, echoing and re-echoing Rasputin’s arguments:
June 11 (O.S.): “Please my angel, make N. [Nikolasha, the Grand Duke] see with your eyes.… I hope my letter did not displease but I am haunted by our Friend’s [Rasputin’s] wish and know it will be fatal for us and the country if not fulfilled. He means what he says when He speaks so seriously.”
June 12: “Would to God N. were another man and not turned against a Man of God’s.”
June 16: “I have absolutely no faith in N.—know him to be far from clever and having gone against a Man of God, his work can’t be blessed or his advice good.… Russia will not be blessed if her sovereign lets a Man of God sent to help him be persecuted, I am sure.… You know N.’s hatred for Gregory is intense.”
June 17: “N’s fault and Witte’s that the Duma exists, and it has caused you more worry than joy. Oh, I do not like N. having anything to do with these big sittings which concern interior questions, he understands our country so little and imposes upon the ministers with his loud voice and gesticulations. I can go wild sometimes at his false position.… Nobody knows who is the Emperor now.… It is as though N. settles all, makes the choices and changes. It makes me utterly wretched.”
June 25: “I loathe your being at Headquarters … listening to N.’s advice which is not good and cannot be—he has no right to act as he does, mixing in your concerns. All are shocked that the ministers go with reports to him, as though he were now the sovereign. Ah, my Nicky, things are not as they ought to be and therefore N. keeps you near to have a hold over you with his ideas and bad counsels.”
The Tsar did not share his wife’s strong views of Grand Duke Nicholas. He respected the Grand Duke and had full—and thoroughly justified—confidence in his loyalty. Paléologue, visiting Stavka, once attempted to discuss the Tsar’s views with the Commander-in-Chief. Drawing himself up, the Grand Duke replied coldly, “I never discuss an opinion of His Majesty’s except when he does me the honor of asking my advice.” To suppress talk in some ranks of the army that Russia could not go on fighting, the Grand Duke issued an Order of the Day: “All faithful subjects know that in Russia, everyone from the Commander-in-Chief to the private soldier, obeys and obeys only the sacred and august will of the Anointed of God, our deeply revered Emperor, who alone has the power to begin and end a war.”
Wherever possible the Tsar tried to buffer relations between the Empress and Grand Duke Nicholas. In April 1915, when Nicholas was to visit Lemberg and Przemysl, Alexandra wanted the Grand Duke to remain behind so that her husband alone could receive the cheers of the troops. Calmly, Nicholas dissuaded her: “Darling mine, I do not agree with you that N. ought to remain here during my visit to Galicia. On the contrary, precisely because I am going in wartime to a conquered province, the commander-in-chief ought to be accompanying me. It is he who accompanies me, not I who am in his suite.”
Nevertheless, as the retreat continued, the Tsar’s determination to take personal command of the army intensified. With the army and the nation in danger, he was convinced that it was his duty to unify civil and military authority and take on his own person the full weight of responsibility for Russia’s destiny. In the Council of Ministers, where bitter attacks had been made on Grand Duke Nicholas’s handling of military operations, Prime Minister Goremykin warned his colleagues, “I consider it my duty to repeat to the members of the Council my emphatic advice to be extremely careful in what they are going to say to the Emperor about … those questions that relate to General Headquarters and the Grand Duke. Irritation against the Grand Duke at Tsarskoe Selo has become of a character which threatens serious consequences. I fear that your representations may serve as a pretext to bring about grave complications.”
On August 5, Warsaw fell. “The Emperor, white and trembling, brought this news to the Empress as we sat at tea on her balcony in the warm autumn air,” wrote Anna Vyrubova. “The Emperor was fairly overcome with grief and humiliation. ‘It cannot go on like this,’ he exclaimed bitterly.”
Three weeks later, Nicholas and Alexandra made an unannounced, private visit by automobile to Petrograd. They drove first to the cathedral in the Fortress of Peter and Paul, where they knelt before the tombs of the tsars. From there they went to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, where they remained for several hours kneeling at the miraculous icon of the Virgin, praying for guidance. That night, the Council of Ministers was summoned to the Alexander Palace. Nicholas dined that evening with his wife and Anna Vyrubova. Before leaving for the meeting, he asked them to pray that his resolution remain strong. Silently, Anna pressed into his hand a tiny icon which she always wore around her neck. Carrying the icon, Nicholas walked out of the room and the two women settled down to wait. As the minutes stretched into hours, Alexandra grew impatient. Throwing a cloak around her shoulders and motioning Anna to follow, she slipped out onto a balcony which led past the windows of the council chamber. Through the lace curtains inside, they could see the Tsar, sitting very straight in his chair, surrounded by his ministers. One of the ministers was on his feet, arguing passionately.
