Born to Rule: Five Reigning Consorts, Granddaughters of Queen Victoria

by Julia P. Gelardi

  Word of Jonnart’s startling ultimatum and the ensuing change of monarchs sent worried Athenians pouring into the streets surrounding Queen Sophie’s palace. The crowd, growing in density with each passing hour, became increasingly agitated and shouted its support for the royal family. Cries of “We will never let our Constantine go!” reverberated as church bells “tolled mournfully hour after hour.”8 The fact that this was all happening on 11 June filled the Greeks with trepidation, for Constantine and Sophie were being driven from their throne on a dreaded anniversary. This was the day that Constantine XI Palaeologus, the last Emperor of Byzantium, died while fighting against the Turks, thereby marking the fall of Constantinople. Tino and Sophie could not have suffered their humiliation at a worst time. With the departure of the royal couple imminent, dreams of a new Byzantium under Constantine and Sophie were shattered.

  Inside the palace, Sophie’s home was thrown into chaos as people filled the place in order to express their disgust at the ultimatum and their support for their sovereigns. The king tried to calm the agitated throng, which consisted of deputations from differing guilds and the military, explaining to them that this sacrifice was necessary. Before leaving, the supplicants kissed Constantine’s hand, tears streaming down many faces. As the hours passed, the dense crowds outside the palace sensed that their appeals were not working. Indignation and sorrow changed to fear and determination—fear that the royal family might flee Greece and determination to stop them. All of a sudden, the Greek royal family became captives of their people.

  “For more than twenty-four hours,” wrote Prince Nicholas, “we were literally besieged in the Palace.” It was, in Nicholas’s words, a “never-to-be forgotten night…there was something infinitely pathetic in the fact that the King was a prisoner in his own house! A prisoner, not guarded by the stern watchfulness of unsympathetic warders, but shielded and protected by his own subjects trembling lest he should desert them.”9

  As darkness descended, the ancient city fell strangely silent. “It was,” according to one eyewitness, “as if the people of Athens were visiting a tomb or a lying-in-state.”10 Queen Sophie and the rest of the royal family with her that momentous night could hardly sleep.

  At four-thirty the next morning, the king’s chauffeur arrived at a side entrance of the palace, and the royal family prepared to leave. They were abruptly stopped when “the guardsmen threw themselves on the ground as much as to say that the vehicle must pass over their bodies. The King and the royal family withdrew, and the car went away empty”11 When, at six o’clock in the morning, Prince Nicholas, his wife, and Prince Andrew tried again to leave the palace, they were beaten back inside by the vigilant crowds of Athenians. “Go back,” they screamed in anger, “we shall not let you pass.”12 Finally, King Constantine issued a proclamation to his people:

  Even far from Greece, the Queen and I will always retain the same affection towards the Greek people. I beg you all to accept my decision with serenity, trusting to God, Whose blessing I invoke on the nation.…At this moment the greatest solace for the Queen and myself lies in the affection and devotion which you have always shown to us, in the happy days as in the unhappy ones. May God protect Greece.

  —Constantine R.13

  The people answered with mournful wails: “No! No!” “He musn’t go!” “We will not let you go.” “We want our King!”14 When Jonnart saw the people’s reaction, he grew nervous and ordered French troops to land at Piraeus and advance to Athens. On the same day, Sophie’s second son, Alexander, was sworn in and became King of the Hellenes. Between the advancing French troops and the stubborn crowds surrounding the palace, the situation was reaching danger point. It became imperative that Tino and Sophie vacate the palace with their family. Otherwise they risked death either from the French troops or their zealous subjects, for a new cry could now be heard from the crowd: “It would be better to kill the King than let him leave Greece.”15

  The royal family finally bolted into waiting cars, running in an effort to escape their devoted but frenzied captors. When the people at the front of the palace saw what was happening, they went wild with grief. Prince Nicholas described how, “holding each other tightly, and in the midst of cries and protestations, we literally fought our way through to the gate.”16 Prince Christopher also wrote vividly of their harrowing escape:

