And the Rest Is History (9 page)

In 1894, the royal heads of Europe traveled to Germany for the wedding of Alix's brother Ernest. When Nicholas arrived at the station, Alix was waiting for him and that night they went to dinner and an operetta. The following morning he proposed; however, although she loved him (it was why she had turned down a proposal from the Prince of Wales), she refused as she was committed to her Lutheran religion. Finally, realizing she had adored him for a decade, she capitulated and they both broke down in tears. After ten days he was obliged to leave and wrote, “What sadness to be obliged to part from her for a long time. How good we were together—a paradise.”

Their separation did not last long. As his father lay dying, Nicholas, with a tremendous duty hovering, was desperate for the support of his beloved, and Alix hastened to Russia where she converted to Russian Orthodoxy, thus becoming Alexandra Fedorovna. To each other, however, they were Nicky and Alicky.

Although they were to be married in the spring, Nicholas changed the date to the week following the funeral, which took place on November 26, 1894, in the Grand Church of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. Mourning obscured their sumptuous Orthodox wedding. The superstitious peasants took this as a bad omen and repeatedly crossed themselves while murmuring, “She comes to us behind a coffin.” On their wedding night, the bride wrote in her husband's diary, “Never did I believe there could be such utter happiness in this world, such a feeling of unity between two mortal beings. I love you, those three words have my life in them.”

The royal couple's main residence was Tsarskoye Selo, an enchanted fairyland comprising two hundred rooms on eight hundred acres, replete with artificial lake. There the tsar and tsarina lived in a cocoon of preposterous protocol unchanged since the reign of Catherine the Great. Their rarefied world was protected from the real one by a high iron fence and five thousand guardsmen. One of its most famous rooms was the empress's mauve boudoir, so named because everything in it was of that hue.

Soon the area above the Mauve Room became the nursery for four daughters: the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia. Dwelling in their domestic idyll, the girls proclaimed their unity by referring to themselves as the OTMA, derived from the first letter of each of their names. Much as Nicholas and Alexandra adored their daughters, they desperately desired a son, as only males could inherit the throne. Therefore, they were ecstatic with the arrival of Alexei. Little could they have imagined that his arrival would result in the fall of the three-hundred-year reign of the House of Romanov.

Soon after his birth, the new tsarevitch had a bleeding episode from hemophilia. When the doctors proved powerless, the desperate mother turned to a peasant holy man, Grigory Rasputin. She became convinced he was her son's sole hope of survival, and, consequently, he began to wield great influence in the royal inner circle. This infuriated the Russian nobles, who were aghast that a low-born man, one given to drinking and womanizing, wielded more power than they did. He also further antagonized the peasants; they might have accepted their monarch's wealth, but the sinner masquerading as a saint was too much. Nicholas wanted to dismiss the mad monk but, realizing that his presence gave his wife hope, refused to do so.

Nicholas and Alexandra also made a fatal mistake in hiding Alexei's illness; they did so in the belief that the next tsar should display no weakness. Ironically, this plan had the opposite effect, as the populace, had they been privy to the truth, would probably have been empathetic to the family's pain. The Romanovs became increasingly the subjects of innuendo.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914. Nicholas, as part of an alliance, brought his country into World War I, and, as commander of the army reluctantly left his family to be at the front with his troops. He took with him a metal pocket case with his wife's portrait. Unfortunately, Nicholas was as bad a leader as he was as loving a husband and father. The ill-equipped Russian soldiers suffered devastating casualties, and the mismanaged government resulted in widespread hunger; the country was on the verge of revolt.

To make matters worse, Nicholas had placed the reins of government with his wife, who was viewed with extreme suspicion, as she was German and the first cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and she relied heavily upon Rasputin.

In 1916, to help stem the tide of horror sweeping across their country, Russian nobles murdered Rasputin; because of his prodigious strength the killing necessitated poison, gunshots, clubbing, and drowning. In fairy tales, the demise of the evil sorcerer meant the salvation of the prince and princess; not so with the reign of the Romanovs. The only effect of the assassination was to drive Alexandra into despair over Alexei's fate. She believed that without her holy man, her son would succumb to his hemophilia

In 1917, besieged on all sides, Tsar Nicholas was forced to abdicate, and the Romanovs were transformed from absolute monarchs to virtual prisoners. They were removed to the Urals, where the family, who had always lived as gods, were subject to endless indignities. The guards rifled through their belongings, food and heat were rationed, and the sentries scrawled lewd drawings to offend the four daughters. Further compounding their anguish, Alexei suffered an accident and became unable to walk. The only source of comfort was the fact that the close-knit family was allowed to remain together and their hope that the royal heads of Europe, their relatives, would come to their rescue.

On July 16 at ten thirty p.m., the Romanovs retired to their rooms; Yakov Yurovsky, the Bolshevik in command, on orders from Lenin, awakened them at midnight and told them to dress quickly. Nicholas came down the stairs first, carrying Alexei. In the basement, he sat with his arm around Alexandra, Alexei on his lap. As they waited, men carrying revolvers entered. Yurovsky stated, “Your relations have tried to save you. They have failed, and we must now shoot you.”

Nicholas began to rise from his chair to protect his wife. He had just time to say, “What?” before Yurovsky shot him in the head. Alexandra began to raise her hand to make the sign of the cross before she too was killed. The OTMA huddled together for the last time. The sisters survived the first hail of bullets, as they had sewn priceless jewels into their clothes; it took countless rounds of ammunition before they met their excruciating end. Alexei, who had always been protected by the phalanx of his family, perished clutching his father's coat.

