She still labored under the illusion that the dynasty was popular and that every decision of the Czar would be received with respect and gratitude by the nation. Though she knew that she was personally disliked, she did not imagine that this dislike extended itself to the Emperor, and she never supposed that, even in regard to her own person, the hatred of which she was the object existed anywhere else than among the aristocratic circles of Petrograd society. In one word, she believed in the power of autocracy, and she worked as hard as she could to consolidate it by getting Nicholas II. to appoint as his Ministers and advisers men who shared her opinions on this point, and who were ready to crush with the greatest vigor and the utmost severity every attempt to shake the prestige and the authority of the Crown.
Of course, the fact that the country was at war made her path most difficult; for this very reason she thought it was indispensable for the safety of the dynasty and of her son that peace should be concluded. She did not care in the least for the secret treaties or obligations Russia had assumed. To her, honor was but a question of opportunism. She set the existence of the Romanoffs before their self-respect. Her German blood made her lose sight of the real interests of her husband and of her children.
Here we must pause a moment and touch upon a point that has been as much discussed as it has remained mysterious to this day. Was Raspoutine a German agent directly employed by the Kaiser to persuade the half-demented Czarina that it was her duty to put an end to the war? Or was he simply the instrument of other people more in possession of the secret of Germany’s schemes than himself? Personally I am inclined to believe this second version of his activity. Raspoutine was far too ignorant and uncouth to have been taken into the confidence of William II., but Mr. Sturmer, Mr. Manassavitch-Maniuloff, and Mr. Protopopoff undoubtedly were confidants of the Kaiser. They had been promised, most likely, large sums of money for their co-operation in this vile intrigue, which even after their fall was to be renewed and, as we have unfortunately seen, renewed with success.
I shall not repeat here the story of Mr. Protopopoff’s famous journey to Sweden, where he got into direct touch with agents of the German Government. I shall not even return to the subject of the negotiations begun by him and continued by Mr. Sturmer. All this is now a matter of history, and what I am writing here only concerns the personal part played by the Empress in this dark plot, directed against all the Allies of Russia in the war as well as against Russia herself. I am only concerned with Alexandra Feodorowna and her share in the catastrophe which was to send her a captive and an exile to that distant Siberia whither so many innocent people had been banished by her husband.
I wish to explain how it could have become possible for her to be transformed into an active agent of German ambition on the Russian Throne. She was, as we have seen, only half-responsible for her actions. Her intelligence had never been properly balanced and self-control had never been taught her. She had, however, principles, and very strong ones, too, which had stood between her and temptation in the serious sentimental crisis of her life. But this resistance to what perhaps had been the one passion she had known, except her love for her son, had helped to overthrow her mental balance. She had given to God, represented by a Divinity of her own created by her imagination, all the affection she had not been allowed to expend on earth, and full of a spirit of self-sacrifice as stupid as it was devoid of any ground to stand upon. She had fancied that she could work out her personal salvation, together with that of her family and subjects, in restoring to the country whose Empress she happened to be the blessings of a peace that would stop the effusion of blood the thought of which robbed her of sleep at night and repose by day.
She was living in a state which most certainly was bordering on insanity, and she had entirely lost the faculty of discriminating between what was reality and what was a dream. Raspoutine held her in a kind of trance, which was further aggravated by the long fasts to which he obliged her to submit. She was told that she was the victim chosen by the Almighty to expiate all the sins of the Russian Empire, that it was only through constant prayer, combined with all kinds of other mortifications, that she could hope to see restored the peace of her mind and the health of her son. It is probable that she suffered from hallucinations during which she saw, as in a cloud, the rising shapes of soldiers killed in battle, clamoring to her to stop the useless massacres going on in the Polish plains where they had fallen. Is it a wonder that, unconscious of aught else than this condition of self-reproach to which she had been reduced, she tried to end her own sufferings, as well as the misery which had fallen upon her country, by disregarding all the advice she received from her real friends and making the most frantic efforts to induce her husband to accept the peace terms which the Kaiser had more than once caused to be secretly conveyed to him?
Nicholas II. was also weary of the struggle, but he realized better than his wife the impossibility which existed for him of acting independently of his Allies. He had Ministers who, in spite of their respect for his person and authority, would not have hesitated to point out to him the grave consequences which a defection of Russia would mean for the whole cause of the Allied nations, who, after all, had been entangled in this disastrous war because they had rushed to his help and to that of his people.
Sturmer, who had for a short time taken the conduct of Foreign Affairs in his hands, had been compelled to resign, owing to the opposition which he had encountered in the Duma, and especially owing to the masterful speech in which Professor Miliukoff had exposed all the vices and all the crimes of his administration. His retreat had not had for consequence a diminution of his favor or of his influence; he still remained the trusted adviser of both Czar and Czarina. Together with him were working Protopopoff, who pretended that he would be strong enough, with the help of the hundreds, nay thousands of police agents he had at his disposal, to crush every attempt at a revolution; Madame Wyrubewa; and, last but not least, the formidable Raspoutine, whose influence had proved wide enough to cause the postponement of the trial for blackmail of his confederate, Manassavitch-Maniuloff. A bank director from whom he had tried to extort 25,000 rubles had denounced the latter to the military authorities, and, in spite of the angry protest of Mr. Sturmer, whose confidential adviser he had become, he had been imprisoned and sent before a jury.
But even the efforts of these people combined could not move Nicholas II. to act in accordance with their wishes, because, as I have said, he still had Ministers unwilling to betray the country into the hands of its enemies. The head of the Cabinet was Mr. Trepoff, an honest man credited with liberal sympathies, who, at all events, would not lend himself to anything that could be interpreted into the light of a treason of Russia in regard to her Allies. Unfortunately, he could not hold out against the attacks that were directed against him by all the pro-German party, and after he had fallen the latter felt at last free to act as it liked, because Prince Galitzyne, who had accepted the difficult position of Prime Minister in a country already standing on the brink of ruin, was far too timid a man to dare express an opinion of his own, after the Sovereign had once spoken and signified his will to him.