All about Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Empress Alexandra Feodorovna: “a sunbeam that broke the empire. "The woman is good, but not normal"
Alexandra Feodorovna Romanova - the last Russian empress, wife of Nicholas II. Today we will get acquainted with the life and work of this, of course, an important historical person.
Childhood and youth
The future empress was born on May 25, 1872, in the German city of Darmstadt. Her father was Grand Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse, and her mother was Grand Duchess Alice, the second daughter of Queen Victoria of England. The girl was baptized in Lutheranism and received the name Alice Victoria Elena Brigitte Louise Beatrice, in honor of her mother and aunts. In the family, the girl began to be called simply Alice. The child was raised by the mother. But when Alice was only six years old, her mother died. She cared for patients with diphtheria and became infected herself. At that time, the woman was only 35 years old.
After losing her mother, Alice began to live with her grandmother Queen Victoria. In the English court, the girl received a good upbringing and education. She was fluent in several languages. In her youth, the princess received a philosophical education at the University of Heidelberg.
In the summer of 1884, Alexandra visited Russia for the first time. She came there for the wedding of her sister, Princess Ella, with Prince Sergei Alexandrovich. At the beginning of 1889, she again visited Russia with her brother and father. Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich, who was the heir to the throne, fell in love with the young princess. However, the imperial family did not attach any importance to this, in the hope that he would connect his life with the royal family of France.
Wedding
In 1894, when the condition of Emperor Alexander III deteriorated sharply, it was necessary to suddenly resolve the issue of the prince's marriage and succession to the throne. On April 8, 1894, Princess Alice was engaged to Tsarevich Nicholas. On October 5 of the same year, she received a telegram asking her to urgently arrive in Russia. Five days later, Princess Alice was in Livadia. Here she stayed with the royal family until October 20 - the day when Alexander III died. The next day, the princess was accepted into the bosom of the Orthodox Church and named Alexandra Feodorovna, in honor of Tsarina Alexandra.
On the birthday of Empress Maria, November 14, when it was possible to retreat from strict mourning, Alexandra Romanova married Nicholas II. The wedding took place in the church of the Winter Palace. And on May 14, 1896, the royal couple was crowned in the Assumption Cathedral.
Children
Tsarina Romanova Alexandra Fedorovna tried to be an assistant to her husband in all endeavors. Together, their union has become a real example of a primordially Christian family. The couple gave birth to four daughters: Olga (in 1895), Tatyana (in 1897), Maria (in 1899), Anastasia (in 1901). And in 1904, a long-awaited event for the whole family took place - the birth of the heir to the throne, Alexei. He was passed on the disease that the ancestors of Queen Victoria suffered - hemophilia. Hemophilia is a chronic disease associated with poor blood clotting.
Upbringing
Empress Alexandra Romanova tried to take care of the whole family, but she paid special attention to her son. Initially, she taught him on her own, later she called teachers and controlled the course of training. Being very tactful, the empress kept her son's illness a secret from strangers. Due to constant concern for the life of Alexis, Alexandra invited G. E. Rasputin to the courtyard, who knew how to stop bleeding with the help of hypnosis. In dangerous moments, he was the family's only hope.
Religion
As contemporaries testified, Empress Alexandra Fedorovna Romanova, the wife of Nicholas II, was very religious. In the days when the heir's illness worsened, the church was her only salvation. Thanks to the imperial family, several temples were built, including in the homeland of Alexandra. So, in memory of Maria Alexandrovna, the first Russian Empress from the House of Hesse, a church of Mary Magdalene was erected in the city of Darmstadt. And in memory of the coronation of the emperor and empress, in 1896, a temple in the name of All Saints was laid in the city of Hamburg.
Charity
According to the rescript of her husband, dated February 26, 1896, the Empress took up the patronage of the Imperial Women's Patriotic Society. Being unusually industrious, she devoted a lot of time to needlework. Alexandra Romanova organized charity bazaars and fairs where homemade souvenirs were sold. Over time, she took under her patronage many charitable organizations.
During the war with the Japanese, the empress was personally involved in the preparation of medical trains and warehouses of medicines for sending them to the battlefields. But the greatest work, Alexandra Fedorovna Romanova carried in the First World War. From the very beginning of the confrontation, in the Tsarskoye Selo community, together with her eldest daughters, the Empress took courses in caring for the wounded. Later, they more than once saved the military from painful death. In the period from 1914 to 1917, the Empress' Warehouse Committee worked in the Winter Palace.
smear campaign
During the First World War, and in general, in the last years of her reign, the Empress became the victim of a baseless and ruthless slanderous campaign. Its instigators were revolutionaries and their accomplices in Russia and Germany. They tried to spread rumors as widely as possible that the Empress was cheating on her spouse with Rasputin and gave Russia to please Germany. None of the rumors were backed up by facts.
Abdication
On March 2, 1917, Nicholas II abdicated the throne personally for himself, and for his heir, Tsarevich Alexei. Six days later, in Tsarskoe Selo, Alexandra Romanova was arrested along with her children. On the same day, the emperor was arrested in Mogilev. The next day, the convoy delivered him to Tsarskoye Selo. In the same year, on August 1, the whole family went into exile in Tobolsk. There, imprisoned in the governor's house, she lived for the next eight months.
On April 26 of the following year, Alexandra, Nikolai and their daughter Maria were sent to Yekaterinburg, leaving three of his sisters in the care of Alexei. Four days later, they were settled in a house that had previously belonged to the engineer N. Ipatiev. The Bolsheviks called it "the house of special purpose." And the prisoners, they called "tenants." The house was surrounded by a high fence. It was guarded by 30 people. On May 23, the rest of the children of the imperial family were brought here. Former sovereigns began to live like prison prisoners: complete isolation from the outside environment, meager food, daily hourly walks, searches, and prejudiced hostility from the guards.
The murder of the royal family
On July 12, 1918, the Bolshevik Ural Council, under the pretext of the approach of the Czechoslovak and Siberian armies, adopted a resolution on the murder of the imperial family. There is an opinion that the Urals military commissar F. Goloshchekin at the beginning of the same month, having visited the capital, enlisted the support of V. Lenin for the execution of the royal family. On June 16, Lenin received a telegram from the Ural Council informing him that the execution of the tsar's family could no longer be delayed. The telegram also asked Lenin to immediately report his opinion on this matter. Vladimir Ilyich did not answer, and it is obvious that the Ural Council considered this as consent. The execution of the decree was led by Y. Yurovsky, who on July 4 was appointed commandant of the house in which the Romanovs were imprisoned.
On the night of July 16-17, 1918, the assassination of the royal family followed. The prisoners were awakened at 2 am and ordered to go down to the basement of the house. There the whole family was shot by armed Chekists. According to the testimonies of the executioners, Empress Empress Alexandra Feodorovna Romanova, together with her daughters, managed to cross herself before her death. The Tsar and Tsarina were the first to fall at the hands of the Chekists. They did not see how the children were finished off with bayonets after the execution. With the help of gasoline and sulfuric acid, the bodies of those killed were destroyed.
Investigation
The circumstances of the murder and destruction of the body became known after Sokolov's investigation. Separate remains of the imperial family, which Sokolov also found, were transferred to the temple of Job the Long-suffering, built in Brussels in 1936. In 1950 it was consecrated in memory of Nicholas II, his relatives and all the New Martyrs of Russia. The church also contains the found rings of the imperial family, icons and the Bible, which Alexandra Feodorovna gave to her son Alexei. In 1977, due to the influx of ladles, the Soviet authorities decided to destroy the Ipatiev house. In 1981, the royal family was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.
In 1991, in the Sverdlovsk region, a burial was officially opened, which in 1979 was discovered by G. Ryabov and mistook for the grave of the royal family. In August 1993, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office opened an investigation into the murder of the Romanov family. At the same time, a commission was created for the identification and subsequent reburial of the found remains.
In February 1998, at a meeting of the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate, it was decided to bury the found remains in a symbolic memorial grave, as soon as there were no grounds for doubting their origin. Ultimately, the secular authorities of Russia decided to rebury the remains on July 17, 1998 in the St. Petersburg Peter and Paul Cathedral. The funeral service was personally led by the rector of the cathedral.
At the Council of Bishops in 2000, Alexandra Feodorovna Romanova, whose biography became the subject of our conversation, and the rest of the royal martyrs, were canonized in the Cathedral of Russian New Martyrs. And on the site of the house in which the royal family was executed, a Temple-Monument was built.
Conclusion
Today we learned how Romanova Alexandra Fedorovna lived her rich, but short life. The historical significance of this woman, as well as her entire family, is difficult to overestimate, because they were the last representatives of the royal power in Russia. Despite the fact that the heroine of our story was always a busy woman, she found time to describe her life and worldview in her memoirs. The memoirs of Alexandra Fedorovna Romanova were published almost a century after her death. They were included in a series of books called "The Romanovs. Fall of a dynasty.
The future wife of Sovereign Nicholas II, the Russian Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, was born in Darmstadt on June 6, 1872 in the family of the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt Ludwig IV and the daughter of the reigning English Queen Victoria Grand Duchess Alice.
The girl was named Alice in honor of her mother, but this name was soon changed to "Alix". She had two older brothers, three older sisters and one younger.
