Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich Romanov (6 November, 1856 - 5 January, 1929) was a Russian general in World War I. A grandson of the Tsar Nicholas I, he was commander in chief of the Russian armies on the main front in the first year of the war, and was later a successful commander in the Caucasus.
Family and ancestry
Nicholas was born to Nikolai Nicholaevich Romanov (1831 - 1891) and Alexandra Friederike Wilhelmine von Oldenburg (1838 - 1900).
His father was the sixth child and third son born to Nicholas I of Russia and his Empress consort Charlotte of Prussia (1798 - 1860). Charlotte was a daughter of Frederick William III of Prussia and Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
His mother was a daughter of Duke Konstantin Friedrich Peter von Oldenburg (1812 - 1881) and Princess Therese Wilhelmine Friederike Isabelle Charlotte von Nassau-Weilburg (1815 - 1871).
His maternal grandfather was a son of Duke Peter Friedrich Georg von Oldenburg and Grand Duchess Catherine of Russia , daughter of Paul I of Russia and Sophie Marie Dorothea of Württemberg. Catherine was later remarried to William I of Württemberg.
His maternal grandmother was a daughter of Georg Wilhelm August Heinrich von Nassau-Weilburg, Duke of Nassau (1792 - 1839) and Princess Luise von Saxe Altenburg .
The Duke of Nassau was a son of Friedrich Wilhelm von Nassau-Weilburg, Prince of Nassau (1768 - 1816) and Luise Isabelle von Kirchberg, Countess of Sayn-Hachenburg. His paternal grandparents were Duke Karl Christian of Nassau-Weilburg (1735 - 1788) and Wilhelmina Carolina von Nassau-Dietz-Orange, Princess of Orange .
Karolina was a daughter of William IV of Orange and Princess Anne, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange.
Early Military Career
Grand Duke Nicholas was educated at the school of military engineers and received his commission in 1872. During the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78 he was on the staff of his father who was commander in chief. He distinguished himself on two occasions in this war. He worked his way up through all the ranks until he was appointed commander of the Guard Hussar Regiment in 1884.
He had a reputation as a tough commander, yet one respected by his troops. His experience was more as a trainer of soldiers than a leader in battle. Nicholas was a very religious man, praying in the morning and at night as well as before and after meals. He was happiest in the country, hunting or caring for his estates.
Nicholas was a Pan Slav nationalist, though not a rabid one.
By 1895 he was inspector-general of the cavalry, a post he held for 10 years. His tenure has been judged a success with reforms in training, cavalry schools, cavalry reserves and the remount services. He was not given an active command during the Russo-Japanese War, perhaps because the Czar did not wish to hazard the prestige of the Romanovs and because he wanted a loyal general in command at home in case of domestic disturbances. It was unfortunate, however, that Nicholas did not have this opportunity to gain experience in battlefield command.
Grand Duke Nicholas played a crucial role during the first Russian Rebellion of 1905. With anarchy spreading and the future of the dynasty at stake, the Czar had a choice of instituting the reforms suggested by Count Sergei Witte or imposing a military dictatorship. The only man with the prestige to keep the allegiance of the army in such a coup was the Grand Duke. The Czar asked him to assume the role of a military dictator. In a emotional scene at the palace, Nicholas refused, drew his pistol and treatened to shoot himself on the spot if the Czar did not endorse Witte's plan. This act was decisive in forcing Nicholas II to agree to the reforms. But, unfortunately for the Czar and for Russia, he went back on his word.
The Empress consort Alexandra of Hesse, a convinced autocrat, never forgave the Grand Duke.
From 1905 to the outbreak of World War I, he was commander-in-chief of the St. Petersburg Military District. He had the reputation there of appointing men of humble origins to positions of authority. The lessons of the Russo-Japanese War were drilled into his men.
Marriage
Nicholas was happily married since 1907 to Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, the daughter of King Nicholas of Montenegro. Both were deeply religious Orthodox Christians, with a tendency to mysticism. Since the Montenegrins were a fiercely Slavic, anti-Turkish people from the Balkans, Anastasia reinforced the Pan Slav tendencies of Nicholas. They had no children.
World War I: Command of the German/Austro Hungarian Front
The Grand Duke had no part in the planning and preparations for World War I, that being the responsibility of General Vladimir Sukhomlinov and the general staff. On the eve of the outbreak of World War I, his cousin, the Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, yielded to the entreaties of his ministers and appointed Grand Duke Nicholas to the supreme command.
