way. A moment later, a sentry was shot less than five hundred yards from the palace. Through the trees of the park, the sound of firing grew steadily closer. From a palace window, the Empress looked down on General Ressine, commander of the defense forces, standing in the courtyard before his men. On impulse, she decided to go out to speak to the soldiers. Throwing a black fur cloak over her white nurse’s uniform, accompanied by seventeen-year- old Grand Duchess Marie and Count Benckendorff, she walked out into the frigid night.
“The scene was unforgettable,” wrote Baroness Buxhoeveden, who watched from above. “It was dark, except for a faint light thrown up from the snow and reflected on the polished barrels of the rifles. The troops were lined up in battle order … the first line kneeling in the snow, the others standing behind, their rifles in readiness for a sudden attack. The figures of the Empress and her daughter passed from line to line, the white palace looming a ghostly mass in the background.” Walking from man to man, she told them that she trusted them completely, and that the life of the Heir was in their hands. Count Benckendorff, a rigid old soldier, thought that some of the men answered in surly fashion, but the Empress, according to Lili Dehn, returned to the palace “apparently possessed by some inward exaltation. She was radiant; her trust in the ‘people’ was complete.… ‘They are all our friends,’ she kept on repeating. ‘They are so devoted to us.’ ” She asked that the men, many of whom were stiff with cold, be brought into the palace to warm themselves and be given cups of scalding tea.
During the night, Alexandra lay down, but did not undress. From time to time, she arose: first to bring extra blankets to Countess Benckendorff and Baroness Buxhoeveden, who were camping on sofas in the drawing room; later, appearing in her stockinged feet, she offered them fruit and biscuits from the table beside her bed.
Outside, the night was filled with confusion and occasional skirmishing. Mutinous soldiers had pressed as close as the Chinese Pagoda near the great Catherine Palace. There, hearing rumors that the Alexander Palace was defended by immense forces and that the roof was studded with many machine guns, they lost their nerve and withdrew.
Although the palace was not assaulted, the sound of shooting carried clearly into the children’s rooms. The sick children, still feverish, were told that the shots came from manuevers; Lili and Anastasia, sleeping together in the same room, went to the window. In the courtyard, a big field gun was emplaced, with sentries and gunners stamping their feet around it to keep warm. “How astonished Papa will be,” said Anastasia, staring at the huge gun.
The following morning—Wednesday, March 14—the Empress was up at five a.m., expecting the Tsar to arrive at six. She was told that he had been delayed. “Perhaps the blizzard detains him,” she said and lay back on her couch to wait. Anastasia was instantly alarmed. “Lili, the train is
During the day, the loyalty of the troops guarding the Alexander Palace began to deteriorate. Standing at the window, the Empress noticed that many of the soldiers in the courtyard had bound white handkerchiefs to their wrists. The handkerchiefs were symbols of a truce worked out between the palace guards and the revolutionary troops in the village: if the Alexander Palace was not attacked, the loyal troops would not intervene against the mutineers in the village. The truce had been arranged by a member of the Duma. Learning this, the Empress said bitterly, “Well, so everything is in the hands of the Duma.”
On the following morning, Thursday, March 15, the Empress had a far heavier blow. Very early that morning, deathly pale, she came up to Lili and said in an anguished whisper, “Lili, the troops have deserted!”
“Why, Madame? In the name of God, why?”
“Their commander—the Grand Duke Cyril—has sent for them.” Then, unable to contain herself, the Empress said brokenly, “My sailors—my own sailors—I can’t believe it.”
In Pskov, on the 15th, the Tsar on his train was amending and signing the instrument of abdication. At Tsarskoe Selo, unaware even of her husband’s whereabouts, Alexandra was coping with new difficulties. Alexis was better, but Anastasia and Marie were beginning to display unmistakable signs of oncoming measles. Both electricity and water had been cut off. Water was supplied only by breaking the ice on the pond. The Empress’s small elevator, running between her rooms and the nurseries upstairs, stopped running. To reach her children, she had to climb slowly up the stairs, supported under the arms and gasping for breath. The lights were out. To visit Anna Vyrubova, whose room was in another wing of the palace, Alexandra was wheeled through the vast, darkened halls, now empty of all servants. Yet, knowing that others were watching for any sign of panic, she said to Lili, “I must not give way. I keep on saying, ‘I must not’—it helps me.”
