Count NIKOLAI MIKHAILOVICH KAMENSKY, 1776-1811, the youngest son of Field Marshal Count Mikhail Fedotovich from marriage to Princess Anna Pavlovna Shcherbatova, was born on December 2, 1776. The conditions of his childhood in the parental home, where everyone, starting with the mother, trembled before the despot father favorable; The father loved the younger son more, but he did not avoid harsh punishments. From the age of 4, Kamensky was enlisted as a cornet in one of the cuirassier regiments, at the age of 19 he was already a lieutenant colonel and at 21 a colonel. On June 28, 1799, Kamensky was promoted to major general and appointed chief of the Arkhangelsk regiment. Then he was sent with a regiment to Italy in the army of Suvorov, where, in the midst of a difficult mountain war, he passed a severe military school under the leadership of the great commander. Having discovered fearlessness and military ability, Kamensky on the Devil's Bridge with a swift attack decided the fate of the battle, for which the horde was awarded. Anna 1 tbsp. and praise of Suvorov, who wrote to old Kamensky: "Your young son is an old general." In the wars with Napoleon, in 1805-1807, Kamensky took part as a divisional general: at Austerlitz he almost died, falling from a horse killed by a cannonball, but was saved by Zakrevsky, and for Preussisch - Eylau he was awarded a horde. St. George class 3 In the Finnish campaign of 1808, Kamensky was already in command of the corps and was the main culprit in the conquest of Finland, and the hordes were awarded for the battle of Orovais. St. George 2nd Art. Having earned (from Barclay de Tolly) the reputation of "the most skillful general", Kamensky on February 4, 1810 was appointed commander-in-chief of the Moldavian army. Trying to provide the soldier with food and free him from the petty burdens of peacetime - exercises, parades, cleaning ammunition, he at the same time instilled in commanders that "whoever finds impossibilities will be replaced by another." The 54-year-old commander-in-chief's arrogance and arrogance hurt him greatly. The chiefs did not tolerate him as much as the soldiers idolized Kamensky, who shared all the hardships with them. On the Danube he suffered a setback; the siege of Shumla and the assault on Ruschuk weakened his energy almost to the point of collapse. Overly self-confident, Kamensky tried to achieve everything at once and everywhere turned out to be weaker than the enemy. In addition, he soon fell ill with a severe, debilitating fever. March 12 Kamensky went to Odessa; along the way, he lost his hearing and showed signs of mental breakdown. On May 4, 1811 he died in Odessa and was buried in the village. Saburove, Oryol province, next to his father. Gr. Kamensky was not married; they said that he was the groom of gr. AA Orlova-Chesmenskaya, but this wedding did not take place, although the bride forever retained warm feelings for him.
Personality gr. Kamensky is not easy to assess. Fear of the father, the impersonality of the mother, the harsh upbringing, the stinginess of the old man Kamensky - all this adversely affected the impressionable nature of Gr. N. M .: a nervous, unbalanced character appeared; kind by nature, but terribly hot-tempered, he sometimes showed cold cruelty; able to bind loved ones to himself, he insulted people in general with suspicion and distrust and repulsed them with envy and arrogance. From fearlessness and insane courage, he quickly went to extreme indecision. Thanks to the constant tension of his nerves, he could endure the labors and hardships of the war, successes revived him, failures acted depressingly both morally and physically. People who knew Kamensky closely, forgave him for his shortcomings, highly appreciated his merits and were deeply devoted to him - such are KL Bulgakov, Zakrevsky. Others like c. P.A.Stroganov, Prince. V.S. Trubetskoy, Prince. S. G. Volkonsky, criticized him as an army commander and judged him too harshly as a person, accusing him of immense cruelty, mediocrity, shameful cowardice ... Be that as it may, gr. N. M. Kamensky was an outstanding person and had the indisputable qualities of a combat general.
(From a miniature by I. Grigoriev; collection of Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich).

Under the heading "Historical Calendar" we continue our dedicated to the approaching 100th anniversary of the 1917 revolution. The project, which we called "The Gravediggers of the Russian Tsardom", is dedicated to the perpetrators of the collapse of the autocratic monarchy in Russia - professional revolutionaries, aristocratic opposition, liberal politicians; generals, officers and soldiers who have forgotten about their duty, as well as other active figures of the so-called. "Liberation movement", willingly or unwillingly, contributed to the triumph of the revolution - first in February, and then in October. The heading continues with an essay dedicated to a member of the Imperial family, a famous Russian historian, the grandson of Emperor NicholasI to the Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, who headed the "Grand Duke Fronde" on the eve of the February Revolution.

Born April 14, 1859 in Tsarskoe Selo. His father was Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich (1832-1909) - the youngest son of Emperor Nicholas I, Field Marshal, Governor General in the Caucasus and Chairman of the State Council, who laid the foundation for the branch of the Romanovs called "Mikhailovich". Mother - Grand Duchess Olga Fedorovna (1839‒1891) - before the adoption of Orthodoxy was called Cecilia Augusta, and before marriage was a princess and margrave of Baden. Being a temperamental nature, in high society circles Olga Fedorovna had a reputation as a courageous woman who was not abstinent in language and was not even afraid to contradict Emperor Alexander III, who somehow said with annoyance about her: “Everyone recognizes Olga Fedorovna as an intelligent woman. How is this mind expressed? She gossips and reads empty novels, but does not want to engage in any serious business. "... S.Yu. Witte spoke of Olga Fedorovna extremely unflattering: “ Beautiful, intelligent, with a will, she had a nasty character, had constant favorites and was the most cunning and heartless. She completely held her husband in her arms. Rumor said that her real father was a certain Jewish banker, Baron Haber. Emperor Alexander III sometimes called her in an intimate circle "Aunt Haber".

According to the existing tradition, the Grand Duke, already on his birthday, was appointed chief of the 3rd Guards and Grenadier Artillery Brigades, enlisted in the Life Guards Horse Grenadier Regiment and the Life Guards 2nd Light Battery. It was assumed that his life, like the life of almost all Grand Dukes, would be devoted to military service. In 1875, he received the rank of second lieutenant, with the rank of staff captain he fought in the Caucasian theater of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-78, having been awarded the Order of St. George, 4th degree for his courage in the battle with the Turks on the Aladzhin heights (Western Armenia). After the end of the war, the Grand Duke continued to serve in the Life Guards Grenadier Regiment, then, after graduating from the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff, he gave 10 years of service in the Cavalry Regiment, for some time commanded the 16th Mingrelian Grenadier Regiment, and then the Caucasian Grenadier Division. As a modern researcher notes, “The greatest achievement in the military career of Nikolai Mikhailovich should be considered the appointment in 1897 to the Commander of the famous Caucasian Grenadier Division, as Mikhail Nikolayevich called it in his congratulations to his son, the first in“ our entire valiant army ”. But this was the last military post of the Grand Duke - in 1903 he was expelled from the division with the rank of lieutenant general (1901). At the same time, Nikolai Mikhailovich was appointed Adjutant General to His Imperial Majesty. "... The last military rank for Nikolai Mikhailovich was the rank of infantry general in the guards infantry, bestowed by the Tsar in 1913. During the First World War, Nikolai Mikhailovich was at the Headquarters. At his own request, he was placed at the disposal of General N.I. Ivanov, whom he himself chose as "the best of the worst." In a letter to the Emperor, the Grand Duke wrote: "In view of the fact that for 10 years I have completely lagged behind the front, I could only be useful as a person on special assignments."... This request was granted by the Emperor - during the war, Nikolai Mikhailovich carried out the personal orders of the Emperor, but did not hold any responsible posts.

But, despite the heights reached, it was not military service that glorified the Grand Duke, but scientific activity. Nikolai Mikhailovich's interest in science, which manifested itself in his youth, began with entomology (a section of zoology that studies insects), and already at the age of 18 for his publications in this area he was elected a member of the French Entomological Society. For 26 years, Nikolai Mikhailovich collected a collection of butterflies, later donated to the Zoological Museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. In the 1890s, the Grand Duke became interested in the study of Russian history, also managing to become famous in this field, gaining wide recognition as the author of a number of historical works dedicated to the era of Emperor Alexander I and the Napoleonic wars. On the initiative of Nikolai Mikhailovich and under his leadership, a lot of work was carried out to publish historical sources and compile reference books-necropolises. However, as noted by the monarchist V.M. Purishkevich, as a historian, the Grand Duke seemed to him then (later they would find a common language) "extremely unsympathetic", since in his historical works he exhibited his royal grandfathers and great-grandfathers "in an extremely ugly form."