Without exception, the ministers were aghast at the Tsar’s proposal. They pointed to the disorganization of governmental machinery that would come if the head of state were to spend all his time at Headquarters, more than five hundred miles from the seat of government. They declared that the unity of administration which Nicholas sought would merely become a concentration of all blame for military defeats and political turmoil on the head of the sovereign. In the last resort, they begged him not to go to the front at a moment when the army was defeated. Nicholas listened, his bro
ws and hands covered with perspiration, until every minister had spoken. Then he thanked them and announced quietly, “Gentlemen, in two days I leave for Stavka.”
His public letter to the Grand Duke, explaining his decision, was characteristic of the Tsar. Eloquent and felicitous, it managed to spare the Grand Duke’s pride while gracefully easing him out of his post:
To Your Imperial Highness:
At the beginning of the war there were reasons of a political nature which prevented me from following my personal inclinations and immediately putting myself at the head of the army. Hence the fact that I conferred upon you the supreme command of all the military and naval forces.
Before the eyes of all Russia, Your Imperial Highness has during the war displayed an invincible courage, which has given me and all Russians the greatest confidence in you, and roused the ardent hopes with which your name was everywhere associated in the inevitable vicissitudes of military fortune. Now that the enemy has penetrated far into the empire, my duty to the country which God has committed to my keeping ordains that I shall assume supreme command of the fighting forces, share the burdens and toils of war with my army and help it to protect Russian soil against the onslaught of the foe.
The ways of Providence are inscrutable; but my duty and my own desires strengthen me in a determination which has been inspired by concern for the common weal.
The hostile invasion which is making more progress every day on the western front, demands above all an extreme concentration of all civil and military authority, unity of command during the war, and intensification of the activities of the whole administrative services. But all these duties distract our attention from the southern front, and in these circumstances, I feel the necessity for your advice and help on that front. I therefore appoint you my lieutenant in the Caucasus and Commander-in-Chief of the brave army operating in that region.
To Your Imperial Highness I wish to express my profound gratitude and that of the country for all your work in the war.
Nicholas
The letter was personally delivered to Grand Duke Nicholas at Headquarters by the War Minister, Polivanov. “God be praised,” said Nicholas Nicolaievich simply. “The Emperor releases me from a task which was wearing me out.” When the Tsar himself arrived at Stavka, he wrote: “N. came in with a kind, brave smile and asked simply when I would order him to go. The following day at lunch and dinner he was very talkative and in a very good mood.”
The fall of the Grand Duke was a source of grim satisfaction to the Germans. “The Grand Duke,” Ludendorff wrote later, “was really a great soldier and strategist.” In the Russian army, officers and men were sad to see him go, but the summer of disaster had dimmed his hero’s luster. Within the mauve boudoir at Tsarskoe Selo, the change was hailed as a supreme personal triumph. When Nicholas left for Stavka, he carried with him a letter of ecstasy from Alexandra:
My very own beloved one, I cannot find words to express all I want to—my heart is too full. I only long to hold you tight in my arms and whisper words of intense love, courage, strength and endless blessings.… You have fought this great fight for your country and throne—alone and with bravery and decision. Never have they seen such firmness in you before.… I know what it costs you … forgive me, I beseech you, my Angel, for having left you no peace and worried you so much, but I too well know your marvelously gentle character and you had to shake it off this time, had to win your fight alone against all. It will be a glorious page in your reign and Russian history, the story of these weeks and days.… God anointed you at your coronation, he placed you where you stand and you have done your duty, be sure, quite sure of that and He forsaketh not his anointed. Our Friend’s prayers arise day and night for you to Heaven and God will hear them.… It is the beginning of the great glory of your reign, He said so and I absolutely believe it.… Sleep well, my Sunshine, Russia’s Savior. Remember last night how tenderly we clung together. I shall yearn for your caresses.… I kiss you without end and bless you. Holy Angels guard your slumber. I am near and with you forever and ever and none shall separate us.
Your very own wife,
Sunny
In France and England, the Tsar’s decision was greeted with a sigh of relief. Russian defeats had aroused fear in both countries that the Tsar’s government might be forced to withdraw from the war. By taking personal command, Nicholas was regarded as pledging himself and his empire once again to the alliance.
