Dagmar, a Danish princess who became a remarkable Tsarina

One problem with being born as a royal princess in past centuries was that you rarely had much choice as to who your life partner would turn out to be. In the case of Princess Dagmar of Denmark, she did not even get the royal prince that had originally been chosen for her, but his far less desirable younger brother.

Dagmar was born in 1847 as the second daughter of Prince Christian, who became King of Denmark in 1863. Christian had made an excellent match for his eldest daughter Alexandra, who in 1861 became engaged to the British heir to the throne, Prince Edward, and in 1864 he landed another prestigious prize by offering Dagmar as the prospective bride of the Russian Tsarevitch, Nicholas, and their engagement was duly announced. 

However, this did not last long due to the death of Nicholas from meningitis in April the following year. He was only 21.

On his deathbed, Nicholas expressed a wish that Dagmar should marry Alexander, his younger brother who was then aged 19. Dagmar therefore acquired a second prospective husband, whom she duly married on 9^th November 1866, shortly before her 19^th birthday.

The couple might have expected to enjoy a much longer period as crown prince and princess than they did, given that Alexander’s father, then reigning as Tsar Alexander II, was in excellent health and not yet 50 years old at the time of the younger Alexander’s and Dagmar’s wedding. However, tragedy intervened in 1881 when the Tsar was assassinated by bombs that were thrown into his carriage as he drove through the streets.

The crown prince was now Tsar Alexander III, and Dagmar, who had taken the names Maria Feodorovna on her marriage, was now the Tsarina. By this time she had had six of her seven children, although one had died in infancy. Her eldest son would become the last Tsar of Russia as Nicholas II.

With her husband Alexander as the nation’s ruler, the atmosphere of social and political life in Russia underwent a marked change. His father’s assassination had not been the first attempt on his life, and the new Tsar was determined to avoid becoming the next victim of the revolutionary mood that was building in the country. He therefore did everything he could to suppress all opposition to his autocratic rule, and to use whatever methods were needed to this end.

This attitude to politics suited his temperament, which was nothing like that of his somewhat mild-mannered father. He was a large, unwieldy man with gruff manners and a fierce temper. The Tsar’s word was law. The story is told that he was consulted about the route that a section of the proposed Trans-Siberian Railway should take. He took a ruler and drew a line on the map in front of him. However, his fingers projected over the top of the ruler and the line was straight with two small bumps on it. These were translated into two completely unnecessary diversions to nowhere that the railway was thus forced to take.

Physically, Alexander dwarfed his wife Maria, who was a small woman with delicate features. As a couple, the Tsar and Tsarina were completely mismatched. Maria had gone out of her way to understand the Russian people, not only learning their language but engaging in charitable and social events and becoming very popular as a result. Alexander had nothing but contempt for ordinary Russians, all of whom he regarded as potential assassins.

Alexander therefore spent much of his time listening to reports from his secret police about plots and threats, and passing judgment on the fate of people who were arrested as suspected terrorists. His worries were no means always baseless. One plot that failed involved a group of students who were hanged in 1887, one among their number being Alexander Ulyanov, whose younger brother would prove to be a far more successful revolutionary in later years, having assumed the nom de guerre of Lenin.

So what qualifies the former Princess Dagmar for the title of “great woman”? Perhaps nothing, but if one story is true – and it may well not be – there is certainly an element of greatness about her.

As mentioned before, Alexander gave much thought to the fate of potential suspects. His officials would produce lists of these and ask for decisions on what should happen to them. Occasionally, it might be thought that a relatively minor offence did not deserve the sanction of exile to the wilds of Siberia, where prisoners were often worked to death in terrible conditions. A piece of paper bearing the suspect’s name, with a recommendation for a pardon, would therefore land on Alexander’s desk to await his comment and signature.

The Tsarina took very little interest in politics, and she knew better than to challenge her husband in such matters. Nonetheless, she knew well what exile to Siberia meant, and she could relate to the heartbreak that such a fate would mean to the family of the person involved if the victim simply disappeared, never to be seen again.

