The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (53 page)

* An
izvozchik
is a driver of a horse-drawn cab, familiar all over Russian cities at the time.

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carriages, no policemen.’58 The following morning, 28 February, as

rioting continued across the city, out at an Alexander Park deep in

snow and in temperatures of 35 F degrees below zero the sound of

intermittent firing and shouting could be heard, coming from the

Tsarskoe Selo barracks. What had started as a group of renegade

drunken soldiers firing in the air soon developed into a mutiny by most of the garrison and reserve battalions. Soon rifle fire was joined by the sound of military bands playing the
Marseillaise
to cheers of ‘Hurrah!’

The imperial family meanwhile had little protection beyond a few

remaining loyal troops camped outside in the park in the bitter cold.

Seeing how desperate the situation was becoming Lili offered to

stay with Alexandra, having asked Nikolay Sablin and his wife, who

lived in the same block of flats in the city, to take care of her son.59

The sick children ‘looked almost like corpses’, she recalled. From

their beds they could clearly hear the firing in town and asked her

what the shooting was about. Lili pretended not to know; such

noises always sound louder in the frost she told them. ‘But are you

sure that’s what it is?’ Olga asked. ‘You can see how even Mama is

nervous, we are so worried about her sick heart. She is overtaxing

herself too much. You absolutely must tell her to rest.’60 It was hard maintaining an air of calm but Alexandra was adamant that she did

not want the children to know anything until it was ‘impossible to

keep the truth from them’. That day, she telephoned Bibi at the

annexe warning her of the dangerous situation now prevailing: ‘It’s

all finished, everyone has gone over to their [the revolutionaries’]

side. Pray for us, we need nothing more. As a last resort we are

prepared to take the children away, even the sick ones . . . All three are in the same room in complete darkness, they are suffering greatly, only the little ones know everything.’ Hearing this from Bibi,

Valentina Chebotareva discussed the situation with her wounded

patients. They all believed that Nicholas would ‘uphold Rodzianko’s

government’ when he returned. ‘Salvation is possible,’ Valentina

wrote in her diary that night, ‘but I am full of doubt.’61

At 10 p.m. on the evening of the 28th, anxious to thank the loyal

troops still guarding them in the bitter cold outside, Alexandra

emerged from the Alexander Palace holding Maria’s hand and walked

out to speak to them, the only light coming from the glow of fire

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on the horizon. Lili Dehn watched Alexandra from a window,

‘wrapped in furs, walking from one man to another, utterly fearless

of her safety’.62 All was strangely silent in the park except for gunfire in the distance and the sound of boots crunching on snow as she

and Maria ‘passed like dark shadows from line to line’, acknowledging the soldiers with a smile.63 Many called out greetings and Alexandra

stopped to talk them, particularly the officers of the Tsar’s Escort, who formed a protective circle round her as she returned to the

palace. ‘For God’s sake,’ she said before leaving them, insisting that they go inside and warm themselves, ‘I ask all of you not to let any

blood be shed on our account!’64

That night, Alexandra decided that Maria should sleep in her

bed. In fact, one of the girls had slept in her room with her ever

since Nicholas had left for Stavka, as they were all fearful of leaving their mother alone.65 A bed was made up for Lili on the sofa in the

girls’ drawing room which connected directly into their bedrooms,

where she also could be on hand if needed. Anastasia got the room

ready, thoughtfully putting a nightgown for Lili on the bed, setting

an icon on the bedside table and even a photo of Lili’s son Titi from their own collection.66 ‘Don’t take off your corset’, Alexandra said, instructing both Lili and Iza Buxhoeveden to be ready to leave at

a moment’s notice. ‘You don’t know what might happen. The

emperor will arrive tomorrow between 5 and 7 and we must be

ready to meet him.’67 That night, Lili and Anastasia found it hard

to sleep; they got up to look out of the window and saw that a large

gun had been positioned in the courtyard. ‘How astonished Papa

will be!’ Anastasia had remarked, open- mouthed.68

Many of the palace servants fled that night, but in Petrograd,

Duma chairman Mikhail Rodzianko was still managing to maintain

order and the situation in the city seemed to have eased. ‘They say

that they’ve gone to Tsarskoe Selo to inform the empress of a change

of government’, wrote Elizaveta Naryshkina, who was currently

trapped in the city. ‘Full revolution has taken place peacefully.’69 But this was not entirely so: revolutionary groups even now were heading

for the Alexander Palace, intent on seizing Alexandra. Count

Benkendorf surveyed the remaining troops he could count on: one

battalion of the Guards Equipage, two battalions of the Combined

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FOUR SISTERS

Regiment of Imperial Guards; two squadrons of the Tsar’s Escort,

one company of the Railway Regiment and one battery of field

artillery brought over from Pavlovsk.70

Early in the morning of 1 March everyone was awake and

anxiously expecting the tsar’s arrival at any moment. But he didn’t

come. At Malaya-Vishera, a hundred miles (160 km) south in

Novgorod province, insurgents on the line had turned his train back;

the route to Petrograd and Tsarskoe Selo beyond was closed. The

imperial train was instead diverted to Pskov. Here, unexpectedly

Nicholas was met by a deputation from the Duma who had come

out by special train with one thought in mind: to force him to

abdicate.

At Tsarskoe Selo a frantic Alexandra was firing off letters and

telegrams to no avail; no reply came. And now Anastasia had gone

down with measles too. Alexandra was intensely grateful for the

support of Lili Dehn – ‘an angel’, who was ‘inseparable’ from her.

