Pierre Gilliard

“ Not desiring to be separated from Our beloved son, We bequeath Our heritage to Our brother, the Grand-Duke Michael Alexandrovitch, and give him Our blessing. We abjure him to govern in perfect accord with the representatives of the nation sitting in the legislative institutions, and to take a sacred oath in the name of the beloved Fatherland.
We appeal to all the loyal sons of the country, imploring them to fulfil their patriotic and holy duty of obeying their Czar in this sad time of national trial. ”

“ To the humble peasant the Czar was both the incarnation of his mystic aspirations and in a sense a tangible reality, impossible to replace by a political formula, which would be an incomprehensible abstraction to him. Into the vacuum created by the collapse of the Czaristic régime the Russian revolution—in view of the passion of the absolute and the proneness to extremes which are characteristic of the Slav nature—was certain to hurl itself with a violence that no government could control. ”

“ In her view the uneducated masses of the Russian people could be galvanised into action only by a Czar in whose person all power was centralised. She was certain that to the moujik the Czar was the symbol of the unity, greatness, and glory of Russia, the head of the state and the Lord’s Anointed. To encroach on his prerogatives was to undermine the faith of the Russian peasant and to risk precipitating the worst disasters for the country. The Czar must not merely rule: he must govern the state with a firm and mighty hand. ”

“ The Czarina knew the Czar’s irresolute character. As I have said, she considered she had a sacred duty to help him in his heavy task. Her influence on the Czar was very great and almost always unfortunate; she made politics a matter of sentiment and personalities, and too often allowed herself to be swayed by her sympathies or antipathies, or by those of her entourage. Impulsive by nature, the Czarina was liable to emotional outbursts which made her give her confidence unreservedly to those she believed sincerely devoted to the country and the dynasty. ”

“ I have such happy and poetic memories of my early years in Darmstadt and the good friends I had there. But on my later visits Germany seemed to me a changed country—a country I did not know and had never known.... I had no community of thought or feeling with anyone except the old friends of days gone by. Prussia has meant Germany’s ruin. The German people have been deceived. Feelings of hatred and revenge which are quite foreign to their nature have been instilled into them. It will be a terrible, monstrous struggle, and humanity is about to pass through ghastly sufferings.... ”

“ Everything was done to accelerate the revolution; nothing to avert its consequences.
It was forgotten that Russia did not consist merely of fifteen to twenty million human beings ripe for parliamentary government, but that it had one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty million peasants, most of them rude and uneducated, to whom the Czar was still the Lord’s Anointed, he whom God had chosen to direct the destinies of Great Russia. ”

“ Wednesday, August 5th.—I met the Czar in the park. He told me with immense pleasure that, as a result of the violation of the neutrality of Belgium, England has joined the great cause. The neutrality of Italy seems assured as well.
We have already won a great diplomatic victory. Military victory will follow, and, thanks to the help of England, it will come sooner than we think. The Germans have against them the whole of Europe, with the exception of Austria. Their insolence and despotism have at last been too much even for their allies. Look at the Italians! ”

“ The Germans were the only people in Europe who knew Russia. Their knowledge of it was fuller and more exact than that of the Russians themselves. They had known for a long time that the Czarist régime, with all its faults, was the only one capable of prolonging the Russian resistance. They knew that with the fall of the Czar Russia would be at their mercy. They stopped at nothing to procure his fall. That is why the preservation of the existing system should have been secured at any cost. The revolution was inevitable at that moment, it was said. ”

“ The only light filtered through a barred window at the height of a man’s head. The walls and floor showed numerous traces of bullets and bayonet scars. The first glance showed that an odious crime had been perpetrated there and that several people had been done to death. But who? How?
I became convinced that the Czar had perished and, granting that, I could not believe that the Czarina had survived him. At Tobolsk, when Commissary Yakovlef had come to take away the Czar, I had seen her throw herself in where the danger seemed to her greatest. ”

“ To the Extremists of the Left who desired victory, but a victory without a Czar, he was the obstacle which the revolution would remove. And while the latter were endeavouring to undermine the foundations of the monarchy by intensive propaganda at and behind the front—thus playing Germany’s game—the moderate parties adopted that most dangerous and yet characteristically Russian course of doing nothing. They were victims of that Slav fatalism which means waiting on events and hoping that some providential force will come and guide them for the public good. ”

“ The room of the Commissary Commandant—the first on entering the house—was occupied by Commissary Avdief, his adjutant Mochkine, and some workmen. The rest of the guard lived in the basement, but the men often came upstairs and strolled into the rooms of the Imperial family as they liked. The courage of the prisoners was, however, sustained in a remarkable way by religion. They had kept that wonderful faith which at Tobolsk had been the admiration of their entourage and which had given them such strength, such serenity in suffering. ”

“ In the first place the Czar believed that his cause was a{122} holy cause. The events of the end of July had enabled him to see through the duplicity of Germany to which he had nearly fallen a victim. He also felt that he had never been so near to his people. He seemed to be borne along by them. His journey to Moscow had shown him how popular the war was and how much the nation appreciated the fact that his firm and dignified attitude had enhanced its prestige in the eyes of the outside world. The enthusiasm of the masses had never before been demonstrated with the same spontaneous fervour. ”

