Authors: Mary McGrigor
Alexander’s body lay in the church at Taganrog for a full three weeks. Nothing could be done until instructions arrived regarding his funeral from the new tsar. On Alexander’s death it had been automatically assumed that in accordance with the rule of primogeniture, his brother the Grand Duke Constantine, second eldest of their father’s four sons, would succeed to the Russian throne.
At Taganrog, at last, an order came from St Petersburg commanding the authorities and soldiers in the little town to swear allegiance to the new Emperor of all the Russias, Constantine I. This order was complied with on 22 December. But still there was no message regarding the funeral of his brother, lying in state within the Alexander Nevsky Church.
Then two days later, on Thursday, 24 December, a printed document reached the little town on the Sea of Azov. From it came the extraordinary news that three years earlier, in 1822, the Grand Duke Constantine had written a letter to his brother Alexander, ‘stating his desire to waive his title to the succession in case of the Emperor’s decease, and requesting that the next in line after him should take his place’.
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These written instructions, shown first to the Dowager Empress, Maria Feodorovna, and to Alexander himself, had then been put in a sealed envelope together with a statement from Alexander, declaring Nicholas to be his successor, and given to the Council of the Empire to be opened in case of his decease. It was to be the first act of the Council after Alexander’s death.
On this being done, however, the Grand Duke Nicholas and the Council, wishing to give Constantine a chance of revoking this agreement, had caused all the troops and authorities in St Petersburg to swear allegiance to him, and had sent off a messenger to Warsaw to invite Constantine to St Petersburg.
Constantine, whose marriage to Princess Anna of Saxe-Coburg had been annulled in 1819, had then defied the Orthodox Church by making a morganatic marriage with his long-term mistress, the Polish Countess Joanna Grudzinska. Technically this did not affect his claim to the succession, but he did not wish to rule the empire, hence his letter to Alexander formally renouncing his right to succeed him in the event of his death. Now, in response to the message from his younger brother Nicholas, Constantine replied that his decision remained unchanged.
By this time, however, on Alexander’s death, the royal guards had already sworn allegiance to Constantine, presuming him to be the heir. When it became known that he had forsworn his inheritance in favour of his brother Nicholas, a group of officers based at St Petersburg, led by Nikita Muraviev, Prince Troubetzkoy and Prince Eugene Obolensky, had formed what they called the Northern Society. They aimed to establish a constitutional monarchy with limited franchise, the abolition of serfdom and equality before the law, and they persuaded some of the regimental leaders not to swear allegiance to Nicholas.
Accordingly, on 14 December, a group of officers commanding about 3,000 men assembled in Senate Square. Abjuring the new emperor, they proclaimed loyalty to Constantine and the constitution. The revolt misfired. First Prince Troubetzkoy lost his nerve and failed to appear. Then, although the rebels quickly appointed Prince Obolensky in his place, other regiments, stationed in or near St Petersburg, failed to join the insurgents for fear of what punishment might ensue.
A period of stalemate ensued until, as Nicholas himself appeared, Count Mikhail Miloradovich, a military hero much beloved of the men, was sent to talk to the rebels. He was still trying to reason with them when a shot rang out, fired by one of the officers, and Miloradovich fell dead.
Furious, Nicholas ordered a cavalry charge. But the horses slipped on the icy cobbles, rendering the charge ineffective. Darkness was descending and the new tsar, in desperation, ordered three cannons, loaded with grapeshot, to open fire. The effect was devastating. The rebels fled. Many tried to reassemble on the frozen water of the Neva where, as the ice broke under gunfire, great numbers of them were drowned.
Nicholas was praised for the prompt action with which he had defeated the insurgents. It was, however, a bad portent for the start of his forthcoming reign.
It was not until 10 January 1826, six weeks after Alexander had died, that the funeral procession finally left Taganrog, to begin the journey of 1,200 miles north to St Petersburg. The weather was now very severe. In Taganrog itself the cold was so intense that dead bodies were being brought from the surrounding steppes for burial in the town. The long funeral procession wound its way slowly over the frozen plains. Everywhere crowds gathered to watch, standing in sad and respectful silence as the great funeral coach, drawn by eight grey horses draped in black with the imperial insignia woven into the cloth, was dragged over the country roads through villages and towns. On 15 February, five weeks after it had begun, the procession at last reached St Petersburg. From there it proceeded to Tsarskoe Selo, where the dead tsar’s mother insisted on seeing his corpse.
