The Tsar's Doctor (23 page)

10th. Starting from the 8th [day] I have noticed that something occupies his thoughts more than his recovery and troubles his soul
post hoc ergo propter hoc
. He is worse today, and Müller, according to his words, is the cause of it. Prince Volkonsky [the tsar’s personal secretary] was, for that reason, instructed to rebuke poor Müller.

Growing weaker and tormented with thirst, Alexander agreed to take a cordial drink, which had been specially prepared. One of his valets tasted it and said it was bitter and Elizabeth did the same. Wylie, however, tried it and said that there was nothing wrong. The drink was almost certainly harmless – nitrous acid, then widely used for fevers, probably giving it a bitter taste. Nonetheless, as was almost inevitable, rumours that the tsar had been poisoned were soon to be on many tongues.

11th. The illness continues; the intestines are quite unclear,
ructus, inflatio
. When I talk to him about blood-letting and laxatives, he gets into a rage and does not deign to talk to me. Today we, Stoffregen and I, discussed the matter. Despite his irritation the Tsar did eventually allow a few leeches to be put to his head.

12th. As far as I remember, tonight I prescribed medicines for tomorrow morning, if we manage, by guile, to persuade him to take them. It is cruel. There is no human power that could bring this man to reason. I am miserable.

13th. Everything will go badly because he will not allow, will not hear, what is indispensable. Such a turn is a very ill omen. His pulse is very irregular, weak and there will be exudation unless one administers
des mercuriaux
(mercurial remedies),
saigne
(blood-letting), patching, mustard, diuretics and purgatives.

14th. Everything is very bad although he is not delirious. I intended to give him
acide muriatique
with a drink but encountered the usual refusal. ‘Go away’. I started crying and he, seeing it, said, ‘Come on, my dear friend. I hope you are not angry with me for that? I have my own reasons.’ (‘Venez, mon cher ami. J’espère que vous ne m’en voulez pas pour cela. J’ai mes raisons.’)

At times Alexander was delirious, rambling on about the awful carnage of the battles and of the burning of Moscow which plainly obsessed his mind. Then suddenly, fixing his eyes on Wylie, he told him of the death of his father, the crime which had eaten like cancer into his subconscious thought. ‘It was a horrible act,’ he said to the doctor, who through the years had grown to be his close friend, and who now stood, helpless to save him, by his side. It was clear that the end was approaching and, at Wylie’s suggestion, a priest was called in to administer the last rites.

15th. Today and yesterday, what a sad duty was it for me to inform him about his coming destruction, in the presence of Her Majesty the Empress who was going to offer him an efficacious medicine, communion administered by Fedorov.

16th. It all seems too late to me. Only because of the physical and mental exhaustion and diminution of sensitivity did I manage to give him some medicines after the Holy Communion and the parting words by Fedorov.

17th. From bad to worse. See the case history. The Prince [Volkonsky] for the first time took possession of my bed to be closer to the Emperor. Baron Dibisch [
sic
] is downstairs.

18th. Not the slightest hope to save my adored sovereign. I warned the Empress and the princes, Volkonsky and Diebitsch. The former was in his room, the latter was downstairs with the valets.

19th. Her Majesty the Empress, who had spent many hours in my company, stayed alone at the Emperor’s bedside all these days until death came at 10 minutes to 11 this morning.

For two days Elizabeth had sat beside her husband or knelt by the bedside holding or stroking his hand. Her eyes were fixed upon him as he became weaker and weaker until all signs of life were gone. Rising, she closed his eyes, folded his arms over his breast, kissed his hand, and then knelt down by the side of the dead body for half an hour in prayer.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The Death Certificate of Doubt

Alexander died on 19 November (or 1 December according to Gregorian calendar) 1825. His body was examined by no fewer than ten doctors but it was left to Wylie, deeply grieving for the man who had been not only his patient but his friend, to carry out the autopsy and to arrange for the corpse to be embalmed. It was Wylie who signed the death certificate, giving Crimean Fever as the cause. And in view of the record of his diary there is little or no reason to doubt his word.