Through the efforts of the English duchess, the Darmstadt palace life developed along the lines of the English Court, starting with a long line in the halls of family portraits of the royal English dynasty and ending with oatmeal for breakfast, boiled meat and potatoes for dinner, and "an endless row of rice puddings and baked apples."
The religious Grand Duchess Alice was the inspirer and founder of hospitals, charitable organizations, Red Cross branches, and women's unions in the country. From an early age she took her children to help the sick in Darmstadt hospitals and orphanages.
Alix, who never got tired of carrying flowers to hospitals, resembled her sister Elizabeth in her beauty: gray-eyed with black eyelashes, reddish hair. This “sweet, cheerful little girl, always laughing, with a dimple in her cheek” was also called “sunshine” in the family, as she would later sign her letters to her husband Tsar Nikolai Alexandrovich. The trouble is that her 35-year-old mother died when Alix was only six years old.
At the age of 15, due to her perseverance and good memory, Alix perfectly knew history, literature, geography, art history, natural sciences and mathematics. The main language for this German princess was English and, of course, she was fluent in German; She spoke French with an accent. Alix became a brilliant pianist, taught by the director of the Darmstadt Opera, and most of all loved Wagner's music. She embroidered beautifully, with delicate taste choosing patterns and colors for this. Friends of the Ducal House shook their heads sympathetically: such a clever and beautiful woman would get rid of shyness ...
The fourth ducal daughter, Alix, became like the former "sun" a few months later, when, together with her brother Ernest and her father, she came to visit her sister Elizabeth in St. Petersburg. They stopped on Nevsky Prospekt in the house of Princess Elizabeth, nicknamed Ella in Darmstadt, and now the Grand Duchess Tsesarevich Nikolai often visited "Aunt Ella", "Aunt" without ceremony.
It was the sprawling Russian winter of 1889, Alix, as best she could, overcame shyness and did not lag behind in the entertainment of St. Petersburg high-society youth: she went to the skating rink, sledding down the hill. The Tsarevich was very carried away by her, and the princess fell in love with him, although she would never have admitted it to herself then. But only with Nikolai Romanov she was natural, she could talk and laugh freely. Returning home, Alix realized that she would only marry the Russian Tsarevich. They began to write tender letters to each other.
They confessed a deep mutual feeling, dreamed of the day when they would unite forever. However, Queen Victoria also dreamed of making this her granddaughter Queen of England. She began to woo Alix for her grandson Prince Albert of Clarensky. The Darmstadt princess could not stand him for godlessness, unsightly appearance. Albert could not compare with the most intelligent, elegant, spiritual, sensitive Russian Tsesarevich! When Queen Victoria proposed marriage to the prince, Alix categorically rejected it. She blurted out to a distressed grandmother that their marriage would not bring happiness to either her or Albert. And the Queen had to retreat.
All these years he dreamed of marrying Alix and Nikolai Romanov, but his parents, like the grandmother of Alix of Hesse, wanted to marry their son to another person. Sovereign Alexander the Third and his wife Maria Feodorovna opposed the union of the Heir with the princess from Darmstadt, because they knew about the incurable aristocratic disease, the incoagulability of "blue" blood - hemophilia, pursuing her family of the House of Coburg.
This “curse of the Coburgs” has existed since the 18th century, the disease passed into the English royal family through the mother of Queen Victoria, the Princess of Saxe-Coburg. Beatrice, Victoria and Alix's mother Alice were supposed to pass the disease on to their children.That is, the possible bride of Tsarevich Nicholas Alix was doomed to the fact that the boys born from her were "sentenced" to hemophilia, from which they do not recover. So it will be with their future son, with the next Heir to the Russian Throne, Alexei. But it will also turn out that only in Russia will the young Tsesarevich be given a person who is able to calm the “uncurlable” attacks of hemophilia - Grigory Rasputin ...
That is why Emperor Alexander the Third and the Empress uninterruptedly looked for another bride for their son Nika. They tried to marry off the daughter of the pretender to the French Throne from the Bourbons, Elena, in order to secure an alliance with France. But fortunately for the Tsarevich, who imagined only Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt for all occasions in his life, Elena refused to change Catholicism and convert to Orthodoxy. Then the Russian Tsar tried to get the hand of Princess Margaret of Prussia for his son.
The Tsarevich flatly refused to marry her, telling his parents that he would rather go to a monastery. And here he was lucky again: Margarita, like Elena before, did not want to change her heterodox, Protestant faith.
The princess of Hesse remained, but Emperor Alexander began to insist that Alix, like other princesses, would not agree to change her faith. Nikolai asked to be allowed to go to Darmstadt to negotiate with her, his father did not agree to this until 1894, until he fell ill.
The chance to ask for Alix's hand in marriage presented itself to Nikolai Alexandrovich at the marriage of her brother Grand Duke Ernest Ludwig to Princess Victoria Melita. The marriage took place in Coburg, where Alix met the Russian Tsesarevich for the first time since 1889. He made her an offer. But what happened was what the father supposed, about which Nikolai Alexandrovich prayed for the last five years of their separation: Alix did not want to convert to Orthodoxy.
At the fiery persuasions of Nikolai Romanov, the princess wept and repeated that she was not able to abandon her religion. Queen Victoria, seeing that her granddaughter might be completely out of work, also unsuccessfully tried to convince her to accept the Russian faith. Only Ella, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, began to succeed. She, eight years older than Alix, after the death of their mother, together with her sister Victoria, tried to replace the younger deceased. Elizaveta Feodorovna really wanted to be with Alix in Russia. The Grand Duchess knew Tsarevich Nika well, loved him and was sure that this marriage would be happy.
After the proposal was made, the heir wrote in his diary: “They spoke until 12 o'clock, but to no avail, she still opposes the change of religion. She, poor thing, cried a lot."
But the full conversion of the princess was helped by the sincere, ardent words of the heir, poured out from his loving heart: “Alix, I understand your religious feelings and revere them. But we believe in one Christ; there is no other Christ. God, who created the world, gave us soul and heart. And He filled my heart and yours with love, so that we merge soul with soul, so that we become one and follow the same path in life. There is nothing without His will. Let not your conscience trouble you that my faith will become your faith. When you find out later how beautiful, fertile and humble our Orthodox religion is, how majestic and magnificent our churches and monasteries are, and how solemn and majestic our services are, you will love them, Alik, and nothing will separate us.
The princess listened with bated breath to the inspired words of the Tsarevich, and then suddenly she noticed that tears were flowing from his blue eyes. Her heart, already overflowing with love and sadness, could not stand it, and a quiet voice was heard from her lips: “I agree.”
In October 1894, Alix was urgently summoned to Russia: Tsar Alexander the Third fell seriously ill. In Livadia, where the Tsar was being treated, the entire Romanov Family gathered, preparing for the worst. Despite feeling unwell, Alexander Alexandrovich got out of bed and put on his uniform to meet his son's bride.
Sovereign Emperor Alexander III died on October 20, 1894. On the same day, Nicholas Alexandrovich accepted the Throne, and the next day, October 21, his bride, Princess Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt, joined Orthodoxy and became known as Alexandra Feodorovna. On November 14, 1894, the marriage of the Sovereign Emperor Nicholas II with Alexandra Feodorovna took place, after which she wrote to her husband in her diary:
"I would never have believed that there could be such a fullness of happiness in this world - such a feeling of unity of two mortal beings. We will not be separated anymore. Finally, we are together, and our lives are connected to the end, and when this life ends, then in another we will meet again in the world, and we will never be parted forever.”
The sacred coronation and holy chrismation, the crowning of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna took place in Moscow in May 1896. In Russia, according to a tradition dating back to the Byzantine Empire, a special ritual of crowning the kingdom. Only after him does the Tsar become the Anointed of God, although the ruler - immediately after the death of the previous monarch. The ability to govern the kingdom is given by the sacrament of chrismation at the coronation.
The first 20 years of the royal couple's marriage were the happiest of their personal family lives. No one who knew them closely met a happier family. The holy martyrs themselves were aware of this, so the empress wrote in one of her letters to the sovereign: “In these times, you rarely see such marriages ... You are my life, my light ... When my heart is heavy from worries and anxieties, each manifestation of tenderness gives strength and infinite happiness. Oh, if our children could be just as happy in their married life. And others, observing from the sidelines their quiet happiness and exemplary family life, were surprised at this idyll of two crowned spouses.
Pierre Gilliard, tutor of the heir to Tsarevich Alexy, wrote: “What an example, if only they knew about him, this such a worthy family life, full of such tenderness, gave. But how few people suspected her. It is true that this family was too indifferent to public opinion and hid from prying eyes. Another person close to the royal family, the adjutant wing Mordvinov, recalled; “I will forever be under the impression of this amazing, until I meet them, a family I have never seen before, wonderful in all respects.” “I’ll just say about them,” Volkov’s valet said, “they were the most holy and pure family.”
In the autumn of 1895, the first daughter was born - a glorious, large child, who caused new worries, gave new joys. “When we prayed, we called the daughter God sent to us Olga,” the sovereign noted in his diary.
