Since the empress was so often ill, her moon-faced friend Anna spent more time with the tsar, who, she boasted afterwards, ‘developed a more than ordinary desire for my companionship perhaps only because I was an entirely healthy, normal woman’.
If Anna thought the tsar was in love with her, Alexandra rightly thought Anna was in love with him, deploying lovesick swoons and playing footsie under the table. ‘One couldn’t help but notice the shocking manner she tried to flirt with the emperor,’ recalled Zizi Naryshkina. Nicky was embarrassed, while ‘The empress became mortally jealous and suspicious of every movement of her husband and myself,’ wrote Anna, and ‘said some very unkind and cruel things of me’.
‘My heart is heavy and sore – must one’s kindness and love always be repaid thus? The Black Family [the Montenegrin sisters] and now she?’ Alexandra asked Nicky. ‘We gave our hearts, our home to her, our private life even – and this is what we’ve gained. It’s difficult not to become bitter.’ She was pleased when Nicky got away from ‘love scenes and rows’ and ‘footgames’. She now called Anna ‘the Lovesick Creature’ or just ‘the Cow’ and declared, ‘I find her stomach and legs colossal (and most unappetizing).’
Just before their return, the family paid a return visit to Romania, partly with a view to a marriage, partly to win over the country in the event of war, sailing over to Constantia to meet the ancient King Carol, his heir Ferdinand and Missy. The girls were ‘cheerful and exceedingly sunburnt from Crimea,’ Alexei was ‘handsome but somewhat spoilt,’ and as for Nicky, Missy noticed ‘how loveable he was’, but as the Romanovs left, ‘little did I imagine we would never meet again.’
At the end of his Livadian idyll, Nicholas said to a courtier, ‘Let’s make a pact that we all meet here again in October.’ Then he paused. ‘After all, in this life, we don’t know what lies before us.’7
On 15 June (28 June New Style), ten days after the Romanovs had returned to Tsarskoe, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo.
The assassin was Gavrilo Princip, a young member of the Serbian nationalist organization Union or Death, also known as the Black Hand, who had been trained under the aegis of Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, codenamed Apis, chief of Serbian military intelligence. Even though the Serbian prime minister Pašić only vaguely knew of the conspiracy, it did not take long for the Austrians to discover the official link.
The Austrian chief of staff (who had advocated war against Serbia twenty-five times in 1913 alone) argued that this atrocity offered the best, perhaps last, chance to destroy the enemy and save the empire. This time the old emperor Franz Josef and his ministers agreed. But since this would provoke Russia, Austria needed German cover. In Berlin, on 22 June the kaiser gave a ‘blank cheque’ to back Austria, the essential decision that led to war – unaware that France had promised Russia its support if Austria invaded Serbia and that Britain had secretly promised support to France. The Germans advised the Austrians to win their war fast before Russia could react. But this was a problem. On 7 July, President Poincaré of France was visiting Petersburg, so the ultimatum could only be sent when he was on his way home.
The emperor and Sazonov were now the key decision-makers: both thought war unlikely but agreed that Russia could not tolerate the destruction of Serbia. On 29 June, Alexandra consulted Rasputin, who was at his Siberian home, sending him a telegram: ‘It’s a serious moment, they’re threatening war.’ Just after reading it, he came out of his house and was stabbed in the stomach by a deformed woman (‘Nose absent; irregularly shaped hole in its place,’ noted the police report), probably sent by the monk Iliodor. As he fought for his life, Nicky and Alix despatched a doctor from Petersburg – ‘We’re deeply shaken,’ the empress wrote to him, ‘our grief beyond description’ – and ordered the police to tighten Rasputin’s security, then they left for a short family cruise on Shtandart. But contrary to the great myth of Alexandra’s and Rasputin’s influence, Nicholas hardly shared his predicament with his wife, let alone with Rasputin, during the entire Serbian crisis. They were irrelevant.
On 3 July Nicholas learned that Austria planned an ultimatum to Serbia. ‘In my view,’ he said, ‘no country can present demands to another unless it has decided to wage war.’
‘Horrible moments,’ Alix telegraphed Rasputin. ‘Pray for us!’
Four days later, the family moved to Peterhof to welcome Poincaré. ‘The complete alliance between our governments appears more necessary than ever,’ Nicholas told the French president, who was staying in the Great Palace. A dinner was held there that night, incandescent with ‘the brilliance of uniforms, superb toilettes, elaborate liveries, the whole panoply of pomp and power’, with a ‘dazzling display of diamonds on women’s shoulders’, observed the urbane French ambassador Paléologue. But everyone joined Poincaré in asking: ‘What does Austria have in store for us?’
