The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II (7 page)

There were also small victories which could bring no pleasure to Tsarskoe Selo. Grand Duke Andrew, for example, showed what he thought of it all by turning up at Knebworth House in January as he had done at Cannes after the marriage, and two months later Michael and Natasha went off to St. Moritz to join his cousin and his long-time mistress Kschessinska. Michael and Andrew skied; Natasha and Kschessinska ice-skated.
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They made an interesting foursome: two Grand Dukes and two of the best-known women in Europe — both the mothers of illegitimate children, with the dainty but dazzling Kschessinska admired as the celebrated prima ballerina
assoluta
, the younger and beautiful Natasha known as the most notorious woman in high society; each was outrageous and what made them more so was that each was clearly adored by the two proud Grand Dukes hovering around them. Society, pretending to look the other way, could only stare in wonderment.

They were back in England in time to offer ‘open house’ at Knebworth to the stars of Diaghilev’s famed
Ballets Russes,
then taking London by storm. They had already conquered Paris, Berlin, Rome, Vienna and Budapest and had done much the same when they came to London in 1911. Their return in 1914 was eagerly awaited, and Natasha invited the dancers
en bloc
to Knebworth, along with the stars of the Russian opera who also were appearing as part of the ‘Russian season’ at Drury Lane.

Her old friend Chaliapin, who had visited them in Cannes after their marriage, was among them. Another guest was the celebrated Russian sculptor and stage designer Sudeikin, whose ‘thank you’ was a bust of Michael, George and Tata.
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Natasha was in her element in those days at Knebworth, when the house rang with laughter and music and no one went to bed until the early hours. ‘On the morning after the parties, the gardeners were not allowed to start work near the house, so as to leave undisturbed the slumber of the guests, who would eventually arise, yawning, just in time for lunch’.
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The ‘Russian season’ in London that summer also included a good number of St Petersburg royals, including the Dowager Empress. Michael’s sister Xenia also came with her husband Sandro to stay at the Piccadilly Hotel, and they were followed by Xenia’s daughter Irina and her new young husband Prince Felix Yusupov, who owned an apartment at 15 Parkside, Belgravia. As summer wore on, the Russian imperial contingent increased when Grand Duchess George Mikhailovich, Sandro’s sister-in-law arrived at Claridge’s with her two daughters, bringing to nine the number of Romanovs in London, in addition to Michael and Miche-Miche.

Michael met them all, including his mother at Marlborough House where, as usual on her many visits to England, she was staying with her widowed sister Alexandra, now the Dowager Queen. Among the other Romanovs there was nothing but sympathy and concern for Michael, and sighs at the venom of Alexandra’s court at Tsarskoe Selo.

No, of course he should not have married her, but yes, he had been put in an impossible position. At least that was all over, and he could make a new life for himself. Unfortunately, they would not be able to meet her. They were sure Michael understood that: no point in stirring up a family row. Not in London, and not with the Dowager Empress in town.

Michael could not complain about that, and nor could Natasha. The ‘season’ was not a place for a divorcée at the best of times — barred from the Royal Enclosure at Ascot races, barred from balls at Buckingham Palace, and effectively barred from any grand table likely to be dined at by a royal. With their days in top hats and designer dresses, their evenings in white-tie and ballgowns, the only outside event that anyone noticed was that on June 29 the London newspapers were reporting the assassination in Sarajevo of the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz-Ferdinand.

It was a brief sensation before society got back to the serious business of parties and balls, not least the great State Ball at Buckingham Palace, fixed for July 16, when the grandest people, including Miche-Miche and Countess Torby, but predictably not Michael and Natasha, would be present.
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This would be followed by racing at Goodwood and by the regatta at Cowes, which Prince Henry of Prussia, brother of the Kaiser and brother-in-law of Empress Alexandra, would be attending in his steam yacht
Carmen
.

German royals were as prominent as the Russian royals in London in the last summer of old Europe. At the State Ball the most distinguished guests included the Tecks, Battenbergs, Saxe-Coburg-Gothas, and Schleswig-Holsteins, all closely related to the British royal family, as were the Russian imperial family. That ball in Buckingham Palace would be the last time old Europe danced the quadrille. Three weeks later, the world exploded.

THE news that Germany had declared war on Russia came to Knebworth on Saturday August 1, 1914 — July 19 in Russia. Michael, determined to return to the army, cabled Nicholas at once asking permission for both he and Natasha to return. Alexandra was opposed to ‘that woman’ ever setting foot in Russia again, but there was larger problems to worry about now, and just as promptly Nicholas cabled back his agreement. At Knebworth, Michael’s private war would now have to be set aside for the greater duty of serving his country. For both Michael and Natasha their brief peace was over.