St. Princess Olga loved Russia very much and, like her father, she loved the simple Russian people. When it came to the fact that she might marry one of the foreign princes, she did not want to hear about it, saying: “I don’t want to leave Russia. I am Russian and I want to remain Russian.”
Two years later, the second girl was born, named Tatyana in holy Baptism, two years later - Maria, and two years later - Anastasia.
With the advent of the children of St. the queen gave them all her attention: she fed, bathed herself every day, relentlessly visited the nursery, not trusting her children to anyone. It happened that, holding a child in her arms, she discussed the serious issues of her new institution, or, rocking the cradle with one hand, she signed business papers with the other. The empress did not like to remain idle for a minute, and she taught her children to work. Wonderful embroideries came out from under their quick hands. Two eldest daughters - Olga and Tatyana - during the war worked with their mother in the infirmary, performing the duties of surgical nurses.
“The higher a person is,” said the martyr tsar, “the sooner he should help everyone and never remind of his position in his address. This is how my children should be.” Being himself a good example of simplicity, meekness and attentiveness to everyone, the sovereign raised his children the same way.
Dr. Botkin, in a letter to his daughter, describes how he asked for a driver who was sitting with him. Princess Anastasia to go out into the corridor and call the footman. "What do you want?" - "I want to wash my hands." - "So I'll give you." To the doctor's protests, she said: "If your children can do this, then why can't I?" - and, instantly taking possession of the cup, helped him wash his hands.
During the glorification of St. Seraphim of Sarov, the royal martyrs fervently prayed in Sarov before the relics of the newly-appeared saint of God, for the gift of a son - an heir. The following year, a boy was born to them, who in holy Baptism was named Alexy in honor of St. Alexy, Metropolitan of Moscow. Heir by nature was endowed with exceptional beauty.
The joy of happy parents seemed to know no bounds, but already in the second month after his birth it turned out that the child had inherited a hereditary disease of the Hessian house - hemophilia, which put his life under the constant threat of sudden death. Even with light bruises, internal hemorrhages occurred, from which the heir suffered greatly.
When the boy grew up, the empress taught him to pray. Exactly at 9 pm, he went up to his room with her, read prayers loudly and went to bed, overshadowed by her sign of the cross. The Empress herself taught him the Law of God. In one letter from the Tobolsk exile, she wrote: “I am going through the explanation of the Liturgy with Alexei. God grant me the ability to teach, so that he will remain in his memory for the rest of his life ... The soil is good - I try as best I can ... "
The empress wrote about the children to the sovereign: “They shared all our spiritual unrest ... The little one feels so much with her little sensitive soul - I will never be able to thank God enough for that wonderful mercy that He gave me in you and in them. We are one."
When a rebellious revolutionary crowd filled Petrograd, and the tsar's train was stopped at the Dno station to draw up an abdication, Alix was left alone. The children had measles and had a high fever. The courtiers fled, leaving a handful of loyal people. The electricity was turned off, there was no water - you had to go to the pond, break off the ice and melt it on the stove. The palace with defenseless children remained under the protection of the Empress.
She alone did not lose heart and did not believe in renunciation to the last. Alix supported a handful of loyal soldiers who remained to guard around the palace - now it was her entire Army. On the day when the ex-Sovereign, who had abdicated the Throne, returned to the palace, her friend, Anna Vyrubova, wrote in her diary: “Like a fifteen-year-old girl, she ran along the endless stairs and corridors of the palace to meet him. Having met, they hugged, and left alone burst into tears ... "
Being in exile, anticipating an imminent execution, in a letter to Anna Vyrubova, the Empress summed up her life: “My dear, my dear ... Yes, the past is over. I thank God for everything that was, that I received - and I will live with memories that no one will take away from me ...
How old I have become, but I feel like the mother of the country, and I suffer as if for my child and love my Motherland, despite all the horrors now ... You know that LOVE CANNOT BE TWISTED FROM MY HEART, and Russia too ... Despite the black ingratitude to the Sovereign, which breaks my heart… Lord, have mercy and save Russia.”
The royal family lived by the ideals of Holy Russia and was its brightest representatives. They loved to visit monasteries, to meet with the ascetics who labored in them. The Empress visited Blessed Pasha of Sarov at the Diveevo Convent. In 1916, visiting Novgorod with its ancient monuments and shrines, she visited the foolish, hundred-seven-year-old reclusive old woman Maria Mikhailovna, who lived in the Desyatinny Monastery. “Here comes the martyr-tsarina Alexandra,” Blessed Marya greeted her with such words. Then she blessed her, kissed her and said: “And you, beauty, - a heavy cross - do not be afraid ...” Secular society ridiculed the best religious feelings of the empress, called her behind her eyes a fanatic and a hypocrite and dreamed of forcibly tonsuring her into a nun.
Three days before the murder of the royal martyrs, a priest was invited to them for the last time to perform a service. Batiushka served the mass, according to the rank of the service, it was supposed to read the kontakion “With the saints to rest ...” In a certain place, for some reason, this time the deacon, instead of reading this kontakion, sang it, and the priest sang it too. The royal martyrs, driven by some unknown feeling, knelt down. So they said goodbye to this world, sensitively responding to the calls of the heavenly world - the Kingdom of Eternity.
Alexandra Feodorovna was forty-six years old when she was killed.
In the appearance and nature of this Woman, many things were combined: light and shadows, smile and tears, love and hate, farce and tragedy, Death and Life. She was strong. And the weakest woman the world has ever seen. She was proud. And shy. She knew how to smile like a true Empress. And cry like a child when no one could see her tears. She knew how to adore and give affection like no one else. But she could hate just as much. She was very beautiful, but for more than seventy years, after 1917, novelists and historians tried to discern diabolical, destructive reflections in her flawless, refined features and the profile of a Roman cameo.
A lot of books have been written about her: novels, plays, studies, historical monographs and even psychological treatises! Her surviving correspondence and pages of diaries that did not burn in the fire of the palace fireplaces were also published. It would seem that archivists and researchers of her life, both in Russia and abroad, have long ago studied and explained not only her every act, but also every turn of her head, and every letter of her letter. But .. But no one has comprehended the strange, almost mystical secret of this woman, the essence of her nature and her character. No one has fully understood the true role of her personality in the tragic history of Russia. No one ever imagined clearly and exactly what she really was: Alice - Victoria - Elena - Louise - Beatrice, Her Grand Ducal Highness, Princess of Hesse - Darmstadt and Rhine, granddaughter of Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Prince Albert, daughter of the Great Duke Ludwig of Hesse, goddaughter of the Russian Emperor Alexander III and wife of his eldest son, Nikolai Alexandrovich, heir to the Russian throne? The last Russian empress.
She grew up in a region where the queens never depended on the will of the favorites, and, if the good of the state required it, they calmly sent their heads to the chopping block. “The personal should not be higher than the good of the country!” - she firmly grasped this unspoken "edict of monarchs", because it was not in vain that she was the granddaughter of the great Queen, who gave her name to an entire era in history - "Victorian"! German Alice of Hesse, only by her father, by the spirit, upbringing and blood of her mother, she was an Englishwoman. To your fingertips. Only now, having married and converted to Orthodoxy, she became, at the behest of her heart, out of the madness of love for her husband, and perhaps out of a hidden thirst to be understood, not only “more Russian than all the people around her, more even than himself her husband, heir to the throne and future Emperor Nicholas II. (Greg King.). But also, having fallen into the heavy captivity of her own grief, loneliness, suppressed ambitions and illusions dormant at the bottom of her soul, she also became an involuntary hostage, a tragic toy in the hands of a favorite - a sectarian, the greatest hypnotist and charlatan, a cunning and simpleton in one person - Grigory Rasputin. Was she aware of it? It is difficult to say, especially since everything, if desired, can be justified. Or, on the contrary, denial.
Forgetting and rejecting in the whirlpool of her inexpressible maternal despair the first ethical law of any monarch: “First - the country, then the family!”, Instilled in her from an early age by the great grandmother - the queen, she pushed herself, her crowned husband, children into the circle of death , power .. But was it only her fault? Or for a huge panel of History there are no separate destinies, there are no small “blame”, but everything immediately merges into something big, large-scale, and a consequence already follows from it? Who knows?...
Let's try all the same to separate from the mosaic layer of History and era a small piece of smalt, called Life. The life of one person. Princess Alix of Hesse. Let's trace the main milestones and turns of her Fate. Or - Fate? After all, she multiplied, as in a mirror. Had several looks. Several fates from birth to death. Happy or unhappy, that's another question. She was changing. Like any person, throughout life. But she could not change imperceptibly. This is not allowed in families where children are born for the crown. Big or small, it doesn't matter.
Fate one: "Sunny girl".
Alice - Victoria - Helen - Louise - Beatrice, the little Princess - Duchess of the Hesse - Darmstadt family, was born on June 6, 1872 (new style), in the New Palace of Darmstadt, the main city of the duchy, which is located in the green and fertile Rhine valley. The windows of the New Palace looked at the market square and the town hall, and going down the stairs into the courtyard one could immediately get into a huge shady park with linden and elm alleys, ponds and pools with goldfish and water lilies; flower beds and rose gardens filled with huge fragrant buds. Little Aliki (as she was called in the house), having barely learned to walk, walked for hours with her nanny, Mrs. Mary - Ann Orchard, in her favorite garden, sat for a long time by the pond and looked at the fish flashing in the jets of water.
