Ill-placed family trust

It was a nice day, slightly lifting his spirits. Nicholas II lunched with his two younger daughters before setting out by carriage for the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg where in the splendour of the Malachite Hall he signed a declaration of war.

Caught up in patriotic frenzy, the ladies of the court surged forward to kiss the hands of the tsar and tsarina leaving the royal couple feeling, as Nicholas later confided in his diary, “slightly battered.”

Given what lay ahead, the horrendous bloodshed, countless lost battles and the revolution that ended the Romanov dynasty's three-century-long rule, the unceremonious scrum might have been seen with hindsight as an ill omen. But what impressed the tsar on that fateful day was the view from the Winter Palace balcony of the vast, jubilant crowd that kneeled to greet him, singing God Save the King.

But if Russia was at last united, the coming war had caused a deep rift between the royal houses of Russia, Germany and Great Britain.

Queen Victoria’s efforts to marry off as many of her progeny as possible into the ruling families of Europe had resulted in the descendants of the British monarch occupying the thrones of more than 10 nations.

Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt and Wilhelm II, the German emperor, were all first cousins of Britain's King George V and were on familiar enough terms to refer to each other by nicknames, Nicky, Alicky, Willy and Georgie.

Blood ties linking Nicholas and Wilhelm stretched further back to the 18th century. Both men were great great grandsons of the Russian Tsar Paul I.

Queen Victoria had hoped that her royal matchmaking efforts would help shore up peace in Europe and her country's position as the greatest of all the great powers. Yet little over 13 years after attending the grandmama of Europe's funeral, the royal cousins were heading off to a calamitous war.

Nicholas and Alix disliked court life and lived most of the time lived at the Tsarskoe Selo palace outside Saint Petersburg, taking care of their invalid son and four daughters. In early 1914 the royal family departed the capital for a three-month sojourn on the Black Sea shores of Crimea.

It was an odd time for the monarch to take time out. Russia was gripped in political turmoil. Nicholas who, like his wife, believed in his God-given right as an autocrat, was on bad terms with the parliament where deputies were pushing for sweeping reforms. More than one and a half million Russian factory workers were out on strike.

Tensions were also rising in Europe where a fresh conflict was brewing in the Balkans. Russia was alarmed by the rapid rise of a unified Germany that threatened the balance of power. Nicholas’ cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm, who was said to fantasise about taking over the Turkish army, had installed a German commander to guard the garrison at the Ottoman Straits, the main waterway for Russia’s lucrative grain exports to the west.

The German menace was driving a surge in popular support for pan-Slavism, an historic movement that, aiming for the unity of all Slavic people, was increasingly eager for Russia to expand in the Balkans.

Wilhelm made efforts to remain on cordial terms with Nicholas, but was convinced that Russia had territorial designs on east Prussia and on the Balkan provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina that Germany's ally, Austria-Hungary had annexed in 1908.

“As a military man I harbour not the slightest doubt that Russia is systematically preparing for war against us, and I direct my policy accordingly,” he wrote to Count Friedrich Pourtalès, the German ambassador to Saint Petersburg in March 1914.

For all his belief in Russia’s God-given great power status, experience had taught Nicholas to be wary of military adventures. Russia’s defeat in a war with Japan in 1905 had marked a disastrous setback for the tsar’s plans to expand the boundaries of empire further into Eurasia and dominate large swathes of China and the Far East.

Russian losses in the Japanese war had sparked a revolution on the streets of Saint Petersburg that was violently put down by tsarist forces. Political and social unrest had fanned out across the empire and for a time it had seemed that Russia was imploding.

If Nicholas was fretting about the future of his nation or of the Romanov dynasty, it did not stop him enjoying the long balmy days in the Crimea. Officials, including Sergei Sazonov, the Russian foreign minister, occasionally visited for talks. Most of the time, however, the tsar was out yachting, playing tennis with his family or overseeing naval parades in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol.

Back from Crimea, the Russian royals were out cruising in the Baltic when the news arrived that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the empire of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie has been murdered by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo on June 28th, 1914.

The fraught weeks that followed were to expose how ill-fit Nicholas was to rule. It must have been obvious that Austria-Hungary would exact some kind of revenge for the assassination of Ferdinand. But until the very last moment, the tsar refused to accept that his German cousin Wilhelm would back the Austrians and draw Russia into a disastrous war.

Most of his ministers thought otherwise. Sazonov was rightly convinced that Germany had encouraged Austria-Hungary to issue tough ultimatums to Serbia and was ready to go to battle with Russia if need be.

