Guchkov, expecting a fierce row, was stunned to find that Nicholas had not only already abdicated but had drawn up a second abdication manifesto removing Alexis from the succession. At a stroke it demolished a key aspect of the Duma men's argument - an innocent boy lawfully inherits the throne and a new responsible ministry is protected by Michael as regent.
Guchkov and Shulgin recognised the problem as they retired to discuss it with Ruzsky and two other generals. Could an emperor remove a lawful successor for health reasons? No one knew the answer, except perhaps that as an autocrat Nicholas could do as he liked. And neither of the Duma men welcomed the prospect of returning empty- handed to Petrograd; they decided therefore that they had no choice but to accept the second abdication as it stood. Filing back into the saloon they told him that they had agreed to his terms.
With that Nicholas took the manifesto into his study for amendment and signature. With the removal ofAlexis, it now read: 'We have judged it right to abdicate the Throne of the Russian state and to lay down the Supreme Power. Not wishing to be parted from Our Beloved Son, We hand over Our Succession to Our Brother Grand Michael Aleksandrovich and Bless Him on his accession to the Throne of the Russian state ...' A sealed copy of the abdication was handed over to Guchkov and another to Ruzsky for transmission to the army commands and to Petrograd and other key centres.
It was then 11.40 p.m. but it was agreed that the manifesto should be timed as of three o'clock that afternoon - as stated on the draft sent from the Stavka when Nicholas had first decided to abdicate, albeit with Alexis as his successor. That made this second abdication appear to have been signed at the same time as the first - and thus to seem its equal and not a belated substitute.
Just after midnight, when Guchkov and Shulgin, with their precious signed manifesto, headed back to the capital, the text of that second manifesto was being broadcast overnight to the world at large. Nicholas, in his turn, left Pskov for Mogilev, the headquarters from which he had departed with such confidence just forty-four hours earlier. Throughout the formalities he had given no sign of distress but within himself he was anything but calm. On the train he went to his diary and revealed his private agony: 'At one o'clock this morning I left Pskov with a heart that is heavy over what has just happened. All around me there is nothing but treason, cowardice, and deceit!'
As always with Nicholas, everyone was to blame but himself.
As news reached the Tauride Palace in the early hours of Friday morning that Nicholas had removed both himself and his son from the throne, panic set in among the Duma leaders. The deal which they had thought settled with a reluctant Soviet had depended in great degree on persuading them that the new tsar would be a harmless boy - not a tough battlefield commander with a high reputation in the army. Among the throng of mutineers, fearful enough that Michael would be regent, the immediate reaction was that, with Michael as emperor, their necks were more at stake than ever. Talk of a general amnesty would not save those who had killed their own officers.
But fear worked in two directions and Rodzyanko was one of those as scared of the revolution as the revolution was scared of the monarchy. Pavel Milyukov - a resolute monarchist and the newly-appointed foreign minister in what was now called the Provisional Government - would describe him as being in 'a blue funk'. But in that sense so was the new premier Prince Lvov, who sided with Rodzyanko's alarmist predictions. Emperor Michael would have to be abandoned; Nicholas had done for the Soviet what the Soviet did not dare to do on its own.
To save itself the new government would have to persuade Michael to give up the throne. The Duma men knew where he was. Kerensky, appointed justice minister, picked up a copy of the Petrograd telephone directory, flicked through the pages and ran his finger down the column to the name of Princess Putyatina. Her number was 1-58-48. A few moments later, at 5.55 a.m., the telephone rang in 12 Millionnaya Street.
Although the new ministers hoped to meet Michael even before he knew he had become emperor - and possibly had started acting as one - there was never any chance of it remaining a secret. At first light, thousands of troops in front-line units were cheering his name and swearing an oath of allegiance to Emperor Michael II. At Pskov itself, with Nicholas gone, a Te Deum was ordered for the new emperor in the cathedral. Even in far-off Crimea, people celebrated Michael's succession. Princess Cantacuzene, one of Petrograd's leading hostesses, remembered that Nicholas's portraits disappeared 'from shop windows and walls within an hour after the reading of the proclamation; and in their place I saw by the afternoon pictures of Michael Aleksandrovich. Flags were hung out, and all faces wore smiles of quiet satisfaction.'
In Moscow, where the garrison had also gone over to the revolution, although without any of the excesses in Petrograd, the succession of Michael was greeted by the rebels with 'wooden indifference', with no sign of the resistance so feared by Rodzyanko in the hothouse of the Tauride Palace - indeed, the opposite seemed true elsewhere in the capital.
Guchkov and Shulgin, arriving back from Pskov, cried 'Long live Emperor Michael' as they hurried from their train, cheered by the people as they went by. After Shulgin read out the manifesto, a transit battalion of front-line troops and the surrounding crowd responded with cheers that 'rang out, passionate, genuine, emotional'.
Shulgin suddenly became aware of an urgent voice telling him that he was wanted on the telephone in the station-master's office. When he picked up the receiver it was to hear the croaking voice of Milyukov.
'Don't make known the manifesto,' barked Milyukov. 'There have been serious changes.'
A few moments later the telephone rang again - the new Railway Commissioner was sending his own man to the station. 'You can trust him with anything ... Understand?' Shulgin understood perfectly. A few minutes later a messenger arrived and Shulgin slipped him the envelope bearing the manifesto. Taken to the transport ministry offices, it was hidden under a pile of old magazines.
In the Tauride Palace, such was the confusion among the 'Council of Ministers' that it was not until 9.30 a.m. that they were assembled, though without Guchkov and Shulgin who had been delayed in a confrontation with the rebel-supporting railwaymen.
By then one question had settled itself: the news was such common knowledge that the Soviet now also knew that Michael was emperor, and the resulting clamour among the mutineers left the Duma majority in no doubt what that meant for them. They had no choice but to insist upon Michael's immediate abdication - their own necks depended on it.
They would take a hastily drafted manifesto with them to Million- naya Street, and with luck bring it back signed by lunchtime. That should quieten the Soviet. The majority also agreed that Michael should be told that if he refused to sign, no one of them would serve as his ministers. He would be tsar with no government. It was him or us.
The apartment first-floor drawing room had been prepared to provide an informal setting. The settees and armchairs were arranged so that Michael, when he took the meeting, would be facing a semicircle of delegates. Lvov as premier and Rodzyanko as Duma president would lead the majority call for Michael's abdication, while Milyukov argued the minority case for preserving the monarchy, futile though that would be.
At 9.35 a.m., the delegates deciding that they could no longer wait for Guchkov and Shulgin, the drawing room door opened, ministers and deputies rose to their feet, and in walked the man being hailed across the country as His Majesty Emperor Michael II. He sat down in his tall-backed chair, looked around the men facing him, and the meeting began.
For Michael the first reality was to find that everyone addressed him not as 'Your Imperial Majesty' but as 'Your Highness' - thus, not as emperor but as grand duke. It was intended as intimidation, and they thought it would also speed up the clock.