She herself looked like a flower or a small, nimble fish: cheerful, affectionate, extremely mobile, with golden hair, dimples on plump, ruddy cheeks!
Aliki was known as the favorite of the whole family, her father, the always busy and gloomy Duke Ludwig, her mother, Duchess Alice, and her formidable grandmother, Queen Victoria, who could not manage to paint a portrait of a mischievous granddaughter when, in the summer, the ducal family visited her in England ! Egoza Aliki never sat quietly in one place: either she hid behind a high armchair with a gold rim, or behind a massive cabinet - a bureau.
Often in the strict, coldly luxurious rooms of the grandmother's palaces in Osborne, Windsor and Belmoral there was a cheerful, contagious laughter of the crumbs - granddaughter, and the clatter of her fast children's legs. She loved to play with her brother Friederik and sister Maria, whom she affectionately called "May" because she could not yet pronounce the letter "R" to call her - Mary. Aliki said goodbye to any pranks, even long pony rides - this is at the age of four!
Best of the day
Under the guidance of her mother, she easily learned to draw and inherited from her a delicate artistic taste and a passion for transparent watercolor landscapes. With her strict nurse, Mrs. Mary - Ann Orchard, Aliki diligently studied the Law of God and was engaged in needlework.
The early years of her childhood flowed quite cloudlessly and happily. In the family, she was also called “Sanny”, which means: “sunny”, “sunny girl”. Grandmother - the queen called her "my sunshine" and in her letters she affectionately scolded her for funny tricks. She loved and singled out Aliki from her grandchildren - the Hessians more than anyone else.
Aliki, the favorite, knew perfectly well how to make a silent grandmother smile or a mother prone to frequent depression, Duchess Alice. She danced and played the piano for both of them, painted watercolors and funny animal faces. She was praised and smiled at. First - through force, and then - on their own. Aliki knew how to infect everyone around with the cloudlessness of childhood. But suddenly thunder struck and she stopped smiling. As soon as she was in her fifth year, her brother Frederick died of a cerebral hemorrhage caused by an accident. They tried to cure the mother, who had fallen into despair and longing, by traveling to all European countries: France, Italy, Spain. They stayed for a long time in the summer of 1878 with their grandmother, in Osborne. Aliki liked it there. She had plenty to play with her Prussian cousins and her beloved cousin, Prince Louis of Batenberg. But everything ends sometime. This sad summer is over. Mother felt better, she came to her senses a little. We decided to return to Darmstadt, on which my father also insisted: things could not wait!
But as soon as they returned home, in the cold autumn, an epidemic of diphtheria struck the cozy duchy. And then Aliki's childhood ended. Suddenly, bitterly, terribly. She was not at all ready for this, despite the fact that her mother often spoke to her about Heaven, about the future life, about meeting with her little brother and grandfather Albert. Aliki felt vague anxiety and bitterness from these conversations, but she quickly forgot. In the autumn of 1878, this bitterness filled both the mind and heart of the little girl. The sunbeam in her soul gradually faded away. On November 16, 1878, her older sister May died of dephtheria. The others were dangerously ill: Ella, Ernst, and Aliki herself also began to fall ill. Heartbroken mother - the duchess, caring for sick children, hid the terrible news from them as much as she could. In the palace, on the occasion of the epidemic, there was a quarantine. Mei was quietly buried, and the children did not find out about it until a few days later. Aliki, her sister Ella, and brother Ernie were shocked by this news and, despite all the quiet persuasions of their mother, began to cry, lying in their beds. To console her son, the duchess went up to him and kissed him. It was impossible to do this, but ....
Ernie was on the mend, and the Duchess's body, weakened by sleepless nights, was struck down by a dangerous virus. Having been ill for more than two weeks, either losing consciousness from intense heat, or recovering, Duchess Alice of Hesse, the eldest, died on the night of December 13-14, 1878. She was only thirty-five years old.
Fate two: "The Thoughtful Princess or" Cameo - Bride ".
Aliki is orphaned. Her toys were burned: due to quarantine. The sunny girl that lived in her disappeared. The next day they brought her other books, balls and other dolls, but it was already impossible to return her childhood. In the mirrors of the ancient ancestral Rhine castles of Seenhow, Kranichstein, Wolfsgarten, another princess was now reflected: melancholy and thoughtful.
In order to somehow overcome the pain of losing her mother, unconscious childhood longing, Aliki went to the patio with an artificial lake - a pool, and there she fed her favorite fish for a long time. Tears dripped directly into the water, but no one saw them.
Her soul matured in an instant, but somehow broken: she became quiet and sad beyond her age, restrained mischief, passionately attached to Ella and Ernie, and cried, parting with them even for half an hour! She was afraid of losing them. Grandmother Victoria, with the permission of her widowed son-in-law, the duke, almost immediately transported the children to England, to Osborne Castle, and there specially hired, carefully selected teachers were engaged in their education.
Children studied geography, languages, music, history, took lessons in horse riding and gardening, mathematics and dance, drawing and literature. Aliki received an excellent education for those times, serious and unusual for a girl: she even attended a course of lectures on philosophy in Oxford and Heidelberg. She studied superbly, the subjects were easy for her, with her excellent memory, only with French there were sometimes slight embarrassments, but over time they also smoothed out.
Her grandmother unobtrusively but strictly taught her refined court manners, etiquette, customs and style of court life, playing the piano, brilliant, complex - she could play Wagner and Schumann! Director of the Darmstadt Opera She was raised to be a Princess, she was meant to be, and it did not frighten her at all. She mastered the "court science" easily and gracefully, as if jokingly. The queen-grandmother cared only that the “dear clever Aliki” seemed to have lost her former charm, spontaneity in a whirlwind of losses: she could not smile in public, as openly as before, she became too shy and timid. Blushed easily. She was silent a lot. She spoke sincerely, sincerely, only in a narrow circle of relatives. She played and sang - too .. Now, alas, there was only a reflection in her, an echo of the former Alix - “a ray of sunshine”.
Restraint undoubtedly adorned her, a tall, slender brown-haired woman with huge, gray-blue eyes, which reflected all the shades of her emotional experiences - for those who knew how to observe, of course - but she did not know how and did not look for a way to please, right away, from the first word, glance, smile, gesture .. And this is so necessary for a royal person!
The queen contritely and tirelessly instructed her granddaughter in the art to please, and she was perplexed: why should she kindly talk and listen to the grandiloquent judgments of court flatterers when she has too little time for that: a book is not read, a panel for the altar of the church is undersized, orphans are waiting for her arrival at the orphanage to have breakfast with her? Why?! Why should she strive to please everyone when this is simply impossible, and even unnecessary in her position as a young duchess, mistress of Darmstadt?
Aliki willfully clutched the fan in her fragile hands, and it crackled and broke. Grandmother looked at her reproachfully, but her granddaughter quietly continued to bend her own. She was stubborn. She has no time to give away flattering smiles! She, who celebrated her sixteenth birthday in June 1888 and assumed the duties of her late mother - the duchess, has too many other worries: charity, libraries, orphanages, music and ... her father is a duke ..
Her father instilled in her the most serious fears. After his obsession with marrying Madame Alexandra de Colmin, the former wife of the Russian envoy at his court, suffered a crushing fiasco, colliding with the unbending will of the ex-mother-in-law, the queen, who immediately angrily rejected this misalliance, Duke Ludwig's health began to fail. . True, he also arranged a grandiose confirmation, pink ball for Alika, to which all relatives gathered: aunts, uncles and cousins, her beloved sister, Ella, who married in 1888 the brother of Alexander III, Emperor of Russia, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich.
At that ball, Duke Ludwig led the princess-duchess under the arm to the guests, introduced him to the refined society. He said that from now on she was officially the first lady of the small duchy, and that he was proud of his daughter. The sovereign duke, however, quickly tired, and spent the rest of the festivity in an armchair, watching his daughter dance and talk with the guests. She was very good that evening, aroused general delight, but she could not erase a slight veil of sadness from her face. And she herself could not decide in any way - was that sadness “invented”, as her cousin Mary of Edinburgh used to say all the time, or was it real?
Aliki's light thoughtfulness, aloofness gradually became her second nature, her constant companion even during exciting travels: in 1889 - to Russia, in 1890 - to Malta, in the winter of 1892 - to Italy. On board the British mine cruiser Scout, off the Maltese coast, she found among the officers very subtle connoisseurs of her beauty. They tried to please her in everything, they called her “Maltese pages” with a laugh, taught her to play tennis on deck and throw a lifebuoy from the side. Aliki smiled bewitchingly, her eyes shone, but her manners were still reserved and a little cool.
In 1892, in Florence, which struck her imagination forever, Aliki-Alix seemed to thaw a little in the company of her beloved grandmother, and her laughter sounded, as before, contagious, but .. But on March 1, 1892, from a heart attack in her hands father, Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse - Darmstadt died. Death again changed Alix's Fate.
Fate three. "The royal bride or the shadow behind the coffin .."
