The concierge heard their banging and recognising Michael’s voice opened up before leading them up two flights of stairs to the apartment of Princess Putyatina, using her pass-key to admit them inside. The princess, whose husband Pavel was away at the front, was alone with her young daughter. ‘I woke with a start hearing violent knocking on my bedroom door. At this noise, seized with fright, I could only imagine that armed soldiers had burst into my apartment.’ She was relieved when she recognised the voice of Johnson. Dressing hurriedly she went into the study where Michael was waiting. He was ‘very tired and seemed very upset’, but apologised with his ‘usual good grace’ for having disturbed her, adding: ‘Are you not afraid, Princess, of putting yourself at such risk by having such a dangerous guest?’40
Her maid produced coffee and they were gratefully sipping it when they heard boots on the stairs and the sounds of shouting from the apartment above. A revolutionary squad, forcing their way through the service entrance at the rear of the building, had come to arrest the Tsar’s chamberlain, Nicholas Stolypin, a brother of the former prime minister Peter Stolypin, assassinated in a Kiev theatre six years earlier. He was dragged away, but as they held their breath there was no knock on their door — or not yet.
Break-ins of suspected homes would be commonplace over the next days as mutineers went around the city looking for officials and ministers associated with the Tsar’s government, or who were simply people judged to be enemies of the revolution. Princess Putyatina had so far been lucky, her concierge telling rampaging mobs that in her apartment was only a soldier’s wife and child. She was not likely to remain so, however, if the mutineers learned that the Tsar’s brother was there, in an unguarded building they could enter with one blow of a rifle butt.
For the moment that was a problem for the morrow. Silently, but gratefully, Michael and Johnson collapsed exhausted on settees and went to sleep.
11. ADDRESS UNKNOWN
AS Michael was slipping out of the Winter Palace and making his way to Millionnaya Street in the pre-dawn of Tuesday, February 28, the train carrying his brother back to Tsarskoe Selo was leaving Mogilev, its windows darkened, its passengers asleep. Another train, carrying members of his suite, had set off an hour earlier, at 4 a.m.1 After the telegraph exchange with Michael, the start-time had been moved forward from 2.30 p.m. because it had been decided to take a roundabout route back, so as to leave the direct line to Petrograd clear for the relief force ordered to the capital. The change would mean adding nine hours and 200 miles to the normal journey. With luck he would arrive home at around eight o’ clock the following morning, Wednesday.
‘Every hour is precious,’ Michael had told his brother on the wire from the war ministry on Monday night, and he had urged him not to leave Mogilev at all, so that he could be in direct communication throughout the crisis. On his train, Nicholas would be virtually incommunicado. Russia no longer had a government and over the next crucial twenty-seven hours or more it would, for all practical purposes, be without an emperor. If, that is, all went to plan.
Nicholas had gone to bed in the train at 3.15 a.m. having talked late with General Nikolai Ivanov,2 the former commander on the south-western front and the man now charged with restoring order in the capital and beyond. What Nicholas hoped was that when he reached Tsarskoe Selo next morning he would hear that Ivanov had crushed the rebellion.
Ivanov had been given a crack battalion comprising 800 men who had each won the Cross of St George,3 and from Mogilev Alekseev had commanded the despatch of reliable battle-hardened formations to be sent on the direct rail route to the capital, giving Ivanov another four infantry and four cavalry regiments, plus artillery.4
Late that Tuesday afternoon, Alexandra received at Tsarskoe Selo a confident telegram: ‘Left this morning at 5. Thoughts always together. Glorious weather. Hope you are feeling well and quiet. Many troops sent from front. Fondest love. Nicky. The telegram, sent from Vyazma at 3 p.m. arrived at Tsarskoe Selo less than two hours later, at 4.49 p.m.5 Some things still seemed to be working.
It was certainly reassuring news. Vyazma was 420 miles away, and if the trains kept to schedule, Nicholas would be home as planned, for breakfast on Wednesday. Darkness had fallen when the telegram arrived, but Alexandra knew that all around the palace were well-armed and reliable troops who would stand guard throughout the night.
The men protecting the imperial palace were hand-picked and their personal loyalty to the Tsar was beyond question. There were Guardsmen, Cossacks of the Emperor’s Escort, artillerymen, riflemen, and the tall marines of the Garde Equipage, whose proud commander was Grand Duke Kirill.6 They were not just crack troops — as Alexandra said to her loyal confidante, Lili Dehn, they were ‘our personal friends’.7
Rodzyanko doubted that, given the tumult in the capital. He sent a message urging Alexandra to evacuate the palace and put herself and her family on a train8 — which made no sense at all at Tsarskoe Selo, given that the Tsar was heading towards the palace in his train, and Ivanov and his battalion of heroes were hastening towards them, followed by eight regiments of frontline troops.
Yet there were grounds for concern. Truckloads of mutineers had arrived in the town itself, but their revolutionary fervour had been diverted into looting the wine shops.9 There was the sound of shooting beyond the palace gates, but as darkness fell, within the ring of troops, the palace itself seemed entirely secure. In the late evening, with a black fur-coat thrown over her nurse’s uniform, Alexandra and her 17-year-old daughter Marie walked among the troops, praising them for their loyalty.10
When she came back, Alexandra seemed ‘possessed by some inward exaltation. She was radiant. They are all our friends…so devoted to us, ’ she told Lili Dehn.11 By morning, Nicholas would be back, and Ivanov marching into town. All was well.
Nicholas still expected to be back on schedule. At around 4 a.m. on Wednesday morning he was less than 100 miles away, having covered 540 miles since leaving Mogilev. It was then that the train stopped, at the town of Malaya Vishera, an alarmed aide hurrying into his carriage to tell him that revolutionaries had blocked the line ahead.12 It was the bitterest of moments for Nicholas; no more than five hours from home, and he could go no further.
Since he had no troops save for a few train guards, there was no hope of fighting their way forward. That being so, there was only one choice for them: the two trains would have to go back to Bologoe, halfway between Petrograd and Moscow, and then head west for Pskov, headquarters of General Nikolai Ruzsky’s Northern Army. It was the nearest safe haven, though it would still leave Nicholas 170 miles from home and worse off than if he had stayed in Mogilev where he could command the whole of his armies. His journey had been entirely wasted.
‘To Pskov, then,’ he said curtly and retired back to his sleeping car.13 But once there he put his real feelings into his diary. ‘Shame and dishonour,’ he wrote despairingly.14
The return to Bologoe would take around five hours, and from there it was 221 miles on the branch line to the ancient town of Pskov. For the next and decisive 15 hours the Emperor of All the Russias would once again vanish into the empty snow-covered countryside, a second day lost.
At Tsarskoe Selo, an increasingly worried Alexandra would wait for a man who was not coming, and when she dashed off a telegram to him to find out where he was, ordering it to be sent immediately to ‘His Imperial Majesty’, it was returned, with the stark message, scrawled across it in blue penciclass="underline" ‘Address of person mentioned unknown’.15