The Court of the Last Tsar , livre ebook

ALSO BY GREG KING
The Fate of the Romanovs
The Last Empress: The Life and Times of Alexandra Feodorovna, Tsarina of Russia
The Duchess of Windsor: The Uncommon Life of Wallis Simpson
The Man Who Killed Rasputin: Prince Felix Youssoupov and the Murder That Helped Bring Down the Russian Empire
THE COURT OF THE LAST TSAR
Pomp, Power, and Pageantry in the Reign of Nicholas II
Greg King

John Wiley Sons, Inc.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright 2006 by Greg King. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
Text illustrations courtesy of: Pp. 14, 15, 34, 35, 50, 53, 55, 60, 73, 79, 80 (both), 82, 83, 84, 87, 98, 106, 135, 138, 146, 161, 178, 211, 212, 243, 254, 272, 274, 278, 280, 283, 292, 316, 318, 326, 443, 449, 463, 472, 474, author s collection; p. 19, Daniel Briere; pp. 33, 37, 39, 40, 49, 57, 143, 174, 181, 198, 200, 214, 256, 260, 275, 289, 312, 314, 320, 329, 335, 361, 364, 372, 377, 378, 382, 391, 393, 415, 416 (both), 417 (both), 421, 422, 425, 442, 464, Antonio Perez Caballero; p. 128, Penny Wilson.
Insert illustrations courtesy of: Plates 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 13, 17, 24, 25, 39, author s collection; plates 6, 8, 11, 12, 15, 18, 27, 35, Daniel Briere; plates 9, 10, 14, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, Antonio Perez Caballero.
Design and composition by Navta Associates, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
King, Greg, date.
The court of the last tsar : pomp, power, and pageantry in the reign of Nicholas II / Greg King.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13 978-0-471-72763-7 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN-10 0-471-72763-6 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Russia-Civilization-20th century. 2. Russia-Social life and customs-20th century.
3. Russia-Court and courtiers. 4. Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia, 1868-1918-Family.
5. Romanov, House of. I. Title.
DK247.K56 2006
947.08 3 08621-dc22
2005017409
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Susanne, a literary malachite column
CONTENTS
Author s Note
Introduction
Prologue: St. Petersburg
Part One: Personages
1. The Last Tsar
2. The Imperial Family
3. A Rival Court
4. The Romanovs
5. The Russian Court
6. Below Stairs at the Palace
7. The Military
8. The Aristocracy
9. The Russian Orthodox Church
Part Two: Palaces
10. The Winter Palace
11. Tsarskoye Selo
12. Peterhof
13. The Moscow Palaces
Part Three: Possessions
14. Imperial Riches
15. Fashion at the Russian Court
16. Jewelry, Regalia, and Objets d art
17. Imperial Transportation
18. Country Estates
Part Four: Pageantry
19. Imperial Ceremonies
20. An Imperial Funeral
21. An Imperial Wedding
22. The Coronation
23. The Tercentenary
Part Five: Pleasures
24. Imperial Balls
25. State Visits
26. The Crimea
27. The Last Season
Epilogue: July 20, 1914: The Beginning of the End
Acknowledgments
Appendix A Family Tree of Nicholas I
Appendix B Organizational Chart of the Russian Imperial Court
Appendix C The Imperial Court in 1914
Appendix D Palace Floor Plans
Appendix E Maps of the Imperial Estates
Appendix F Map of St. Petersburg
Notes
Bibliography
Index
AUTHOR S NOTE
In this book, readers will encounter a variety of titles: emperor, empress, tsar, and tsaritsa. Until 1721, all Romanov rulers were called tsar, which was commonly believed to have derived from the Latin word caesar but was actually adapted from the Greek translation of the Byzantine title basileus , signifying a Christian emperor. Peter the Great, enamored of all things Western, officially adopted the title gosudar imperator , or sovereign emperor; until the end of the empire, this was the correct form of address. Despite this, the emperor was often referred to as tsar, and his wife, bearing the title imperatritsa , or empress, was commonly called tsaritsa in Russian; tsarina, familiar to some readers, never existed in Russian. In official documents, Nicholas II was called emperor, although, as a Slavophile, he preferred the older title of tsar; conversely, his wife, Alexandra, preferred the Western title of empress. In this book, I have used emperor and empress, leaving tsar and tsaritsa in place only for direct quotations.
Peter the Great also altered the title of the heir to the throne from tsarevich, meaning son of the tsar, to tsesarevich, a higher distinction derived from Byzantine models. Nicholas I refined the title to gosudar naslednik , to include his status as sovereign heir. Without altering original sources and quotations, I have attempted to use the correct form of tsesarevich.
Paul I established a number of rules governing the imperial family, which also spelled out the distinctions in their titles. A male was a velikii knyaz , translated by the imperial court, which used French as its official language, as grand duke; a female was a velikaya knyazhna , or grand duchess. Married females were marked with a subtle difference, velikaya knyaginia , although there was no change to their designation as grand duchesses. In 1886, Alexander III restricted the use of grand duke and grand duchess to the children and the grandsons of an emperor; lesser members of the imperial family were thereafter titled a prince or a princess of the imperial blood. In recent years, people unfamiliar with the nuances of the Russian language-and attempting to relate these styles to more familiar European models-have resorted to tortured literal translations of these titles, resulting in uncomfortable appellations such as grand prince or great princess and ignoring Paul I s declaration of grand duke and grand duchess. I have used the latter titles, employed by the imperial court itself, as correct.
Titles used by the imperial court present their own unique difficulties. Court offices followed Peter the Great s Table of Ranks, or Chin , a system he introduced that established sixteen categories of officials, arranged according to their hierarchy. Although French was the official language of the court, its officials largely bore titles originally drawn from German models but transliterated into their own, peculiar Russian form: ober-tseremoniimeister (grand master of ceremonies), kamer-junker (gentleman of the chamber), and fligel-adjutant (aide-de-camp). An additional corruption stems from the fact that in the Russian language, there is no letter h. Titles copied from German models, such as Hof-Marschall (master of the court) and Hof-Meisterina (mistress of the court) therefore become, in Russian, gof-marschal and gof-meisterina . This led to a mixture of German and English, such as freilina (maid of honor). As such, they stand as curiosities, and often their English translations are awkward. I have given English translations as the Russian versions of these titles appear in the text, though I have moved freely between these three languages throughout, in an effort to not only maintain the flavor of Nicholas II s court but also ease the task for readers. A complete listing of official court titles and offices can be found in appendix C.
A Russian has two names: a Christian name and a patronymic derived from his or her father. The masculine form takes the father s first name and adds vich to the ending, indicating son of. Thus the last emperor was Nicholas Alexandrovich, the son of Alexander. For daughters, ovna is added to the end of the father s name: Marie Pavlovna, the daughter of Paul, for example. During the reign of Nicholas II, the imperial family included some sixty individuals, who often shared Christian names. To distinguish between them, I have therefore frequently used patronymics in the text, with the hope that this will make the complex relationships in the imperial family easier for readers to follow, with one exception: Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna, the wife of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, is referenced using her husband s title, to avoid confusion with another Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna, the daughter of Vladimir s brother Paul.
In transliterating Russian names, I have followed th