Brother Ernie became heir to the crown and ducal standards. And Alix .. She was orphaned a second time. She closed herself completely, shunned society, since mourning allowed. In general, she strongly began to remind Victoria of her late melancholic daughter Alice, the eldest. And then the grandmother became agitated, hurried. She planned to marry Aliki to the Prince of Wales Edward, her cousin, and already dreamed of her beloved granddaughter as the Queen of England, who came to replace her ..
But Aliki suddenly protested violently. She didn't like this lanky, foppish Eddie, whose neck was always taut in starched collars and his wrists in cuffs. That's what she called him: "Eddie - cuffs!"
He seemed to her somehow false, prosaic, he often smelled of wine, and most importantly: he was absolutely not interested in anything, except for his appearance. She refused Edward, resolutely and firmly, citing the fact that she already had a fiancé in Russia. This is the heir to the Russian throne, Tsarevich Nikolai, the son of the godfather - Emperor Ella's "nephew"! They met back in June 1884, when little Aliki traveled to Russia to attend her elder sister's wedding.
The modest, serious Tsesarevich, who then surrounded the then twelve-year-old Aliki with warm attention and care, immediately liked the shy princess. On walks, she held his arm, at dinner, at meetings, she tried to sit next to him. He showed her the palace in Peterhof, gardens and parks, they rode boats and played ball together. He gave her a brooch. True, Aliki returned her the very next day, but from the moment she considered that they were engaged to Nicky.
Then she once again visited Ella in Ilyinsky (* the Romanov family estate near Moscow, the estate of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, Ella's wife - author.), five years later. I met Niki at balls and walks, in theaters and at receptions. And I realized that their feelings only strengthened. She somehow knew in her heart that Nicky loved only her and no one else. Ella was also convinced of this. And in every way she persuaded Aliki to change his faith. Grandmother - the queen was amazed. She already found Aliki too romantic and deep in strange dreams, and now she was completely alarmed!
The Russians never enjoyed her special sympathy, although once, in her youth, she was almost in love with the sovereign - the reformer Alexander II. Nearly. This does not mean - seriously!
Victoria several times tried to talk to her granddaughter in private, but it was impossible to break her stubbornness. She showed her grandmother her correspondence with Nicky and sister Ella..
In her letters to Ella, Aliki sadly said that there was only one obstacle insurmountable in her love for the Tsarevich - a change of religion, everything else did not frighten her, she loved the Tsarevich so strongly and deeply. The Tsarevich sincerely admitted to Aliki that one of the ways to overcome the despair that gripped him when he received the news of the matchmaking of the Prince of Wales for her was a trip to the Far East and Japan, which he, Nicky, undertook, and which almost ended in tragedy! * ( * In Japan, in the city of Otsu, on April 29, 1892, an unsuccessful attempt was made on Tsarevich Nicholas - the author.)
The wise queen immediately realized that the feelings of young people are quite serious. And retreated. For her, the main thing was the happiness of her granddaughter, and, in addition, as a very insightful person, she perfectly understood that it was in snowy, distant, vast and incomprehensible Russia that her smart, domineering, capable of strong feelings and passions, possessing a “purely masculine mind ”(A. Taneev.) Alix’s beloved “beauty is a ray of sunshine” will find application for her great ambitious ambitions, which she unconsciously hides under a veil of sadness and thoughtfulness.
In addition, Alix, like any girl, it was time to start her own family and have children. At twenty-one, she was a model of a captivating young lady who could make any, the most sophisticated heart tremble! But how could Victoria console her granddaughter? According to the information that reached her from the ambassadors, she knew that Nika's parents were also strongly against the choice of their son. Not because Aliki was a poor German princess, not at all. Nobody thought so. It’s just that the dynastic marriage of the heir to a huge empire required necessarily healthy children in his family, and Aliki, by the blood of her mother and grandmother, was the carrier of the insidious hemophilia gene - blood incoagulability, inherited by future sons, successors of the family. Both Queen Victoria, and Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria, his wife, mother Nika, and he himself, and the stubborn Aliki, understood perfectly well that if this marriage was concluded, then at the birth of the future heir to the throne, his natural title "prince of blood "will acquire an ominous sound and create a number of problems for Russia, where it has historically happened - since the time of Paul the First - that the throne and crown belong only to male descendants. True, the law of succession to the throne can always be changed, but reforms are very fraught with stormy consequences. Especially in such an unpredictable - spontaneous country like Russia. Everyone understood everything. But young people were irresistibly attracted to each other. Nicky stubbornly refused, when talking with his parents about the future, from the parties offered to him, in particular, from the hands of the daughter of the Count of Paris, Helena of Orleans or Princess Margaret of Prussia. He informed "dear father and mother" that he would marry only Alix of Hesse and no one else!
What ultimately influenced Alexander III's decision to bless his son and see him betrothed to a shy and easily blushing German princess with a chiseled profile of a Roman cameo? Sharply and suddenly shaken health? The desire to see the son - the heir in the role of a determined, family man? The experience of the personal happiness of the emperor himself, who lived with the Danish princess Daggmar - Maria Feodorovna, happy 26 years? Or just respect for the inflexibility of someone else's will and someone else's decision? I think it's both, and the other, and the third. Everything turned out so that on April 20, 1894, in Coburg, where representatives of almost all European powers gathered for the wedding of Aliki's brother, the Duke of Hesse, Ernie and Princess Victoria - Melita of Edinburgh, her own engagement to the Russian Tsarevich Nikolai was announced .. On the glasses On the windows of the “green office” of the Coburg castle, on the second floor, two letters carved with diamond facets from Alix’s family ring, intertwined into an intricate monogram: “Н&А”, have been preserved. And in the correspondence between Nikolai and Alexandra, this day is often mentioned by them as one of the happiest in life. He returned to her that day the brooch he had given her at their first meeting, at Ella's wedding. She considered it now the main wedding gift. The brooch was found in the summer of 1918 in the ashes of a large fire in the wilderness of the Koptyakov forest. Or rather, what was left of her. Two large rubies.
On the days of the engagement of her beloved granddaughter, the Queen of England wrote to her elder sister Alix, Victoria: “The more I think about the marriage of our dear Alix, the more unhappy I feel. I have nothing against the groom, because I like him very much. It's all about the country and its politics, so strange and different from ours. It's all about Alix. After her marriage, her private personal life will come to an end. From an almost unknown princess, she will turn into a revered and recognizable person. Hundreds of appointments a day, hundreds of faces, hundreds of trips. She will have everything that the most spoiled human soul desires, but at the same time, thousands of eyes will meticulously follow her, her every step, word, deed .. An unbearable burden for dear Alix .. After all, she never really liked the noisy life in light.
In order to get used to their brilliant position, some Russian empresses, I know, took years. Alix will hardly have a few months, alas!”
The old, wise "Queen Vicki", as always, was not mistaken. The wedding of Alix and Nikolai was scheduled for the summer of 1895, but Fate seemed to rush Alix. Already at the end of September 1894, she received an alarming telegram from the Tsarevich with a request to urgently arrive in Russia, in the Crimea, where Emperor Alexander the Third was fading in the Livadia Palace in the midst of the colors of lush southern autumn. In the last month of his life, which the doctors took him, he wanted to bless his son and his bride for marriage officially, already in Russia. Alix hastily left Darmstadt for Berlin. From there, by express, to the east. Ella met her in Warsaw. And already on October 10, 1894, they were in the Crimea, at the gates of the Livadia Palace. As soon as he heard about the arrival of his future daughter-in-law, the dying emperor, suffering from kidney edema and heart weakness, nevertheless wished to receive her standing and in full dress uniform. Life physician N. Grish was about to object, but the emperor abruptly cut him off: “None of your business! I do this by the Highest Command!” Meeting his eyes with the Sovereign, Grisha fell silent and silently began to help him get dressed.
The young, shy princess was so shocked by the affectionate reception and the boundless respect that the dying father of her beloved Nicky showed her that many years later she recalled this meeting with tears. She was warmly received by the whole family of the groom, although there was neither time nor energy for special courtesies. But Alix did not demand them. She understood that everything was ahead.
Exactly ten days later, on October 20, 1894, the powerful Russian Emperor Alexander III passed away. He died quietly, sitting in an armchair, as if asleep, before that he had communed the Holy Mysteries from the hands of the famous Father John of Kronstadt. Five hours after the death of the Sovereign, in the palace church of Livadia, Russia swore allegiance to the new Emperor - Nicholas II, and the next day, Princess Alix of Gesenskaya converted to Orthodoxy and became "Her Imperial Highness, Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna, Highly Named Bride of the Sovereign Emperor."
She uttered the words of the Symbol of Faith and other prayers according to the Orthodox rite clearly, distinctly and almost without errors. Together with all members of the Imperial family and the Court, the young bride departed for St. Petersburg, where the funeral of Alexander III was soon to take place. It is happened
November 7, 1894 in the Peter and Paul Cathedral, after a countless series of requiems, liturgies and farewells.
And exactly one week later, on the birthday of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, the mother of the young Emperor, (with the due relaxation of mourning), the wedding of the new Sovereign and the former Hessian princess took place in the front church of the Winter Palace.
