The departure of Italy from the Central powers was soon offset when Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire joined their alliance. As far as Bulgaria was concerned, this was not just a military alliance. Zita’s eldest sister, Maria Louisa, had been the first wife of the king of the Bulgarians, Ferdinand I, the self-styled “tsar.” Melodramatic, farcical, and obnoxious with grandiose ideas about himself, the rotund Ferdinand was notoriously annoying but possessed a brilliant mind. Through personal avocation, he was reputed to be the most accurate royal genealogist in Europe. Franz Joseph was willing to overlook Ferdinand’s many eccentricities, since Bulgaria’s support for Austria on the Balkan front brought much-needed relief to the imperial troops.
As Zita’s war work increased, she saw her husband less than ever. He was since promoted to commanding the First Hussar Regiment at the front. His return visits to Vienna were few and far between. Charles was under no illusions about what his position as an army officer meant, and he was by no means optimistic about this. “I am an officer with all my body and soul,” he told Zita, “but I do not see how anyone who sees his dearest relations leaving for the front can love war.” The bloody scenes Charles was seeing at the front made a profound impression on him. One eyewitness recalled the archduke surveying the troops at Gmunden before shipping out: “I remember vividly the visit of the new heir to the throne, the young Archduke Charles, who inspected the troops going to the front. There was a solemn high Mass said in the parish church, a rather beautiful late Gothic building. Many of the congregation cried. There was no wild enthusiasm when we accompanied the young soldiers, their caps decorated with green twigs, to the railway station.”826
When the war began, Charles was initially stationed at the Russian front, but “after the first opening skirmishes it was decided that the Heir Apparent ought not to be exposed to daily peril, since in the event of his death Austria would have been hard put to appoint a fourth Crown Prince.”827 He was reassigned to the High Command in Vienna, though he still traveled around to different command centers as the emperor’s representative. Franz Joseph’s goal was to train his great-nephew to take over the reins of power at any moment. Charles’s new post with Imperial High Command afforded him the opportunity to meet Emperor Wilhelm II for the first time in January 1915 at a German military base at Charleville. The meeting was more for show than anything else. They “achieved little in the all-important matter of establishing some clear war aims and working directly and specifically for the long-term objective of peace,” though it is recorded that Charles and Wilhelm got along well “on a personal level.”828
While her husband was away visiting military installations, Zita was left at Schönbrunn with their children. To occupy her time, she started accepting invitations from the emperor for her and the children to spend more time with him. The family started seeing the emperor almost every day. This brought a great deal of joy to Franz Joseph. “In this [sic] serious and exciting days it was both a comfort and a recreation for the old sovereign to pass an hour or two in the company of the young Archduchess and her merry family,” wrote a member of the emperor’s court.829 They took meals together, and she accompanied him on his walks in the afternoon. Zita’s role as wife and mother soon expanded to include advisor and confidante. On more than one occasion, the emperor confided his hopes and fears to his great-niece. Zita recalled that Franz Joseph “never assumed that everything was assured for all time.” He confessed to her “a feeling that, ever since 1848, the empire was like [a] volcano which was uneasily sleeping. This was not only because he saw it threatened by nationalist movements and the growth of parliamentary pressure but because its future depended on alliances with all their uncertainty and weakness. And, of course, Austria-Hungary was not the old Holy Roman Empire which was, for him, his real homeland.”830
Not content to be seen only on the emperor’s arm, Zita went about making her own personal contribution to the war effort. Portraits of the imperial family were taken and made into postcards, proceeds from which went to the Red Cross. One portrait, labeled “Three Generations,” showed the emperor seated in his customary dress uniform, along with Charles and Otto, who clutched his father’s leg. Another one, which bore the caption “God save our Beloved Kaiser,” was of Franz Joseph in a similar position, wearing the same uniform, with only Otto at his side. Even a century later, this image would become one of the most famous ever taken of the tiny archduke and his great-great-uncle.