Friday, March 16, another blizzard roared in, rattling the windows and piling the snowdrifts deeper in the park. Through the storm, more unsettling reports and rumors began to seep into the palace. At 3:30 a.m., a member of the Duma committee had telephoned Dr. Botkin, asking for news of the Tsarevich’s health. During the afternoon, household servants making their way back from Petrograd on foot said that leaflets announcing the Tsar’s abdication were being distributed in the capital. The Empress refused to believe them. At five p.m., the printed sheets announcing Nicholas’s abdication, the renunciation of the throne by Grand Duke Michael and the establishment of a Provisional Government reached the palace. Officers of the Guard and members of the suite read them with tears in their eyes. At seven, Grand Duke Paul, the Tsar’s uncle, arrived and went straight to the Empress. Grand Duchess Marie and Lili Dehn, waiting in the next room, heard agitated voices.
Then, wrote Lili, “the door opened and the Empress appeared. Her face was distorted with agony, her eyes were full of tears. She tottered rather than walked, and I rushed forward and supported her until she reached the writing table between the windows. She leaned heavily against it and taking my hands in hers, she said brokenly: ‘
That night, wrote Gilliard, “I saw her in Alexis Nicolaievich’s room.… Her face was terrible to see, but with a strength of will which was almost superhuman, she had forced herself to come to the children’s rooms as usual so that the young invalids … should suspect nothing.”
The same evening, Count Benckendorff, Baroness Buxhoeveden and others went to see the Empress to assure her of their personal loyalty. “She was deadly pale,” wrote Baroness Buxhoeveden. “… When the Empress kissed me, I could only cling to her and murmur some broken words of affection. Count Benckendorff held her hand, tears running down his usually immobile face.… ‘It’s for the best,’ she said. ‘It is the will of God. God gives this to save Russia. That is the only thing that matters.’ Before we shut the door, we could see her sinking into her chair by the table, sobbing bitterly, covering her face with her hands.”
Painful as it was, the Tsar’s abdication improved the immediate situation at Tsarskoe Selo. The virtual state of siege surrounding the palace ended as officers and men of the palace guard, absolved by the abdication from their oath to the Tsar, swore allegiance to the Provisional Government. Communication between the deposed sovereigns, no longer a danger to the revolution, was restored. On March 17, upon his arrival at Headquarters, Nicholas was allowed to telephone his wife. Word of the call was brought by an aged servant, trembling with excitement. Oblivious of etiquette, he stammered: “The Emperor is on the phone!” Alexandra stared at him as if he had taken leave of his senses; then, realizing what he was saying, jumped up like a girl of sixteen and rushed to the telephone. Knowing that other people were listening in at both ends of the line, Nicholas said only “You know?” Alexandra answered nothing more than “Yes,” before they went on to discuss the health of their children.
After ten o’clock at night on March 18, Count Benckendorff was startled to hear that Guchkov, now Minister of War in the Provisional Government, and General Kornilov, a regular soldier who had come from the front to take command of the Petrograd garrison, were on their way to Tsarskoe Selo to see the Empress. Guchkov was an avowed enemy—a former President of the Duma, an early antagonist of Rasputin, just back from overseeing the Tsar’s abdication at Pskov. His coming, plus the lateness of the hour, seemed to indicate imminent arrest. Benckendorff informed Alexandra, who sent for Grand Duke Paul. The Grand Duke got out of bed and hurried from his house in Tsarskoe Selo. At eleven, Guchkov and Kornilov arrived, accompanied by twenty members of the new revolutionary council of the village of Tsarskoe Selo. While the Empress and the Grand Duke received the two envoys, these men, mostly workers and soldiers, wandered through the palace, abusing the servants and addressing the suite as “bloodsuckers.”
As it happened, Guchkov and Kornilov had come only to investigate the state of affairs at the palace and to offer the protection of the Provisional Government to the Empress and her children. Guchkov respectfully asked whether the Empress had what she needed, especially medicines. Alexandra, relieved and grateful, replied that