For a very religious, obligatory, straightforward Alix, this was very painful and incomprehensible. She was full of some kind of bad foreboding, she was very worried and even cried. In dismay, she wrote to her sister Victoria, the Duchess of Baden, that she did not understand how mourning and a wedding could be mixed into one, but she could not object to the uncles of the adored Nicky, who gained great influence at the Court after her brother's death. And who would listen to her! As her beloved grandmother once said to her: “Possessing persons cannot be slaves to their desires. They are slaves of circumstances, prestige, court laws, honor, Fate, but not themselves! The fate of Alix was pleased to dispose so that she came to Russia after the royal coffin. Bad omen. Tragic omen. But what can you do? Death accompanied her so often that Alix gradually became accustomed to her faithful shadow. Death again changed her Fate. For the umpteenth time already. Alix gathered her courage and, casting aside all her doubts, plunging into new dreams and hopes, did her best to fill the new page of her life with meaning. Outline the paths of your new Destiny. The fate of the Empress of Russia and the Mother of the heirs of the royal family. She did not yet know how painful and difficult all this would be.
Fate Four: Before the mother than the Empress, or a portrait of an ideal family..
It was the most beautiful and most desired role in her life! The mother of the children of the man she adores. In the Alexander Palace of Tsarskoe Selo, the Empress created a happy island of Solitude and Peace for the emperor, burdened with a heavy burden of state cares, which was decorated with four lovely flowers: - daughters that appeared one after another with an interval of one and a half to two years: Olga, Tatyana, Maria, Anastasia . Four Tsesarevnas, so strikingly similar to each other and so different!
They loved white dresses and pearl beads, delicate ribbons in their hair, and playing the piano. They did not really like the lessons of writing and calligraphy and enthusiastically played the plays of Molière in French - for eminent guests of the next dinner party and the diplomatic corps. They enthusiastically played lawn tennis and furtively read books from their mother's table: Darwin's Voyage on the Beagle and Walter Scott's The Lamermoor Bride. They signed their letters with the initial letters of their names, which merged into a strange seal sign, mysteriously romantic, and at the same time - childishly ingenuous: OTMA. They adored their mother, she was an indisputable deity for them, and they hardly noticed her affectionate authority. A hand “in a velvet glove” painted their every step, every minute of the lesson, dress at breakfast, at lunch and dinner, entertainment, cycling, swimming. To the detriment of herself and her majestic image of the Empress, Alexandra Feodorovna devoted so much careful attention and time to her daughters that the brilliant secular society of St. Petersburg, in which the Empress, by the way, did not completely become her own, because she did not collect gossip and did not and masquerades, quietly constantly expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that maternal duties overshadowed everything else for a crowned person and looked at her with resentment. To feel inferior to the Empress in this respect, too, many, oh, how they did not want to!
As if in retaliation for the cold disregard of such a high man for his rules and laws, the beau monde of both capitals and behind him - and all of Russia, nervously, in secret whispers, attributed to Alexandra Feodorovna anything: lovers - Count A. N. Orlov, to for example, - fanatical religiosity, imperious pressure on the crowned husband, disagreement with the dowager empress - mother-in-law. She, knowing the rumors, pursed her lips, smiled stonyly at receptions at impossibly decolleted countesses and princesses, held out her hand to them for a kiss, but she never favored them “as great friends”, and this offended titled dragonflies - gossips, such as the princess Zinaida Yusupova, for example, most of all!
But the overly proud Empress Alexandra did not at all consider herself guilty of the fact that her passionately imperious nature, desiring activity, real dedication, achieving great, ambitious inner capabilities, did not find any response, sympathy, understanding from superficial and shallow creatures, called "approximate to the Court of Her Majesty, ”and forever busy only with the brilliance of their own outfits and the whims of a lightweight heart, but not the mind! The crowned wife of the Autocrat did not pay attention to all sorts of bad rumors about herself, she didn’t care what and how they say about her, since she knew, long ago, from a young age, even from a strict grandmother, that it’s difficult, very difficult to hear the truth and separate her from the chaff in the chosen court environment and on the sidelines, where everyone is looking only for their own benefit, and all paths to it are paved with flattery!
She, undoubtedly, seemed to many cold, unsmiling, but, perhaps, because she simply - simply protected her soul from superficial “sliding” over it, not penetrating into her suffering and searching? So much has always hurt this soul, and especially ..
There were especially many wounds and scars on her after the birth of the “porphyritic”, long-awaited, implored heir, who was called by the people, baptized: “Alyoshenka is bleeding!”
Talking about the suffering of a mother who has a terminally ill child in her arms, for whom every scratch could end in death, is meaningless and useless. These circles of hell for the soul of Empress Alexandra also remained incomprehensible to absolutely no one, and were they comprehensible ?! Is the selfish human heart, which knows how to coldly remove other people's suffering from itself, capable of doing this at all? If yes, then this is very rare. Mercy in all ages is not honored, we confess frankly!
From the very moment of the birth of her son Alexei (August 12, 1905 - new style), the illusory, fragile hope for peace and happiness at least in the Family, in an indestructible harbor where one can fully realize oneself as a Woman, left Alexandra's restless soul forever. Instead of hope, an endless anxiety now settled in her, squeezing her heart in a vise, completely destroying her nervous system, leading not only to hysteria, but to a strange heart disease - symptomatic,
(diagnosis of Dr. E. Botkin) which was called in the Empress, for example, half an hour ago, still healthy and vigorous, with any, trifling nervous shock and experience. Perhaps, to this was added a guilt complex in front of her son, and torment from realizing herself as a failed mother who failed to bestow the desired child with the happiness of childhood, and protect her from unbearable pain! These endless “guilty” burdened her so much that she could suppress this burden only by “letting off steam” in a peculiar way: by giving strict advice in a matter in which she did not really understand (*politics, for example, or the military actions of the First World War - the author.) leaving the box in the theater in the middle of the performance - for a desperate prayer, or even - raising a dubious sectarian - hypnotist to the rank of "Holy Elder". It was. And there is no getting away from it. But even this has its justification in history.
Alexandra, in fact, was terribly lonely and in order to survive “in the vast, unimaginable loneliness among the crowd,” she gradually developed her own “philosophy of suffering”: are physical torments sent by God only to the elect, and the harder they are, the more humble you bear your cross, she thought, the closer you are to the Lord and the closer the hour of deliverance! Having not met the support of practically no one in society, including relatives, with the exception of her husband, daughters, mother-in-law and Anna Alexandrovna Vyrubova, Alexandra Feodorovna voluntarily, schemingly, selfishly went into self-isolation. Having plunged into endless suffering, she made them a kind of obsessive cult, and they swallowed her up! This is, in general, a rather complex ethical issue - the cult of suffering, the service of suffering, the justification of suffering in the name of God. But will anyone raise their hand to throw a stone at a woman who has lost hope in everyone and everything except the Almighty? Hardly..Could she have done otherwise? Then? All this requires a certain growth of the soul. He, of course, took place, this inevitable growth, but - later .. After March 1917. Then she overcame all her suffering. But even then Death defeated her Fate.
The Empress seemed to someone to be religious fanaticism. Maybe it was so: the walls of her reception room - the living room and the famous lilac boudoir are almost entirely hung with icons, one wall - from floor to ceiling, but, having changed her faith, she simply tried to correctly and earnestly fulfill all religious canons. The whole point is also that for strong and bright natures, which, undoubtedly, was the last Russian empress, God can become an extreme, and God can become too much. And then again there will be a suppressed rebellion of the soul and a hidden desire to express oneself, to find something unlike the rest, familiar, unlike what has not given peace for a long time. Rasputin. Man of the people. God's wanderer who visited the holy places. In front of the Crowned Person, in despair kneeling at the bed of a bleeding child, he is alone, in the famous gypsy restaurant "Yar" - completely different. Cunning, unkempt, unpleasant, mysterious, possessing the magical power to speak blood, and in confused phrases - mutterings to predict the future. Holy fool, Saint and Devil rolled into one. Either - by itself, or - a servant in someone's very experienced hands? ..
Masons or revolutionaries? Versions, conjectures, facts, hypotheses, interpretations that have appeared now are a great many. How to understand them, how not to get confused? No matter how much you guess, don’t sort out, don’t imagine options, there will be many answers to the questions of history. Even too much. Everyone sees what he wants to see and hears what he wants. Naturally, the Siberian peasant Grigory Rasputin-Novykh was, of course, an excellent psychologist. And he knew this law of human “seeing and hearing” very well. He immediately, unmistakably, subtly caught the vibes of the Power tormented by passions and the suppressed Self-expression of the Soul of Alexandra Feodorovna. He caught what she craved.
And decided to play along with her. While he played along, convincing her that she could “divide and rule”, help the Spouse bear the burden and be the Guardian Angel, the chatty “opposition to His Majesty”, the Party of the Left Bloc, the Duma, ministers incapable of decisive steps, also ruled. Aby how. Pulling the "blanket" in different directions. Strengthening in the tormented soul of Alexandra Feodorovna the tragic feeling that everything is falling apart, collapsing, that everything that the ancestors of her beloved husband had created with titanic efforts, is coming to an end! With a last effort of will, she tried to save her ruined nest, her son's legacy: the throne. And who could blame her for that?
