Once A Grand Duke by Alexander Grand Duke of Russia. Alexander Mikhailovich
of historical events, placed a regiment of loyal cavalry and a battery of artillery at the foot of the Senate Building, but permitted the plotters to reach their destination without interference.
All morning long a heavy fog had been creeping up from the banks of the Neva. When it lifted toward noon, the shivering crowds of curious spectators beheld the two opposing armies standing in front of each other, divided by some three hundred feet of no man’s land.
Minutes, hours, went by. The soldiers commenced to complain of hunger. The leaders of the secret society felt helpless and miserable. They were willing to sacrifice their lives, but the Government did not seem inclined to start hostilities, and it would have been sheer madness on their part to attempt sending the infantry against the combined forces of cavalry and artillery.
“It’s a standing revolution,” said a voice from behind, and an outburst of laughter greeted this historical phrase.
Suddenly a hush fell over the crowds.
“The young Czar, the young Czar! Look at him riding next to Miloradovich.”
Disregarding all advisers, who pointed out that he had no right to risk his life, Emperor Nicholas I decided to assume personal charge of the situation. At the head of a group of officers, mounted on a tall horse, he presented an easy target for the revolutionaries. Even a mediocre shot could hardly have missed him.
“Your Imperial Majesty,” pleaded the frightened Miloradovich, “I beg of you to return to the palace.”
“I will stay right here,” came the firm answer. “Someone must save the lives of these poor misguided people.”
Miloradovich spurred his famous white mount and galloped toward the opposite end of the Plaza. Not unlike his master, he had no fear of the Russian soldiers. They would never dare fire at a man who had led them against the Old Guard of Napoleon.
Stopping in front of the revolutionaries, Miloradovich made one of those colorful speeches that had inspired many a regiment during the battles of 1812. Every word went home. They smiled at his jokes. They brightened up at the familiar allusions. One minute more, and they would have followed his “brotherly advice of an old soldier” and started back for the barracks.
Just then a dark figure appeared between them and Miloradovich.
Pale, disheveled, smelling of brandy, and having never parted with his pistol since early morning, Kakhovsky fired point-blank: the resplendent general sank back in the saddle.
A riot of indignant vociferations broke loose on both sides.
The Emperor bit his lip and glanced in the direction of the battery. The echo repeated the bark of the guns all over the city.
The standing revolution had come to an end. Several score of soldiers were killed, and every one of the leaders was arrested by midnight.
“I shall never forget my friends of December the fourteenth,” said the Emperor weeks later, and signed the sentences condemning Pestel, Kakhovsky, Bestujeff-Rumin, Rylyeff and Mouravieff to the gallows, and the rest of their associates to penal servitude in Siberia.
He never did. During one of his journeys through Siberia he inquired into the minutest details of the lives of the exiled aristocrats who had unwittingly become the predecessors of a movement which was to achieve its goal ninety-two years later.
He had likewise expressed the desire to talk to a hermit known as Feodor Kousmich, and had made a long detour in order to visit his humble log cabin in the wilderness. There was no witness to their meeting, but the Emperor remained closeted with the saintly man for over three hours. He came out in a pensive mood. The aides-de-camp thought they had noticed tears in his eyes. “After all,” wrote one of them, “there may be something to the legend which tells us that a simple soldier had been buried in the imperial mausoleum in St. Petersburg, and that Emperor Alexander I is hiding in the guise of this strange man.”
My late brother, Grand Duke Nicholas Michailovich, spent several years working in the archives of our family, trying to find a corroboration of this astounding legend. He believed in its emotional plausibility, but the diaries of our grandfather Emperor Nicholas I, strangely enough, failed to mention even the fact of his visit to Feodor Kousmich.
The sentinel of the imperial palace in Taganrog may have conceived his story under the influence of the rumors which had gripped the popular imagination in the early thirties of the nineteenth century. The fact remains, however, that the mystic mentality developed by Emperor Alexander in the latter years of his reign could be used as a powerful argument by the historians inclined to uphold the imperial identity of the silent Siberian hermit.
Worn out by the continuous wars with Napoleon, thoroughly disillusioned by the insincerity of his German, Austrian and English allies, my imperial granduncle liked for months to stay in the provincial retirement of his Taganrog palace, reading the Bible to his sad and beautiful consort, who had never ceased to grieve over their childlessness. Suffering with insomnia, he would get up at all hours of the night and try in vain to relieve his mind, filled with the images of a stormy past.
Two particular scenes used to haunt his memory: Count Pahlen entering his room on the morning of March 11, 1801, announcing the assassination of his father, Emperor Paul I; Napoleon at Tilsit embracing him and promising to maintain eternal peace in Europe. These two people robbed him of his youth ad covered his hands with blood.
Over and over again he read the words of the Preacher, heavily outlined by him in pencil: “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.”
CHAPTER TWO
A GRAND DUKE IS BORN
“A BOY has just been born in the family of His Imperial Highness,” announced an aide-de-camp of Grand Duke Michael, then Viceroy of the Caucasus, bursting into the office occupied by the commandant of the Tiflis fortress on the morning of April 1, 1866. “Have the imperial salute of one hundred and one guns fired immediately.”
“It ceases to be funny,” answered the old general, looking gloomily at the calendar hanging over his head. “I have been pestered all morning long. Try your April first jokes on someone else, or I shall report you to His Imperial Highness.”
“You don’t seem to understand, Excellency,” said the aide-de-camp impatiently. “This is no joke. I come straight from the palace and would advise you to carry out the orders.”
The commandant shrugged his shoulders, glanced once more at the calendar and started for the palace to verify the news.
Half an hour later the guns commenced to boom, and a special proclamation informed the excited Georgians, Armenians, Tartars and Highlanders promenading along the main thoroughfare of the Caucasian capital that the newly-born grand duke was to be christened Alexander, in honor of his imperial uncle, Emperor Alexander II.
On April 2, 1866, at the tender age of twenty-four hours, I became the honorary colonel of the 73rd Krimsky Infantry Regiment, an officer of the fourth rifle battalion of the Imperial Guard, an officer of the Guard Hussars, an officer of the Guard Artillery Brigade and an officer of the Caucasian Grenadier Division. A beautiful wet-nurse had to exercise all her ingenuity to pacify the holder of all these exalted positions. . . .
Following in the steps of his uncompromising father Emperor Nicholas I, my father thought it only natural that his sons should be raised in an atmosphere of militarism, strict discipline and exacting duties. Inspector-general of the Russian artillery and viceroy of an enormously rich, half-Asiatic province incorporating some twenty-odd nationalities and fighting tribes, he had but small regard for the niceties of modern education.
My mother, Princess Cecilia of Baden before her marriage, came of age in the days when Bismarck kept all Germany spellbound by his sermon of iron and blood.
Small wonder that the joys of my care-free childhood came to an abrupt end on my seventh birthday. Among the many gifts presented to me on that occasion I found the uniform of the colonel of the Seventy-third Krimsky Infantry Regiment and