Against the concerns of the chief procurator of the Holy Synod, the tsarina succeeded in having Seraphim made a saint. At a moving ceremony in Sarov, a Baroque monastery east of Saint Petersburg, the relatively unknown Seraphim was canonized amid strong-voiced choirs and priests burning incense. Thousands of peasants walked for days to reach the monastery at Sarov, hoping with fervent prayers that Seraphim could heal their lame, sick, and infirmed. And by all accounts, he did. According to a number of witnesses, mute children became able to speak, people with crippled limbs could walk again, and even those appearing to suffer from insanity were healed. On the last night of Seraphim’s canonization ceremony, Alexandra “bathed in the waters of the Sarov River in hopes that she would at last conceive a male child.” In this, she was not alone; she was joined by Nicholas, the dowager empress, Ella, the tsar’s sister Olga, and many other members of the imperial family who made their way down to the river under the moonlight in groups of twos and threes. In the end, the “efforts seemed to have reaped their intended rewards, for within months of Seraphim becoming a saint Alexandra Feodorovna found to her satisfaction that she was again with child.”479
During her fifth pregnancy, she was racked with anxiety over whether or not she would deliver a boy. This undermined the empress’s already-fragile health. She was never well during her pregnancies, and her added anxiety afflicted her with very real pain in her back, legs, and head—her mother, Alice, had endured very similar symptoms, leading many to speculate about the genetic predisposition for illness in Queen Victoria’s bloodline. For days at a time, Alexandra would withdraw to her now-famous Mauve Boudoir in the hundred-room, white-and-yellow, neoclassical Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo. Of all the rooms in all the palaces Alexandra called home, it was her Mauve Boudoir that was truly her refuge. Decorated entirely in mauve—the curtains, the linens, the flowers spread throughout the room—it was filled with books, chintz, lounges, and two pianos. She spent many hours alone resting or on her knees in prayer beneath jewel-encrusted icons. She would not see anyone, save for her husband, daughters, and a handful of close friends. “Why, why will God not grant me a son?” she sobbed to Nicholas.480
His wife’s insularity did not strike Nicholas II as unusual. Growing up, his parents had insisted that family life and governance were to be kept mutually exclusive. This extended to sheltering Nicholas and his siblings, even into their twenties. Alexander III “would not even have Nicky sit in the Council of State until 1893,” wrote his sister Olga. “My father disliked the mere idea of state matters encroaching on our family life.”481 Nicholas and Alexandra were united in their desire to isolate themselves from the outside world. “I feel very sorry for the Emperor and Empress,” wrote the British ambassador to Russia. “They live at Tsarskoe Selo in a world apart, and are almost like prisoners since it is not considered safe to come even to Saint Petersburg.”482 By all appearances, Tsarskoe Selo was a fortress against the difficulties of life. By 1905, the fences were ten feet high and capped off by barbed wire and razor-sharp spikes.
Alexandra and Nicholas’s growing isolation from other members of the Romanov family—and the imperial court as a whole—earned them a reputation for being haughty and difficult, especially the tsarina. Her natural timidity was mistaken for aloofness, prompting many to think she was cold, distant, and uncaring. Whispers, from within the court and without, grew louder and louder claiming that Nicholas and Alexandra should never have been permitted to ascend the throne. But where Nicholas II was easily influenced by members of the imperial family, especially his larger-than-life uncles, Alexandra stood resolute against their influence. She closed in around Nicholas, making a concerted effort to shield him from their advice. Sadly, when she did this, she also prevented him from receiving the help he so desperately needed to rule Russia. Even Alexandra’s own brother, Ernie, commented on this issue during a visit to Livadia. When a woman asked him about his sister, he replied, “My sister? She is splendid. Only you people here don’t know how to treat her. The Tsar is an angel, but he doesn’t know how to deal with her. What she needs is a superior will which can dominate her, and which can, so to speak, bridle her.”483 To outsiders, Alexandra seemed mad. She rejected the opinions of those who were truly wise in favor of others whom she believed possessed some small merit. On both sides of what became the Alexandra issue, misunderstanding reigned supreme. It was not long before most of the Romanovs wanted nothing to do with the empress.