The strain that Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire placed on the war effort was felt the most acutely by Russia, who shared borders with both nations, meaning the country was cut off from the south. Further triumphs by the Germans in the Baltic cut Russia off from Western aid altogether. After only a year, Russian losses were staggering. The problem was compounded by an inadequate support system to fuel the war effort.
Hampered by insufficient weapons and supplies and poor food rations, Russia’s armies fought on, but the losses sustained by the empire were enormous. By August 1915, a staggering 450,000 Russians a month were dying at the front. This brought the total loss of life since the previous year to 1.5 million men. For the year 1915 alone, an astounding 2 million men were captured, wounded, or killed, and the whole Russian front had for all intents and purposes crumbled.831
Ammunition was in such short supply that soldiers were told to limit themselves to ten bullets a day. One British observer noticed that when a group of eighteen hundred new recruits arrived at the front lines, they were unarmed. They were later told to wait until enough soldiers had died to supply themselves with guns and ammo. The Russian army as a whole was comprised of fifteen million mobilized men. This was disastrous for the country’s infrastructure. Farmers, factory workers, and laborers were marched off to the front lines, leading to a falloff in Russia’s fragile economy. A recession soon took hold. This meant trouble for the empire, which had been tottering on the brink of instability for many years.
Tsarina Alexandra was deeply moved by the suffering of her people. She wrote to the bishop of Ripon, an old friend, “We can only trust & pray that this terrible war may soon come to an end—The suffering around is too intense. You, who know all the members of our family so very well, can understand what we go through—relations on all sides, one against the other.”832
The setbacks his country was enduring weighed heavily on Nicholas II. Deeply committed to his role as Batiushka Tsar, he believed that the only way for Russia to be victorious on the battlefield was to lead the troops himself. He relieved the commander in chief of the armed forces, his highly respected cousin Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaievich, who was made viceroy of the Caucasus. Rumors began to spread that Nikolasha’s shocking dismissal was pushed for by the empress, since the grand duke was an outspoken critic of Rasputin. There was universal agreement that this was a terrible idea. Nicholas’s Council of Ministers, long accustomed to the tsar’s poor decisions, fell silent in shock when he announced he was leaving for Russian military headquarters. Incredulous, they composed a long letter begging him to reconsider. The tsar’s cousin Grand Duke Andrei visited the dowager empress shortly after Nicholas announced his decision and found her “in a terribly worried state.” He confided in his diary Minnie’s great anxiety over the whole situation.
She was especially excited over the question of Nicholas Nicholaevich. She thinks that his removal will be the ruin of N. [the tsar] because it will never be forgiven him. She exonerated Niki [the tsar] in all this and laid all the blame on Alix. When Niki came to see her before going she [Minnie] begged and begged him to think over everything carefully and not lead Russia to ruin. To her pleas he replied that everybody deceived him, that he must save Russia, that it was his duty. It was in vain that she pleaded with him that he was poorly prepared for this hard task and that State affairs required his presence at Petrograd. He remained unpersuaded and would not even promise to deal kindly with Nicholas Nicholaevich.… Aunt Minny, as she related to me all this, was so excited, so stirred up, that I was fri
ghtened. She kept repeating the question: “What are we coming to, what are we coming to? That is not at all like Niki—he is lovable, he is honest, he is good—it is all her [Alexandra’s] work.833
Ignoring all entreaties, Nicholas took over full command of the Russian military at their headquarters, Stavka. Originally located at Baranovichi in Belarus, it was moved to Mogilev, on the Dnieper River, five hundred miles away from the capital. Although the tsar left, he did return home from time to time. In some instances, when he left for Stavka from Saint Petersburg, he took Alexei with him. The times that the tsarevitch accompanied his father were difficult for Alexandra to cope with. She was anxious for her son’s welfare, and rightly so. In 1915, Alexei nearly died when he slipped and fell at Stavka. On another occasion, the boy had a sneezing fit, which led to a nosebleed, which led to another hemophilia attack. The only hope, Alexandra reasoned, was Rasputin. “Thanks be to God!” the staretz wrote in a telegram. “He has given me your son’s life once more.”834 And without delay, Alexei pulled through. This latest episode only served to further inculcate into Alexandra the way Rasputin was tied to her son’s fate like a double helix.