On one occasion she walked into Alexander’s office to ask him a question, but he was not there. However, in his out-tray of signed papers she spotted a command concerning a prisoner for whom a pardon had been sought. Under the name of the man Alexander had written “Pardon impossible” on one line, and underneath “to send to Siberia”. Quick as a flash, Maria grabbed a pen and simply inserted a comma on the sheet, which now read:

“Pardon, impossible to send to Siberia”.

This is one of those stories that one wishes was true, even if it isn’t!

Alexander died of natural causes in 1894 at the age of 49, leaving the throne to his son Nicholas, who was eventually unable to prevent the end of the Romanov Dynasty. When this happened and the Bolsheviks took over, Maria left Russia, eventually ending her days back in Denmark and resuming her old name of Dagmar. She died in 1928 at the age of 80.

There is an interesting parallel between Dagmar’s story and that of a much earlier royal bride in another country. Catherine of Aragon was a foreign princess who was due to marry Arthur, Prince of Wales, who unfortunately died at a young age before the marriage had been consummated. Catherine was then passed on to Arthur’s younger brother, who became King Henry VIII. It might also be thought that there were some similarities, both physical and temperamental, between Henry and Alexander, both of whom were absolute monarchs who would demand obedience and accept no opposition.

Was Dagmar a great woman? She was certainly a woman of compassion who may just possibly have saved a life thanks to a piece of quick thinking and the stroke of a pen.

© John Welford

What really happened to Grigori Rasputin?

History is full of stories that “everybody knows” but which later turn out not to be true after all. One of these concerns the assassination of Grigori Rasputin, the “mad monk”, in December 1916.

Rasputin was a strange character from Siberia who persuaded the Russian Tsar and Tsarina, Nicholas and Alexandra, that he could help with the treatment of Crown Prince Alexei, who suffered from haemophilia. He did indeed appear to have a beneficial effect on the boy’s health, possibly through keeping at bay the court doctors whose treatments were making his condition worse.

However, Rasputin then went further and started to become influential in political matters, which did not go down well with the class of aristocrats who formed the Russian court and whose advice was being ignored. It was one of these, Prince Felix Yusupov, who is credited with being Rasputin’s assassin. 

The story that is usually told is that Yusupov invited Rasputin to an evening drinks session where he was given poisoned cakes which he wolfed down greedily but which had absolutely no effect on him. Yusupov then – according to him – shot his victim twice in the heart but Rasputin refused to die. The prince was then joined by associates who continued to shoot Rasputin as well as stabbing him and kicking him in the head, again to no effect. He only died after being wrapped in a rug and dropped through a hole in the ice on the frozen River Neva.

But the real facts are very different.

For one thing, the plot to assassinate Rasputin originated in London, not St Petersburg. Had Rasputin succeeded in his aim of persuading Tsar Nicholas to withdraw Russia from World War I, the full might of the German Army would have turned westwards to make life extremely difficult for the Western Powers, especially Great Britain. The British therefore had very good reasons for wanting Rasputin dead.

The chief agent in the plot was a British intelligence officer named Captain Oswald Rayner, who had known Prince Yusupov at Oxford University and travelled to meet him in St Petersburg. It was Rayner who actually killed Rasputin by shooting him once in the forehead with his Webley service revolver. The mad monk died instantly and was then dumped in the river. Captain Rayner promptly made his escape back to England.

The Yusupov account, which made him look like a noble hero who had saved Mother Russia from the Devil incarnate, was full of holes, unlike Grigori Rasputin.

For one thing, Rasputin would never have been tempted to drink madeira or eat sweet cakes. This was because a previous abdominal injury had made it impossible for him to ingest sugar without causing him severe pain. 

For another, an autopsy carried out on the body when it was recovered from the river found no water in the lungs, which meant that he did not die from drowning and was already dead before going though the hole in the ice. Reviews of the autopsy by forensic pathologists working in recent decades have confirmed the original findings and pointed out that the fatal wound almost certainly came from a weapon that was only used by British soldiers at that time.

However, if the assassination aimed to prevent Russia from abandoning World War I, it did not succeed, because that is what happened. This was due in part to Germany responding by allowing Vladimir Lenin to cross Germany from his exile in Switzerland so that he could return to Russia and lead his Bolsheviks to victory in the 1917 Revolution.