  Queen Sophie, who had been ill, lagged behind and two of us seized her under the arms and almost carried her along, spurred on by the yells of the crowd on discovering that it had been tricked. We could hear the wooden railings cracking in the general stampede back to the front of the Palace, but by that time the King, Queen Sophie and their children had hurled themselves unceremoniously into the cars. The Crown Prince drove off lying on the floor of one, with his legs waving wildly out of the open door…and started for Tatoi.17

  The royal family were not only frightened for themselves but became scared for the very crowds, for suddenly people flung themselves on the ground in an attempt to prevent them from leaving. Even more dramatic were instances of attempted suicide. Prince Nicholas recalled, “I saw one man pull a revolver out of his pocket and try to shoot himself; a guardsman snatched it our of his hand just in time.”18 Once the crowds realized their attempts were in vain, a sudden sense of foreboding hit them. For just as Sophie and her family sped off toward Tatoi, it began to rain, and those who were superstitious saw this as a terrible omen.

  From Tatoi, Sophie and her family left for the port of Oropus, an ancient town with a small pier that jutted out into the sea. People had packed the roads leading to Oropus to say good-bye. Once there, the royal family were treated to scenes of more devotion as flowers were thrown onto the pier. Making their way on board the weathered royal yacht Sphacteria, Sophie and Constantine were again mobbed by admiring crowds who wanted to touch them, eliciting gentle pleas from the king to be allowed to pass.

  Prince Nicholas, still with his brother and sister-in-law, recounted Constantine and Sophie’s poignant last minutes on Greek soil:

  The crush became even greater when we advanced along the pier; the nearer the King and Queen drew to the boat the fiercer grew the frenzy of the people, who tried to keep him back by force; many leaped into the sea and held fast to the boat. The King and Queen, after a last handshake right and left, stepped into the boat…among lamentations and sobs that rent the air…whilst all the people went down on their knees and stretched out their hands towards the King and Queen. It was a heart-rending picture and the King ordered them to put on speed.19

  A lone voice stood out. Alexander, Sophie’s second son, left behind to reign in Constantine’s stead, was heard to cry out from the shore at Oropus after his departing father: “You shall come back to us soon.”20

  The French had deposed King Constantine and hounded him and his queen from their country. In the monumental battle that pitted Sophie’s husband and the dynasty against Eleutherios Venizelos, Venizelos and the Allies had won. Sir Francis Elliot captured the mood in Athens after Constantine and Sophie’s departure: “In practically two days the shops, banks and theatres…were closed and the city had the appearance of having been struck dumb.”21

  It has been said that the deposition of the legitimate monarch in Greece in June 1917 was “the end result of a situation which concealed one of the most complicated episodes of inter-allied diplomacy of the whole war.”22 Others have been more blunt. The “martyr King” lost, “persecuted by France and by England and calumnied by the ‘Satan of Salonika,’ “ Venizelos.23 Of Eleutherios Venizelos, Admiral Kerr concluded that “Constantine and his family were, he considered, a bar to the fulfilment of his great dream [of re-creating the old Greek empire], and so by hook or by crook they must be swept out of his way. “24

  After Constantine and Sophie’s deposition, Venizelos began his three-year rule of the country, marked by the imposition of martial law. Concerted efforts to install pro-Venizelists to important positions continued and a purge of pro-royalists within the arm
ed forces was carried out so that over a thousand officers and soldiers were exiled, dismissed, or imprisoned. Instead of seeking to heal a deeply divided country, the Venizelos regime sought instead to consolidate its hold over power, to the detriment of those who had been or continued to be loyal to Constantine I. With Constantine and Sophie in exile and their inexperienced young son, Alexander I, a virtual prisoner in the palace, Venizelos was able to bring Greece into the Allied camp at last.

  Sophie was almost forty-seven years old; she had been crown princess for over twenty years and Queen of the Hellenes for just over four. But exile from Greece did not bring tranquility. Worries over the fate of her son would never abate. And Sophie was to find to her great cost that Constantine’s sacrifice of his throne had come at an unbearably high personal price.

  Held in captivity at Tsarskoe Selo, Nicholas and Alexandra remained a devoted couple. Physically, the former tsar and tsarina were a study in contrasts. Nicholas continued to carry on with his physical exercise as much as his guards allowed. Shoveling snow in winter, felling trees and preparing and planting a vegetable garden in the warmer months, occupied the outdoor-loving Nicky. Alix, on the other hand, once so beautiful, looked old beyond her years and was a physical wreck. Her weak legs and troubled heart meant that Nicky had to push her about in a wheelchair, a task he did devotedly.

