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- Historical Context -
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The Romanov dynasty began in 1613 when Mikhail Feodorovich was
elected sovereign of all of Russia. It came to a brutal end 300 years later with the
murder of Nicholas II by the Bolsheviks. |
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At the beginning
of the 20th century, Swiss tutors are fashionable in Russia! That's why a 25 years old
Swiss young people, Pierre Gilliard, is hired as French professor for Duke Serge de
Leuchtenberg, the son of a Czar's cousin. The next year, Gilliard met the imperial Romanov
family during an invitation and the Czar and his wife seek him later to teach their two
elder daughters, Olga and Tatiana.
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Nicholas II had a weak personality and was not at all prepared
for his future post as Czar. This man, who only aspired for a restful family life, became
the head of a huge state in full mutation after his father's death. He had not anticipated
such a change in Russia and he always reacted under the pressure of events, either too
late, or too clumsily. Moreover, he was conscious of the holy character of his mission and
he would always defend the monarchy's prerogatives when important concessions were
inevitable. Nicholas's wife was the German-born granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England - Alix, Princess von Hesse, who became Aleksandra when she joined the Russian Orthodox Church in preparation for her wedding. |
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They had five children: (at the times of their deaths), Grand Duchesses Olga (22), Tatiana
(21), Maria (19), Anastasia (17), and the Tsarevich Alexei (13).
Nicholas's rule began on several ominous notes: As the future Czarina Aleksandra first appeared officially in Russia during Alexander III's funeral, people said, "She arrives behind a coffin, she will bring bad luck." To mark the coronation of a new Czar, it was Russian tradition to offer food and drink to the people. When Nicholas came to the throne, about 700,000 people were assembled in Khodynskoe field to celebrate it, but a stampede occured and 2000 people were crushed to death.
Nicholas and Aleksandra made the situation even worse by attending a ball the night after
the tragedy, giving the impression that they had a distinct lack of concern for their
subjects. Unrest continued in Russia; an echo of turmoil on the world scene which was about to erupt into World War I. At first, Russians saw their participation in the battle against Germany as heroic, but as the death tolls rose, popular opinion turned against continued involvement in the conflict and against Nicholas's German-born wife Aleksandra. |
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Aleksandra had long since come under the influence of one of the century's most-colorful characters, Grigory Yekfimovich Novykh, better known as Rasputin. The so-called "holy man" was born in Siberia in 1872 and arrived in St. Petersburg in 1911. He gained his hold over the Czarina by his apparently miraculous ability to heal the tsarevich, who suffered from what was believed to have been hemophilia. (No doctor at the time ever confirmed the diagnosis and the illness was kept secret). She kept him in her private circle despite well-documented stories of his drinking and womanizing. |
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Aleksandra began to trust his opinion on an ever-widening range of issues, and he even
advised on the hiring and firing of government ministers while Nicholas was at war.
Nicholas, in one letter from the battlefield, gave information about troop movements to
his wife, and then begged her to keep them secret. The Czar's relatives, fearing the ever-growing influence wielded by Rasputin, hatched a plot to kill him. The mad monk's death became the source of his enduring fame-the murderers poisoned and shot him to no avail. It was only by tying him up and throwing him into a frozen river that they succeeded in ending his life. Legend has it that when his body was recovered, his bonds were broken and his lungs were full of water, indicating that he had been alive when he had been thrown into the river. His death, at the end of 1916, came as the country was about to plunge into revolution.. |
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Involved
in the first World War because of alliances, Russia had serious military reverses while
the people suffered from the economic aftermath of the conflict. In February 1917, a
spontaneous strike movement requiring an end to the fighting ruined Petrograd. |
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In spite of this, insurrection spread so much that the situation ended up
uncontrolled by army officers who implored Nicholas II to abdicate. He finally made his
decision on March 1, 1917, first in favor of Alexei, then in favor of his brother, the
Great Duke Michael, who in his turn abdicated in favor of the temporary government. So,
this last abdication marked the end of monarchy in Russia.
The temporary government initially held the royal family under house arrest in their palace. Their first intention was to send them into exile in England, but the government could not stand up to the growing power of the Bolsheviks. By the fall of 1917, the Bolsheviks had prevailed over the other major revolutionary groups and they had control of Moscow and St. Petersburg soviets. Soon after that, they established a government. |
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Charles Sydney Gibbes is born on 19 January 1876 at Rotherham where his father, John
Gibbes, manages a local bank. His mother, Mary Ann Elizabeth, from Surrey, is the daughter
of a watchmaker named Fisher. If Gibbes family had 11 children, only 5 survived. Charles,
the youngest surviving son, starts studies at Broadstairs, in the south, then at Hornsea,
on the East Riding coast. His father wishing him entering the Church, Charles Sydney goes
on St John's College, Cambridge where he acquires his diploma 4 years later, in 1899.
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On August 1, 1917, the
imperial family and many of their friends left Petrograd for Tobolsk by train and arrived
there on August 6. Nicholas stood in the former residence of the Governor of the province.
The family was first taken care of with many considerations and solicitude. |
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On the
night of October 24-25, 1917, thousands of red guards infested Petrograd and overthrew the
temporary government. Bolsheviks had won the part. |
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A
new commissioner named Vassili Yakovlev, sent by the new Bolshevik governmet, arrived in
Tobolsk on April 22 to remove the Romanovs away from the region. But Alexei, only 13 years old, had just fallen, which caused internal bleeding. He could not be moved at that time. Four days later, Nicholas, Aleksandra, and their daughter Maria finally left Tobolsk with Yakovlev. We can think that Germany's government pressured the Bolshevik government to move the Romanovs away from Tobolsk. Indeed, they could not leave such a symbol of anti-revolutionary movement in this part of Russia, which had remained faithful to the former Czar. |
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The train that was supposed to carry the Romanovs to Moscow was stopped by
Bolsheviks in Ekaterinburg
on April 30. Peter the Great had founded Ekaterinberg in 1723 as the gateway to the
colonization of Siberia. He named the city after his wife, Ekaterina. In 1924,
Ekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlovsk, the name of one of the Bolshevik leaders in charge of
the Romanovs' execution. The city's historical name was changed back in 1991.
In Ekaterinburg, the
Bolsheviks had improvised a place of detention for the Romanovs; a house of special
purpose. Nicholas Ipatiev, a wealthy burgess of the city, was moved from his house
just before the Romanovs' arrival and the Bolsheviks fenced it in with wood boards that
rose up to the top windows. Former Czar Nicholas saw in the name of this house (called in
Ekaterinburg 'Ipatievski dom') a fatal destiny sign. Indeed, in 1613, the founder of the
Romanovs dynasty, Mikhail Fedorovich, was in the monastery of Ipatievski near Kostroma
when he accepted the autocratic Czar crown from the Muscovite embassy. |
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| Most of these friends were not admitted in Ipatiev house and put
into jail. Others like Pierre Gilliard and Sidney Gibbes, Alexei's teachers were let
free. Bolshevicks asked them to leave the city. The Ipatiev house was kept by a squadron of bolsheviks soldiers directed by commander Avdief. The conditions of captivity were harder than at Tobolsks and the Romanovs had to endure the guards ragging and humiliations. In July, Avdief was replaced by a new man : Yakov Yurovsky who brought with him ten other men, the future execution squadron... |
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