So the clinical and well-planned assassination of the mad monk only succeeded in delaying the inevitable.

© John Welford

The death of Grigory Rasputin, 1916

On 30^th December 1916 the “mad monk” Grigory Rasputin was murdered in St Petersburg, thus depriving the Tsar and Tsarina of their last hope of finding a cure for their son Alexei, who suffered from haemophilia.

Grigory Yefimovich Novykh was born in 1872 in Siberia. He became attached to a religious sect that practised flagellation, but developed his own theories that included using sex to obtain a state of grace. Despite his unsavoury appearance – he had a long straggly beard and strong body odour that came from only washing on rare occasions – he managed to seduce dozens of women, possibly through the use of hypnosis. He gained a reputation as a mystic healer as well as a debaucher – the name Rasputin means “the debauched one”.

When Rasputin reached the imperial capital of St Petersburg in 1903 his name was mentioned at the royal palace and Tsarina Alexandra (a granddaughter of Queen Victoria) sent for him in desperation at being unable to find any treatment that helped young Alexei.

Whatever Rasputin did seemed to work, because Alexei’s condition, although not cured, was at least alleviated. The royal family then became dependent on Rasputin, whose future therefore seemed assured. He did not cease his previous practices and continued to hold drunken orgies and seduce high-born women to save their souls, safe in the knowledge that all stories of his misdeeds would not be believed should they reach the ears of the Tsar and Tsarina.

However, Rasputin was by no means universally popular. Things came to a head in August 1915 when Tsar Nicholas left Russia to take command of the army during World War I and Alexandra was left in charge. By this time she would make no decisions without taking Rasputin’s advice, which meant in effect that the mad monk was in virtual charge of the government and was appointing Cabinet ministers.

The opposition to Rasputin was headed by a hard-line conservative, the extremely wealthy Prince Felix Yusupov, who decided that there was only one solution to the problem, which was to engineer Rasputin’s death. He headed a small group of like-minded aristocrats (including a cousin of the Tsar) to plot and carry out the murder.

He invited Rasputin to join him for late-night drinks at his sumptuous palace, this being an invitation that he knew Rasputin would not turn down. When the monk arrived he was offered cakes, which he wolfed down with his usual lack of table manners. What Rasputin did not know was that the cakes were laced with enough cyanide to kill him several times over.

However, the poison had no effect on him at all. Yusupov then went for a less subtle approach and shot Rasputin in the back when he rose from the table. He fell to the ground but then got up again and charged out into the garden, where another plot member had stationed himself. He also had a revolver to hand and promptly shot Rasputin twice more.

Rasputin’s body was rolled up in a carpet and dropped through a hole in the ice in the nearby river. However, when the body was recovered three days later it was found that there was water in Rasputin’s lungs, thus proving that he had died as a result of drowning rather than poison or bullets.

Rasputin had predicted that, should any harm befall him, the royal family would not survive for more than two years. In this he was eerily correct, because on 16^th July 1918 they were all murdered by Bolshevik revolutionaries.

Prince Yusupov’s story was somewhat happier, in that, following a period of house arrest, he was able to flee the country after the Tsar abdicated in February 1917. He and his wife (a niece of Tsar Nicholas) settled in France, although the huge family fortune eventually ran out. He died in Paris in 1967, at the age of 80.

© John Welford

Tsarina Elizabeth of Russia

Pre-Revolutionary Russia was ruled by a long series of Tsars who were often intriguing characters who did remarkable things. During the 18^th century a surprisingly high proportion of them were women. One of these was Tsarina Elizabeth, who seized the throne on 25^th November 1741 and ruled for 20 years.

Elizabeth of Russia

Elizabeth was a daughter of Peter the Great, who died in 1725 when Elizabeth was 16. The crown passed to Peter’s wife Catherine and then to his grandson (by his first wife) who ruled as Peter II. Another female ruler was Tsarina Anna, Peter the Great’s niece, and when she died in 1740 her nominated successor was her grandnephew Ivan, who was only one year old.