On 9 July, emperor and president reviewed 60,000 troops at Krasnoe Selo. At Nikolasha’s banquet, the two Montenegrin Crows warned Sazonov against any wobbling and told the French that their father the king of Montenegro had told them ‘There’s going to be war . . . There’ll be nothing left of Austria . . . You’re going to get back Alsace and Lorraine . . . Germany will be destroyed.’ The emperor flashed her a look. ‘I must restrain myself,’ Stana finished. ‘The emperor has his eye on me.’
On the last night, 10 July, while bands played on the deck of La France, Poincaré told Nicholas, ‘This time we must hold firm.’ As Poincaré sailed away, in the Serbian capital Austria presented its ultimatum, designed to be unacceptable. Nicholas returned to Peterhof. He had an ‘aversion to telephones’ and none of his studies had been fitted with them, ‘but now he had wires and instruments installed and spent much time in conversations with ministers’. Now his foreign minister rang him for the first time on this new-fangled device to report that the ultimatum was brutal, ‘could not be complied with by Serbia’ and was a German machination. ‘This means that European war’, Sazonov said, was ‘unavoidable’.
As Sazonov set off for lunch with the British and French ambassadors in Petersburg, Nicholas in Peterhof put down the phone and called in his finance minister, Peter Bark, for his weekly audience. The tsar, uncharacteristically, confided in Bark that he did not trust Sazonov who tended to exaggerate. The emperor could not believe that the kaiser would give the trigger-happy Austrians a blank cheque when he had not exploited Russia’s total collapse in 1905 and when they had managed to compromise in every crisis since. Bark agreed – but many shared Sazonov’s view. Meanwhile the Serbs rejected the ultimatum.
The following day, Sazonov warned the Austrian ambassador, ‘You’re setting fire to Europe,’ and he told the French and British envoys that ‘Russia would have to mobilize.’ At 11 a.m. he saw Chief of Staff Nikolai Yanushkevich; at 3 p.m., he attended the Council of Ministers. If Russia ‘failed to fulfil her historic mission’, Sazanov said, speaking first, she would become ‘a decadent state’. No one should be under any doubt that Germany was the power behind Austria. Krivoshein, the key minister, backed him tentatively, warning that ‘concession was no guarantee of peace’, though ‘no one desired war’. They agreed to recommend ‘partial mobilization’ against Austria.
Next day, at 11 a.m. on 12 July, the tsar summoned the ministers and Yanushkevich to a meeting at Krasnoe Selo, the venue for summer manoeuvres attended by the tsar every day from nearby Peterhof. There, in Nikolasha’s palace, the world lurched closer to war. Nicholas entered the room with Nikolasha and then sat between the grand duke and Premier Goremykin. ‘Smiling but showing no emotion’, the tsar turned to Sazonov, who proposed his secret ‘partial mobilization’, against Austria only, and a preliminary stage known as ‘the Period Preparatory to War’. The tsar was quiet; Nikolasha said nothing. Nicholas approved partial mobilization – in the event of Austria declaring war on Serbia. Afterwards the tsar and Nikolasha attended the ballet, then returned to Peterhof.
Nicholas’s decision to remain
closeted there is strange. Even with his new phones, he was still too removed. At the great test of his hard-won autocracy, the autocrat was barely present, leaving the initiative to Sazonov and the generals. When the generals who actually ran the mechanics of war discovered that the amateurish war minister Sukhomlinov and Yanushkevich had proposed partial mobilization, they explained that this was an administrative nonsense. If they partially mobilized against Austria, how could they then fully mobilize if necessary against Germany? There was only one appropriate plan: Plan 19A, and that was for a full mobilization.
Many of these mediocre players later blamed one another for warmongering, but the Russian generals, knowing that their mobilization would be slower than that of Germany and later than that of Austria, were terrified that France (and Serbia) would be destroyed and the war lost – if they did not hurry. And they were right to be afraid because the German Schlieffen Plan was designed to smash through Belgium to knock out France first and then turn to obliterate Russia.
Nicholas was thinking of ways to prevent the war. On 14 July, the tsar wrote to Sazonov:
I’ll receive you tomorrow at 6. I’ve got an idea in my head not to lose the golden moment – I’ll tell you. Should we try by agreement of France and England, then of Germany and Italy, to offer Austria to transfer its dispute with Serbia to the Hague Tribunal. So as not to lose a moment before already unavoidable events. Try to do this today . . . My hope for the world is not yet extinguished.