In the days of the February anarchy and indiscriminate shooting on the streets of Petrograd, risking being killed by stray bullets every second with her daughters, she behaved in such a way that she resembled the True heroes of the tragedies of Aeschylus, Schiller, Shakespeare. Heroes of the spirit in the days of the Greatest Troubles of Times. Tragic, mournful, misunderstood by almost no one, the Empress, she managed to rise above her suffering. There, later, in exile in Tobolsk and Yekaterinburg, in the last months of his life in the Ipatiev House. But death was already standing guard over her, fanning her with an elastic, cool wing. Death once again conducted her Fate, played its last, victorious note, a loud, sonorous chord in the strange, brilliant, incomprehensible, broken line of her Life. The line, which abruptly broke off, went into the stars on the night of July 17 to July 18, 1918, in the basement of the Ipatiev House, on Svoboda Street. Death breathed a sigh of relief. She finally overcame, covered with a black, dull veil the appearance, features, the one that was called at first: Aliki - Alix, Princess of Hesse - Darmstadt and Rhine, and Her Imperial Majesty the Empress Empress of All Russia, Alexandra Feodorovna. By the way, I’ll note in the end that, probably, least of all in the world, the Last Empress would like to be, oddly enough, the Holy Great Martyr, for her soul knew and comprehended at the end of her earthly path all the truth of bitterness and the irreparable mistakes from suffering elevated to a cult, laid on the altar of the deity, illuminated by the halo of infallibility and chosenness!
After all, you must admit, in such a halo, it will undoubtedly be very difficult to distinguish, find, recognize, living, humanly attractive, vulnerable, warm, real features of an outstanding woman, what was Alix - Victoria - Elena - Liuza - Beatrice, Princess of Hesse, Empress of Russia . All bizarre, alluring, bewitching, mirror-replicating images of a Woman, involuntarily, by her mere presence, who changed the entire course of world history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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*The author deliberately does not quote extensive quotations from numerous historical documents known to almost everyone, leaving the reader the opportunity to choose the tone and colors in which he will see the image of the character in this essay. Books, hypotheses, facts, appear in our time with the speed of the speed of light, and the author simply does not consider it ethically acceptable to exaggerate numerous gossip and anecdotal stories that were published in various publications in the 1990s.
** In preparing the article, materials from the author's personal book collection and archive were used.
*** The article was written by order of the weekly "Aif - Superstars", but for reasons unclear to the author, remained unclaimed.
University, where she received a bachelor's degree in philosophy. The culture of journaling and correspondence has distinguished Princess Alice since childhood.
The crowned family has become a model of a truly Christian, close-knit family. The imperial couple had 4 daughters: Passion-Bearers Grand Duchesses Olga Nikolaevna (November 3), Tatiana Nikolaevna (May 29), Maria Nikolaevna (June 14), Anastasia Nikolaevna (June 5). On July 30, the long-awaited heir to the throne, begged from God, was born - the passion-bearer Tsarevich Grand Duke Alexy Nikolaevich, who was transmitted a hereditary disease of the descendants of Queen Victoria - hemophilia. The empress took care of the upbringing and education of children, passed on to them her culture of correspondence and diary keeping, her religiosity. It is no coincidence that the royal family, according to historians, are "among the best documented in history." In addition to written sources, more than 150 thousand photographs of the imperial family have been preserved, in which everyone had a personal camera; more than a thousand photo albums are known.
The Empress took care of the health of all family members, especially her son. She conducted the initial training of the heir on her own, later invited outstanding teachers to him and watched the progress of the teaching. Thanks to the great tact of the empress, the illness of the crown prince was a family secret. Constant concern for the life of Alexy became the main reason for the appearance at the court of G. E. Rasputin, who had the ability to stop bleeding with the help of hypnosis, therefore, in dangerous moments of illness, he became the last hope for saving the child. Maternal torments of the empress and the desire to keep peace in the family on the part of the king determined the role of Rasputin in the life of the court.
According to contemporaries, the empress was deeply religious. The church was the main consolation for her, especially at a time when the heir's illness worsened. The maid of honor S. K. Buxgevden noted that Empress Alexandra believed “in healing through prayer”, which she associated with her origin from the Hessian house from Elizabeth of Thuringia (Hungary) (1207-1231), who arranged hospitals in Marburg, Eisenach, Wartburg in the name of Great Martyr George and Saint Anna, who cured lepers. The empress stood for full services in the court churches, where she introduced the monastic liturgical charter. The room of Alexandra Feodorovna in the palace was " connection of the empress's bedroom with the nun's cell. The huge wall adjacent to the bed was completely hung with icons and crosses.» . Beneath the icons stood a lectern, covered with ancient brocade. In July of the year, Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna participated in the celebration of the glorification and discovery of the relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov, at the expense of the imperial family, a shrine and a canopy for the relics were built. A year before, the Empress had sent a lampada and church vestments to the Sarov Hermitage with a request to serve a prayer service daily for her health in the chapel built over the grave of St. Seraphim. She was sure that thanks to the prayers of the monk, Russia would receive an heir.
By the care of the imperial family, several Orthodox churches were erected. In the homeland of Alexandra Feodorovna, in Darmstadt, a church was built in the name of St. Mary Magdalene in memory of the first Russian Empress from the House of Hesse - Maria Alexandrovna. On October 4, in Hamburg, in the presence of Nicholas II, Alexandra Feodorovna, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, Grand Duke of Hesse, in memory of the coronation of the Russian Emperor and Empress, a church was laid in the name of All Saints. At its own expense, the imperial family, according to the project of the architects S. S. Krichinsky and V. A. Pokrovsky, created the Feodorovsky town in the Alexander Park of Tsarskoye Selo with a court cathedral in the name of the Theodore Icon of the Mother of God, consecrated on August 20, where a prayer room was arranged with an analogion and an armchair for the empress. The underground temple in the name of St. Seraphim of Sarov was a genuine treasury of ancient iconography and church utensils, it contained the Gospel of Tsar Theodore Ioannovich. Under the auspices of the empress, committees worked to build churches in memory of the sailors who died in the Russo-Japanese War - the year, and the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Petrograd.
One of the first undertakings of the Empress, who became famous for her charitable activities, was the patronage of the Imperial Women's Patriotic Society, according to the rescript of Emperor Nicholas II of February 26. Unusually hardworking, devoting a lot of time to needlework, the empress organized charity fairs and bazaars where homemade souvenirs were sold. Under her patronage there were many charitable organizations: the House of Diligence with educational workshops for cutting and sewing and a children's boarding school; Society for Labor Assistance to Educated Persons; House of Diligence of Educated Women; Olginsky shelter for industriousness for children of persons being treated in the hospital of St. Mary Magdalene; Trusteeship of the Imperial Philanthropic Society to collect donations for the handicraft education of poor children; Society for Labor Assistance "Beehive"; the Tsarskoye Selo Society of Needlework and the School of Folk Art for teaching handicrafts; All-Russian guardianship for the protection of motherhood and infancy; Brotherhood in the name of the Queen of Heaven in Moscow (under it there was a shelter for 120 children - feeble-minded, crippled, epileptics - with a school, workshops, a craft department); Shelter-nursery of the 2nd Interim Guardianship Committee for the protection of motherhood and infancy; Shelter named after Empress Alexandra Feodorovna in Harbin; the nursery of the Peterhof Charitable Society; 4th Petrograd Committee of the All-Russian guardianship for the protection of motherhood and infancy with a shelter for mothers and a nursery-shelter; "School of nannies" in Tsarskoye Selo, established at the personal expense of the Empress; the Tsarskoye Selo Community of the Sisters of Mercy of the Russian Red Cross Society (ROKK) and the House of the Empress for the charity of crippled soldiers; Exaltation of the Cross Community of Sisters of Mercy ROKK; 1st Petrograd Women's Committee of the ROCK; Mikhailovsky, in memory of General M. D. Skobelev, a society for medical care for low-income wives, widows, children and orphans of soldiers (with it there was an outpatient clinic, an inpatient department, a shelter for girls - orphans of soldiers); The All-Russian Alexander Nevsky Brotherhood of Sobriety (with it a school, a kindergarten, a summer cottage, a book publishing house, folk choirs).
Of exceptional interest to Russian culture, history, and science are objects of palace life, collections of antiquities, collections of books and works of art compiled by the Empress and the august family. All imperial orders intended for palaces were unique, no duplicates were allowed. The library of the Empress and the Grand Duchesses in the Winter Palace contained about 2,000 volumes, and manuscripts were also kept there. Alexandra Feodorovna's books were also in Livadia, Tsarskoe Selo, they are marked with an ex-libris and are works of publishing and binding art. The support of Alexandra Feodorovna and the entire imperial family of the Faberge firm became a prerequisite for the emergence of a new trend in applied art - the “imperial style”, “Faberge design and style”. The Empress collected antiquities and assisted scientists. She received an honorary diploma from the Archaeological Institute, the committee for the construction of the Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow named after Emperor Alexander III elected her an honorary member for her active assistance to the museum, the Pergamon Hall of the museum was named after the Empress. Under the auspices of the empress was the Imperial Society of Oriental Studies, which had the goal of " distribution among the Eastern peoples of accurate and correct information about Russia, as well as familiarization of Russian society with the material needs and spiritual life of the East". Alexandra Feodorovna was a skilled artist; icons embroidered by her have been preserved in the church of St. Mary Magdalene in Darmstadt. By the beginning of the year, she had made drawings of a Russian costume for a charity ball at the Winter Palace, in consultation with the director of the Hermitage, I. A. Vsevolozhsky. The Empress was dressed in golden brocade clothes, created according to sketches from the clothes of Tsarina Maria Ilyinichna. Another work of Alexandra Feodorovna is a drawing of a sign for parts of the imperial convoy. The Empress collected laminated glass works and personally gave orders for the production of imperial porcelain and glass factories.