In the Russian army, it was clearly understood that the Tsar’s role would be that of a figurehead, and that the actual military decisions would be made by whichever professional soldier became his chief of staff. Nicholas’s choice for this post was reassuring. Michael Vasilevich Alexeiev was an energetic soldier of humble beginnings who had risen to the top by sheer ability and hard work. A former professor at the military staff college, he had served in the southwest against the Austrians and had commanded the Northern Front. Now, as Chief of Staff, he was in fact, if not in name, Commander-in-Chief of the Russian armies.
In appearance, Alexeiev compared poorly with the Grand Duke. He was short, with a simple, wide Russian face which, unlike most Russian generals, he chose to expose without a beard. He had trouble with an eye muscle, and Nicholas once described him to Alexandra as “Alexeiev, my cross-eyed friend.” At Headquarters, he was solitary, avoiding contact with the Imperial suite. His weakness was a failure to delegate authority; he tried to do everything himself, including checking map references on the huge war maps spread out on Headquarters tables. Nevertheless, Nicholas was delighted with him. “I have such good help from Alexeiev,” he telegraphed immediately after taking command. And a few days later: “I cannot tell you how pleased I am with Alexeiev. Conscientious, clever, modest and what a worker!”
In September 1915, soon after the change of command at Russian Headquarters, the German offensive began to lose impetus. Russian troops, fighting now on the soil of Russia itself, gave ground slowly, contesting every river, hill and marsh. By November, as winter closed down most of the front, Alexeiev had managed to stabilize a line which ran, on the average, two hundred miles east of the front in May. Firmly in German hands lay all of Russian Poland and the lower Baltic territories. Indeed, the battle line at the end of 1915 became almost precisely the western frontier of Soviet Russia until 1939 and the outbreak of the Second World War.
There were no further great German offensives in the East during the war. Assuming that the losses of 1915 had broken the back of the Russian army, the German General Staff transferred its main effort back to the Western Front. Beginning in February 1916, all of the great mass of German artillery and a million infantrymen were hurled at the pivotal French fortress of Verdun. To the utter astonishment and intense dismay of the Kaiser’s generals, no sooner were they committed in the West than the Russians attacked again in the East. From May until October, the Russians pressed forward; by July, eighteen German divisions had been transferred from West to East and the assault on Verdun had been abandoned. But the cost to the Russian army of the 1916 campaign again was a terrible one: 1,200,000 men.
After the war, Hindenburg paid tribute to the bravery and sacrifices of his Russian enemies: “In the Great War ledger the page on which the Russian losses were written has been torn out. No one knows the figures. Five or eight millions? We too have no idea. All we know is that sometimes in our battles with the Russians we had to remove the mounds of enemy corpses from before our trenches in order to get a clear field of fire against fresh assaulting waves.” Ten years after Hindenburg wrote, a careful analysis of Russian casualties was made by Nicholas Golovine, a former general of the Imperial army. Weighing all the evidence, he estimated that 1,300,000 men were killed in action; 4,200,000 were wounded, of whom 350,000 later died of wounds; and 2,400,000 were taken prisoner. The total is 7,900,000—over half of the 15,500,000 men who were mobilized.
Thus, the military collapse of 1915 played a major part in all that was to happen afterward. For it was the
tragic and bloody defeat of the army which weakened the grip of Grand Duke Nicholas and persuaded the Tsar to take personal command of his troops. By going to the army, hundreds of miles from the seat of government, the Tsar gave up all but a vague, supervisory control over affairs of state. In an autocracy, this arrangement was impossible; a substitute autocrat had to be found. Uncertainly at first, then with growing self-confidence, this role was filled by the Empress Alexandra. At her shoulder, his “prayers arising day and night,” stood her Friend, Rasputin. Together they would finally bring down the Russian Empire.
* Not surprisingly, those Russian soldiers who survived this maelstrom came to regard artillery as the God of War. Thirty years later, in April 1945, when Marshal Zhukov began the Red Army’s final assault on Berlin, his attack was preceded by a barrage from 20,000 guns.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Fateful Deception
THE Empress had thrown herself heart and soul into the war. Burning with patriotism, filled with energy and enthusiasm, she forgot her own illness to plunge into hospital work. Alexandra was happiest when immersed in other people’s problems, and the war gave endless scope to this side of her nature. “To some it may seem unnecessary my doing this,” she said, “but … help is much needed and every hand is useful.” Nursing became her passion. The huge Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe Selo was converted into a military hospital, and before the end of 1914 eighty-five hospitals were operated under her patronage in the Petrograd area alone. This activity, although on a grand scale, was not unique; many Russian ladies at this time established themselves as patrons of hospitals and hospital trains. But only a few followed the Empress’s example by enrolling in nursing courses and coming daily in person to tend the wounded.
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