PART II
THE GREAT REVOLUTION
CHAPTER I
On the 15th day of May, 1896, Moscow was celebrating the Coronation of the Czar Nicholas II. of Russia. In the large courtyard inside the Kremlin, an immense crowd was gathered, awaiting the moment when the Sovereign together with his Consort would come out of the Cathedral of the Assumption, to make the customary round of the different shrines and churches, which according to the ancient custom, they had to visit after they had assumed the old Crown of the Russian Autocrats. Among this crowd, there were persons who remembered having witnessed the same kind of ceremony thirteen years before, when Alexander III. had been standing in his son’s place. What a splendid apparition it had been that of this Czar, gigantic in stature, whose quiet and strong features seemed in their placidity to be a true personification of the might of that Empire at the head of which he stood. One had hoped at that time, that he would preside over the destinies of his Realm for long years to come, and no one had given a thought to the possibility that he would so soon be lying in his coffin. Now it was with mixed feelings of pity, combined with a sympathy which already was no longer so strong as it had been when he had ascended the throne, that all were awaiting the new Monarch, who had become in his turn the chief of the old House of Romanoff, so that when the golden gates of the Assumption were thrown open to give passage to the procession which was escorting Nicholas II. all the heads of the numerous people gathered in honour of the occasion, under the shade of the ancient belfrey of Ivan Weliky, turned with an anxious curiosity towards the Sovereign about to show himself for the first time before his people, in the full pomp of his Imperial dignity.
What did one see? A young man thin and slim, who seemed to be entirely crushed under the weight of the massive crown which was reposing on his head, and of the heavy robe of cloth of gold, lined with ermine, which was thrown upon his shoulders. He was tottering as he walked along, and his pale, tired face, together with his uncertain steps, bore no resemblance whatever to the firm and superb countenance of his father thirteen years before. As he reached the door of the Church of the Holy Archangels, one noticed that he suddenly stopped, as if unable to proceed any further, completely worn out by the fatigue of the long ceremony that had come to an end a few moments before, and the hand which was holding the sceptre, enriched with precious stones, which the Metropolitan of Moscow had just handed to him, dropped down at his side, whilst the symbol of might and of power which it was holding, escaped from its grasp. Chamberlains and lords in waiting hastened to pick it up, and the crowd never noticed what had occurred, but those who had witnessed the incident, were deeply impressed by it, and different rumours began to circulate in regard to it, rumours which would have it that it was a bad omen, whilst persons well up in the study of history, and especially in that of foreign countries tried to find an analogy between it, and the remark made by Louis XVI. on the day of his Coronation at Rheims, when he had complained that his crown was hurting him, and felt too heavy for his head.
A few days later there happened another event, which reminded one of a similar coincidence between the life of the unfortunate King whose head was to fall on the scaffold of the Champs Elysées, and that of Nicholas II. It occurred during the popular feast which is always given in Moscow after the Coronation of a Czar. A crowd amounting to several thousands of men and women, some say three hundred thousand, had gathered together on a field known by the name of Khodinka Plain, in the immediate neighbourhood of the town, to be present at it, when suddenly a panic which was never accounted for nor explained, seized this multitude, and about twenty thousand human creatures were crushed to death in the short space of a few minutes. The emotion produced by this disaster among all the different classes of society was very deep and terrible. The only person who accepted it with calm and even with indifference, if the reader will forgive me for this expression, was the Czar himself, who, however, and this is a justice which I must render to him, only heard much later the whole extent of the disaster, but who at the same time, did not try to learn anything definite about it, on the day when it took place, and who, under the direct influence of his Consort, gave directions to reply to the French Ambassador, the Comte de Montebello, who had enquired whether he ought to postpone the ball he was giving that same night, that “he did not see any necessity for doing so.”
This answer became known at once, and it traced between the Monarch and his subjects one of these white lines which in a tennis ground marks the antagonistic camps, and out of two players makes two enemies ... and this line went on getting wider and wider as time went on. It still existed when Nicholas II. abdicated, but it had then become an abyss.
In general there is nothing sadder in the world than a misunderstanding between two people both possessed of good intentions towards each other. It is something worse than a discussion, worse than a quarrel, and even worse than hatred, because it is the only thing which sound reasoning cannot conquer, and which is bound to go on aggravating itself from day to day. How much worse therefore is a thing of the kind when it has established itself between a nation and those who rule it. The great, the supreme misfortune of Nicholas II. consisted in the fact that he never could understand his people or their wants, whilst Russia on the other hand was, through circumstances independent of its will, brought to distrust the real feelings harboured by the Czar in regard to its welfare, and to indulge in comparisons which certainly were not to his advantage, between him and the Sovereign to whom he had succeeded, who had possessed the full confidence of his subjects.
This fatality which has dogged all the footsteps of the Emperor who abdicated a year ago, from the very first moment that he had ascended his Throne, can be partly attributed to the defective education which he had received, together with the deplorable weakness of his character; and partly to the state of absolute subjection in which he had been kept first by his father, during the whole time of the latter’s life, and later on by his wife, together with the complete ignorance in which he remained in regard to the wants, the aspirations, needs and character of his people. He was a despot by temperament, perhaps because he had never seen anything else but despotism around him, and perhaps because he had got a mistaken idea in regard to the duties which devolved upon him. He had always been told that he ought to uphold intact the principle of autocracy, thanks to which his predecessors had maintained themselves upon the throne. He had seen Alexander III. adopt him with these principles with success, and he had forgotten, or rather he had never known, that in order to be a successful autocrat, one must neither prove oneself a tyrant, nor an oppressor of people’s consciences and opinions. His first steps as a Sovereign had hurt all the feelings of loyalty of his subjects. Among the many addresses of congratulation that had been presented to him on the occasion of his marriage and of his accession to the Throne, there had been one from the Zemstvo or local assembly of the government of Tver, a town which was known to be very liberal in its opinions, in which was expressed the hope that the Monarch would try to govern his people with the help and with the co-operation of these same Zemstvos or local assemblies, the aim of which was the improvement of the local conditions of existence of the population of the different governments or provinces of the Russian Empire. There was absolutely nothing that was revolutionary in this address. Unfortunately there happened to be in the vicinity of the young Empress a person whose influence had always been perniciously exercised, whenever it had manifested itself: the Princess Galitzyne, her Mistress of the Robes. Out of a feeling of personal dislike, or rather hatred, against one of the signatories of this document, which, on account of the consequences that followed upon its composition, became historical, Princess Galitzyne explained to the Sovereign at the head of whose household she stood, that this appeal in favour of a liberal system of government ought to be discouraged, if not crushed, at once. Alexandra Feodorovna was then beginning to acquire the absolute power over her consort’s mind, which she was never to lose in the future, and she spoke to him of the matter suggested by the Princess, on the very day that different deputations, coming from all parts of Russia to express their good wishes to the young Imperial couple, were about to be received by them in the Winter Palace.