20th. As soon as His Majesty passed away, even before that, some persons checked his effects and within a short time the papers were sealed; we exchanged our remarks about the envy and sadness for the one who had departed from us.

22nd. Autopsy and embalming, which confirms everything I foretold. Oh, if only I had had his consent, if he had been compliant and obedient, that surgery would not have taken place here.

23rd. The complaints by physicians about those in charge of logistics were very justified.

According to one visitor of 1890 the room in which Alexander died was converted into a private chapel. ‘Under the altar, in the basement, there is a monument made of rough stone . . . There is a bronze plaque embedded in the monument, which depicts Alexander’s death . . . The story goes that Alexander’s intestines are buried under that monument.’
⁸⁷

The first Robert Lee, at Odessa, knew of what had happened was on the morning of 20 November when Count Vorontsov summoned him into his library. Entering the room he was told by the count that there was bad news from Taganrog – that the emperor was dangerously ill –and that he must hastily pack his bags and set out with him in two hours, to give what assistance he could to the other overwrought physicians who were trying to save his life.

Setting off at noon, the count’s carriage rumbled its way across the deep sands by the seashore. The count told Lee that he believed all hope for the emperor was lost. Reaching Nikolaev at midnight, they found Admiral Greig, who, also ignorant of the extent of the emperor’s illness, begged Lee to write to him from Taganrog to tell him what was happening there.

Travelling on they found the country so devastated by locusts that the peasants were actually hauling straw from the roofs of their houses to feed cattle that would otherwise starve. Next day, reaching Breslau, they crossed the Dnieper on a raft which had replaced the floating bridge. It was only on the following day, on reaching Taganrog in the evening and being taken by the governor of the town to the house of a merchant, that they learned the sad news. Alexander had died the day before Count Vorontsov had received the letter reporting his illness.

Count Vorontsov, greatly distressed and hardly able to believe that the man whom he had entertained at his house on that memorable evening less than a month before, had died so suddenly, sent his own doctor to Wylie to find out what had occurred.

Sir James read Doctor Lee the whole of his report from the diary so neatly written in his small meticulous hand. His reports had been signed by the other doctors, Stoffregen and the empress’s surgeon among them, to whom Wylie, in desperation, had turned to for advice.

In his journal, Lee testifies that, as far as he knew, there was no cause for misgiving concerning Alexander’s death.

During the six weeks I remained in Taganrog after the Emperor’s death, I never heard that anyone entertained a doubt, or expressed a suspicion, that His Majesty’s death was attributable to any other than a natural cause. The physicians who had the care of His Majesty were accused by some, without the slightest ground, of mismanaging the case; and I heard the question repeatedly put: ‘Why did they not compel His Majesty to submit to their plan of treatment?’ Or, in other words, as Sir James Wylie expressed it, why did they not commit the crime of lèse Majesté – a proceeding which no circumstances could ever justify.

I enjoyed the best opportunities in the Crimea of observing the devoted attachment of Sir James Wylie to the Emperor Alexander, whom he had accompanied in all his campaigns; and I conscientiously believe that on this trying occasion Sir James Wylie discharged his arduous professional duty in a manner worthy of his high reputation.

Wylie’s own diary continues to describe the details of Alexander’s lying in state: of how he himself placed his body in a coffin, and of his great sadness in being forbidden to accompany the cortège on the long trip from Taganrog back to St Petersburg for burial.

December 3rd. All the documents with the case history sent off today to Dr Klinle for the Dowager Empress by express mail and four days before the departure of Prince Gagarin.

11th. The body taken to the cathedral of the Greek monastery where I was present.

12th. Grand service at the monastery which I attended with sadness.

13th. The prince hinted today that I could leave. However, I need an order from Baron Dibitsch [
sic
] to accomplish it. Read arrives from Petersburg.

14th. I visited Her Majesty the Empress several times. The birthday [Tsar Alexander’s]
⁸⁸
the day before yesterday, which I spent in her presence, was the most moving and sorrowful day for me. The Tsarina deserves to be pitied for thousands and thousands of times; no other wish but to die.

