Austrians in a forest. There was a bloody hand-to-hand battle, but the bayonets of the ‘stalwart Tyrolese’ wavered in the face of the swords and daggers of ‘the active little Tartars’, their commander proudly reported.32
Half his men lay dead among the trees, and as Michael rode up ‘he was very much impressed’ by the fight the regiment had put up, but also clearly saddened as he rode through the woods full of corpses. ‘A battlefield after a fight is not a beautiful picture,’ noted the Tartar colonel, ‘and I think that the kind heart of the Grand Duke suffered from the sight.’ 33
With that, Michael wrote to Natasha that his division had been pulled back for a rest and that they could meet again in Lvov. She arrived on March 1, and when she and Michael awoke next morning it was to find that he was being honoured with Russia’s highest gallantry award, the Order of St George, on the recommendation of his tough-minded army commander Brusilov. In contrast to the Cross of St George — which could be and was awarded in the field in its thousands by battlefield generals, the Order had to be approved by no less than fifteen Knights of the Order. No honour in Russia was so highly prized.
The award, made independently of the Tsar, was made in recognition of his conduct on the battlefield ‘during which he exposed his life to great danger, inspiring and encouraging the troops under constant enemy fire by the example of his personal bravery and courage and when resisting attacks by superior enemy forces…and later, when moving onto the offensive, he contributed to the successful development of our manoeuvres by his energetic actions…’34
The honour impressed even the cynical back-biting circles in the capital, Petrograd. Newspapers across the country published the announcement and the laudatory comments which accompanied it. Michael, wrote one war correspondent, ‘always wanted to be wherever there was danger…seeing the Grand Duke at their forward positions the ranks were ready to follow him to a loyal death’.35 He was ‘the idol of his men’, wrote another, ‘sleeping in the open with them, and living the same life as they did, without the least indulgence…’36
Brother-in-law Sandro was also highly approving, noting that Michael’s division, ‘led by him through innumerable battles, being recognised by GHQ as our best fighting unit’37 — and that after only six months with horsemen who had known nothing of soldiering when he took command.
‘We were all devoted to him’, said a colonel.38 Ordinary soldiers simply called him
The men trusted him implicitly, believing that whatever their grievance they could go to him for justice. One such dispute involved an Ingush Cossack rider who had captured two officers. Taking an officer prisoner earned a medal, and the simple Ingush reasoned therefore that he was entitled to two medals. Stubbornly refusing to accept what he was told by his own officers, he argued his way into divisional headquarters and was brought before Michael. Having heard him, Michael burst out laughing: ‘Lord, what am I to do with him?’
His staff had no doubt. ‘You must tell him he is wrong, Your Highness.’
‘I know perfectly well he is wrong, but he is offended. He places his hopes on me, and it is not within my power to help him’.
With that, the Ingush bowed. ‘Do not help me’, he said. ‘I thought that they were lying, but if you say it, that means it is true. Do not be angry’. Michael gave him the medal he was due, and settled the matter of the second officer by handing the grateful rider twenty roubles.40
Some matters ended badly. Later, three men condemned to death by a court martial for looting, were taken out for execution. In the process they broke free and were shot dead, with one guard killed and another wounded in the confusion. Michael was horrified, noting that ‘it all turned out to very horrible and tragic, and such a shame, as a telegram with their pardon had been received and was to be read to them at the place of execution for greater effect — and it all failed!’41
Michael’s abiding concern for his men was its own testimony to his leadership in fashioning a formidable division from Muslim tribesmen who had never before known military discipline, and whose differences with each other hampered rather than helped the forging of a coherent unit. That in itself earned him distinction.
But with the Council of St George’s approval of his high award, an Order founded by Catherine the Great but rarely given for gallantry on the battlefield, Nicholas’s reaction was a curious mixture of pleasure, pride, and yet begrudging condescension. Writing to Alexandra, he told her about ‘the splendid behaviour of Misha’s division in the February fighting, when they were attacked in the Carpathians by two Austrian divisions…while Misha was the whole time in the line of fire.’ He then added patronisingly, ‘I am very glad for his sake, as I think this time that he has really earned this military distinction and it will show him that he is, after all, treated exactly as all the others, and by doing his duty well he also gets his reward’.42
Alexandra’s response was almost breathtaking in its priggishness. ‘I am sure this war will make more of a man of him — could one but get her out of his reach, her dictating influence is so bad for him.’43
She was too blind to her own faults to know it, but many people were beginning to think that the charge of ‘dictating influence’ was more true about her and Nicholas than it was about Natasha and Michael. But at least there was one private gain for Michael in all this. Ten days later he wrote to his brother, raising again the question of his son.
‘Something that upsets me very much is that neither when we saw each other in January, nor in your letter afterwards, have you said anything in response to my personal request which means so much to me…please remember about it during Easter.’44 With the Order of St George on his chest, Michael felt more entitled than ever before to demand the legitimisation of little George — and Nicholas less able to refuse him, whatever Alexandra’s protests. This time the Tsar gave in, and four-year-old George had at last a named father and a title of his own — he was now to be styled Count Brasov.45
But that was as far as Nicholas would go. He would still not release Michael’s assets; war hero he might be, but legally he was to remain in the role of madman. If he was killed, there might be some discretionary bequest now to his son, but Natasha would still be left penniless. The first three months of 1915 had seen the private tragedy of the death of her two sisters in Moscow: Olga of appendicitis in January, Vera of pneumonia in March. If anything, it heightened her fears for Michael. If he were killed, what would she have left? She could expect nothing from a Tsarskoe Selo which still thought of her as a villainess, and would never pardon her as they had yet to pardon Michael.
As if to underline the point that he was not forgiven, the Tsar snubbed his brother when he paid a visit to the southern front in early April on ‘a victory tour’ and to see the newly-captured fortress of Przemysl, 70 miles east of Lvov. Although he was joined in Lvov by his two sisters, Xenia and Olga — who was nursing in Kiev — there was no invitation to any family reunion for Michael, and indeed he would not know that Nicholas had been to nearby Lvov until he read about it later in a local newspaper on April 10.46 That raised eyebrows in the Savage Division —‘the best in the Russian army’ with its commander awarded the Order of St George. And the Tsar had not bothered to tell them he was coming? Odd.
Natasha, however, was in no doubt of the reason. Alexandra was not going to have Michael seen to be back in the family.
5. ALEXANDRA THE GREAT
TWO weeks after the Tsar departed Lvov to return home, with heady talk of an advance to Vienna in prospect, Michael also went home. His sector of the front had been quiet, with relatively little action. On April 19, 1915, a German plane dropped five bombs on his headquarters ‘without causing any damage’, there was sporadic firing from the enemy outposts, and ‘we buried a soldier, Veris, killed the day before yesterday’.1 One dead soldier in two days; given what had gone before that was almost peace. Five days later he was back in Gatchina, his division, after six months in the frontline, being withdrawn for rest and refitting, and that would take at least a month.
That month passed so quickly that afterwards it seemed the briefest of interludes. Michael saw his brother