In Saint Petersburg, Alexandra spent hours writing letters to Nicholas at Stavka, exhorting him to hold fast to absolutism. “Forgive me, precious One,” she wrote in one letter, “but you know you are too kind & gentle—sometimes a good loud voice can do wonders, & a severe look—do my love, be more decided & sure of yourself … You think me a medlesome [sic] bore, but a woman feels & sees things sometimes clearer than my too humble sweetheart … a Sovereign needs to show his will more often.”835 With her husband away from Saint Petersburg for months at a stretch, Alexandra was left to rule in his absence. Within a week, the empress gave Russia what she considered a crash course in autocracy. She took an equally hard-line approach in the capital. She systematically sought out the ministers who opposed the tsar’s departure to Stavka and had them dismissed. She also shut down the lines of communication between the government and the Duma. Sadly for Alexandra, her ability to rule was as wanting as her faith in Rasputin was misplaced. She appointed and dismissed ministers based solely on the staretz’s opinions. The governing of Russia came to a standstill because her constant shuffling of ministers handicapped the administration. This was not a new concept in Russia, though. Nicholas II had once admitted to always having replacements ready should he need to sack his ministers at any given time.
Anger against the empress began boiling over in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Many viewed her with distrust, thinking she was a German spy. The same way Dona’s mother-in-law was labeled Die Engländerin (“the English woman”), so too was Alexandra being slanderously called the Nemka (“the German woman”). In the newspapers, she was openly slandered as “Alix Rasputin.” This was a mirror image of the same innuendo that had befallen Queen Victoria during her—platonic—relationship with the Scottish gillie John Brown. The more time the queen had spent with the gillie, the more she was snidely called “Mrs. Brown.” But there was never any notion of eliminating Queen Victoria’s influence in the same way most people wanted Alexandra removed. There was soon talk of her being sent packing to a convent in faraway Siberia or back to Germany like the traitor she supposedly was.
Alexandra’s ultraconservative rule struck an ironic chord. Had Russia and Germany been at peace at the time, she and Dona may have come to respect one another. This tendency to the political Right was something both empresses shared, but in Britain, the tsarina did not win any friends. Public opinion dramatically shifted to the Left over the last two decades, with increasing criticism in the British press of Russia’s autocracy. When Alexandra took the reins of power in 1915–16, many liberal politicians in London cringed. Despite being allies with Russia, the English people held little esteem for Alexandra or Nicholas, who was now being looked upon as a weak failure of an emperor.
Although British opinion was against them, Nicholas and Alexandra maintained cordial ties with the royal family. A number of Romanovs took up residence in England away from the fighting, prompting closer communications on tactical plans between London and Saint Petersburg. In particular, Dowager Empress Marie and Queen Alexandra remained in close contact. “Aunt Alix [Queen Alexandra] wires to say they know for certain that the Germans intend to attack Warsaw this week and she hopes we are aware of it,” Minnie wrote in February 1915.836 She later wrote to Nicholas II, “I have just had a telegram from aunt Alix who wires in despair that they have lost six battleships. But I do hope the German losses are even heavier.”837
Like Mary of England, Dona of Germany, and Zita of Austria, Alexandra of Russia was devoted to caring for wounded soldiers. It was the expected role of a reigning consort during times of war. Similarly to Queen Mary, Tsarina Alexandra was instrumental in taking a leading role in these hospitals. Russia’s attrition rate in the war was extremely high. Mikhail Rodzianko, the president of the Duma, recalled seventeen thousand wounded soldiers being left on a train in Warsaw because there was nowhere for them to go. Many wounded were sent back to Saint Petersburg. The city was incapable of dealing with such a throng of human suffering, leading the tsarina to convert a number of palaces into field hospitals. By 1916, more than eighty-five hospitals in Saint Petersburg were under her aegis.