Although their love had destroyed their family and brought ruination to their empire, perhaps the words that Alexandra had written in Nicholas's diary on her wedding night could serve as their epilogue: “At last united, bound for life and when this life is ended, we meet again in the other world and remain together for eternity. Yours, yours, Alexandra.”

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1895

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O
ne of the events that drastically altered the course of history was World War I, a calamity that led to endless rows of white crosses in graveyards across Europe. The nightmare began with a Black Hand, one that cruelly crushed a Balkan love story.

The historic equivalent of “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” is “Do the times make the man or does the man make the times?” In the case of Franz Ferdinand, the answer is the latter. His life was forever altered with the execution of his uncle, Ferdinand Maximilian, emperor of Mexico, and the murder-suicide of his cousin Crown Prince Rudolf and his lover, Baroness Marie Vetsera, in his Mayerling hunting lodge. With their passing, he became the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. His chief passion in life was hunting; on the walls of Artstetten Castle hung the heads of five thousand deer. However, his passion for the hunt was to be replaced by a passion of his heart.

Franz's destiny, Sophie Chotek, was born in Stuttgart, the fourth daughter of an aristocratic yet impoverished count. Because of financial need, she was compelled to take the position of lady-in-waiting to the Archduchess Isabella. Little did she imagine that she was to become, for a period, a contemporary Cinderella.

The first time Franz met Sophie was at a ball in Prague. At the soiree his eyes bypassed all the suitable princesses who were paraded before him; he contemptuously referred to them as
piperl
, “chicks.” However his interest, and ultimately his heart, was to fall captive to Sophie. Because she was not of royal parentage, she was ineligible to wed into the imperial family. Their relationship, to which both were fiercely committed, had to be clandestine.

Franz started to make regular trips to the home of the Archduchess Isabella, who took the royal visits as a sign that the heir was interested in one of her six daughters; she assumed his love interest was her eldest, Marie Christine. However, the cat was let out of the bag when a servant discovered the archduke's gold watch, left behind at the tennis court. Isabella opened it, expecting to see Marie Christine's portrait. Instead, she was infuriated to discover the photograph of her lady-in-waiting. Sophie was immediately dismissed, and the archduke's secret love became a public scandal.

Franz Ferdinand, now that his heart had become an open book, was determined to marry Sophie; however, the emperor was equally determined that the match would not take place and berated his nephew for his lack of dynastic discipline. Franz Joseph's antipathy was founded on the premise that the only proper consort for the future king was a princess from the House of Habsburg or a princess from one of the other reigning European dynasties. The tug-of-war between uncle and nephew escalated to such a degree that Pope Leo XIII, Tsar Nicholas II, and Kaiser Wilhelm II argued for a compromise, as the royal battle of wills was undermining the stability of the monarchy. The impasse was resolved when the king agreed to the match; however, there was a caveat: The marriage had to be morganic. This meant that none of their issue could ever wear the crown; moreover, Sophie would not be entitled to share her husband's rank, title, or other privileges, such as appearing beside him in public. She was not permitted to ride in the royal carriage, dine with him at state functions, or sit beside him in the royal opera box. When entering a room for a formal function, Sophie would have to wait until all of the higher-ranking women made their entrance.

The wedding took place on July 1, 1900, at Reichstadt in Bohemia. Emperor Franz Joseph, to show his royal displeasure, did not attend. All other archdukes, including the groom's brothers, likewise stayed away. The only members of the imperial family who were present were Franz's stepmother and her two daughters. Upon her marriage, Sophie received the title of Princess of Hohenberg; she could never attain the rank of archduchess. European royals accorded Sophie little respect, with the exception of King George V and Queen Mary, who welcomed her to Windsor Castle in November 1913.

Although tensions existed between the couple and the court, inside Artstetten Castle Sophie was Franz's undisputed queen. Soon, in contrast to the dead animals lining the walls, the house came alive with the birth of children: Sophie, Maximilian, and Ernst. Because of the nature of their marriage contract, the children did not carry their father's name of Habsburg; their surname was von Hohenberg. After the birth of his youngest, Franz wrote to his stepmother, “The most intelligent thing I've ever done in my life has been the marriage to my Soph. She is everything to me: my wife, my adviser, my doctor, in a word: my entire happiness. Now, after four years, we love each other as on our first year of marriage, and our happiness has not been marred for a single second.” However, even the enclave of their home could not keep the bitterness at bay. Franz named one of the pathways in their estate's magnificent garden
Oberer Kreuzweg
(“The Upper Stations of the Cross”), a bitter nod to the degradations his wife had to endure at court.

In 1914, General Oskar Potiorek, governor of the Austrian provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina, invited the archduke to watch his troops on maneuvers. Franz decided to accept as a fourteenth-anniversary present for Sophie. Away from the Austrian court, strict protocol was not enforced, which meant on their visit Sophie could accompany her husband everywhere. Franz was warned that the visit might be potentially dangerous; many of the people living in Bosnia-Herzegovina were angry over Austrian imperialism and wanted their independence from the crown. In answer the archduke replied,
“Mann ist überall in Gottes Hand”
(“It's all in God's hands”). It was an attitude that would decide their fate.