THE Monarchy of the Romanoffs had fallen like a house of cards which crumbles on the ground at the slightest touch. It had been considered one of the strongest, one of the most powerful, in Europe; yet its collapse had come with an amazing promptitude and there had not been found in the whole vast Empire over which it had ruled one single man or woman willing to arrest its downward course toward the abyss into which it finally disappeared. What the tyranny of Nicholas I., the selfishness of Alexander II., and the iron rule of Alexander III. had failed to produce, the weakness, indecision, and incapacity of Nicholas II. had made easy. What a German Princess, Catherine II., had maintained, another German Princess compromised and lost forever.

Without wishing to add to the faults and mistakes of Alexandra Feodorowna, it is nevertheless quite impossible to acquit her of blame in the catastrophe which finally wrecked poor, unfortunate Russia. Without her it is likely that the Crown would have kept some prestige, at least in the eyes of those whose family traditions were linked with the fate of the Monarchy in their country. She destroyed this prestige by the singularity of her conduct, the want of balance of her mind, and her proud, haughty, and totally false conception of the Russian character. She firmly believed that nothing she could do would be criticized and that even those who disliked her, whose number was legion, as she knew very well, would never dare to question her right to do whatever she pleased, or to choose her friends no matter in what circles or among what kind of people.

This woman, whom misfortune associated with the fate of the House of Romanoff at the very time when the latter ought to have had the aid of an intelligent, well-intentioned, and unselfish Princess to help it face the dangers which were threatening it, had never known how to put herself at the level of the persons by whom she found herself surrounded. She lacked not only tact, but also generosity, and she never could hold broad views about anything or about anybody. She was as scathing as she was hasty in her judgments. From the very first day she was raised to the Throne of Russia she abused the privileges which her position conferred upon her, and either through stupidity—or willingly—because of her dislike for the nation whose Crown she wore, she applied herself to wound those whom she ought to have spared and to propitiate persons whom it would have been imperative for her to keep away as far as possible from her person and from that of her husband.

Of course she was in a certain sense a strong character, in so far, at least, as she never would yield to reason or accept any compromise. She had principles of her own, which, however, did not help her to win respect for herself or esteem for her conduct. Without ever allowing herself to be led by impulse, she failed to perceive that in most of her actions she was influenced by superstition of a most foolish kind. The fact that insanity existed in her family may excuse her to a certain point, but should not blind us to faults which might easily have been corrected had she only realized their existence.

She was a blameless wife; about this there cannot be any doubt. But she never loved her husband and she only cared for his position. She was a tender mother, at least to her son, whatever may have been her feelings in regard to her daughters, whom she most unjustly blamed for their sex, if we are to believe all that we have been told on the subject. But she lacked sympathy, which she never could give to others or win for herself. She was a cold, ambitious, stern creature, so convinced of her own perfection that she never could be brought to see good in anything with which she was not connected in some way or other. Her life certainly had tragedy entwined with its course. Perhaps the most cruel blow, until the final catastrophe that wrecked all her hopes, had been her unfortunate affection for the dashing officer, Colonel Orloff, who had died to save her honor and good name, whose post-mortem influence had been so cleverly made use of by unscrupulous adventurers in order to win her confidence. Alexandra had always at heart despised the weak man to whom she was married, but she had loved the high position which, thanks to her union with him, she had acquired; she would have liked to remain alone in control of it and to revenge her supposed wrongs at the hands of the Russian nation, by delivering it into the power of that German Fatherland of hers to which she had always remained attached. Her desire for peace was sincere (at least we must hope so), and everything we know about her and about her conduct during that momentous time when she kept working toward its conclusion points to the truth of this supposition. It had all along been a terrible trial for her to find the land of her birth at war with that of her adoption, and to this initial agony was added the superstitious terror which Raspoutine had inspired in her, thanks to the hypnotic practices in which he had induced her to participate—terror which ended by completely wrecking her already badly balanced mind.

But the supreme misfortune of the last Empress of Russia, a misfortune for which she was not responsible, was the fact of her having been married to a being who was too weak to lead her, too selfish to understand her, too cruelly inclined to sympathize with her; who at the same time did not acquire sufficient authority over her to inspire her with respect for his individuality as a man and for his position as a Sovereign. Had she been the wife of Alexander III., it is likely that she would have turned out entirely another woman from the one which she ultimately became; on the other hand, had Nicholas II. had for Consort a person different from the one to whom destiny had linked him, it is also probable that he would have contrived to avoid some of the mistakes into which he fell. He might have shown himself more plucky and more human in the different moments of crisis which made his reign such a sad and such an unfortunate one.