Alexandra did not care what people thought of her, especially Russia’s hypocritical courtiers of whom, in the early days of her marriage, she had drawn embarrassing caricatures of in an act of defiance against their criticisms. They became just as scathing of her. “What else could we expect from Victoria’s grand-daughter,” her critics opined. “Hemming red-flannel petticoats on weekdays and reading the Bible on Sundays—there’s an Englishwoman for you!”484 One of the tsarina’s friends later remarked on the chasm that separated Alexandra from those around her: “The Russian aristocracy could not understand why on all the earth their Empress knitted scarves and shawls as presents for her friends. Their conception of an Imperial gift was entirely different, and they were oblivious of the love which had been crocheted into the despised scarf or the useful shawl.”485
Alexandra’s only concerns were helping Nicholas rule the Russian Empire and raising their children. Their four daughters were charming young girls who brought great joy to their parents’ lives. Alexandra was a devoted mother who loved her children beyond words. Unlike Princess May, Alexandra took a hands-on approach to parenting, rather than give the care of her children entirely over to governesses. Whatever grief she may have experienced at the Russian court, Alexandra received ample rewards for it in the blessedness of her family life.
The happiness Nicholas II and Alexandra enjoyed was soon overshadowed by talk of war. During the empress’s fifth and final pregnancy, Russia found itself embroiled in war in the Far East. The problem began internally. Conflict in the tsarist empire had been brewing for years. Work stoppages, strikes, and riots were becoming commonplace in Moscow and Saint Petersburg as a result of the poor living conditions, rampant poverty, and illiteracy among the masses. These problems only added to the maelstrom when Russia went to war with Japan in 1904, which proved to be Nicholas II’s annus horribilis. The conflict had been brewing ever since Russian imperial ambitions branched out into Asia by targeting Manchuria. But when the first volley was fired, it caught the Russian Empire totally unprepared. After breaking off peace talks with Russia in February 1904, Japan sent a group of torpedo boats to attack Port Arthur, Russia’s Asian military command center in China and its only seaport on open, warm water. After making it into port, the torpedo boats sank two of the most advanced warships in the Russian fleet. “Yes, it is a trying time,” Alexandra wrote to her sister Victoria, “but one must put all one’s trust in God, who gives strength and courage. Unluckily I cannot get about at all and spend my days on the sofa … walking and standing causes me great pain.”486
Despite Russia’s lack of preparedness, the war was met with enthusiasm by the population at first. It diverted the nation’s attention off its own problems and onto the war effort. The French military attaché in Russia reported on the people’s reaction to the war: “All the Russians, apart from a handful of fanatics, are prepared to make any sacrifice to bring it to a victorious conclusion and avenge the insult to the Russian flag. We are witnessing a great outburst of national vigour and the grim determination which animates even the lowest classes—particularly the lowest classes—is most impressive.”487 There was an inflated sense that the tsarist empire would quickly vanquish the forces of Japan; many in Russia considered the Japanese an inferior race. Alexandra wrote about the war to her brother, Ernie, how “we did everything to avoid it, but it seems it had to be, & it has done our country good.”488 Wilhelm II supported Russia in the conflict by allowing Russian ships to be refueled with coal at German stations en route to the Far East.
