Behind the veil at the Russian court

by Princess Catherine Radziwill

The Grand Duke himself, whose intelligence was moderate, whose education had been conducted on the principle of strict obedience to the orders of the head of his House, and who had the great defect of believing that he possessed principles, whereas he had only passions, did not realise the gravity of the crisis which his country was going through. He imagined that by hanging a few people, and exiling a good many, he would be able to subdue the revolutionary tendencies which he was forced to recognise were little by little taking hold, not only of the lower orders, but also of the higher classes of Society in Moscow.

He was courageous by nature, more so than his nephew and brother-in-law, the Emperor, and he disdained the threats which he heard every day levelled at his person. However, at the end of the year 1904, these threats assumed such proportions that it was deemed advisable for the Grand Duke and his wife to remove from the palace of the Governor-General, where they resided, to the Kremlin, and the Grand Duchess, alarmed by all she heard, and having been told that her presence at his side would preserve her husband from any attempt to murder him, made a point of accompanying him wherever he went. However, one morning she was prevented from doing so, and as if to prove that she had been his guardian angel, it was on that very morning that Sergius Alexandrovitch was killed.

A cross is now erected on the spot where he was blown to pieces, and reminds the world of this dastardly crime. It is useless to repeat its harrowing details, or to relate how his mangled remains were picked up during three whole days (one of his fingers was found on the roof of the Arsenal). The people who first reached the spot where the catastrophe had occurred cannot to this day speak without a shudder of what they saw. A stretcher was brought hurriedly, no one knows from where, and upon it were deposited what remains it had been possible to pick up; and whilst this was being done one saw a woman, bareheaded, with a blue cloak thrown upon her shoulders, hurry up to the spot where the catastrophe had taken place and throw herself upon her knees beside the stretcher. It was the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, who, hearing the noise of the explosion, had rushed to see what had happened.

Bravely she followed the soldiers, who slowly brought back the remains of the Grand Duke to the Kremlin, and her composure in that trying moment of her life was the admiration of all who saw it. She found the courage to dispatch at once a telegram to the Emperor, in which she begged him, among other things, to allow her husband to be buried in Moscow, the town he loved so well, as she expressed herself; and she further begged Nicholas II. not to endanger his own person by coming to the funeral, and to grant her permission to spend the rest of her life beside the murdered Grand Duke’s grave.

Her message relieved Nicholas II. from a great anxiety and difficulty. He knew very well that his duty would have required him to be present at his uncle’s obsequies, but he did not care to do so at all, and thus expose himself to the possibility of a like fate. The request of the Grand Duchess gave him the opportunity for which he longed, and so he dispatched his other uncle, the Grand Duke Alexis, to Moscow, to represent him at the funeral, and he replied to his aunt and sister-in-law that he would follow her wishes in everything, and that she had only to order what she wanted.

Elizabeth Feodorovna then did one thing which was bitterly criticised afterwards, and not without reason. She insisted upon going to the prison where her husband’s murderer was confined, to hold conversation with him. It was said that she wanted to assure him of her forgiveness; but, as some people remarked, taking into account that she could not save him from the gallows, her step in visiting him seemed entirely out of place.

There was in all her actions at that sad time an exaggeration which did her more harm than good, and which destroyed many sympathies. However, Moscow loved her, and perhaps felt grateful to her for her willingness to remain in the town where her married life had been wrecked. When, later on, she developed considerable activity, not only in the domain of charity, but also in politics, she still kept the affection of the inhabitants of the old capital—so much so that it is at least certain that if ever another revolution breaks out in Moscow, the Grand Duchess will be respected by everybody, equally with the nuns of the community of Martha and Mary, which she has founded for the relief of the poor and sick inhabitants of the city.

The Grand Duke Sergius Alexandrovitch was murdered in January of 1905, and the year which began with this catastrophe was to see many more bloody days before it came to an end. About the same time that the fifth son of the Emperor Alexander II. met with the same fate as his father, Port Arthur fell into the hands of the Japanese, and this loss of the fortress on which the attention of the whole of Russia had been concentrated for long months, put the crowning touch to the general indignation of the public against the Government. In St. Petersburg, especially, where factories abound, and where the workmen felt bitterly the economical crisis, which, as a consequence of the war, was ruining the country, the agitation assumed quite gigantic proportions. It was felt that a revolt, if not a revolution, was imminent, and that something had to be done to arrest its progress. The misfortune was that no one seemed to know what was to be done.

At that time Count Witte was Minister of the Interior. Unscrupulous as ever, clever as usual, he thought that the first step to be taken would be to ascertain what really were the intentions of the leaders of the anarchist movement, which lately had assumed considerable proportions among the working classes.

The leaders of this movement had hitherto escaped the vigilance of the police, and could not be discovered. On the other hand, it was evident that unless the Government discovered the intentions of these leaders, fight was impossible and no measures could be taken to check the evil. It was then that he bethought himself of resorting to the old method of agents provocateurs, through the help of whom he hoped to get at last to the bottom of the vast conspiracy, the existence of which no one denied.