His younger brother Alexander Mikhailovich recalled: “My mother dreamed of his brilliant military career, and to please her, my brother Nikolai graduated with honors from the military school. However, his true calling was in abstract historical research. He served in the Cavalry Regiment only as a result of his friendly relations with Empress Martya Fedorovna (my mother-in-law) and bore the rank of commander of this regiment. He was so taller in terms of the mental development of his fellow soldiers that it deprived him of any pleasure in communicating with them. Gradually, he moved away from ties with the military world and spent all his time in the historical archives of St. Petersburg and Paris. His monumental biography of Emperor Alexander I, written after years of gathering materials and checking dates, will remain unsurpassed in Russian historical literature. Not a single student of the early twentieth century could not have known an analysis of events and an overview of the period described by the Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich. The book, which was translated into French, caused a sensation among the French Napoleonists, forcing them to revise, correct and even re-compose a number of historical treatises. ".

Nikolai Mikhailovich was the chairman of the Russian Historical Society (since 1910), in 1915, by decision of the Council of Moscow University, he received a doctorate in Russian history. The Grand Duke also headed the Russian Geographical Society (since 1892), the Society for the Protection and Preservation of Monuments of Art and Antiquity (since 1910), was an honorary member of the Imperial Moscow Archaeological Society (since 1907), the Academy of Spiritual and Political Sciences of the Institute of France (1913), Doctor of Philosophy Berlin University (1910-1914).

The Grand Duke was considered one of the richest people in the Russian Empire. In his possession were the Novo-Mikhailovsky Palace in St. Petersburg, the Mikhailovskoye estate in the Petersburg province, the estates in the Yekaterinoslav, Kherson and Tauride provinces, the Borjomi estate in Georgia, and, together with the brothers, the Vardane estate in the Black Sea province (collectively Nikolai Mikhailovich was the owner about 150 thousand acres of land). His passion for hunting and ornithology were widely known. The Grand Duke was never married, which gave rise to rumors in society about his unconventional orientation. True or fiction, it's hard to say, but if you believe the writer N.N. Berberova, Nikolai Mikhailovich got along "with young people whom he preferred to young women, treating the latter more than coldly", and "he was leading one of his lovers. book Dmitry Pavlovich ". The famous statesman A.A. Polovtsov, who wrote in his diary: “... Nikolai Mikhailovich, as usual, is agitated and full of gossip and all kinds of condemnations. ... Knowing him as an intriguer and generally not credible person, I do my best to get rid of him by silence. (...) Nikolai is smart, slanderous and does nothing serious (...) As usual, he speaks a lot, evil, exaggerated ".

Nikolai Mikhailovich adhered to very liberal and oppositional views. While in correspondence with the writer L.N. Tolstoy, he informed him in one of his letters: “... I dare to assure you that, in spite of family ties, I am much closer to you than to them. It is the feeling of delicacy due to my kinship that makes me keep silent about the existing order and power, and this silence is even more difficult, since all the ulcers of the regime are obvious to me and I see their healing only in a radical change in everything that exists. "... Berberova claimed that the Grand Duke was a member of the Masonic lodge. And soon he earned in secular circles the iconic nickname "Philippe Egalite", given to him in honor of the prince of blood and a relative of King Louis XVI, who, despite his belonging to the Bourbons and immense wealth, was distinguished by opposition, was a great master of the Masonic lodge during the Great French Revolution joined the revolutionaries. The French ambassador Maurice Paleologue left such a characteristic entry in his diary, after talking with the Grand Duke: "Nikolay Mikhailovich," Nikolay Egalite ", interested in progressive ideas and new people". “Highly educated and very talented, he was the only member of the Imperial family who was a sincere supporter of liberal ideas, which he expressed with such frankness that he earned the nickname“ Philip Egalite ”at court”, - recalled the Minister of Foreign Affairs A.P. Izvolsky . At the same time, the memoirist noted, the Grand Duke “Was on good terms with the Emperor and used to speak with him quite frankly. They worked together in the field of historical sciences - the Grand Duke was the chairman of the Imperial Historical Society, and Nicholas II was its honorary chairman. (...) [But] despite the deep respect that Nicholas II had for him, the Grand Duke did not have political influence on the Tsar and did not hold any position in the public service ".

The nickname "Philip Egalite", as subsequent events showed, turned out to be prophetic. Nikolai Mikhailovich was brought closer to the French prince not only by origin, wealth and opposition, but also by the tragic ending of life - like Philip Egalite, he became a victim of the revolution, the triumph of which he himself involuntarily contributed.

"We were called" dangerous radicals "- recalled Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich ... - My elder brother Nikolai Mikhailovich was undoubtedly the most "radical" and most gifted member of our family. (...) I cannot say that I fully agree with his "French" political sympathies. Being an ardent admirer of the parliamentary system and a convinced admirer of the Clemenceau-Jaurès verbal duels, he did not want to admit that the creation of a constitutional system in Russia on the model of the Third French Republic would end in complete failure. The truth was that he was born in the wrong country where he should have been born. The guards gave him the nickname "Philippe Egalite", but the authors of this nickname did not suspect that their regal brother-soldier went much further in his democracy than the brother of the French king, who dreamed of using the revolution as a springboard to achieve his own ambitious plans. My brother Nikolai possessed all the qualities of a loyal president of a civilized republic, which made him often forget that Nevsky Prospect and the Champs Elysees are far from the same. ".

“Nikolai Mikhailovich adhered to liberal views for a long time, at one time he corresponded with L.N. Tolstoy, was personally acquainted with many members of the State Duma, openly criticized some ministers, but he did not take an active part in politics until the beginning of 1916 ", - historians E.E. Petrov and K.O. Bityukov. But the opposition of the Grand Duke eventually led to the fact that on the eve of the February Revolution, he turned into the most radical critic of the Royal family from among the Grand Dukes, becoming the de facto leader of the “Grand Duke Fronde”. At the same time, the Grand Duke was well aware of the threat hanging over the monarchy. Back in 1914, he wrote: “... It is clear to me that in all countries there will be huge coups; I think the end of many monarchies and the triumph of world socialism, which must prevail, for it has always spoken out against war. We in Russia will not do without major unrest and riots ... " But the conclusion that Nikolai Mikhailovich drew from this turned out to be dubious. In his opinion, the risk of revolutionary upheavals in Russia became the higher, the more "The government will cling pointlessly to the right"... This logic led to the fact that the Grand Duke was on the side of the Duma liberal opposition. " The Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich is characterized by a connection with the Duma, liberal views and lack of restraint in political and personal assessments.» , ‒ note E.E. Petrov and K.O. Bityukov.

While in correspondence with the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, Nikolai Mikhailovich during 1916 regularly wrote to her about the “pernicious influence” of Alexandra Feodorovna, pointing out that “The way of thinking of A.F. took a threatening turn not only for the everyday interests of our country, but also for the interests of Nika and the entire dynasty "... He was no less negative about the Tsar's personnel appointments, demanding that the Empress Mother "open Nika's eyes." In the aristocratic yacht club, Nikolai Mikhailovich openly allowed himself to criticize the Emperor and Empress, spoke rather sharply about the abilities of the government and the command of the Russian army, tried to "open the eyes" of the Tsar to an imminent disaster, believing that its main culprits were not critics of the government, but its carriers ... Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, who, in his opinion, confused the Tsar by means of "clever machinations" with the support of "dark forces", aroused particular discontent of the Grand Duke, as already mentioned above. On November 1, 1916, Nikolai Mikhailovich sent a letter to the Tsar, in which he stated that if he "It was possible to eliminate this constant intrusion into all the affairs of the dark forces, the revival of Russia would immediately begin and the trust you lost from the vast majority of your subjects would return". “When the time comes, and it’s not far off, - lectured by the Grand Duke of the Emperor , - you yourself, from the height of the throne, can bestow the desired responsibility of ministers before you and the legislative institutions ... "

Among the other correspondents of the Grand Duke were members of the Progressive Boka Duma and N.N. Lvov, he also met with the Chairman of the State Duma M.V. Rodzianko, with whom he had a "great conversation." Nikolai Mikhailovich was aware of the composition of the "responsible ministry" outlined by the liberal opposition, providing this idea with all possible assistance. The Grand Duke also met with whom on the eve of the murder of G.E. Rasputin talked about the "dark forces" and "intrigues" of the Empress, after which the right-wing deputy, in his own words, "for several minutes, under the impression of what he had listened to, sat as if hypnotized" and came to his senses only after Nikolai Mikhailovich offered him a cigar ... Perhaps, modern researchers note, “This conversation became the starting point for both the anti-Rasputin speech of V.M. Purishkevich in the Duma on November 19, and for his participation in the murder of G.E. Rasputin "... Nikolai Mikhailovich also greeted the November "storm of power" undertaken in 1916 by opposition deputies of the State Duma, stating the next day after the "historic speech" of V.M. Purishkevich, during which he "Cried like a child, cried with shame": “I made a breach, and others continued the assault, which ended yesterday in the Duma. (...) This is my first victory. "

The Grand Duke's 1916 Notes perfectly illustrate his political views on the eve of the revolution. Particularly interesting in this regard are the pages devoted to the murder of G.E. Rasputin. (About the attitude of the Grand Duke to this crime, A.N. Benois writes in his diary as follows: “Very, they say, enjoying the whole story Conducted. Prince Nikolai Mikhailovich, who, according to some information, is a real instigator "). Describing the actions of the killers, Nikolai Mikhailovich noted: “Undoubtedly, they are neuropaths, some kind of aesthetes, and everything that they have done, although they have cleared the air, is a half measure, since it is imperative to put an end to both Alexandra Fyodorovna and Protopopov(by the Minister of the Interior - A.I.)... ... I am again flickering with plans of murder, not yet fully defined, but logically necessary, otherwise it may be even worse than it was. (...) It is still possible to get along with Protopopov, but how to neutralize Alexandra Fyodorovna? The task is almost impossible. Meanwhile, time passes, and with their departure and Purishkevich, I do not see and do not know other performers. "... True, realizing himself and, apparently, horrified by his own thoughts, the Grand Duke made a note: "But, she-she, I am not from the breed of aesthetes and, even less, murderers ..."