The early weeks of the war also brought about a resurgence in the imperial family’s popularity, which had taken a serious hit in the first years of the twentieth century. Undoubtedly, the imperial couple was relishing their popularity when, in the summer of 1904, the day Tsarina Alexandra had hoped and prayed for finally arrived. On the stiflingly hot afternoon of August 12, Nicholas and Alexandra were at the Peterhof Palace, on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg in the Gulf of Finland. Just as the couple sat down to lunch, the empress went into labor. After a surprisingly short delivery of only one hour, the empress delivered an eleven-pound son at 1:15 p.m. Holding the child in his arms, Dr. Ott turned to Nicholas and announced, “I congratulate Your Majesty on the birth of a tsarevich!”489 When Alexandra awoke from the effects of the chloroform, she looked around the room and saw her husband’s beaming face. “Oh, it cannot be true; it cannot be true,” she cried out in joy. “Is it really a boy?”490
A thunderous 301-gun salute announced to the people of Saint Petersburg that an heir had finally been born—this may seem like overkill, but in 1537 when Jane Seymour presented Henry VIII with his much coveted son, the future Edward VI, the Tower of London guards fired off two thousand rounds of artillery as a tribute. It was the first time in nearly three hundred years that an heir had been born to a reigning tsar. In his diary, Nicholas described it as a “great and unforgettable day … during which we were clearly visited by the grace of God.”491 The reaction across Russia was rapturous. Church bells rang out in parishes from Kiev to Siberia as people celebrated into the small hours of the morning. Nicholas, his mother, and his daughters attended a Te Deum to thank God for the birth of a son.
Eleven days later, Alexandra’s son made his first public appearance for his christening. The tiny infant was paraded through the streets of Saint Petersburg resting on a cloth-of-silver cushion in a gilded carriage drawn by six cream-colored horses. The four-hour ceremony was held at the ornate Peterhof Palace, famous for its gold-plated, eight-tiered fountain system that reminded visitors of Versailles. In a fitting move during a time of war, the entire armed forces were named godparents to the tsarevitch, along with the Prince of Wales and Emperor Wilhelm II. The christening brought together the entire Russian imperial court. Hundreds of men and women, dressed in dazzling medals and jewels made of gold and diamonds, watched as the metropolitan of Saint Petersburg baptized the little boy, who was given the title tsarevitch and publicly proclaimed heir to the throne. During the ceremony, Nicholas II and Alexandra named their only son Alexei, after the seventeenth-century tsar of the same name. Some people looked upon the choice as a bad omen: “others shook their heads and saw the name as foreboding; it was an unlucky name. According to a seventeenth-century prophecy, the Romanov dynasty would end with an Alexey as heir.”492
Nicholas and Alexandra thought nothing could dampen their happiness, but they were dreadfully mistaken. In September, Alexandra was horrified when she noticed her baby son was bleeding from his navel. “Alix and I are very disturbed at the constant bleeding in little Alexei,” Nicholas confided to his diary. “It continued at intervals from his navel until evening.”493 For the next three days, Nicholas and Alexandra watched in terror as their son bled intermittently from his navel. It was then that they reached a horrifying conclusion: little Alexei was a hemophiliac. That dreaded blood disease that had killed Alexandra’s brother Frittie and her uncle Leopold had shown up in her son. The slightest bump or bruise could lead to a fatal bleeding episode. The long-term prognosis was equally grim, since the disease’s bleeding effect destroys tissue, bone, and cartilage. The empress then had a sickening revelation: it was she who had passed the disease on to Alexei. As a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, she was a carrier of what the imperial court dubbed the “English bleeding disease.” Now, she passed the disease to her only son. “Oh, what anguish it was,” she wrote after Alexei’s first attack, “and not to let others see the knife digging in one.”494 Although the tsarina was somewhat familiar with the disease—her sister Irene’s two sons were both hemophiliacs—she did not realize how widespread it was in her family. Emperor Wilhelm II lost one of his brothers to hemophilia and would later watch a nephew die from it as well.
Once the truth of Alexei’s condition was revealed, the tsar and tsarina made the fateful decision to keep it a state secret. The truth of the tsarevitch’s illness was never to be revealed, not to the public, not even to other members of the imperial family. Everyone from the dowager empress to the tsar’s sisters to the palace servants were kept in the dark. The decision to hide the truth of Alexei’s condition was twofold. First, it was a long-standing tradition in Russia to never discuss the health of the imperial family. Second, Nicholas and Alexandra were afraid that if the truth were known, it would cast doubt on Alexei’s position as heir and thereby threaten the future of the monarchy. From the moment the decision was made, Tsarina Alexandra would not know a moment’s peace. Every moment of every day for the rest of her life would be tinged with anxiety and worry over her son’s delicate health.