17th. I came to have a meal and to see the Volkonsky princesses and the three adjutants. I wrote today to Doctor Klinle sending him the last instructions on preservation.

18th. Within a few days the winter settled in and the sea froze so much as to enable crossing on sledges.

25th. I was busy the whole evening from 7 till 10.30 packing
His Majesty’s body. Good God, what a coffin, suitable for nothing; they started to make a new coffin in the cathedral again. I am afraid that the lead may crush the head; everything is made hugger-mugger. But the four adjutants, the generals, Sazonov, the prince and princesses have made sure everything is safe so far.

28th. Today I am going to the Empress to receive her last orders.

29th. I saw my adored sovereign for the last time on earth. Due to the hatred for me, I am deprived of the permission to accompany him all the way through.

The question is, was Alexander really in that coffin – described by Wylie as both makeshift and barely long enough for his height – that was buried eventually in St Petersburg?

The fact that when it was opened on two later occasions, it was found to be empty, gave rise to the legend that Alexander had colluded with Wylie to sign a false declaration (as he had done in the case of his father’s death) and, having substituted a body, allowed him to escape to the freedom of anonymity for which he yearned.

The author of an article in a Cologne newspaper in 1933 claimed that Wylie’s ‘Memoirs’, lately found among the Imperial Secret Archives, provided documentary evidence of Alexander’s survival. They showed, he wrote, that the body of a courier, killed in an accident a few days earlier, was embalmed, while the tsar, by arrangement with Wylie, boarded an English ship at Taganrog on the night of 18/19 November 1825. In 1841, the article continues, Nicholas asked Wylie, sworn to secrecy, to write a single copy of his ‘Memoirs’ of the happenings. Each tsar, as was clear from the notes and signatures on the manuscript, undertook to reveal the true course of events to his successor when he came of age. The signatures, according to the writer of this article, were those of Tsar Nicholas II and his brother, Grand Duke Michael.
⁸⁹

The author of the article does not reveal how he came about the sources of his claims. However, doubtful as these may be, it does seem certain that Alexander’s face was soon unrecognizable even to those who knew him well. The embalmers at Taganrog were amateurs at their trade. His body began to decompose before it even left the town. Elizabeth ordered that his face be covered as he lay for three weeks within the room where he had died. The head was exposed, however, when the body was eventually moved to the church of the Greek Monastery in the town, but by that time the face was black and so disfigured that people shrank back at the sight. Doctor Lee records in his memoirs:

11th December, 1825, Friday. This morning at nine o’clock the body of the Emperor Alexander was conveyed from the house in which he resided to the church called St Alexander Nevsky, which has been fitted up for its reception. The streets were lined with troops. At half past nine the procession set out. A small party of gendarmes commanded by the Master of Police, under his direction, led the way. Then followed the valets, cook, and others employed about His Majesty. Next, the persons employed about the quarantine and others of the town. Then came a number of priests with flags, torches, and crosses, usually carried by funeral processions. Then came a band of singers. After these a number of generals bearing the orders, crosses, etc, of His Majesty. The car was drawn by six horses covered with black cloth. The coffin was exposed at the head. The feet covered with the same yellow gold cloth which I noticed in the chamber of his house. Over the coffin was a canopy of yellow silk. Attached to the car were a number of cords, which were held by some of the most distinguished officers of His Majesty. After these followed a body of Cossacks with their pikes reversed. The day was bitterly cold . . . The Empress’s coach followed the hearse . . . Guns were fired at short intervals from the time the procession set out.

12th. I went to the church of St Alexander Nevsky this morning where the Emperor’s body was lying in state. There were two Cossacks with drawn swords at each door of the church. A number of slaves or peasants were looking in but not permitted to enter. There was a platform in the middle of the church covered with black. On this was a small elevation covered in red. Over this was placed the coffin surmounted by a canopy. At the feet, on cushions raised on stools covered with red velvet, were the different orders of His Majesty. This was all that remained of the mighty sovereign who had reigned over forty millions of slaves, and whose empire had extended from China to the Baltic Sea, and from the confines of Persia and Turkey to the Arctic Ocean.