Spending ‘many hours each day in his study with Grand Duke Nikolasha and Sazonov’, Nicholas was ‘half dazed’. Country days rolled on lackadaisically at Peterhof – dominoes, tennis and swimming.
When Sukhomlinov saw him at Peterhof on 15 July (28 July New Style), the tsar seemed ‘serene if not indifferent to current affairs as if nothing threatened peaceful life’. That was the day Austria declared war on Serbia. Nicholas telegraphed the kaiser to mediate and restrain his ally ‘from going too far . . . The indignation in Russia shared by me is enormous.’ But at 6 p.m., he received Sazonov, who asked the tsar to agree two decrees, one of general, one of partial mobilization. He approved the mobilization of the four military districts facing Austria.
On the next day, the German ambassador warned Sazonov that if Russia did not halt its measures, Germany too would mobilize: the Schlieffen schedule was incredibly tight. At Peterhof, Alexandra telegraphed Rasputin: ‘Terrible times. Pray for him.’ Rasputin’s advice was clear but irrelevant. ‘Our Friend was always against this war,’ wrote Alix to Nicky later, ‘saying the Balkans weren’t worth the world to fight about.’
At the Lower Dacha, Nicky received Goremykin who was still against full mobilization. The emperor ‘played tennis’, he recorded. ‘The weather was magnificent.’ The royal hotline between Nicky and Willy buzzed with a confusing parallel dialogue of telegrams that often contradicted that of the ministers and generals. ‘Your Devoted Willy’ agreed to do his utmost to stop the Austrians. At 8.30 p.m. Nicky, confused by the difference between the kaiser and his ambassador, telegraphed Willy: ‘Thanks for your telegram conciliatory and friendly, whereas official message by your ambassador conveyed in very different tone. Beg you to explain divergency. Your Loving Nicky.’
In town, at seven o’clock that night, Sazonov met the generals at the Foreign Ministry. Yanushkevich realized that partial mobilization was not enough and Sazonov was finally convinced. Russia must fully mobilize. The Austrians were shelling Belgrade. Sazonov then telephoned the tsar to explain that full mobilization would be the right answer to the German threat. The tsar agreed. Tsar and ministers signed the order that was to be sent out half an hour later at 9.30 p.m. But, minutes earlier, a telegram arrived at Peterhof from the kaiser claiming that ‘Russian military measures . . . would precipitate a calamity’ while he was trying to mediate between Vienna and Petersburg. Nicholas must cancel the mobilization.
The tsar reached for his new-fangled telephone and called Sukhomlinov.
‘I won’t be responsible for a monstrous slaughter,’ said the tsar. ‘Can we stop it for a while?’
‘Mobilization is not a mechanical process which one can stop at will,’ Sukhomlinov explained. But Nicholas overruled him. He called Yanushkevich, who phoned the director of mobilization, who in turn sent a runner to the telegraph office to halt the process. The tsar ordered Yanushkevich to return to ‘partial’ mobilization, an order that was sent out around midnight.
Still up at Peterhof at 1.20 a.m., Nicky, trying to save the peace, let the cat out of the bag by telegraphing the kaiser to say that ‘Military measures which have now come into force were decided five days ago.’
‘That’s almost a week ahead of us,’ said Willy. ‘The tsar’s been mobilizing behind my back. The tsar telegraphed asking for mediation’ while ‘in reality he’s been lying to me . . . I regard my mediation as mistaken. That means I’ve got to mobilize as well!’
In Petersburg too, the lights were burning late as Sazonov told the German ambassador that ‘reversing the mobilization was no longer possible’ – even though the tsar had just half reversed it.
Next morning, 17 July, ‘The weather was hot,’ wrote Nicky in his diary. ‘Had a delightful bathe in the sea.’ Grousing about the vacillating tsar, the generals met Sazonov and Krivoshein at Staff Headquarters. They recruited Rodzianko, president of the Duma, to back them. Then Sukhomlinov and Yanushkevich both phoned the tsar to say that ‘it was indispensable to proceed to general mobilization . . . to prepare for serious war’.
‘The conversation is at an end,’ said the emperor. They persuaded Sazonov to call. The tsar’s hesitant voice, ‘unaccustomed to the telephone, desired to know with whom he was speaking. I told the tsar I was speaking from the chief of staff’s office.’