Russia had suffered heavy military losses in the Japanese war and was not ready to take on another conflict. Sazonov knew that, but believed that failure to go to the rescue of Serbia would signal unacceptable weakness that could fatally undermine Russia’s position in Europe and popular support for the government.

There was a risk of course that war would spark another revolution. But that was outweighed by the immediate danger that Russia’s pro-Slavic population would rise up against the authorities that abandoned the Serbs to their fate.

Nicholas thought Sazonov was exaggerating and suspected Wilhelm of sabre-rattling. “I can’t believe the emperor wants war. If you knew him as I do! If you knew how much theatricality there is in his posing,” he told the French ambassador in Saint Petersburg.

Wilhelm was indeed prepared to mediate with Austria-Hungary, not least because he did not want to risk being saddled with responsibility for letting Europe slide into a disastrous conflict. After Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28th, the two cousins exchanged a flurry of telegrams, each appealing to the other to find a way out of the crisis.

Austria-Hungary had taken up arms in an “ignoble war to a weak country,” Nicholas wrote to Wilhelm in the early hours of July 29th.

“The indignation in Russia shared fully by me is enormous. I see that very soon I shall be overwhelmed by the pressure forced upon me and be forced to take extreme measures which will lead to war. To avoid such as calamity as a European war, I beg you in the name of our old friendship to do what you can to stop your allies from going too far.”

Wilhelm, 10 years older and a far more forceful character than Nicholas, thought he could bend his Russian cousin to his will. He had already whistled off a message that crossed with Nicholas’ telegram somewhere between Saint Petersburg and Berlin that ruled out the notion of an “ignoble war”.

Wilhelm agreed to mediate but reminded Nicholas, as a fellow monarch, that the murder of Ferdinand could not go unavenged. “The spirit that led the Serbians to murder their own king and his wife still dominates the country. You will doubtless agree with me that we both, you and me, have a common interest as well as all Sovereigns to insist that all the persons morally responsible for the dastardly murder should receive their deserved punishment.”

Pale and haggard, Nicholas was clutching at straws. In another late night message, he suggested to Wilhelm that the Serbian problem could be taken to the international court in the Hague.

Wilhelm was meanwhile penning another high-handed telegram telling Nicholas he had got the Serbian crisis all wrong and should at all costs refrain from military action. Austria-Hungary, according to the emperor, was not aiming to grab Serbian territory but merely applying pressure to force the Serbs to yield to its demands.

“I therefore suggest that it would be quite possible for Russia to remain a spectator of the conflict without involving Europe in the most horrible war she ever witnessed.”

While professing their desire for peace, the royal cousins were gearing up for war. Indecisive at the best of times, Nicholas was now fumbling hopelessly. Under intense pressure from his ministers, he issued an order to mobilise, withdrew it and then issued it again. Wilhelm was not one to dither. Germany’s army received the command to ready for combat on two fronts.

In mobilising, both sides were raising the stakes, but Germany, with its highly organised and well equipped army, could move much faster than Russia, which needed at least two weeks to get its troops to the front.

When Wilhelm discovered that the Russian army was heading not only for the border of Austria-Hungary but also towards eastern Germany, he was incensed and fired off a furious telegram accusing Nicholas of betrayal. “In my endeavours to maintain the peace of the world I have gone to the utmost limits possible. The responsibility for the disaster which is now threatening the whole civilised world will not be laid at my door. In this moment it lies in your power to avert it. Nobody is threatening the honour or power of Russia which can well afford to await the result of my mediation.”

Nicholas came as near as he could to being openly assertive and replied that it was “technically impossible” for Russia to halt the mobilisation. He gave his “solemn word” that his troops would take no provocative action as long as mediation talks continued.

Even when Wilhelm admitted that Germany was mobilising, Nicholas clung to the hope that war could be avoided. “Our long proved friendship must succeed with God’s help in avoiding bloodshed,” he wrote in what was the last telegram in the exchange. “Anxiously, full of confidence in your answer . . .”

Wilhelm drafted a reply saying further talks might be possible if Russia halted mobilisation, but it was too late. By the time the telegram arrived in Saint Petersburg the German ambassador there had handed Sazonov a declaration of war.

Years before Queen Victoria had warned Nicholas not to trust his German cousin. With Wilhelm’s final telegram the penny finally dropped. “He was never sincere, not for a moment,” Nicholas said. “I felt that all was over forever between me and William.”

It was.