Grand Duke Nicholas was responsible for carrying out a plan he had no part in formulating. The disasters of Tannenburg and the Masurian Lakes in August 1914, though under his command, were not of his doing. Russian Armies achieved considerable success against the forces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His dispositions in response to the German advance of October 1914 were masterly. Russian forces held on through the winter of 1914/1915, but were compelled by a lack of munitions in the spring and summer of 1915 to retreat eastward to a line they mostly held through 1916/1917. He was well liked by both officers and the troops.
Nicholas seems to have been more an army commander than a military generalissimo with the broad strategic sense and the ruthless drive to command all the Russian armies. His headquarters had a curiously calm atmosphere, and the Grand Duke seems to have viewed himself as a coordinator rather than a Napoleon or a Moltke. He came into his own later in the war when he was given a smaller direct command of one theatre.
The Grand Duke gained the emnity of Rasputin, the dissolute monk who had the ear of the Empress. He threatened to hang Rasputin should he come anywhere close to the Russian armies in the field. Rasputin then prophesied that the Russian armies would continue to be defeated until the Emperor placed himself at their head. The Emperor, despite having no training or aptitude, did so on August 21, 1915.
World War One: Command in the Caucasus
Upon his dismissal, the Grand Duke was appointed commander-in-chief and viceroy in the Caucasus area where the opponent was the Ottoman Empire. Nicholas put new vigor into this front, pushing an expeditionary force through to Persia (now Iran) to link up with British troops and launching three successful offensives into Armenia capturing the Fortress of Erzerum, the port of Trebizond (now Trabzon) and the town of Erzinjan . During this campaign, Nicholas had the competent General Nikolai Nikolaevich Yudenich as a subordinate.
Nicholas followed up his 1916 victory by pushing foward a railway from Russian Georgia to the conquered territories with a view to bringing up supplies for a new offensive. He was to be ready in the spring of 1917. But in March of 1917, the Czar was overthrown. Had Nicholas been able to launch his offensive, there is little doubt that he would have been successful and that the Ottoman Empire would have been knocked out of the war in the summer of 1917.
The Revolution
The Russian Revolution found Nicholas in the Caucasus. He was appointed by the Emperor, in his last official act, as the supreme commander in chief, and was wildly received as he journeyed to headquarters in Mogilev. However within 24 hours of his arrival, the new premier, Prince Georgy Lvov, cancelled his appointment. Nicholas spent the next two years in the Crimea, sometimes under house arrest, taking little part in politics. There appears to have been some sentiment to have him head the White Russian forces active in southern Russia at the time, but the leaders in charge, especially General Anton Denikin, were not about to share power. He and his wife escaped just ahead of the Red Army in April 1919 aboard the British Battleship HMS Marlborough.
In Exile
After a stay in Genoa as a guest of the King of Italy, (his brother-in-law), Nicholas and his wife took up a reclusive residence in a small country house at Choigny , 20 miles outside Paris. He was guarded night and day by the French secret police as well as by a small number of faithful Cossack retainers. He became the centre of an anti-Soviet Monarchist resistance. Plans were underway to send agents into Russia. A top priority of the Soviet secret police was to penetrate the monarchist organization and to kidnap Nicholas. They were successful in the former, infiltrating spies and rolling up the monarchist network, including luring the anti-Bolshevik British master spy Sidney Reilly across the border to his death. But, as late as June 1927, monarchists were able to explode a bomb at Lubyanka Prison in Moscow.
Grand Duke Nicholas died on January 5, 1929 of natural causes on the French Rivera, where he had come to escape the rigors of winter. He was the last significant Romanov.
A competent but not great general, Nicholas radiated intergity and character. Enormously tall, he had a forbidding manner but was plain in dress and well liked by the common soldiers. Profoundly religious like his wife, his mysticism tended to make him rather fatalistic, a significant weakness in a military commander. He was a sentimental man, easily moved to tears.
References
"A Peace To End All Peace", David Fromkin, Avon Books, New York, 1990
"The Flight Of The Romanovs, A Family Saga", John Curtis Perry and Constantine Pleshakov, Basic Books, New York, 1999
"Encyclopaedia Britannica", Vol. 16, pp. 420-421, Chicago, 1958
" A People's Tragedy, The Russian Revolution 1891-1924", Orlando Figes, Pilmico, London, 1997
Last updated: 05-09-2005 16:45:40