In the last years of her reign, especially during the First World War, Alexandra Feodorovna became the subject of a ruthless and baseless smear campaign led by revolutionaries and their accomplices both in Russia and in Germany. Rumors spread widely about the Empress' adultery, about her supposedly unchaste relationship with Rasputin, about her betrayal of the Motherland in favor of Germany. This lie, whipped up in order to overthrow the royal house and embarrass the Russian people, at one time was widely disseminated not only in popular, but also in scientific publications. However, despite the fact that the sovereign knew about the purity of the private life of the Empress, he also personally ordered a secret investigation into "slanderous rumors about the relations of the Empress with the Germans and even about her betrayal of the Motherland." Although in the pre-war period the empress did support the improvement of relations with Germany, it was established that rumors about the desire for a separate peace with the Germans, the transfer of Russian military plans by the empress to the Germans, were spread by the German general staff. After the abdication of the sovereign, the Extraordinary Investigation Commission under the Provisional Government tried and failed to establish the guilt of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna of any crimes.
However, the blackening of the image of the royal family, the widespread loss of faith and loyalty to it, the clear desire of wide sections of the empire's elite to abandon the monarchical structure of the state led to the removal of the imperial family from power. On March 2, Emperor Nicholas II abdicated the throne for himself and for Tsarevich Alexy.
Imprisonment and martyrdom
By decision of the secular authorities of Russia, the reburial of the remains was carried out on July 17 of the year in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg, the funeral service was led by the rector of the cathedral.The Synodal Commission for the Canonization of Saints of the Moscow Patriarchate, chaired by Metropolitan Juvenaly of Krutitsy, found " it is possible to raise the question of reckoning among the holy martyrs ... Empress Alexandra Feodorovna» . By the resolution of the Holy Synod of October 10 and the decision of the Council of Bishops on February 18-22, this position was approved. The canonization of Alexandra Feodorovna and other royal martyrs in the Cathedral of the New Martyrs of Russia took place at the Bishops' Council of the year.
On the site of the former house of Ipatiev, a memorial church “on the blood” was built in the name of All the Saints who shone in the Russian land. On September 23, Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia served a prayer service at the site of the church under construction and placed a mortgage deed in its foundation.
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She was glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad for the year A. V. Kolchak was entrusted with the investigation of the murder of the royal family.
Gilliard, 162.
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JMP, 1998, № 4, 10.
"Report by Metropolitan Yuvenaly of Krutitsky and Kolomna ... on the question of the martyrdom of the royal family, proposed at a meeting of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church on October 10, 1996."
Leafing through the photo albums of the last imperial family, one can often see photographs of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna in a wheelchair, or in bed and mostly in a sitting position. But at the time of her death in the Ipatiev House, she was only a little over forty. An inquisitive researcher, in this regard, will certainly become interested and try to find out what kind of illness or what life circumstances led the Russian Empress to such a situation?
Empress Alexandra Feodorovna
Looking through various books and memoirs about the life of Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt, in the baptism of Alexandra Feodorovna, you come to a very sad conclusion: the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II Romanov got a very, very unhealthy woman as his wife. She was already unhealthy from birth, which later affected her life and, alas, the fate of one of the children - Tsarevich Alexei.
Empress Alexandra Feodorovna in the home rooms
As it turns out, Alexandra Fedorovna suffered from neuralgia of the facial nerve and inflammation of the lumbosacral nerve and lumbago since childhood. The last illness was especially aggravated after the empress was forced to stand for many hours during court ceremonies and celebrations. As a result, in the hands of the Empress, you can increasingly see a cane in photographs, and then she herself in a wheelchair. " Alix feels, in general, well, but cannot walk, because the pain immediately begins; through the halls she rides in chairs," - this is how Nicholas II wrote to Empress Maria Feodorovna in March 1899.
Walking in the park of Tsarskoe Selo
Walking with husband and girls
The female characteristics of the body also played their cruel joke. So the beloved maid of honor of the Empress A. Vyrubova wrote: " Alexandra Fedorovna fell ill at the age of 14 when she began menstruating. At this time, she begins to sleep. She falls asleep. Then convulsions occur during sleep. She beats for several minutes. Then he calms down. Falls asleep again. Starts talking or singing in a terrifying way. She was treated. It's gone. When she was 18 years old, the disease began to recur, but rarely: two, three times a year.". Apparently, her behavior in public is also connected with these critical women's days, about which E.A. Svyatopolk-Mirskoy writes in his diary in February 1906: " Alexandra Feodorovna has a bad influence, that she is an evil and terrible character, rages attack her, and then she does not remember what she is doing."
Apparently, because of these women's problems, Alexandra Fedorovna did not tolerate heat well, and therefore, in warm rooms, she began to have asthma attacks and she could faint. In this regard, in the chambers of the palaces, the temperature of the premises was maintained even in winter at a very low degree.
When sick with family
Since 1908, the empress began to have heart disease, court doctors constantly visit her, she travels abroad for treatment. Ksenia Alexandrovna notes this fact in her diary on January 11, 1910: " Poor Nicky is concerned and upset about Alix's health. She again had severe pains in her heart, and she became very weak. They say it's on the nerve lining, the nerves of the heart sac. Apparently it's more serious than people think.". Also in February 1909, A.V. Bogdanovich wrote in his diary: " Stürmer said about Empress that she had terrible neurasthenia, that ulcers appeared on her legs, that she could end up insane". In September of the same year, the following entry appears there:" Today Kaulbars said that the queen is quite ill - she has suffocation, her legs are swollen." Swollen legs, neurasthenia, ulcers - all these are signs of problems with the heart and blood circulation in the vessels.
During lunch in nature
On the yacht "Standart"
Moreover, the empress had very exotic diseases, such as allergies to floral scents. Therefore, in Peterhof, Tsarskoe Selo and Livadia, only varieties of roses were planted that had no smell. Touching the metal also caused problems for the Empress, and because of this, all the baths and pools that Alexandra Feodorovna used were covered with suede covers.
On a walk with Tsarevich Alexei
Empress Alexandra Feodorovna with her family
With daughters and husband
Heart, Head and Leg Diseases, i.e. varicose veins - all this hurts also from smoking! Yes, the last Russian empress smoked like a steam locomotive, although photographs of such an action can hardly be found anywhere at all. " Fasting is that I do not smoke - I fast from the very beginning of wars and love to go to church" and I I feel bad, so I haven't even smoked for a few days"- such messages can be read in the letters of the Empress to Emperor Nicholas II, who also liked to smoke. The Empress's head ached from the first day of her married life, which is reflected in diary entries and letters. What is it: from women's problems or neuroses?
Empress Alexandra Feodorovna with her beloved maid of honor and friend Anna Vyrubova
All these women's problems and headaches at receptions, in church and dinners, as well as a somewhat strange relationship with Anna Vyrubova, gave rise to rumors that the Empress was a sexual pervert - she preferred homosexual (lesbian) love to normal marital relations with her husband.
The empress was watched very carefully, and therefore periodically in the memoirs of a person who was close to the court at that time, the following entries can be found. So in December 1910 A.V. Bogdanovich writes: More than ever, she is close to Vyrubova, to whom she says everything that the tsar tells her, while the tsar constantly expresses everything to the queen. Everyone in the palace despise Vyrubova, but no one dares to go against her - she is constantly with the queen: in the morning from 11 to one, then from two to five, and every evening until 11 4/2 hours. It used to happen that during the arrival of the tsar Vyrubova was reduced, but now she sits all the time. At 11 4/2 the tsar goes to study, and Vyrubova and the tsarina go to the bedroom. Sad, shameful picture!". And a little earlier, in May 1910, A.V. Bogdanovich wrote about the doctor's visits to the Empress: " There was Rhine. He said about the young queen that she was repeatedly offered to call him, but she rejects everything, does not want to appear to a specialist. One must think that she has something secret that she does not dare to entrust, and, knowing that an experienced doctor will understand what is the matter, she rejects the help of specialists".
In a chair in nature
In 1912, the lesbian connection began to be combined in rumors and records with the proximity of both ladies to Grigory Rasputin. Whether only they themselves knew this, but judging by the touching letters and relations between Alexandra Feodorovna and Nicholas II, rumors are rumors, and there was no sexual connection, and even in a very dubious form. And if it was? This is a personal matter of two people who decided that it would be good for them.
The illnesses of the empress probably played their evil role in Russian history, but the worst thing is that she could not give Russia a healthy heir to the throne and gave birth to a boy with hemophilia, a terrible hereditary disease transmitted to the child through the maternal line. So Alexandra Feodorovna put an end to the Romanov dynasty!