Not knowing what time his train was to be expected, there was no one at the station to meet him, though shortly afterwards the army commander, General Nikolai Ruzsky, turned up, his manner unwelcoming.
He did not bring good news. What of those relief troops that Nicholas had sent to the capital? The answer was that with no orders, no tsar, and no one in authority, General Ivanov had simply abandoned his task and turned back. The capital was lost and would stay lost.
In the tsar's study aboard the train, Ruzsky believed that Nicholas now had no option but to grant the concessions demanded of him and he said so, doggedly, over a gloomy dinner. As stubborn as ever and still blind to his own peril, Nicholas refused to give up his autocratic powers, though he conceded that he was willing to appoint Rodzyanko as prime minister, albeit with a cabinet responsible to the tsar.
Ruzsky was getting nowhere until a telegram arrived from General Alexeev at Mogilev, urging the same concessions. Nicholas, now in an uncomfortable corner, sought compromise. He insisted that, whatever else, the ministers for war, navy and foreign affairs should continue to be accountable to him. Ruzsky would not even concede that.
Nicholas went to his sleeping car a rattled man. In refusing the demands of politicians and dismissing the pleas of his brother and others, he had assumed the absolute loyalty of his senior military commanders. Now they, too, seemed to be against him. At 2 a.m. he called Ruzsky to his carriage and told him that he had 'decided to compromise'; a manifesto granting a responsible ministry, already signed, was on the table. Ruzsky was authorised to notify Rodzyanko that he could now be prime minister of a parliamentary government.
However, that proved only how little the tsar knew of what had happened in the capital since Michael had wired him at 10.30 p.m. on Monday night, a little more than forty-eight hours earlier. When, at 3.30 a.m., Ruzsky got through to Petrograd on the direct line, Rodzyanko's reply was shatteringly frank: 'It is obvious that neither His Maj esty nor you realise what is going on here ... Unfortunately the manifesto has come too late ... and there is no return to the past ... demands for an abdication in favour of the son, with Michael Alexandrovich as Regent, are becoming quite definite.'
When Ruzsky finished his painfully slow discussion on the direct wire, it was 7.30 a.m. that Thursday morning, 2 March. It was only then that Ruzsky knew that the crisis in Petrograd had moved beyond demands for a constitutional monarchy to that of the abdication of Nicholas. He therefore sent on Rodzyanko's taped message to Alexeev at Supreme Headquarters and at 9 a.m. on the same morning Alexeev cabled his reply: 'My deep conviction that there is no choice and that the abdication should now take place ... but there is no other solution.'
Having made his own views clear, at least to Ruzsky, Alexeev - less pained than he pretended - sent out his own telegrams to his other army commanders and to the admirals commanding the Baltic and Black Sea fleets. Russia had a war to fight and Alexeev was determined that the revolution in Petrograd should not undermine the front-line armies waiting to begin their spring offensive.
'The dynastic question has been put point-blank,' he told his commanders. 'The war may be continued until its victorious end only provided the demands regarding the abdication from the throne in favour of the son and under the regency of Grand Duke Michael
Alexandrovich are satisfied. Apparently the situation does not permit another solution ...'
His cables went out at 10.15 a.m. Four hours later, at 2.15 p.m., he wired the emperor at Pskov giving him the first three replies. They would prove decisive.
The first, from 'Uncle Nikolasha', the former Supreme Commander sacked in 1915 and now commander on the Caucasus front, could not be more frank: 'As a loyal subject I feel it my necessary duty of allegiance in the spirit of my oath, to beg Your Imperial Majesty on my knees to save Russia and your heir ... and hand over to him your heritage. There is no other way ...'
The second, in like terms, was from Brusilov, Michael's former commander-in-chief, and the most successful fighting general in the army: 'The only solution ... is the abdication in favour of the heir Tsarevich under the Regency of Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich. There is no other way out; otherwise it will result in incalculable catastrophic consequences.' The third was from General Alexei Evert, the commander on the western front: 'abdication is the only measure which apparently can stop the revolution and thus save Russia from the horrors of anarchy'.
Nicholas rose and went to the window, staring out unseeingly. He could not defy his generals and they had just passed a vote of no confidence in him, both as tsar and Supreme Commander. He could not sack them, nor could he argue with them. Suddenly he turned and said calmly: 'I have decided. I shall renounce the throne.' He made the sign of the cross and Ruzsky, realising the enormity of what had just been said, followed suit.
Two short telegrams were drafted for Nicholas - the first to Rodzyanko.
There is no sacrifice which I would not bear for the sake of the real welfare and for the salvation of our own dear Mother Russia. Therefore I am ready to abdicate the throne in favour of my son, provided that he can remain with me until he comes of age, with the Regency of my brother the Grand Duke Michael Aleksandrovich.
That was the response that was hoped for by the Duma men - Nicholas gone, a boy emperor, Michael as regent. His second telegram, to Alexeev, was in similar terms. At 3.45 p.m. Nicholas told Ruzsky to send them out.
At that moment, Nicholas ceased to be tsar, Alexis was the new emperor and Michael was regent. Or so it was assumed when an excited Rodzyanko spread the word in the Duma. Indeed, the abdication was so generally known that in London Nicholas's cousin King George V that night wrote in his diary: 'Heard from Buchanan [the British ambassador] that the Duma had forced Nicky to sign his abdication and Misha had been appointed Regent.' The king was in no doubt about the reason: 'I fear Alicky [the empress] is the cause of it all and Nicky has been weak.'
That was exactly the verdict of the relieved Duma men as they began their negotiations with the Soviet over ending the revolution and forming a responsible government. The 'historically inevitable' had, it seemed, stepped in to save Russia. In fact, Nicholas was just about to demonstrate yet again that history only happens afterwards.
Before Nicholas's signed abdication had been signalled to Petrograd, two leading Duma men had boarded a train for Pskov, thinking they would only obtain that abdication by facing him directly. They were Guchkov, the architect of the earlier plot to arrest the tsar and compel him to go, and his co-monarchist Vasily Shulgin. For the next seven hours they would be out of touch with events, and arrive in Pskov at around 10 p.m. not knowing that in Petrograd the matter was taken as already settled.
But what as yet no one knew was that in those same hours Nicholas had changed his mind: yes, he would abdicate, but in so doing he would also remove his son from the succession. It would be his brother Michael not the boy Alexis who would be emperor.
Petulance? If you won't have me, then you won't get my son. That may have been the thinking in Nicholas's embittered mind, but behind it was a real worry that without the care of his family the fragile haemophilic Alexis could die, a possibility confirmed by Professor Sergei Fedorov, the court physician travelling with him. The professor could have no idea about the future plans for caring for the boy, but whatever these may have been, Alexis was always at risk. And in stating the obvious Fedorov gave Nicholas the excuse he was looking for.