There was much to do in the next frantic days. With some Moscow friends who had joined them in Knebworth there were twenty people seeking to get back to Russia, including secretaries, governesses, valets and servants. The best route home was across the North Sea to Norway, thence through Sweden and Finland to St. Petersburg. A ship was found, the
s.s
.Venus
, which could accommodate the whole party, and it was leaving from Newcastle, 200 miles north on the River Tyne.
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The lease on Knebworth was to end in September, when they were due to move to Lord Cowdray’s Paddockhurst estate in Sussex. Although he would not now be moving there himself, Michael still needed a property in England to house his possessions from Knebworth— furniture, paintings, books, linen, cars and horses. Besides, no one expected the war — which Britain joined on August 4 — to last very long. A year perhaps, or maybe less? Certainly it would be no longer than their two-year lease, so Paddockhurst would be home when they came back. In the meantime, he would entrust the care of that estate to Mr Bennett, the head groom he had hired at Knebworth. The only Russian who would stay behind was Mme Johnson, mother of Michael’s new secretary. Having been terrified by the stormy crossing of the English Channel in her journey to Britain, she could not face the prospect of another and much longer sea journey; she would stay behind and help to manage the house. After all, they would all be back soon.
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On Thursday, August 13, Michael went up to Buckingham Palace to say goodbye to his cousin King George. Just over two weeks earlier the king had met another cousin, Prince Henry of Prussia, hurrying home from the yachting regatta at Cowes as the Balkans crisis deepened. It was a gloomy meeting, with the king grimly predicting that if war came it was almost certain that Britain would be ‘dragged into it.’
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Now it was Michael’s turn, and a more cheerful handshake, for at least they were on the same side. But as with Henry, the farewell would also prove to be goodbye. King George would never see either cousin again.

With that, Michael and his party prepared to depart Knebworth the following day. All the servants, together with the local villagers, gathered together to wave them farewell as they began the first leg of their journey home. That Friday evening they boarded the
s.s
. Venus
and escorted by British destroyers sailed off to Norway. Once there, the party crossed over to Sweden then travelled on to Finland. A week after leaving Knebworth they were back in St. Petersburg — now renamed Petrograd, patriotic sentiment having deemed that Petersburg sounded too German.

Michael’s mother the Dowager Empress had also returned to Russia, but after a more eventful journey.

She had left London hurriedly, travelling with daughter Xenia through Germany; by the time the train reached Berlin the war had already started. Hostile crowds broke the windows of her carriage and tore down the blinds, until police intervened. On orders from the Kaiser, her train was allowed to continue on to neutral Denmark, and from there she got back via Sweden and Finland.
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Returning home to the Anichkov Palace she was naturally anxious to see Michael, albeit without Natasha, but accepted that this time he would set up home with her. There would be no further demands that they lived separately, or were not to be seen in public together. She would still be Madame Brasova, but she was also his wife, and that was a fact which it was pointless now to deny. There was also a war on. Nonetheless, there could be no question of her ever living in an imperial palace — that would be a step too far. Given that, Michael would never again live in one either.

On arriving back in the capital, Michael and Natasha had booked into the
Hotel de l’Europ
e,
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near the Anichkov Palace but on the other side of the Nevsky Prospekt. That was something they could never have done two years earlier, but the real question now was where should they make their home?

Michael was in doubt about that: it had to be his beloved Gatchina. The Blue Cuirassiers were on their way to the front line; there would be no more insults from them, and local society would have to learn that Natasha was no longer to be reviled as before.

The decision made, he and Natasha waited until her ‘hideaway house’ at 24 Nikolaevskaya Street, securely locked up when the children had left to join them in Cannes two years earlier, was re-opened and made a home again, though it was so run-down that Natasha was ashamed of it. She would get it right eventually, but as it stood it was the last place anyone would expect to find a Grand Duke. Nonetheless, Michael liked it so much he also bought the property next door, to house guests as well as some of his staff.
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With that, he was ready to go to war.

WHEN Michael came back to Russia he was 36, with some 16 years of soldiering behind him; he had been colonel of two cavalry regiments, the Chernigov Hussars and the elite Chevalier Gardes, and he had proved his leadership. It was remembered, after the 1911 manoeuvres, that ‘he had displayed such excellent qualities as a regimental commander that the Chernigov Hussars were unanimously found to be the smartest cavalry regiment reviewed by the Tsar’.
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That was not evidence of competence on the battlefield, but it went to his credit when, as with other peacetime commanders, there was nothing else to go on. Ten years earlier, in the war against Japan, the Russian army had proved a disaster. There had been much-needed reforms, and new men promoted to command, but it was still an army untested on the battlefield. Confidence was high, but it always was at the start of a war.

Although his brother had approved his return, the Tsar made clear that he was anything but forgiven. He would be given a high command, but it would be far removed from the world of the Guards or even the professional cavalry. His role would be to lead a newly-formed division of Muslim horsemen from the Caucasus and who had never been in the army before. Michael’s actual appointment therefore came as a surprise to the army itself. It was a public snub and intended as such. Having walked out on the Guards cavalry, he was not to think that he could walk back in, or be given a regular command.

There were two main fronts: the northern, in East Prussia, facing the Germans, and the southern, in Galicia, facing the Austro-Hungarians. On the outbreak of war, the German plan was to defeat France first, in just six weeks, leaving their eastern border manned only by a defensive ‘holding army’ until the German armies in the west could turn and attack Russia, a plan hubristically summarised by the Kaiser as ‘lunch in Paris, dinner in St Petersburg’. The counter to this, as the French were pressed back to Paris, was that the Russians should draw off the German army by launching an offensive on the eastern front, even before they were fully ready to do so. The Russians gallantly obliged, but a month after the war began they were heavily defeated at Tannenberg in East Prussia and then suffered humiliation at the Masurian Lakes. In the first thirty days they lost some quarter-of-a-million men in East Prussia alone. One of the dead was the beaten commander of the Russian Second Army, General Aleksandr Samsonov, who walked into a wood and shot himself.
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Berlin, only 150 miles away, was not going to be the cavalry canter some had boasted it would be.

Tannenberg could be explained away as a necessary sacrifice made for France and a month later there was better news on the southern front, where the Russians won important successes. Their losses were no less appalling, but they had more to show for them, advancing 100 miles across the frontier, capturing 100,000 prisoners and inflicting battle casualties of some 300,000 on the Austrians.
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