  The royal couple’s dignified behavior was pronounced in contrast to those who mercilessly hurled taunts at them. The tall iron fencing surrounding the park at Tsarskoe Selo offered no protection from jeering crowds who came to leer and insult their former tsar. And the soldiers guarding the couple were equally impudent. An abusive exchange at the end of March 1917 highlighted this, when some of the soldiers shouted insolently at the ex-tsar: “Well, well, Ni-colouchka (Little Nicholas), so you are breaking the ice now, are you? Perhaps you’ve drunk enough of our blood?…And in summer, when there’s no more ice—what’ll you do then, Goloubchik nach (our darling)? Perhaps you’ll throw a little sand on the walks with a little shovel?”25 Only when some of their captors actually spoke to the imperial family did a few minds change in favor of Nicholas and Alexandra. One even conceded to the former tsarina: “Do you know, Alexandra Feodorovna, I had quite a different idea of you? I was mistaken about you.

  Alexander Kerensky, as a senior member of the Provisional Government, visited the couple at Tsarskoe Selo. Though he urged them to have confidence in the Provisional Government, Kerensky did not exactly give orders that would endear him to his wards. Lili Dehn and Anna Viroubova were sent off to Petro-grad. During one of his visits, Kerensky interrogated Alexandra on her political role. For an hour, a frank exchange took place in which Alexandra told Kerensky that since she and Nicholas were absolutely as one in their marriage, they discussed everything. “It was true that they had discussed the different appointments of ministers, but this could not be otherwise in a marriage which was as united as theirs.” Kerensky was satisfied, even “struck by the clarity, the energy and the frankness of her words.”27 He evidently believed in her sincerity, for Kerensky afterwards told Nicholas, “your wife does not lie.”28

  Exile for the family in England came up for discussion. At first the British government, under the prime minister, David Lloyd George, endorsed the idea of granting asylum to Nicholas and Alexandra and their children; but in a curious twist of fate, the couple’s cousin, King George V, thought twice about the matter. Owing to domestic opposition, especially from the left, George V instructed his private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, to advise Lloyd George that the granting of asylum to a former autocrat who had been unpopular among the British might not be such a good idea after all.

  In all fairness to George V, he did not know that his actions might lead to the imperial family’s execution. Anti-German feeling was high at home, prompting the king to change the name of his own house from that of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the much more Anglicized House of Windsor; and along with this change came a wholesale shedding of other German titles among the king’s numerous English relatives, not least Queen Ena of Spain’s two brothers, who lost their title as Princes of Battenberg and became, instead, the Marquis of Carisbrooke and Lord Leopold Mountbatten.

  During the family’s captivity, Alexandra felt keenly the incessant attacks against her husband in the press. Writing to a Russian Army officer who had been a patient at the hospital at Tsarskoe Selo during the war, the former tsarina poured out her frustration: “They write so much filth about Him [Nicholas II]; a weak mind and so forth. It gets worse and worse, I throw the papers down, it hurts, it hurts all the time. Everything good is forgotten, it is so hard to read curses against the people you love most.…When they write filth about Me— let them, they started tormenting me long ago, I don’t care now, but that they slander Him, throw dirt on the Sovereign Anointed by God, that is beyond the bearable.” Once again, Alexandra’s lengthy letter revealed her reliance on God in all her tribulations: “You know that I have nearly lost all faith in people, and yet My whole being is in God, and no matter what happens, this faith cannot be taken away.…There is no such adversity that does not pass. God promised us this in His endless mercy, and we know what unimaginable bliss He readies for those who love Him.”29

  In August 1917, Alexandra and her family were ordered to leave Tsarskoe Selo for Tobolsk, seven hundred miles east of Moscow in western Siberia, as the next best alternative. With insolent soldiers and hostile railwaymen making their departure difficult and humiliating, “the scene was as disgraceful as could be.”30

  The family left Tsarskoe Selo forever the day after Alexei’s thirteenth birthday. For several days, the train carrying them traveled east, with the window shades pulled down whenever a station was passed. Arriving at Tiumen, on the banks of the Tobol, the family then boarded a steamer that sailed past Pokrovskoie, Rasputin’s village. They finally reached their destination, Tobolsk, a town of some twenty thousand people, dotted with onion-domed churches and wooden homes. There Nicholas and Alexandra encamped at the governor’s house until the spring of 1918. At first the family’s confinement proved less constricting than might have been expected. The town’s residents, for one, still felt loyal to the family. When Nicholas and Alexandra went to a nearby church for Mass, they were greeted by people falling on their knees and crossing themselves.