9
A Mother’s Heart
(1905–06)
The new year brought with it an unending string of challenges for Russia. The country’s infrastructure continued to be undermined by strikes, work stoppages, and protests. The winter of 1904/05 was particularly unbearable for the people of Saint Petersburg. No longer able to endure rising food prices, falling wages, and the inevitable starvation that followed, the people took matters into their own hands. An assassination attempt on the tsar’s life was made that winter during a ceremony to bless the waters of the Neva River in Saint Petersburg, leading to a tangible increase in security at all imperial facilities. Nicholas II’s uncles, who were particularly hated for their brutality and graft, were often the targets of assassins. Ella’s husband, Serge, was so terrified of being murdered that he slept in a different palace in Moscow every night, surrounded by a constantly changing contingent of guards lest an assassin infiltrate their ranks. Dona’s son Willy was in Russia at the time. In his memoirs, the crown prince recalled the tense atmosphere: “The fear of assassins was very great at the court. Among the many precautionary and preventive measures which I saw taken everywhere, one that I met with on paying the Tsar a late evening visit made a deep impression upon me. In the vestibule of his private apartments, the Emperor’s entire body-guard of about one hundred men were posted like the pieces on a chess-board. It was impossible for anyone to pass; and my entrance created the greatest alarm and excitement.”495
On January 9, 1905, a group of exasperated workers gathered in the streets of Saint Petersburg. They were desperate for Nicholas II to reform his tottering empire. Their list of demands included a constituent assembly for the people and better working conditions, such as an eight-hour workday. As the crowd moved through the city streets toward the Winter Palace, it grew in size. Mostly made up of peasants—workers, women, and children—the mob’s size soared to more than two hundred thousand. Their leader, Father Gregory Gapon, was a priest loyal to the tsar—until recently, Gapon had been secretly working for the interior ministry. The crowd he now led was undeniably devoted to Nicholas II. “We workers and residents of the city of Saint Petersburg,” so went their petition to the tsar, “of various ranks and stations, our wives, children and helpless old parents, have come to Thee, Sire, to seek justice and protection.”496 As they hovered outside the gates of the palace, they held up portraits of the tsar and tsarina while singing the national anthem. What happened next has since gone down as one of imperial Russia’s grisliest political rallies.
As the hymn-singing, icon-waving, noisy but entirely respectful mass of humanity closed in on the [palace] and showed no sign of withdrawing, the commander of the guard finally panicked and ordered his men to fire their first volley not over the heads of the crowd, as was the customary dispersal procedure, but slap [sic] into their bodies. Volley after volley followed and the killing continued late into the afternoon as Cossacks and oth
er mounted troops of the Petersburg garrison hunted down groups who had fled the corpse-strewn palace square. ‘Bloody Sunday’ had entered its mark on the Russian calendar, and the stain was never to be removed.497
The irony was that neither Nicholas nor Alexandra was at the Winter Palace that day. They were instead at Tsarskoe Selo at the urging of their ministers, who felt it was an easier location to protect against the strife in the capital. Charles Hardinge, the British diplomat and statesman, could not hide his disgust at the massacre. He believed that the tsar had “missed the chance of his lifetime … if he had received at the Winter Palace a small deputation and promised to give them what has been sincerely promised to them in his name, he would have obtained the undying loyalty and admiration of the lower classes.”498
Alexandra was horrified at the bloodshed that day, which amounted to more than two hundred people killed. Her comments on the massacre are a chilling reminder of the repressive nature of autocracy in Russia: “The poor workmen who had been utterly misled, had to suffer, and the organizers have hidden as usual behind. I love my new country. It’s so young, powerful, and has much good in it, only utterly unbalanced and childlike.”499 In a letter to one of her sisters, she was more candid: “It is a time full of trials indeed. Things are in a bad state and it’s abominable [sic] unpatriotic at the time when we are plunged into war to break forth with revolutionary ideas.” Unfortunately, the empress refused to believe things were as bad as they really were. “Don’t believe all the horrors the foreign papers say,” she continued. “They make one’s hair stand on end—foul exaggeration.”500 This myopic quality would stay with Alexandra until the bitter end.
Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires Page 25