Sympathy for the murderers of Rasputin, as well as the participation of the prince in the "grand-ducal front" did not go unnoticed by the Emperor. “Information comes to me from all sides, - it was said in the letter of the Emperor, - that Nikolai Mikhailovich in the yacht club allows himself to say inappropriate things. Tell him to stop these conversations, otherwise I will take appropriate action. "... Justifying himself, Nikolai Mikhailovich ordered to convey to the Emperor the following: “I have a lot of vices, a tongue without bones. It may be my only fault that I write to imp every week. Maria Feodorovna a detailed letter about current events, according to the strength of her mind and conscience. In these letters I write everything, without being embarrassed by anything, and I speak my opinion without being embarrassed by either faces or other considerations. (...) ... The accusation against me is unfair and I consider myself innocent. ".

The Empress Alexandra Feodorovna was extremely indignant at the behavior of Nikolai Mikhailovich, who regarded his opposition activities as almost treason. She wondered why the Tsar would not frighten his relative with exile to Siberia, and indignantly wrote to his wife that Nikolai Mikhailovich spoke ill of her in the yacht club and at the same time was “hiding behind the back” of Empress Maria Feodorovna, which is “an abomination and betrayal” ... Concluding that Nikolai Mikhailovich is "the embodiment of all evil", "that all loyal people hate him," Alexandra Feodorovna conveyed to her husband the opinion given by Rasputin about the Grand Duke: "He is an insignificant man." Remembering rumors about the Jewish origin of the mother of Nikolai Mikhailovich, Alexandra Fedorovna exclaimed in her hearts: "He's a bad man, the grandson of a Jew!"

“Quite handsome and very smart, he was a hardened intriguer, - was confirmed by the head of the Chancellery of the Ministry of the Imperial Court, General A.A. Mosolov ... - ... He always criticized everyone, but he never did anything himself. (...) When the Tsar went to the front, Nikolai Mikhailovich remained in Petrograd. In the club, where he was always in the spotlight, his caustic remarks, overthrowing everything possible, did great harm to the autocracy. Criticism emanating from the highest spheres infected everyone with its poison and destroyed the Sovereign's moral authority. The Empress hated him to the core. It was Nikolai Mikhailovich who initiated the writing of a collective message to the Tsar (immediately after the murder of Rasputin), which finally quarreled the Tsar and his relatives. "

In the end, the Emperor's patience ran out (the signature under the collective letter of the Grand Dukes addressed to the Emperor, who spoke in defense of one of Rasputin's killers, the Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, overflowed the cup of patience), and on the last day of 1916, Nikolai Mikhailovich was ordered to leave for two months. estate Grushevka, Kherson province. Responding to the imperial command, Nikolai Mikhailovich wrote: “Alexandra Feodorovna is triumphant, but how long will the bitch keep power? And he(tsar - A.I.) what kind of person he is, he is disgusting to me, but I still love him, because he is not a bad soul, the son of his father and mother; maybe I love it by ricochet, but what a mean little soul! "

The capital's "society" expressed sympathy for the disgraced prince. "The whole city, they say, has been with him.", - noted in the diary the Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich. “In the highest circles, they were choking on stories about the expulsion of V. Kn. Nikolai Mikhailovich, - recalled the gendarme general A.I. Spiridovich. - ... Some, knowing V. Knyaz, only as a chatterbox, found the expulsion a too strict measure and blamed the Tsarina for it, of course. "... Word of mouth in high society passed on the words of Nikolai Mikhailovich, thrown on the eve of exile, that he would go to Tsarskoe Selo on January 1, because he “does not want to kiss hands ...” news of the "repression" against a member of the Imperial House: “Upon receiving the news of this, one historical precedent immediately comes to my mind. On November 19, 1787, Louis XVI exiled the Duke of Orleans to his estate of Villers-Cottreux to punish him for having declared in the Paris parliament that only the states-general had the right to authorize additional taxes to the king. So has Russia really reached 1787? - No! .. She went much further. Subjecting the Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich to severe punishment, the Emperor obviously wanted to terrorize the imperial family and he succeeded, because she was terrified; but Nikolai Mikhailovich did not deserve, perhaps, "neither this excessive honor, nor this offense." In essence, he is not dangerous. The decisive crisis that tsarism is experiencing in Russia calls for Retz or Mirabeau. And Nikolai Mikhailovich is more a critic and fronder than a conspirator; he loves salon epigrams too much. He is not in the slightest degree a man of risk and onslaught. Be that as it may, the conspiracy of the grand dukes misfired ".

On the way to exile, Nikolai Mikhailovich, after talking with representatives of the opposition V.V. Shulgin and, left an interesting note: “Shulgin - that he would be useful, but, of course, not for murder, but for a coup! Another, also solid type, Tereshchenko, a young, richest, but deep patriot, believes in the future, believes firmly, is sure that in a month everything will burst, that I will return from exile ahead of time. God grant! Drink honey with his lips. But what anger these people have for the regime, for her, for him, and they do not hide it all, and both speak with one voice about the possibility of regicide! "

The Grand Duke's hopes were soon justified, but only in part. From an easy exile, he was able to return to the capital during the February Revolution. Nikolai Mikhailovich welcomed the February Revolution and recognized the power of the Provisional Government. He met with several times, discussing with him the issue of the refusal of all Grand Dukes to the succession to the throne and the transfer of their appanage possessions in favor of the state. Very indicative is the desire of Nikolai Mikhailovich, immediately after the revolution, to erect a monument to the Decembrists, about which he wrote to Kerensky on March 7, 1917, offering to support this project financially.

He did not hesitate to publicly condemn the policy and personality of the Tsar, which aroused the anger of Grand Duke Georgy Mikhailovich, who wrote in one of his private letters that “to his horror” he read the words of his older brother in one of the newspapers, which he described as “low and unworthy disgusting ", As revenge on the" lying ". Being himself an opponent of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, Georgy Mikhailovich remarked: "We can talk to each other about whatever we want, but taking the dirt out into the street and reviling the unfortunate person is low ..." General P.N. Wrangel recalled: “In a number of newspapers there appeared“ interviews ”of the Grand Dukes Kirill Vladimirovich and Nikolai Mikhailovich, where they defamed the abdicated Tsar in the most unworthy way. It was impossible to read these interviews without indignation. "

M. Paleologue left the following testimony relating to the March days of 1917: “In the afternoon, driving along Millionnaya Street, I notice the Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich. Dressed in a civilian suit that looks like an old official, he wanders around his palace. He openly went over to the side of the Revolution and poured out optimistic statements. I know him enough not to doubt his sincerity when he asserts that henceforth the fall of the autocracy will ensure the salvation and greatness of Russia; but I doubt that he will retain his illusions for a long time, and I wish him not to lose them, as Philippe-Egalite lost his illusions. ".

But illusions tend to dissipate upon contact with harsh reality. Like many voluntary or involuntary perpetrators of the revolution, in the views of Nikolai Mikhailovich, an intelligent man, rather soon there was disappointment in the revolutionary events. “The anarchy is complete, and no one can say when this state of affairs will end. "Bolshevism" more and more seizes the provinces, and some districts in a number of provinces are completely devastated by peasants and deserters ... They burn and destroy everything, sparing no one. The Provisional Government is unable to curb this popular squall ... "- he wrote in early October 1917 to one of his correspondents. M. Paleologue, who communicated with the Grand Duke in May 1917, wrote down the following words in his diary: “How far from the splendid optimism he displayed at the start of the new regime! He does not hide his longing and sadness from me. (...) ... As he walks me through the salons to the lobby, there is excitement in his voice. (...) - I can't forget that I am a gallows! "

The last words were soon destined to come true. After the Bolsheviks came to power, Nikolai Mikhailovich, like the rest of the representatives of the House of Romanov, was persecuted. In March 1918, he, together with his brother Georgy Mikhailovich and cousin Dmitry Konstantinovich, was exiled to Vologda. On July 1, 1918, the Grand Duke, who was in exile, was arrested, and on July 21 he was transported to Petrograd and placed in the House of Preliminary Detention. The last Minister of War of the Provisional Government A.I. Verkhovsky, recalled: “The library was in charge of the former Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, who reproached me for arresting Nikolai Nikolaevich and the former Empress Maria Feodorovna in Crimea. Nikolai Mikhailovich laughed at me. "You arrested us in April, and now you are sitting with us. Firstly, it serves you right, and secondly, learn history," Nikolai Mikhailovich was a famous historian. "There is no middle ground in the revolutionary struggle. If you do not go with consistent revolutionaries , then, as you can see, you find yourself behind the same bars with us "".