One of the most tragical things with which a student of history finds himself confronted when he analyzes any of the great catastrophes that come to change the fate of nations is the total insufficiency of the people who have to meet them or to handle them. There is no more pitiful spectacle than the vacillations of Louis XVI. during the first days of the great Revolution which sent him to the scaffold. Witness the want of character of the miserable Czar who is meditating at present in Tobolsk over the misfortunes that have landed him into exile; it is another of those sights one should have liked to see spared to posterity. During the twenty-two years he occupied the Russian Throne Nicholas II. constantly opposed himself to the wishes of his people, even the most reasonable ones, when he thought that they implied any diminution of his personal prerogatives or power. He sent hundreds of thousands of innocent people to the gallows or to horrible Siberian prisons under the slightest of pretexts. He had no hesitation at spilling the blood of his subjects either on the battle-field or on the scaffold. He allowed the detestable police system, which became, under his rule, stronger than it had ever been before, to interfere with private liberty and private opinions to an extent that had never been witnessed in his country even in the times of Nicholas I. or of Paul. While he reigned no one felt secure in his home or could go to bed with the consciousness that he would not be wakened in the middle of the night by an army of police agents come to search his drawers, or to arrest him under the most futile of pretexts or simply because he had refused to pay a bribe. And yet that man in whose name the most terrible injustices had been committed, who did not admit any resistance to his will, who believed in his unlimited power over one hundred and eighty millions of human beings—that man did not find sufficient courage to resist the only demand, among the many which were addressed to him during the course of his nefarious reign, that he ought never to have granted; and without one single thought of the future of his country or of his son he gave up without a murmur the Crown of which he was the bearer, when two determined men came to claim it from him, and he did so without even noticing that they were far more awed by the solemnity of the scene in which they found themselves unwilling actors than he was himself.

There never was a Throne relinquished with less dignity, there never was an act of abdication accomplished with less consciousness of the importance of its meaning. When one recapitulates all the details of the drama which was performed at Pskow, one can, when one is a Russian, feel but one passionate regret—that no one was found by the side of the last crowned Romanoff to drive a knife into his heart or put a bullet through his brain, and thus spare this haughty dynasty the shame of having been dragged into the gutter by its Head.

It is scarcely to be doubted that if Nicholas II. had only given more thought to the importance of the act he was invited to perform he might at least have saved his dynasty, if not himself. His brother, the Grand-Duke Michael, who could easily renounce the Crown for himself, would hardly have been able to refuse the Regency on behalf of his little nephew. A man with the slightest political knowledge would have put the interests of his country before his own selfish feelings of paternal affection, and the Czar ought to have abdicated in favor of his son, and not have put forward this stupid pretext of lacking the courage to part from him. This very remark proves how little he understood the situation in which he found himself. It also shows us how utterly helpless he was when confronted by any difficulties of an overpowering and potential character. When one considers his whole conduct during those eventful hours when he lost not only his own, but his posterity’s, Crown, it is impossible not to wonder as to whether or not there was any truth in the rumor that the Empress had been giving him drugs of some kind with the purpose of annihilating his will. It seems almost incredible that any man should have so quietly and so spontaneously lent a hand to his own degradation.

It is to be doubted, also, whether he regretted what he had done. Certainly he never imagined to what it would lead him. The idea that his people would have the courage to make him a prisoner does not seem to have crossed his mind, any more than did the fact that, once he had lost his position, he had become not only a useless, but an embarrassing factor in Russian politics. He went back to Mohilew, to the headquarters of that army of which he had been the Commander-in-chief as well as the Sovereign, quite naturally and in the same quiet manner he might have done in the days gone by. He did not even seem to yearn after his wife and children, and never once did he suggest the advisability of returning to Tsarskoye Selo. Of all the people assembled around him he appeared the most unconcerned. This indifference lasted even when he found himself faced with captivity and when the former Head of his Staff, General AlÉxieieff, came to acquaint him with the decision of the Provisional Government to arrest him.

His wife, left alone in the Palace where she had spent so many happy days, did not perhaps share his indifference; she certainly displayed the same apathy. Alexandra Feodorowna, from the moment that she saw her schemes of personal grandeur frustrated, gave up the game; she gave it up with more dignity than her husband had ever shown—this much must be conceded to her. She never flinched before the insults that were poured down upon her; she never gave a sign that she was moved to anything else but disdain when General Korniloff read to her the orders of the Government in regard to her person, and acquainted her with the fact that she was a prisoner. She declared to the few people left with her that she considered herself only as a Sister of Charity in attendance on her sick children. The Empress had disappeared, outwardly at least, and perhaps it was just as well that she accepted the situation in this way, rather than attempt a useless resistance, which could only have added to her unpopularity.

But still the fact remained that the whole Russian Revolution had been conducted after the style of a comic opera of Offenbach. No one at first had recognized its serious character. No one had seemed to realize that it constituted the most portentous event of the last hundred years or so. Those who had carried it out had done it on the spur of the moment, without thinking of what would follow; and the Monarch who had bowed his head under its decrees also had not suspected that a morrow was there, waiting for the results of what was being done to-day. The historical stick that had been wielded by Peter the Great had been transformed into the ridiculous sword of the Grand Duchess of Gerolstein.