Elizabeth was now 32 years old and was witnessing the crown slipping down the generations and out of her reach. She took action by persuading a regiment of the Russian guards to march to the Winter Palace in St Petersburg and arrest the Tsar and his parents. It was a bloodless coup that proved to be popular with just about everyone, thus leaving Elizabeth as the undisputed ruler of Russia.

At first sight, Elizabeth might not have seemed suited to such an important role. She was lazy, vain and licentious, taking any lover she wanted including footmen and coachmen. She was also highly religious, so was able to console herself that she could be absolved of sin by attending mass every day. The morality of such a line may be questionable, but you can get away with quite a lot when you are the absolute monarch of a huge country.

However, she also seemed to have inherited Peter the Great’s talent for government and made some wise choices of people to govern on her behalf when she was otherwise engaged in bed or in church. To be fair, her endeavours also included the rebuilding of the Winter Palace, at vast expense, to produce the edifice that can be seen today.

She proved to be an enlightened ruler in that she abolished the death penalty, but less so in that a favourite punishment for people who offended her was that their tongue should be cut out.

Elizabeth never married and so had no direct heir. She selected her nephew Peter to succeed her, but was well aware that Ivan, the young prince she had usurped, was still alive and had a far better claim to the throne. She therefore gave orders that, should an attempt be made to free Ivan from the prison where he had languished for almost the whole of his life, that life would be forfeit - thus breaking her rule about the death penalty, it would seem.

When Elizabeth died in 1762 Peter did indeed become Tsar, as Peter III, but he only lasted for six months before he was overthrown and died in mysterious circumstances. The way was now clear for another redoubtable woman to take the throne, namely Catherine the Great who, incidentally, managed to complete Elizabeth’s threat by having Ivan executed.

© John Welford

Catherine the Great

Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, died on 6th November 1796 at the age of 67, having reigned as the absolute monarch of Russia for 34 years.

Catherine did not have a single drop of Russian blood in her, having been born a German princess in 1729, but she married, at the age of 14, her second cousin Peter. Peter was also German by ancestry but had been declared heir presumptive of Russia by his maternal aunt, Empress Elizabeth I.

Thus, when Peter became Tsar Peter III in 1762, Catherine became Empress Consort. However, she had come to thoroughly dislike Peter as a husband and was living apart from him at the time of his accession. She joined a plot to overthrow him, which succeeded sixth months later. Peter was murdered during the coup, but whether Catherine had ordered this is a matter for debate. At all events, Alexei Orlov, the man who committed the crime either directly or otherwise, became a court favourite of Catherine’s and was heaped with honours.

Technically, Catherine ruled as regent for her young son Paul, who was eight years old at the time and was almost certainly not fathered by Peter III. However, he had to wait until his mother’s death before he became Tsar in his own right. In the meantime, Catherine was most definitely in charge.

Catherine was certainly one of the strongest monarchs that Russia has had in modern times. She expanded the borders of Russia to the south and west, thus ensuring Russia’s highly influential place in European power politics. During her reign some 200,000 square miles were added to the Russian Empire.

She saw herself as a liberal in internal affairs, but that is a strange definition of “liberal”. She increased the power of nobles and landowners at the expense of the serfs, who were little more than slaves who worked the land but had no rights to it.

She did not re-marry, but instead took on a succession of lovers. It was said that the young men who attended to her needs had been “market tested” by the ladies of her court in advance, but the promotion to the royal bedchamber cannot have been one to fill the candidates’, hearts with joy, given that she continued to require a succession of young men as she grew older and fatter. Her final lover, aged 22, was taken on when she was 60.

Catherine’s death was not particularly pleasant for those around her, if such things ever are. She suffered a stroke on 5th November while sitting on the toilet and it took six strong men to carry her unconscious body to her bedroom. Even they could not lift her on to her bed, so she had to lie on a mattress on the floor, where she expired late the following day.

Her son Paul insisted that Catherine be accompanied by her late husband at her funeral. Two bodies therefore lay side by side in their coffins during the ceremony at the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul – the dried-up remains of long-dead Tsar Peter and the massive corpse of Catherine the Great. It must have been a bizarre and somewhat nauseating event.

© John Welford