While in prison, Nikolai Mikhailovich returned to historical studies. At the beginning of January 1919, he sent a petition, which he asked to be conveyed to A.N. Lunacharsky. The prince reported that, despite the difficult conditions of imprisonment and lack of material, he was writing a large work about the reformer Speransky. Nikolai Mikhailovich asked to return his freedom, to give him a break from moral and physical torment, after which he expressed his readiness to accept any work in his specialty from the new government, assuring that he did not and does not have any insidious plans against Soviet power. But the Soviet government did not need a progressive Grand Duke.

On January 9, 1919, Nikolai Mikhailovich, as a member of the "imperial pack", was sentenced to death by the Presidium of the Cheka. “My brothers, Grand Dukes Nikolai Mikhailovich and Georgy Mikhailovich, - wrote the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich , - met their death in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where, starting with Peter the Great, all Russian Tsars and Grand Dukes were buried. Maxim Gorky asked Lenin for pardon for Nikolai Mikhailovich, who was deeply respected even at the Bolshevik leaders for his valuable historical works and the well-known progressive way of thinking. "The revolution does not need historians," replied the head of the Soviet government and signed the death warrant. "... The petition of the Academy of Sciences, which asked for the prince, did not help either. The verdict was carried out on January 24, 1919. Together with Nikolai Mikhailovich and his brother Georgy, his cousins, Grand Dukes Pavel Alexandrovich and Dmitry Konstantinovich, were also shot. A prison attendant who witnessed this execution said: “At three in the morning the soldiers, named Blagovidov and Soloviev, took them out(Great Dukes - A.I.) naked to the waist and led to the territory of the Mint, where a common grave was dug at the fortress wall opposite the cathedral, where thirteen corpses already lay. They put the princes on the edge and opened fire on them ".

By a decree of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation dated June 9, 1999, Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich was rehabilitated. But what is characteristic: the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, which in 1981 glorified three of the four Great Dukes who were shot in the Peter and Paul Fortress, refused this to only one of them - Nikolai Mikhailovich, who made a feasible contribution with his extremely stupid "political activities" collapse of the Russian monarchy.

Swedish writer and journalist Staffan Scott wrote on this subject: “When the Russian Church Abroad in 1981 canonized all members of the Romanov dynasty who were killed during the revolution, as well as other victims of that period, the name of Nikolai Mikhailovich was not mentioned among them and no icons were written in his honor. The fact is that he sometimes called himself a socialist and, moreover, was a Freemason, and besides, from the point of view of the Church, he was considered an atheist. Knowing the views of Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, one can assume that he would be pleased that he had escaped the lot of the great martyr. ".

However, on the memorial plaque in memory of the four murdered Grand Dukes, installed in 2004 on the initiative of the rector of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, Abbot Alexander (Fedorov) on one of the pylons of the Grand Duke's tomb, by some misunderstanding, Nikolai Mikhailovich is called not only "the most worthy representative of the Russian Imperial House ", But also" faithful " ...

A good historian and, undoubtedly, a gifted scientist, Nikolai Mikhailovich turned out to be an extremely naive and short-sighted "politician" - apparently, sincerely wishing the country well and thinking that by his actions he was saving the monarchy from collapse, in fact he became one of its gravediggers ...

Prepared Andrey Ivanov, Doctor of Historical Sciences

And Felix The only heir to the richest Yusupov family, husband of the second cousin of Nicholas II, organizer of the murder of Rasputin in an ecstatic mood of spirit, I was with them and examined in detail all the places of the drama. Incredible! They quietly dine in the same dining room: husband, wife, Andrey Cousin of Nicholas II, fifth in line to the throne, Fedor and Nikita.

I can't understand the psyche. How, for example, can one explain the unlimited trust that Rasputin showed to the young Yusupov, trusting no one at all, always fearing being poisoned or killed?

It remains to assume again something completely incredible, namely - love, carnal passion for Felix, which darkened this hefty peasant-lecher and brought him to the grave. Was it possible that during their endless conversations, they only drank, ate and chatted? I am convinced that there was some physical outpouring of friendship in the form of kissing, mutual groping, and perhaps something even more cynical. Rasputin's sadism is beyond doubt, but how great was Felix's carnal perversion, I still have little idea, although rumors about his lusts were still widespread before his marriage.

This murder scene, where one cold-bloodedly poisoned the other and was only surprised that the poison did not work, and continued to drink with it! Further - the whole last struggle. The awakening of the murdered, the expression of his eyes, full of anger and bloodthirstiness, of course, understandable, this rage of a brazenly deceived bastard at the sight of a stunned murderer, this growling of a wounded beast to death - all this is disgusting in its realism, but if there was no carnal passion, is it all is it possible? Finally, the frenzy of Yusupov himself in front of the corpse of the murdered man and finishing off his already helpless victim with a tourniquet made of rubber. Why such anger, why such cynicism, such a perversion of feelings - all the same, a suffering, dying victim?

But, of course, it remains to guess and guess, and Rasputin took the whole truth of their relationship with him, as for Felix, he, of course, does not say a lot out of a feeling of bashfulness, especially in front of his wife's uncle. It seems to me that he is a candidate for madness in the future. To my repeated questions that his conscience really doesn’t torment him, that he did kill a man, there is always the same answer: "Nothing." - Did he even see him in a dream? - "Never".

The power of will is incredible, the power of the conviction that he has created something necessary is also complete, and the relationship of his wife and mother to him, which equally idolize him! I am a different generation, but his mother is only a little younger than me, and she is infected with the same disease - to extol murder! This is inexplicable to me, like all the details, to the smallest detail, inclusive, thought out in advance before the murder. If Rasputin was a beast, then what about the young Yusupov ??

Alexander I and the secret of Fyodor Kozmich Kudryashov Konstantin Vasilievich

Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich. The Legend of the Death of Emperor Alexander I in Siberia in the Image of Elder Fyodor Kozmich

In a country like Russia, since ancient times, people have often succumbed to the most ridiculous rumors, incredible legends and had a tendency to give faith to everything supernatural. One has only to remember the appearance of impostors during the time of Boris Godunov, the famous False Dmitry I in Moscow and False Dmitry II in Tushino; Stenki Razin - during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, and finally, Yemelyan Pugachev - under Catherine II, in order to be convinced of the disposition of the masses to believe in the crudest manifestations of the imagination of courageous adventurers. This was usually facilitated by the sudden death of the heir to the throne, or the monarch himself, as was the case with the murder of Tsarevich Dmitry, the execution of Alexei Petrovich and the violent death of Peter III.

When Emperor Alexander I died in Taganrog on November 19, 1825, after a short illness, rumors that the sovereign had retired to an unknown monastery immediately spread among the people; these rumors circulated in Moscow, as evidenced by various contemporaries, such as the Bulgakov brothers and others. The then engines of the revolutionary movement in Russia, that is, the future Decembrists, the spread of this kind of rumors and rumors played into the hands of maintaining the turmoil in the lower classes of the people, and the end of the twenties, that is, the beginning of the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, can be considered a time when legendary legends were not only about Alexander I, but also about Empress Elizabeth Alekseevna reached the greatest intensity. Then, in subsequent years, all this fell silent, and no one was interested in the legend about the disappearance of Emperor Alexander I.

At the end of the 60s, I think in 1866, a merchant from Tomsk, Khromov, appeared in Petersburg, who allegedly brought some papers to Emperor Alexander II from the deceased pious elder Fyodor Kozmich, who lived in a house that belonged to Khromov. They said that they took the papers from Khromov, put him temporarily in the Peter and Paul Fortress, and then released him, allowing him to go back to Tomsk, but on condition to keep his mouth shut. At the most careful examination, it turned out that there was no Khromov on the lists of persons who had ever sat in the Peter and Paul Fortress; that in the files of the Third Section there was no trace of either Khromov or the transferred papers; Finally, according to inquiries from Khromov's descendants, nothing of the kind was confirmed, except for the very fact of his trip to Petersburg. At the beginning of the reign of Emperor Alexander III, the merchant Khromov was again in St. Petersburg, addressed with petitions to their majesties and brought some little things that supposedly belonged to Elder Fyodor Kozmich, which he handed over or sent to the emperor. The fact of Khromov's arrival in St. Petersburg is true, the filing of petitions is also true, but again it was invented about things, just a photographic card of Elder Fyodor Kozmich was attached to the petition.