In the times when Alexei was in good health, Alexandra—with Olga and Tatiana by her side—was a familiar face in many of the hospitals. “To some it may seem unnecessary my doing this, but help is much needed and my hand is useful,” she said.838 She even went so far as to earn her certification as a Red Cross nurse. “As you know,” she told her friend Princess Marie Bariatinsky, “I am of the preacher type. I want to help others in life, to help them to fight their battles and bear their crosses.”839
The day she graduated after two months of nurse training was arguably the proudest moment of Alexandra’s life. Anna Viroubova recalled, “I think I never saw her happier than on the day, at the end of our two months’ intensive training, she marched at the head of the procession of nurses to receive the red cross and the diploma of a certified war nurse.” Her position as empress did not shield Alexandra from the full horrors of the war. She experienced many of her people’s hardships firsthand. She was seen in the hospitals on a daily basis, dressed in her white nurse’s uniform, going from one ward to the other, comforting the soldiers or praying with them. Her day usually lasted from early morning until midnight. She would see men covered head to toe in burns or with limbs missing. Sometimes she would even assist during surgeries. Anna Viroubova often accompanied Alexandra while she was “assisting in the most difficult operations, taking from the hands of the busy surgeons amputated legs and arms, removing bloody and even vermin-infected dressings, enduring all the sights and smells and agonies of that most dreadful of all places, a military hospital in the midst of war.” It was not uncommon for men who were about to have limbs amputated to be heard crying out, “Tsaritsa! Stand near me. Hold my hand that I may have courage.”840 It was not enough for Alexandra simply to care for the soldiers’ physical needs. She was also deeply concerned about comforting them spiritually, so she made sure that every package bound for soldiers on the front lines included Bibles or copies of the Psalms. In the words of one historian, “she demonstrated the same deep levels of compassion for the sick and wounded that her own mother had shown before during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1.”841
The empress took great joy in her work. She wrote to Nicholas at Stavka, “My consolation when I feel very down & wretched is to go to the very ill & try & bring them a ray of light & love.”842 She later admitted to the bishop of Ripon, “It does one no end of good being with those brave fellows—how resignedly they bear all pain & loss of limbs.”843 The sad irony of Alexandra Feodorovna’s life was that so few people ever saw this humble, loving side to her. In the public eye, she was all too easily branded a German traitor who shared a bed with Rasputin. These rumors would gain such momentum in the coming years that they were soon to top
ple the monarchy forever.
16
Apocalypse Rising
(January–December 1916)
After thirty years of marriage and two years of war, Emperor Wilhelm II found himself relying on his wife more than ever. The strain of the war, combined with the marginalized role of a figurehead he was expected to play, was beginning to erode the turgid emperor. As he began a plunge into personal crisis, it was Dona who continued to be the strength behind the throne. She buttressed as many problems for her husband as possible. In public, Wilhelm propagated the myth of a powerful, confident paterfamilias, with Dona in the role of the kleines hausfrau. The truth was somewhat different. Behind the emperor’s verbose facade was a man plagued by insecurities and prone to emotional instability. Conversely, Dona, having weathered her fair share of emotional storms in life, became his rock. Gone were the days of her acrimonious fits of hysteria or jealousy. In supporting her husband during the war, she found a new raison d’être that tapped into a wellspring of strength and fortitude.
In her efforts to make Wilhelm’s burden as light as possible, Dona kept in regular contact with his ministers. A letter she once wrote to her mother’s cousin Prince Chlodwig of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, who had served as German chancellor from 1894 to 1900, encapsulates Dona’s lifelong effort to shore up her husband.
If you[,] dear Prince[,] are willing to help the emperor along … I am certain that everything will turn out all right. I have always wanted the emperor to have older more experienced friends who would help here and there with a calm word or good advice. For despite his exceptional gifts—I as his wife say this with pride, there probably is at present no other monarch in Europe as gifted as he—he is still [relatively] young, and in his youth one is apt to act spontaneously.… You may be surprised about my frankness, but I know I can rely on your discretion.844
Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires Page 41