  From Tobolsk, Alexandra received some correspondence from a few friends. She was also able to send off messages to the outside world. More and more references to God and the afterlife appeared in the former tsarina’s correspondence. In one letter to Anna Viroubova, Alexandra wrote: “Ah God! Still He is merciful and will never forget His own. Great will be their reward in Heaven. The more we suffer here the fairer it will be on that other shore where so many dear ones await us.”31

  At the end of October, Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power and overthrew Kerensky’s Provisional Government, marking the beginning of a more radical and dangerous shift to the left. With the withdrawal of the more moderate Kerensky and the appearance of the ruthless Lenin, the lives of the ex-tsar and his family were further endangered.

  As the months passed and the outcome of the war and the family’s captivity remained unresolved, Alexandra became anxious, especially for her country. “Although we suffer horribly still there is peace in our souls,” wrote the ex-tsarina. But above all, “I suffer most for Russia.” What pained Alexandra and her family was the tragedy facing the Russian people; as she told Anna, “it is the sufferings of the innocent which nearly kills [sic] us.”32

  As Christmas 1917 approached, Alexandra’s melancholy descended into deeper depression, brought on no doubt by the long darkness and intense cold. The notorious Siberian winter made its way into the house with its drafty windows and left in its wake a shivering Alexandra, her fingers nearly frozen, and in pain. With temperatures plunging to near —60 degrees at Christmastime, Gleb Botkin, who was with them, recalled how “the Siberian winter held us, by that time, completely in its icy grip…one can only sit in de
spair and shiver…one no longer lives during the Siberian winter but merely vegetates, in a sort of frozen stupor.”33

  Alexandra’s conduct during this period touched Dr. Botkin, who told his son, “I was moved to tears. Here are we, come to Tobolsk for the purpose of helping the Imperial family to keep up their courage in exile, but in reality it is they who are helping us.” Botkin’s son rightly concluded that Alexandra “behaved, throughout, with true heroism, and exhibited a touching kindness for everybody who shared the exile of her family.”34

  As Russia was reeling from the war and Lenin wanted to consolidate power, the Bolsheviks were compelled to make peace with the Central Powers, culminating in the 3 March 1918 Treaty of Brest Litovsk. Lenin ceded huge tracts of land and large swathes of population in a humiliating and harsh agreement imposed by Germany and its allies. Russia gave up Finland, Poland, the Ukraine, the Baltic States, and most of Byelorussia. Not only had Russia lost much land and a good many people to the Central Powers, it had also let down the Entente side by withdrawing from the war. Nicholas was devastated by the news. “Had I known it would come to this,” he dejectedly told Dr. Botkin, “I would never have abdicated.”35

  In the former tsarina’s eyes, Lenin’s actions amounted to nothing short of treachery. “What infamy!” exclaimed Alexandra, “that the Lord God should give peace to Russia, yes, but not by way of treason with the Germans.”36 To Anna Viroubova, she wrote indignantly: “What a nightmare it is that it is Germans who are saving Russia (from Communism).…What could be more humiliating for us? With one hand the Germans give, and with the other they take away. Already they have seized an enormous territory. God help and save this unhappy country. Probably He wills us to endure all these insults, but that we must take them from the Germans almost kills me.”37 When Alexandra heard rumors that Germany might actually be asking for the family to be placed in their hands, she recoiled at the thought, saying, “after what they have done to the Tsar, I would rather die in Russia than be saved by the Germans.”38 Within months, Alexandra was to get her wish. The former tsarina most likely had a premonition that the end was drawing near, for in April 1918 she wrote that “though we know that the storm is coming nearer our souls are at peace.”39