Finally, in 1897 and 1898, four volumes of NK Schilder's “History of the reign of Emperor Alexander I” appeared in print, where the entire legend about Fyodor Kozmich is told in detail and transparent hints are made that the author himself fully admits an incredible legend. For clarity, I quote the concluding words of NK Schilder in Volume IV: “If fantastic guesses and folk legends could be based on positive data and transferred to real soil, then the reality established in this way would leave behind the most daring poetic inventions; in any case, such a life could serve as a canvas for an inimitable drama, with a stunning epilogue, the main motive of which would be atonement. In this new image, created by folk art, Emperor Alexander Pavlovich, this "sphinx, not unraveled to the grave", no doubt, would appear as the most tragic face of Russian history, and his thorny life path would be strewn with an unprecedented afterlife apotheosis, shaded by the rays of holiness. "

On this kind of conclusion to the extensive and serious work, such as Schilder's historical research, comments are superfluous. I personally knew and deeply respected Nikolai Karlovich Schilder, I am convinced of the complete frankness of his views, but it always seemed incomprehensible to me how one can get carried away in serious historical work before finishing his major work with the above words, which can only support doubts and confuse the educated public. In support of the fact that my opinion is not unfounded, I will point out the appearance of a number of brochures and books on the topic of the Siberian elder, which appeared in the period from 1891 to 1901, both in Russia and in Siberia. Having dealt with this mysterious question since that time, I had to make sure more than once at the places of my research what can do, on the one hand, complete ignorance, and on the other, blind fear of some kind of responsibility. It turns out that the appearance of brochures about the Siberian elder Fyodor Kozmich attracted the attention of the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod K.P. So, in one of the monasteries, not far from Pskov, a monk came to me, promising to show something interesting if I did not hand him over to the Chief Prosecutor of the Synod. What turned out to be? He kept a full-length portrait of Fyodor Kozmich in oil paints, an exact copy of a famous photograph, and this portrait was hidden in some closet! Another time one of the bishops in Novgorod personally told me some episodes from his life, in connection with the legend about the elder, but asked me not to betray him in order to avoid troubles with his higher authorities. This bishop later died in the rank of metropolitan.

I was assisted in my research on the question of Fyodor Kozmich by a young man, Nikolai Apollonovich Lashkov, a former official for special assignments under the Novgorod governor, Count Medem. I twice sent Lashkova to Siberia at my expense, where he made the most detailed inquiries in the field and made a very interesting report on all the legends, talk, stories, anecdotes about Elder Fyodor Kozmich that he heard during his travels. In addition, Lashkov, on my instructions, visited a lot of monasteries in various regions of Russia to clarify the same issue. They encountered many difficulties, and mainly from the clergy, who either did not trust his powers, which I had given them, or feared trouble for themselves when they inspected various archives, especially monastic ones.

What is still known about Elder Fyodor Kozmich? What is reliable? What needs to be dropped into the legend area?

The elder appeared in Siberia in 1837, lived in various places, leading a hermitic life everywhere, enjoying the universal respect of the surrounding population and not revealing his identity to anyone. He was visited more than once by clergy, local bishops and casual travelers, especially after his final resettlement to Tomsk.

In 1859, at the invitation of the Tomsk merchant Semyon Feofanovich Khromov, Elder Fyodor Kozmich moved to live with him, having a separate, modest cell, where he died on January 20, 1864, in extreme old age. In the fence of the Tomsk Alekseevsky monastery was visible until recently the grave of an elder, quite modest, with an ordinary cross, on which the following inscription was made: "The body of the Great Blessed Elder, Fyodor Kozmich, who died in Tomsk on January 20, 1864, is buried here." The grave is in great honor among the devout strata of the society of the city of Tomsk, it has also been visited by travelers for many years. Of the famous people, this grave was visited by the now safely reigning sovereign, while still an heir, during his trip to Siberia, and before that, Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich and a member of the State Council Galkin-Vraskoy, who renewed the elder's grave, having built a kind of chapel on it.

In addition to the late N.K. Schilder, who mentioned (in the IV volume of his work) about the story of two exiled courtiers who allegedly recognized the elder as Tsar Alexander Pavlovich, the same episode is found in brochures about Fyodor Kozmich with others like that, messages; however, Schilder himself says about the resemblance of the elder to the Emperor Alexander I (p. 447, vol. IV):

"The face of the elder resembles several features of the Emperor Alexander Pavlovich."

Of course, such notes, both in brochures about Fyodor Kozmich and in the history of Alexander I Schilder, should leave an impression, but all these are only poetic reflections of a legend that is very tempting, but has no basis whatsoever. So, for example, among the things left in the elder's cell is the icon "The Pochaev Mother of God in Miracles" with the initials "A", barely noticeable, but to which special significance was attached; the icon itself is very damaged, part of it is missing, and, obviously, it has undergone damage from time to time. The elder's things remained in his cell: a black cloth caftan, a wooden staff, stockings made of sheep wool, leather shoes, two pairs of black suede mittens and a black woolen belt with an iron buckle. Everything else in the cell of the newest origin, especially the mass of icons donated by various persons, as well as two portraits of Emperor Alexander I, one in coronation vestments, bought by Khromov in St. Petersburg, at the Apraksin market, and the other, of a smaller size, a copy from the portrait of Dow, it is unknown by whom here, in a cell, hanged.

The merchant Khromov knew, of course, what he was doing, placing this kind of portrait in the elder's cell after his famous trip to Petersburg, and his heirs would be glad to intrigue the public in one way or another and even made unspoken proposals for high-ranking officials to purchase Fyodor Kozmich's cell. Perhaps the following handwritten remains from the elder deserve some attention: 1) two leaves in the form of a ribbon, on which (on both sides) there are separate words, scraps of sayings, letters, numbers and 1837 with the number March 26, as if written by Fyodor himself Kozmich, which is quite possible; 2) an envelope with the inscription: "To the gracious sir Semion Feofanovich Khromov from Feodor Kozmich" and 3) a copy from the note left by Elder Feodor Kozmich dated June 2, 1849. All these three documents are probably still in the possession of Khromov's heirs and were in the originals made available to me; magnifying photographs were taken from them, and the originals were sent back to Tomsk with gratitude. The first of the three documents is called the "secret" of Fyodor Kozmich. Despite the most thorough searches for the key to this note, no one has yet been able to solve this "secret" or decipher the text. As for the envelope, where it is written clearly and in firm handwriting: "From Fyodor Kozmich", it was handed over to specialists in the analysis of handwriting; all the letters on the envelope were separately enlarged and compared with another envelope written by the hand of Emperor Alexander I, but all experts unanimously recognized that there was not the slightest similarity, both in general character and in individual letters, between both handwritings. The third note is a set of sayings from the Holy Scriptures, and it is difficult to guess for what reason it was written. Since this note is a copy, not the original, it has the least value.

These meager data exhaust almost everything that we managed to collect about the Siberian elder. The material, unfortunately, is small and does not give any positive data for identifying his identity.