Lili did her best to comfort Anastasia who ‘could not reconcile

herself to the idea of being ill and kept crying and saying “Please

don’t keep me in bed”’71 ‘God for sure sent it, for the good somehow’, Alix wrote to Nicky of their children’s suffering. Later that same

day she scrawled another letter: ‘Your little family is worthy of you, so brave and quiet.’72

For seventy-two hours the household at Tsarskoe Selo waited.

‘No news of the Emperor; we don’t know where he is’, wrote

Elizaveta Naryshkina.73 Meanwhile, over in a railway siding at Pskov, 183 miles (294.5 km) to the south-west, Nicholas had on 2 March

abdicated the throne, not just for himself but his son also. His decision, it later emerged, was based on a candid conversation he had

had with Alexey’s paediatrician Dr Federov, about the nature of his

son’s condition. Fedorov had told him that although Alexey might

live for some time, his condition was incurable. Nicholas knew that

if his son became tsar under the required regency of his brother

Grand Duke Mikhail, he and Alexandra, as former monarchs, would

not be allowed to remain in Russia and would be sent into exile.

Neither of them could contemplate separation from their son and

so he abdicated for both of them.
*
*But he also did so in the genuine

* As next in line Mikhail was offered the throne the following day but he declined
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hope that his abdication was the best thing both for Russia and the

honour of the army – and that it might defuse the volatile political

situation.74 At Mogilev Nicholas had been joined by his mother

Maria Feodorovna who had travelled up from Kiev where she was

now living. With the millstone of duty lifted from him, Nicholas

sat quietly and dined with his mama, went for a walk, packed his

things and after dinner played a game of bezique with her. He signed

the declaration of abdication at 3 o’clock that afternoon and finally left Pskov at 1 a.m. ‘with the heavy sense of what I had lived through’, heading back to Mogilev to bid farewell to his military staff. All

around him he saw nothing but ‘betrayal, cowardice and deception’;

there was only one place he wanted to be and that was with his

family.75 ‘Now that I am about to be freed of my responsibilities to

the nation,’ Nicholas had remarked to the commander of the Tsar’s

Escort, Count Grabbe, ‘perhaps I can fulfill my life’s desire – to

have a farm, somewhere in England.’76

Back at the Alexander Palace the tsaritsa was still fervently praying for news of her husband. Meanwhile the first rumours began to

reach the capital that Nicholas had abdicated. Shortly afterwards,

the Guards Equipage, on the orders of their commander Grand

Duke Kirill, were ordered to leave the palace, for Kirill had thrown

in his lot with the new provisional government. The tsaritsa watched

as the naval colours – so familiar from the family’s many trips on

the
Shtandart
– were marched away. But as the Guards left, others such as Rita Khitrovo, one of Olga and Tatiana’s fellow nurses from

the annexe, were arriving to offer help. Even some servants who

had been stranded in the city had managed to make their way back

to Tsarskoe Selo on foot. Outside their windows the children were

greatly comforted to see their ‘dear Cossacks . . . with their horses, standing around their officers and singing their songs in low voices’, as Maria told her father.77 But it was a terrible time for her and her mother as they watched over the sickroom: Olga and Tatiana were

very much worse, with abscesses in their ears. Tatiana had gone

temporarily deaf, and her head was swathed in bandages. Olga had

been coughing so much that she had completely lost her voice.78

to take it.

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Prime Minister Rodzianko continued to urge that the children

be got away to safety but Alexandra was adamant: ‘We’re not going

anywhere. Let them do what they will, but I won’t leave and will

not destroy the children [by doing so].’79 Instead, she asked Father

Belyaev of the Feodorovsky Sobor to bring the icon of Our Lady

of the Sign from the Znamenie Church and hold prayers upstairs

for the children: ‘We put the Icon on the table that had been prepared for it. The room was so dark that I could hardly see those present

in it. The empress, dressed as a nurse was standing beside the bed

of the heir . . . a few thin candles were lit before the icon’, the priest recalled.80 In the afternoon, Ioannchik’s wife, Princess Helena,

bravely made her way over to see Alexandra. She was shocked at

how the last two weeks had dramatically aged Alexandra. There was

no doubting her courage and she found her ‘extremely dignified’:

Even though she had gloomy forebodings about the fate of her

imperial spouse and fear for her children, the empress impressed

us with her sangfroid. This composure may have been a char-

acteristic of the English blood that flowed in her veins. During

these tragic hours she did not once show any sign of weakness,

and like any wife and mother she lived through those minutes

as a mother and woman would.81

‘Oh my, our 4 invalids go on suffering,’ Alexandra wrote to

Nicholas that day, not knowing if her letter would reach him, ‘only

Marie is up and about – calm and my helper growing thin as [she]

shows nothing of how she feels.’ There is no doubt, however, that

recent events had finally cowed Alexandra’s combativeness. A new

note of meekness was to be discerned, as she assured Nicholas that

‘Sunny blesses, prays, bears up by faith and her martyr’s [Grigory’s]

sake . . . she assists into
nothing
. . . She is now only a mother with ill children.’82

On the afternoon of 3 March it was Grand Duke Pavel (still

resident at his home at Tsarskoe Selo), who arrived finally bringing

news of Nicholas. ‘I heard that N[icky] has abdicated, and also for

Baby’, Alexandra noted curtly in her diary.83 She was shocked but

remained outwardly calm; in private she wept bitterly. Sitting with

the grand duke over supper, she talked of a new and different future.

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‘I may no longer be Empress, but I still remain a Sister of Mercy’,

she told him. ‘I shall look after the children, the hospital, and we

will go to the Crimea.’84 In the midst of this crushing news Maria

remained the only one of the five children still not affected by sickness, but even she was convinced, as she told Iza Buxhoeveden, that

she was ‘in for it’.85 It was hard for her to keep her mother going

on her own and protect her from harm, as all four sisters had done

so conscientiously all their adult lives.