“ Fearing that these circumstances might give rise to difficulties, the Admiral had had the “Pretender” brought to Omsk; and General D—— had called for me, thinking that my evidence would settle the difficulty and put a stop to the legend that was beginning to grow up.
The door of the next room was opened a little, and I was able to observe, unknown to him, a boy, taller and stronger than the Czarevitch, who seemed to me fifteen or sixteen years old. His sailor’s costume, the colour of his hair, and the way it was arranged were vaguely reminiscent of Alexis Nicolaïevitch. ”

“ It seemed as if it made their troubles less unbearable, and as if their boundless love for each other was a dynamic force which enabled them to face any degree of suffering.
In spite of the self-control which was habitual with the Czar, he was unable to conceal his immense distress, though his soon recovered in the bosom of his family. He spent most of the day with them, and otherwise read or went for walks with Prince Dolgorouky. At first he had been forbidden to go into the park, and was only allowed the enjoyment of a small garden contiguous to the palace. It was still under snow. ”

“ From the very start Russia showed herself to me under a terrible and menacing aspect, a presage of the horrors and sufferings she had in store for me.
At the beginning of June the family took up their residence in the attractive Villa Sergievskaïa Datcha, which the Duke possessed at Peterhof. The contrast was most striking as we{18} left the barren coast of the southern Crimea, with its little Tatar villages snuggling in the mountains and its dusty cypresses, for the splendid forests and delicious fresh breezes of the shores of the Gulf of Finland. ”

“ By assuming the command of his troops and thus staking his crown on the struggle, the Czar had definitely deprived his enemies of all hopes of a reconciliation. At Berlin the authorities now knew that Nicholas II. would stand by his allies to the bitter end, and that all attempts at a rapprochement would be broken against his unswerving determination to continue the war at any cost. They also knew that the Czar was the sole bond between the different parties in the Empire, and that once it was removed no organised power would be capable of averting dismemberment and anarchy. ”

“ In ordinary times the Czar did not see much of his children. His work and the demands of Court life prevented him from giving them as much time as he would have wished. He had handed over their bringing-up entirely to the Czarina, and in the short time he spent with them in family intimacy he liked to enjoy their company without restraint and with a mind free from all cares. ”

“ The destinies of Russia, the honour of Our heroic army, the welfare of the people and the whole future of Our dear country demand that the war should be carried to a victorious conclusion at any price. ”

“ As the revolution was desired, preparations should have been made to avert this eventuality. Even in times of peace it would have been a formidable risk: to venture upon such a step in war was simply criminal. We Westerners are apt to judge Russian affairs by the governing classes with which we have come in contact—classes which have attained a degree of culture and civilisation equal to our own. We too often forget the millions of semi-barbarous and ignorant beings who understand the simplest and most primitive sentiments alone. ”

“ The influence of these men, who live as a kind of unofficial clergy, is still very considerable in Russia. In the provinces and open country it is even greater than that of the priests and monks.
The conversion of the Czarina had been a genuine act of faith. The Orthodox religion had fully responded to her mystical aspirations, and her imagination must have been{55} captured by its archaic and naïve ritual. She had accepted it with all the ardour of the neophyte. In her eyes Rasputin had all the prestige and sanctity of a staretz. ”

“ In September Commissary Pankratof arrived at Tobolsk, having been sent by Kerensky. He was accompanied by his deputy, Nikolsky—like himself, an old political exile. Pankratof was quite a well-informed man, of gentle character, the typical enlightened fanatic. He made a good impression on the Czar and subsequently became attached to the children. But Nikolsky was a low type, whose conduct was most brutal. Narrow and stubborn, he applied his whole mind to the daily invention of fresh annoyances. ”

“ On December 18th we left for Mohileff again. The situation there had taken a turn for the worse. The news of the capture of Bucharest had just come in to depress everyone’s spirits. It seemed to justify the most gloomy forebodings. Rumania appeared to be lost.
We were all oppressed and uneasy, a prey to that vague anxiety which men experience at the approach of some danger or catastrophe. The muttering of the gathering storm could be heard.
Suddenly the news of Rasputin’s death fell like a thunderbolt. ”

“ The arrogance of the soldiers is inconceivable; those who have left have been replaced by a pack of blackguardly-looking young men.
In spite of the daily increase of their sufferings, Their Majesties still cherish hope that among their loyal friends some may be found to attempt their release. Never was the situation more favourable for escape, for there is as yet no representative of the Bolshevik Government at Tobolsk. With the complicity of Colonel Kobylinsky, already on our side, it would be easy to trick the insolent but careless vigilance of our guards. ”

“ WHILE the illness of Alexis Nicolaïevitch threw such a gloom over the Imperial family, and the influence of Rasputin, a product of their very distress, continued to grow, life at Tsarskoïe-Selo seemed to flow along as smoothly as ever, at any rate to outward appearance. ”