Let us now turn to the events that took place in November 1825 in Taganrog. Emperor Alexander Pavlovich fell ill on November 4 in Mariupol, returning from a trip to Crimea, but even before that, namely in Bakhchisarai, he felt the first attacks of malignant fever. The next day, on the 5th, the sovereign arrived in Taganrog and took to bed. Adjutant General Prince Pyotr Mikhailovich Volkonsky, who was in the presence of the sovereign, kept a detailed journal about the course of the monarch's illness, which began on November 5. This magazine was printed in its entirety by Schilder. The physicians Willie and Tarasov, who accompanied His Majesty, also left detailed reports on the sovereign's illness. Schilder repeatedly refers to the notes of doctor Tarasov in his story. When Alexander I died on November 19 in Taganrog, an autopsy was made on his body, which was embalmed. The autopsy report was signed by nine doctors, namely: life-doctor Baronet Willie, life-doctor Stofregen, doctors: Reingold, Tarasov, Dobert, Lakier, doctors: Yakovlev, Vasiliev and Aleksandrovich. Adjutant General Alexander Ivanovich Chernyshev sealed the protocol in the following terms: “I saw the signs described by the doctors and was present when the body of His Imperial Majesty Emperor Alexander Pavlovich was opened. Adjutant General Chernyshev ". In addition, a French translation of this act has been made. All these data were published by Schilder, and if I mentioned them, it was only because our late historian attached special importance to these trifles. So, for example, the act on the death of the sovereign was signed by two adjutant generals, Baron Dibich and Prince P.M. Volkonsky, and two doctors, Willie and Stofregen, and the above protocol on the autopsy was signed only by Adjutant General A.I. Chernyshev. Schilder paid special attention to this difference in the number of signatures, wondering why the autopsy report was signed only by Chernyshev. I dare to think that it was a simple accident that did not matter. Details about the illness and death of Alexander Pavlovich can still be found in a number of writings of various personalities who were at that time in Taganrog, namely: in the letters of Dibich to Konstantin Pavlovich, Solomka to Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, chamber-maid of honor Valueva and Princess Sofia Grigorievna Volkonskaya to the dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna; this also includes information obtained from the words of the valet Fedorov and the coachman Ilya: “Leaving Petersburg very early, so that only the sun began to appear on the horizon, and having passed the outpost, the emperor ordered the crew to stop and he himself got to his feet in a carriage, about a quarter of an hour deigned to stand and look at his capital in all directions, and, as his heart foreshadowed, for the last time. Here, from September 1 to November 1, a dark comet was visible, whose rays extended upward over a large space, then they noticed that it was flying, and whose rays extended to the west; besides, on one night in October, at 2 o'clock in the middle of the night, many residents of Taganrog saw two stars above the palace in the following order: at first they were at a distant distance from one another, then they merged, and again diverged up to three times, after that from one star a dove became, sat on the second star, and after a short time fell, and it was no longer visible. Then the second star gradually disappeared. - The sovereign asked his coachman Elijah about the comet: "Have you seen the comet?" “I saw it, sir,” he answered. "Do you know what she portends?" - "Calamity and Sorrow". Then, after a pause, the emperor deigned to conclude: "So God pleases." On the eve of His Majesty's departure to the disastrous Crimea, the Emperor deigned to write a letter in his own hand to his parent. It was in the afternoon at 4 o'clock, at this time a cloud found and it became very dark. The sovereign ordered candles to be given to the valet; meanwhile, as the sky cleared, it was still light and the sun, the valet dared to come up and report: Would you order, your Majesty, to accept the candles? The sovereign asked: "For what?" - "In order, sir, that it is not good to write in Russian with candles during the day." - “Is that what it is? Tell the truth, do you really think to say that when they see candles from the street, they will think that there is a dead man here? " - "So, sir, according to the remark of the Russians." - "Well, when so, - said the emperor, - then take the candles." The next day, that is, October 20, our dear monarch deigned to leave for the Crimea, the empress and prince Volkonsky begged not to go there, but the sovereign gave his word to Count Vorontsov to be there and wished to fulfill his promise without fail, while he was there he caught a severe cold that I hid it from everyone for a very long time, and on the way back, 250 miles from Taganrog, in the town of Orekhov, they noticed his illness, where Dr. Willie suggested that his Majesty take medicine, but the emperor did not agree; then, having reached Mariupol, he became very ill; chills and fever intensified, but in order to save his majesty it was not desirable to accept anything from Latin cuisine, as the sovereign himself called his road pharmacy; having arrived in Taganrog on the 5th of November, the disease had an even stronger evil effect; on the first evening of his arrival, when the candles were brought in, the emperor deigned to recall his previous conversation with the valet, said to him: "Fedorov, I am not very well." - "Sovereign, you must use it." The sovereign replied: "No, brother, remember our previous conversation." The valet burst into tears. The Emperor, noticing this, said: “The candles that I ordered you to remove from the table do not leave my head. It means me to die, who will stand in front of me. " - “Your Majesty, what do you deign to say, God save us from such misfortune,” - and this ended the conversation. The disease increased from time to time, and all the requests of the doctors remained in vain, but finally the emperor, seeing his weakness, on Sunday 18 of this month, deigned to express his highest consent to the invitation of the local council of the archpriest, in order to confess and partake of the Holy Mysteries of Christ.

Humility, meekness, diligence and firmness in the Christian religion, as well as the immutable trust in the mercy of God sovereign emperor were absolutely extraordinary. He said to his spiritual father before confession: "Please sit down, you treat me like a Christian, forget my majesty." This day, by order of the empress, the archpriest could hardly beg his majesty to start using it from the doctor; but this was already too late - flies, mustard and leeches were applied, but all this did not produce the desired effect, and the monarch did not want to take any medicine into the insides. His only and everlasting denial was: "It is so pleasing to God." On the 16th, until his death, they saw only the suffering and patience of the sovereign. He could no longer speak. The initial illness of His Majesty was fainting and heavy sleep, then the strongest heat in the whole body, which forever deprived us of the kind, meek and merciful king. The Almighty Creator strengthened the firmness and greatness of the spirit of the empress. She was with the emperor for a day and a half; an hour before his death, the sovereign, opening his eyes and seeing the most beloved queen, Baron Dibich, Prince Volkonsky and other persons standing by him, could not speak, but he still had a memory; made a movement with his hand, called the empress, who approached him. The sovereign took her hand for the last time, kissed it and, pressing it to his heart, bid her farewell forever, after which, soon after, in a deep silent silence, he gave his spirit to the Almighty. Finally, at the end of the soul of her great husband, she herself deigned to close her dearest tsar's eyes and, tying her chin with a handkerchief, bursting into tears, received a severe fainting. They immediately took her to another room. "

Almost all these documents agree, even in details, about the course of the disease and about the very death of the sovereign, nowhere is there a hint of the possibility of the sick monarch disappearing or suspicion of the resemblance of the deceased sovereign to another person, when the body of the deceased was laid in a coffin and daily memorial services. Finally, there are letters from Empress Elizabeth Alekseevna to her mother, Margrave of Baden, where she tells in the most touching expressions about the last days of her husband's life and the details of his death. The same information has been preserved in an excerpt from the Empress's notes, the original of which is in the archives of His Majesty's own library in the Winter Palace.

In addition, there are in His Majesty's own library copies of two letters from an unknown person from the Shikhmatov family to his mother and brother, about the last days of the life of Emperor Alexander I. I cite them in full:

Ah, my dear brother and dear mother, I don’t know where to start about our general misfortune. You already know that our father, the Emperor, deigned to return from the Crimea, infected with a fever, which turned into a rotten and bilious fever, which was hidden from us until the 15th, but as I already wrote to you that we learned about this by chance, which could not be hidden from the whole city, at that moment all the people rushed to the churches to ask God with tears for the salvation of our king, and it seems that our sinful prayers were answered! During the Mass itself, our father came to himself, who had been without a tongue for a whole day and was languishing in the Empress's arms, but he opened his eyes, took the Empress's hand, kissed her and said to her: “You are very tired,” he ordered himself to be seated for five minutes. sat, ordered to make pearl barley soup, looked out the window, said: "What a beautiful day" - and went to bed, and until eight o'clock in the evening he felt very good, ate soup, - immense joy spread throughout the city ... 18 - and imagine our horror, this day in the morning Prince Volkonsky sent to my son-in-law to ask him to prepare his house in case of general misfortune for the empress, whom they disposed to transport to us; but God is merciful, He raises the dead, and our father and sovereign still exist; we hope that he will be saved by universal tears and prayers that continue here day and night. This very minute my woman came from the palace to tell us that, glory to God, our sovereign Emperor has become better, and now they have taken over the local head physician Alexandrovich, about whom my son-in-law suggested, for he has been using my house for twenty years, and especially fever miraculously heals; and the court doctors should be hanged that they allowed the fever to combine with the fever, although they justify themselves that the sovereign did not want to take any medicine; but they are to blame for the fact that it was hidden from the public, which of course would have rushed with all the people to his windows and would have begged him to be treated, to which he would surely have agreed. Now only all hope and hope in God, who strengthens our mother, the Empress. She does not leave the bed of her adored spouse. They pay by mutual care of one another. When the sovereign deigned to come here, his first concerns were to arrange the palace as quietly as possible for the empress, and did not leave a single corner without his own observation, so that there was no blowing anywhere, and that all the benefits were observed for her peace. Finally, upon her arrival here, he was inseparable with her. The day began with the report to him: "The Empress is awake," - he will order tea to be served to her; takes a bite - they report to him; if he pleases to go for a walk, he will be reported; will return - also; and it was like a clockwork that he watched all her movements, and with that care and affection her health was strengthened from day to day; but we are afraid that it will upset itself again. This is what we pay for the Crimean voyage, against which the whole yard was. But who dared to stop him? One empress asked him to leave until spring. But he said: "Be calm, I will just look at that edge and be back soon." And there they took advantage of that opportunity, offered him to buy the estate of Count Kushelev, who was illuminated by mountains, gorges and presented to him in a charming form, where they drank his health, and he stood for more than half an hour without a hat in the most cruel wind; the next day I rode over 80 miles on horseback, the day was hot, the wind was terrible and the night was extremely cold. This is the consequence of his illness, then was it possible not to warn him to that person who knows the climate that various fevers are always raging there, and now the most evil; that's how they sacrificed solely in order to draw all the tsar's attention to that land, and deprive the whole of Russia of the merciful sovereign, whom only forces have been fighting with death for several days. Now they came to say that at midnight, at 12 o'clock, it became very bad again and he was suffering. Merciful God, support the queen - and I am losing strength! - 19th, at 11 o'clock. We no longer have our father, and we unfortunate people must tell you our heartfelt sorrow. Ah, this unfortunate moment decided the fate of Russia.

