The Eastern Front: A History of the First World War by Nick Lloyd

Author:Nick Lloyd [Lloyd, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Wars & Conflicts, World War I, Military, General, Europe, Eastern
ISBN: 9780241992104
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2024-03-27T19:00:00+00:00

The responses, received an hour or two later, all favoured abdication. From the Caucasus, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich urged the Tsar ‘on my knees to save Russia and your heir, knowing as I do the feelings of sacred love you bear towards Russia and him’. At Western Front, General Evert implored Nicholas to ‘save the Fatherland and the dynasty’ by acting ‘in accordance with the declaration of the President of the State Duma’. Likewise, Brusilov, at Southwest Front, was equally forthright. ‘Please submit to the Emperor my loyal petition … that he renounce the throne in favour of His Highness the heir’.46

The loss of his generals’ confidence was devastating for the Tsar. He read the telegrams shortly before three o’clock that afternoon. Smoking continuously and occasionally getting up to look out of the window at the snowy ground outside, he told Ruzski that he had been ‘born for misfortune’.47 He then signed the abdication manifesto, his hands shaking slightly, all the energy and vigour drained out of his face. ‘In the midst of the great struggle against a foreign foe, who has been striving for three years to enslave our country, it has pleased God to lay on Russia a new and painful trial.’ What Nicholas called ‘newly arisen popular disturbances’ now threatened the successful prosecution of the war, and to ‘help our people to draw together and unite all their forces’, he had agreed to ‘lay down the Supreme Power’. In direct contravention of the Law of Succession, which specified that the throne would pass automatically to the next male heir, he had decided that he could not be parted from his son, Alexis, and that he would hand it to his brother, the Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich. But the Grand Duke reacted with horror when he was told the news and quickly divested himself of the responsibility, hurriedly issuing a statement confirming that he would only accept the ‘supreme power’ ‘if that be the desire of our great people’ expressed at a general election. In the meantime, he urged his fellow countrymen to ‘subject themselves to the Provisional Government, which is created by and invested with full power by the State Duma’.48

It was done. What had started as a series of demonstrations about bread had turned into a raging torrent of anger and violence that had overturned one of the most enduring royal dynasties in the world. The Tsar had always struggled in his role, despising the idea of a constitutional monarchy, yet lacking the fierce and brutal determination of an autocrat (at least when compared with those that came after him). Nicholas de Basily, director of the Imperial Chancellery at Stavka, was astonished at his demeanour throughout the crisis. ‘He accepted fate without the least revolt, without the least show of anger or ill humor, without the least reproach to anyone’, he remembered. ‘This man, who on so many occasions had seemed to us to lack will, had made his decision with great courage and dignity, without hesitation … According to the English expression, he knew how to lose.

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