sir,” said Pourtales, “my government charges me to hand you this note. His Majesty the Emperor, my august sovereign, in the name of the empire accepts the challenge and considers himself in a state of war with Russia.” Pourtales was overcome with emotion. He leaned against a window and wept openly. “Who could have thought I should be leaving St. Petersburg under such circumstances,” he said. Sazonov rose from his desk, embraced the elderly Count and helped him from the room.
At Peterhof, the Tsar and his family had just come from evening prayer. Before going to dinner, Nicholas went to his study to read the latest dispatches. The Empress and her daughters went straight to the dinner table to await the Tsar. Nicholas was in his study when Count Fredericks brought him the message from Sazonov that Germany had declared war. Shaken but calm, the Tsar instructed his ministers to come to the palace at nine p.m.
Meanwhile, Alexandra and the girls waited with growing uneasiness. The Empress had just asked Tatiana to go and bring her father to the table when Nicholas appeared in the doorway. In a tense voice he told them what had happened. Alexandra began to weep. The girls, badly frightened, followed their mother’s example. Nicholas did what he could to calm them and then withdrew, without dinner. At nine p.m., Sazonov, Goremykin and other ministers arrived at the palace along with the French and British Ambassadors, Paleologue and Buchanan.
Four months later, in another conversation with Paleologue, Nicholas revealed how the day had ended for him. Late that night, after war had been declared, he had received another telegram from the Kaiser. It read:
An immediate, clear and unmistakable reply of your government [to the German ultimatum] is the sole way to avoid endless misery. Until I receive this reply, I am unable to my great grief to enter upon the subject of your telegram. I must ask most earnestly that you, without delay, order your troops under no circumstances to commit the slightest violation of our frontiers.
Almost certainly this message had been intended for delivery before the declaration of war and had been caught in the crowded bureaucratic pipeline. Yet it was composed during the same hours that his country was declaring war, an indication of the Kaiser’s state of mind. To Nicholas, this last message he ever received from the German Emperor seemed a final revelation of William’s character.
“He was never sincere; not a moment,” Nicholas told Paleologue, speaking of the Kaiser. “In the end he was hopelessly entangled in the net of his own perfidy and lies.… It was half past one in the morning of August 2.… I went to the Empress’s room, as she was already in bed, to have a cup of tea with her before retiring myself. I stayed with her until two in the morning. Then I wanted to have a bath as I was very tired. I was just getting in when my servant knocked at the door saying he had ‘a very important telegram … from His Majesty the Emperor William.’ I read the telegram, read it again, and then repeated it aloud, but I couldn’t understand a word. What on earth does William mean, I thought, pretending that it still depends on me whether war is averted or not? He implores me not to let my troops cross the frontier! Have I suddenly gone mad? Didn’t the Minister of the Court, my trusted Fredericks, at least six hours ago bring me the declaration of war the German ambassador had just handed to Sazonov? I returned to the Empress’s room and read her William’s telegram.… She said immediately: ‘You’re not going to answer it, are you?’ ‘Certainly not!’
“There is no doubt that the object of this strange and farcical telegram was to shake my resolution, disconcert me and inspire me to some absurd and dishonorable step. It produced the opposite effect. As I left the Empress’s room I felt that all was over forever between me and William. I slept extremely well. When I woke at my usual hour, I felt as if a weight had fallen from my mind. My responsibility to God and my people was still enormous, but at least I knew what I had to do.”