Dear brother, I have nothing to say to your consolation. Now there are only tears and sighs about the loss of our father the sovereign, who, according to anatomy, had three ounces of water in his head on his brain; but his insides were so healthy that he ought to have lived for a hundred years. Here are the consequences of the Crimean voyage, which I already wrote to you, that he stood in an open place without a hat for more than half an hour, where there was a hot day and a piercing wind, from which he received an angry fever, which combined with fever, and finally all the cold stopped in his head , which ended his invaluable days for the whole of Russia. We now mourn why they concealed his illness from us until the moment when we had already lost hope in him, and why we did not invite the local doctors who know the properties of the Crimean fever. Apparently, the court doctors were afraid of losing fame and therefore hid from the public the position of our father and sovereign, even from all those around him, whom we saw every day; and they told us that, thank God, the sovereign is better, only there is still a fever: Loginov told me this on Saturday evening, and on Sunday night the sovereign was introduced, and already his sufferings continued with various changes until Thursday, that is, until 19 th day. The empress is still strengthened by the merciful God, whom they asked to move to our house, to which she did not want to agree and said to Prince Volkonsky: “I am sure that you share my misfortune with me, but do you really think that one crown tied me to to my husband? I ask you not to separate me from him as long as there is a possibility, ”after which no one dared to ask her, and she remained all day alone in her rooms, and went incessantly to the body without witnesses; and when he died, she herself tied his cheeks with a handkerchief, closed her eyes, crossed herself, kissed, wept, then got up, looked at the image and said: "Lord, forgive my sin, you wanted to deprive me of it," and went into her rooms where she has already given complete freedom to her tears. The next day, the prince again asked her to move to our house, although for a few days, to which she agreed, and already the 4th day with us; but she deigns to go every day to the body and is completely inconsolable. Support her, merciful God!

There is also the most detailed information about the embalming of the body of Emperor Alexander I. They are extracted from the memoirs of Nikolai Ignatievich Shenig (died in 1860), who was under Count Dibich, which were placed in the Russian Archive in 1880 (III, pp. 267–326 ). These notes are replete with interesting details about the sovereign's stay in Taganrog in 1825.

Meanwhile, suppositions were made by lovers of the legend that the sovereign, being sick, disappeared a few days before his death, that another person was put in his coffin (this person was even called by his last name), they assured that the empress was not present at his death and did not see him even dead; they forgot that there are engravings, lithographs and bone-carved paintings depicting the last minutes of the life of Emperor Alexander I, which show portraits of all faces, with Empress Elizaveta Alekseevna at the head, crying during the last minutes of his life. If we admit the slightest plausibility of these assumptions, then we still need to reckon with the facts of their implementation, purely from a practical point of view. The sovereign, having decided on such a disappearance, had to have accomplices, several or one at least, either from among the entourage, or from the empress's side, or from the persons of his servants, or, finally, from among his doctors.

Who were those who were around Alexander Pavlovich in Taganrog in November 1825? First of all, his wife, Empress Elizaveta Alekseevna, for whom a trip was undertaken to the south of Russia, due to the precarious health of Her Majesty. As you know, the Empress also died soon after, on her way back to Petersburg, in the small town of Belev, on May 3, 1826. Among the outstanding confidants in Taganrog were: the Chief of the General Staff Adjutant General Dibich, Adjutant General Prince P.M. Among the doctors were there: Willie's life-doctor, Dr. Tarasov, and Her Majesty Stofregen's medical life. The sovereign was also accompanied by the wagenmeister Colonel Solomka, the valet Anisimov, the valet Fedorov, the life coachman Ilya Baykov and other lower court officials. The Empress was with the chamber-maid of honor E.P. Valuev, as well as Princess Sofya Grigorievna Volkonskaya, the wife of Prince Peter Mikhailovich.

If the sovereign had the idea to hide imperceptibly, he would have to enter into an agreement with one of the aforementioned persons, and besides, he would also have to take care of finding a dead person who could replace him in a coffin. No matter how fantastic this kind of plan would be, the first part of it, that is, its disappearance, can be admissible in practice, provided that the secret is unconditionally protected by the accomplices of such a drama; As for the execution of the second part of an incredibly difficult undertaking, that is, replacing the sovereign with some suitable dead man, it seems to us that, attaching importance to this issue, we would have entered the realm of simply fabulous tales. Nevertheless, there were people who hinted exactly who should be looked for in this role as a substitute in the coffin of the reigning emperor.

The fact is that on November 3, 1825, returning to Taganrog from the Crimea, the sick sovereign met, before reaching Orekhov, who was traveling from Petersburg with the papers of the courier Maskov; accepting the papers, Alexander Pavlovich ordered the courier to follow him in the direction of Taganrog. Due to the negligence of the driver, Maskov was thrown out of the crossbar at some sharp turn and, hitting a stone, died right there ...

During my conversations with the late Nikolai Karlovich Schilder, he repeatedly dwelled on this case. After a series of efforts to find any of the descendants of the murdered courier Maskov, Schilder managed to track down a certain Apollo Apollonovich Kurbatov, a professor of chemistry at the Institute of Technology. I personally invited the professor to my place, and this is what he conveyed to me in 1902, shortly after the death of Schilder himself. A.A.Kurbatov was his mother's grandson of courier Maskov, and their family had the wrong conviction, not the assumption that their grandfather Maskov was buried in the Cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress instead of Emperor Alexander I, that this was a legend to him, the professor, it is also known that Maskov's children admitted the possibility of such a legend. Unfortunately, all Maskov's children died long ago, there were five of them, two sons and three daughters, and A.A.Kurbatov's father, Apollo Mitrofanovich, who died in 1857, and his wife, Alexandra Nikolaevna, born Maskova, were no longer alive. who died in the 90s. Professor A.A.Kurbatov himself (at that time already an elderly man) died in 1903. I managed to find other descendants of both Maskov's sons and his other daughters.

In any case, it is curious that this kind of legend could exist at all and, according to the testimony of Professor Kurbatov, it was kept secret in their family and, for obvious reasons, was avoided to be made public. In the Moscow Lefortovo archive, I found not only Maskov's formal list, but also a detailed report from Captain Mikhailov to the commander of the courier corps Major Vasilyev, written on November 6, 1825 from Taganrog. It is similar to Schilder's story and Tarasov's description, but besides, the exact place where the courier Maskov is buried is indicated, namely in the village where the accident happened to him: was sent by order of the Chief of the General Staff of His Excellency Adjutant General Dibich from the city of Orekhov. " The Maskov family was granted, by imperial command, the full allowance he received during his lifetime, and, in addition, the amount was released several times to pay debts, and the youngest daughter of Alexander (later Kurbatov) was assigned to state support in the bourgeois school of noble maidens.

Consequently, there is no doubt that the body of the deceased courier Maskov was buried the next day after the incident, that is, November 4, fifteen days before the death of the sovereign. It remains only to be glad that documentary it is possible to prove all the incongruity of this legend regarding Maskov. It was also said about some soldier of the Semyonovsky regiment, who bore a great resemblance to Alexander Pavlovich, personally known to the emperor and allegedly located or sent to Taganrog. There are no positive indications of this circumstance.

Continuing my research, I turn to the further fate of the remains of Alexander I on their way from Taganrog to St. Petersburg. The adjutant general, Count Vas, was entrusted to accompany the body of the deceased emperor. You. Orlov-Denisov, together with other persons of the sovereign's retinue, who were entrusted with duty at the coffin along the route of the sad procession. I will quote in full two reports of Count Orlov-Denisov dated February 6 and 7, 1826, addressed to Baron Dibich, Chief of the General Staff of His Majesty:

I. “By the highest order, dated February 2, no. 196, your Excellency was pleased to convey to me the opinion presented by the chief medical inspector for the army, life-physician Willie, regarding the lead coffin containing the body of the blessed memory of Emperor Alexander Pavlovich. Having taken upon myself the high and sacred duty for me to accompany the priceless remains of the sovereign emperor reposed in Bose, I made it my most important duty to vigilantly keep them, both during the procession itself, and during overnight stays and days. From the instructions enclosed with this in a copy of the instructions to the aide-de-camp on duty at the coffin, Your Excellency, please discern my orders on this subject; moreover, the medical-surgeon nadv. owls. Tarasov was instructed by me to strictly observe the proper temperature at the coffin, who, following without interruption during the procession with him, during the nights and days, with great accuracy looks after the contents of the coffin, as much as possible, in the lowest temperature. Regarding the examination of the coffin and the position in it of the body of the emperor itself, then, not daring hitherto to proceed with it before receiving the highest will, I will not hesitate to do this now after leaving Moscow at a new convenient occasion during the night, trying to do this, as much as possible, more secluded and more careful, I will not fail to inform Your Excellency in detail about the subsequent events. "

(Sent from the aide-de-camp, Count Stroganov).