‘What is it you wish?’ asked Nicholas.
‘I begged earnestly to see him that afternoon,’ his foreign minister recorded.
There was an even longer delay.
‘I’ll receive you at 3.’
At this point, the pressure on Nicholas was punishing. ‘I was struck by his very exhausted appearance,’ wrote his son’s Swiss tutor Pierre Gilliard who saw him then. But he was holding out alone against his entire military command, his civilian government and parliamentary and public opinion, which the tsar needed behind him. Given our pre-set Western view that the war was surely caused by autocrats and aristocrats, it is useful to remember that the Russian parliamentarians, from Guchkov to Rodzianko, had long been the most vociferous warmongers calling for intervention on behalf of the Serbs.
Could Nicholas have refused to mobilize? It was nearly impossible for him to do so. It would have required the total reversal of foreign policy not just since 1905 but since 1892, to end the French and British alliances and suddenly join Germany. (Stalin, who had more power and less public opinion to worry about, did something similar in 1939 with Hitler – but that did not avoid war either.) This would have infuriated every section of society and have led to deposition, if not worse – the fate of Peter III and Paul who reversed foreign policy against universal opinion. To do this, Nicholas would have had to start to reorientate Russia years if not decades earlier. It was far too late. At this stage, only German pressure on Austria to accept British mediation could have stopped the war.
Sazonov changed into court uniform and set off by train. Meanwhile, the kaiser’s latest telegram repeated the threat of the day before, exposing the mediation as a ploy.
At 3 p.m., the ‘tired and anxious’ emperor received Sazonov in his study, accompanied by Count Ilya Tatishchev, his military liaison with Kaiser Wilhelm whom he planned to send on a desperate mission to Berlin.
‘Is it too late?’
Sazonov said it was. Nicholas showed him Willy’s telegram: ‘He’s asking the impossible . . . If I agreed, we’d find ourselves unarmed against Austria. It would be madness.’
Sazonov agreed. The tsar was silent. Then: ‘This means sending hundreds of thousands of Russian people to their deaths. How
can one help hesitating?’
‘It’s hard to decide,’ said Tatishchev.
‘I will decide.’ Nicholas’s face ‘betrayed a terrible inner struggle’. Finally, ‘speaking as if with difficulty’, he declared: ‘You’re right. There’s nothing left but to prepare ourselves for an attack. Transmit my orders of mobilization.’ Sazonov called the chief of staff: ‘Issue your orders, General.’ Yanushkevich replied that henceforth ‘His telephone was out of order’, to prevent the tsar changing his mind again.
‘Smash your telephone,’ said Sazonov.
The central telegraph office tapped out the first general mobilization of the Great War, triggering the movement of scarcely imaginable legions: Russia already fielded the biggest army of 1.2 million men. Five million more would be conscripted in the remaining months of 1914; 15 million during the coming war; 2 million would die.
Meanwhile Rasputin, encouraged by Alix, telegraphed Nicky: ‘A terrible storm hangs over Russia. Disaster, grief, murky darkness and no light . . . Let Papa not make war, for war will mean the end of Russia and yourselves.’ Nicholas considered arresting Rasputin for treason. Surprisingly he did not mention the mobilization to Alexandra. When Anna heard of the military preparations, she rushed back to report to the empress, whose ‘amazement was unbounded – she couldn’t understand, she couldn’t imagine under what influence the emperor had acted’.
On 18 July (31 July New Style) in Berlin, the kaiser mobilized and unleashed the Schlieffen Plan to knock out France through neutral Belgium, while a token force held back the Russians in East Prussia.
Sukhomlinov was the obvious candidate for the supreme command, but, calculating that it would be a short war, he preferred to keep the War Ministry and suggested that Nicholas take it. The tsar longed to be the commander, but instead the next day he summoned Nikolasha: ‘I informed him of his appointment as commander-in-chief until I could join the army.’ Nikolasha, experiencing ‘an indescribable, indelible and over-exuberant feeling’, accepted the tsar’s ‘sacred will’ but added that he knew nothing of operational plans. Then he asked his cousin to promise that ‘whatever might happen, the loss of Petersburg, Moscow, even Siberia, he would conclude no peace’. Nicholas agreed, then went to vespers. In Petersburg, at 6 p.m., while Nicky was praying, the tearful German ambassador thrice asked Sazonov to stop the mobilization, then handed him a declaration of war. The two embraced. Sazonov then telephoned the court minister Count Frederiks at Peterhof.