II. “After a safe departure from Moscow, on the second night in the village of Chashoshkovo, on February 7, at 7 o'clock in the afternoon, after all outsiders were removed from the church, the adjutant generals: Count Osterman-Tolstoy, Borozdin and Sipyagin and me, the adjutant wing, colonels: Herman , Shkurin, Kokoshkin, Count Zalutsky and Captain Plautin, also guards colonels, cavalry guard Arapov, Solomka, and medical surgeon Tarasov to verify the position of the body of Emperor Alexander resting in Bose, an opening of the lead coffin was undertaken, and he, the following : after removing the wooden lid, the lid of the lead coffin was in its place and in perfect safety, except for only the corner of the right side near the head, which went down one line, in the same place the end of the iron rod, which serves as a support for the lead lid, lagged slightly behind its place. When the lead lid was lifted as carefully as possible by us, the position of the body itself in the coffin appeared to us in perfect order and safety, so that in the packing of this not the slightest change on the journey followed. At this autopsy, apart from a fragrant and balsamic smell, no gas was noticeable. After that, both coffins were closed by us as before ”. It seems that the reports of Count Orlov-Denisov to Baron Dibich are written clearly, all those present at the opening of the coffin are also named. All these persons saw the body of the deceased sovereign, embalmed, in a coffin, and none of them, either in the posthumous notes, or in conversations and letters, doubted the features of the deceased lying before them, and two and a half months had passed since the death of the emperor in Taganrog, and on the way, the body could easily deteriorate and change, especially with the state of the roads at that time. But, in addition to the above evidence, there are also notes printed in Berlin by Leopold von Gerlach, who accompanied Prince Wilhelm of Prussia (the future German emperor), who arrived for representation during the funeral and was present at the opening of the coffin near Tsarskoye Selo.

It is quite understandable that close relatives, like mother and brothers, as well as Prince William of Prussia, who often saw the deceased sovereign, had to find changes in the features of the deceased, which occurred both from embalming and from shaking along the way. Finally, on March 5, in Chesme, near Tsarskoe Selo, the body of the emperor was transferred from the previous coffin to a new bronze coffin, again by the adjutant generals, in the presence of Prince Alexander Nikolaevich Golitsyn and Prince Alexei Borisovich Kurakin. This is evidenced by the adjutant general Count Komarovsky and the doctor Tarasov in their notes. In addition, twice before that, namely at the second passage from Novgorod, in the presence of Count Arakcheev, and in Babin, before reaching Tsarskoe Selo, the coffin was opened to inspect the body of the sovereign. Schilder details these autopsies in volume IV of history (see pp. 437 and 438). After all these testimonies, one can hardly still doubt the authenticity of the personality of Emperor Alexander in the coffin, especially since, I repeat, none of his contemporaries expressed doubts either during his lifetime or after in any papers on this issue. Meanwhile, reasons for this kind of doubt existed both then, and much more so than in later times. It was known that Alexander Pavlovich, leaving for the south from Petersburg, prayed for a long time in the Kazan Cathedral, visited some monk in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, where he remained with him for a long time in conversation; that the sovereign had a certain presentiment that he would no longer see his capital; that, leaving Petersburg, His Majesty looked around several times, as if saying goodbye, and was in a gloomily concentrated mood of spirit.

Schilder puts it this way: “Before leaving St. Petersburg, the sovereign stopped at the outpost, stood up in his carriage and, turning back, gazed at the city for several minutes in thought, as if saying goodbye to it. Whether it was a sad foreboding, inspired by the meeting with the schema-monk, or was it a firm determination not to return to the emperor any more - who can solve this mysterious question ”(p. 354). Of course, in these words of the historian doubts sound again and gives the reader only a reason for all kinds of assumptions.

There were other rumors about his alleged desire to abdicate the throne. These rumors had their basis, since Alexander really expressed more than once that he was tired of the burden of ruling Russia, that he needed peace. If such sayings of Alexander Pavlovich were known to his closest relatives, then they could have succumbed to all doubts, having learned about the unexpected death of the sovereign after a short illness in Taganrog. In reality, everything turned out quite simply and no one came to mind in those days to compose fantastic guesses. And in the personality and actions of Emperor Alexander, especially in the last years of his life, there was something to ponder over, and even his contemporaries he more than once puzzled, before that his techniques were sometimes mysterious and enigmatic. One has only to recall the acts on the issue of succession to the throne, of which the original was kept in the Assumption Cathedral, and a copy was left in the Senate. When Prince A. N. Golitsyn allowed himself to notice to the sovereign before his departure to Taganrog that it was inconvenient to leave the acts that change the order of succession to the throne during a prolonged absence unpublished and what danger could be born from this in the event of a sudden misfortune, the sovereign replied: God: He will arrange everything better than we weak mortals ”(Schilder, vol. IV, p. 350).

Obviously, this kind of behavior of Alexander Pavlovich amazed not only relatives and close associates, but should have given rise to other persons to be surprised, as well as made it possible for all sorts of rumors and rumors to arise. The archive of the Office of the Ministry of War contains a collection of such rumors, in the amount of 51, recorded by a certain courtyard Fyodor Fedorov, under the title: “Moscow news or new truthful and false rumors, which later become more visible, which are true, and which are false, and now they cannot be asserted. I cannot alone, but I decided to describe at my leisure, for a distant time unforgettable, namely 1825, from December 25 ”. I will cite the most typical of these rumors concerning Emperor Alexander, since many others refer to the Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich.

“3 rumor. The sovereign was killed, cut and searched for his body for a long time, and probably they cannot confirm whether his body was found, and it is impossible to find out, for this they made a wax mask on his face.

7 hearing. The sovereign was drunk with such drinks, from which he fell ill and died. His whole body was so blackened that it was not suitable to show it in any way. That is why they made a wax lining, and a lead coffin of 80 pounds.

9 rumor. The sovereign is alive, he was sold into foreign bondage.

10 hearing. The sovereign is alive, he left in a light boat at sea.

11 hearing. The tsar's coffin is being carried by coachmen, who were given 12 thousand rubles for the carriage, which they find very suspicious. Shulgin, the Moscow police chief, talked about this, and even Prince Golitsyn, the Moscow governor-general, is in considerable doubt about this.

20 hearing. Prince Dolgorukov Yuri Vladimirovich, the old prince, after the blessed death of Alexander 1, has not yet sworn allegiance to any of the new sovereigns, but first wants to see the body of the deceased sovereign with his own eyes, then he will swear allegiance to someone, then the people from this expect something sad. (Prince Yur. Vl. Dolgoruky died in Moscow as a deep old man, 90 years old, in 1830).

24th hearing. When the sovereign went to Taganrog, many gentlemen pursued him all the way with the intention of killing him; two and caught up in one place, but did not dare to kill. So the people conclude that the sovereign was killed in Taganrog by loyal fiends, that is, by gentlemen noble souls, the foremost scoundrels in the world.

25th hearing. Countess Orlova and the wife of Count Potemkin were whipped for doing balls at which there were conspiracies for the royal surname, but they could not prove it to the emperor, loyal maids of honor, grateful canals.

31 rumors. During the passage through Moscow, the sovereign's body was in Moscow from a certain village, a deacon, he also looked, and when he arrived in the village the peasants began to ask him if they had seen the sovereign, and he replied: what kind of sovereign, it was the devil that they were taking, not the sovereign. Then the peasant hit him in the ear and then announced to the steward and the priest, that this deacon was taken to Moscow, and the priest and the deacon too. The priest was released from Moscow and dismissed from the service, but the deacon and the deacon are still being held, and it is not known what will happen to them.

33 hearing. The tsar's coachman Ilya Baykov was poisoned with poison in a pie and could not give him milk to drink, and the doctor who treated the late emperor died when he arrived in St. Petersburg.

34 hearing. When the sovereign of the deceased is brought to Petersburg and his body is placed in the aforementioned cathedral, then the entire royal family will examine, and there will be no other rank except the royal family in the cathedral, and his body will be taken out of the coffin and examined by whoever follows.

36 hearing. When the sovereign is brought to Petersburg, they will examine him in the presence of foreign kings and envoys.

37 hearing. The sovereign himself will greet the sovereign's body, his own body, and at 30 miles the ceremony will be arranged by him himself, and his adjutant, who was hacked up in his place, is being taken, who told him, and he then fled and hid to Petersburg.

39 hearing. When the sovereign was in Taganrog, several soldiers come to that chamber and ask: "What is the sovereign doing?" They were told that the sovereign was writing; they went away. The next night, the soldiers came again and asked: "What is the sovereign doing?" They were answered: "The sovereign is asleep." On the third night they came again, asked: "What is the sovereign doing?" They were told: "The sovereign walks through the chambers." One soldier went up to the sovereign and said to him: "Today they are prepared to cut you up without fail"; to this the sovereign said to the soldier: "Do you want to be hacked to pieces for me?"; to this the soldier said: "I do not want either one or the other"; the sovereign said to him: "You will be buried like me, and your whole family will be rewarded." The soldier agreed to this and put on the tsar's uniform, and the emperor was lowered through the window ... and so on.

Life of Elder Fyodor Kuzmich In the early autumn of 1836, a tall old peasant with a long, thick beard drove up to one of the forges located on the outskirts of the city of Krasnoufimsk in the Perm province. The blacksmith noticed that the old horse was a good breed,