When warned of its decomposition, she refused to be deterred. ‘That is my dear Alexander. Oh, how he has wasted away’, was all that she said after a cursory glance. The body, badly mummified, was by then obviously almost unrecognizable to anyone who had known Alexander in life. Nonetheless the words of the dowager empress were remembered, and later construed to signify that she herself was uncertain that the body in the coffin was that of her son.
The funeral took place on 25 March 1826. The coffin was placed beside that of Alexander’s father, the murdered Paul I, in the small cathedral in the fortress of St Peter and St Paul. The Duke of Wellington, who was present, representing King George IV, described it as ‘a terrible ceremony’. He voiced the opinion of many who, like himself, had known and respected Alexander, both for his personal charisma and for his enlightened, if confused, ideals.
Alexander’s wedding ring, which he had worn for thirty-two years, was placed on an icon beside his grave, supposedly to prove his identity. He was dead. He was buried. But the story did not end there. Many people then believed, and some still think to this day, that the corpse in the coffin was a substitute, smuggled in by Wylie at Taganrog in obedience to the orders of Alexander himself.
The Russian love of mystery certainly enhanced this claim. Also the fact that it was now widely believed that Wylie had falsified the death certificate of Tsar Paul (by claiming he had died of apoplexy when strangulation was the cause) strengthened the speculation that he had done the same in the case of his son. The court gossips were to some extent silenced when Alexander’s brother Nicholas, now the tsar, made public demonstration of his faith in the Scottish doctor by appointing him personal physician, the post he had held with Alexander for no fewer than twenty-five years.
The theory that Alexander survived and that another, unidentified, body was put in his coffin in his place rests on the fact that in 1836, eleven years after he died, a holy man – or
starets
, as Russian visionaries were called – appeared in the Siberian town of Krasnou-fimsk claiming to be the late tsar.
The man, who was guessed to be in his early sixties (Alexander was forty-eight when he died) was tall and slightly bent, as the late emperor had been before his death His facial features were hard to distinguish, being largely concealed by a thick white beard. He wore the black tunic and trousers of a peasant, but for a man of apparently low social standing, he rode a handsome, obviously well-bred white horse.
It was the horse that first attracted attention when it needed to be shod. The blacksmith, intrigued by its strange and rather sinister-looking rider, asked him where he had come from, as he hammered the iron shoes into shape.
The man made an evasive answer but by this time a few local people had gathered, drawn by curiosity as to the identity of this stranger who rode such a noticeable horse. Some pestered him with questions and, on his refusal to answer, bundled him off to the police station, hoping, it would seem, for a reward.
The police were slightly more successful. The man told them that his name was Feodor Kuzmich, that he owned the horse, and admitted that he had no fixed address. The laws against vagrancy being prohibitive, the police then stripped him and reputedly beat him with a rod made of birch branches. He bore the pain silently, and eventually, frustrated by his silence, but highly suspicious as to who he really was, they banished him still farther into Siberia, to the isolated town of Tomsk.
There he worked in a vodka distillery for nearly five years. He got on well with both the management and his fellow workers, all of whom respected his gentle good manners and lack of pretension to be anything other than the
starets
, or holy man, he claimed to be. Nonetheless a rumour seems to have started that he was not of humble birth, but in fact an aristocrat in hiding from the secret police.
In 1842 Feodor Kuzmich, as he still insisted he was called, was moved to another place of exile at Beloyarsk.
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There he lived in a hut built for him by a Cossack who befriended him. Soon he became a local celebrity as people, discovering he was knowledgeable about much in the outside world, came to his hut to ask for advice on their problems and for spiritual guidance. Soon he attracted so much attention that the local authorities, apparently afraid of his influence, moved him on elsewhere.
Kuzmich then travelled around Russia for a period of about eleven years. Wherever he went he became involved with the local people, particularly with the children, with whom he appears to have shared a special bond. He captivated them with his stories and is known to have taught them grammar, history, geography and religion. Despite his formidable appearance they seem to have taken to him instantly and often came clutching little bunches of wild flowers.
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From this it can be taken that, whatever his real identity, Feodor, like Tsar Alexander, was possessed of a captivating charm.
With older people he also discussed religion and described past events in St Petersburg with great clarity. Occasionally he let things slip, as when some workmen, making repairs to his hut, annoyed him by noisy hammering and he shouted out, ‘If only you knew who I am you would not dare to aggravate me in this way!’
In October 1858, Kuzmich moved back to the outskirts of Tomsk where a merchant called Khromov offered to build him yet another hut on his property. The
starets
accepted and became friends with the merchant’s family, particularly with his young daughter Anna, with whom he had long conversations.
Anna recorded in her diary an incident which greatly puzzled her at the time. The
starets
was living with them while his hut was being built and one evening, as the family were sitting round the dining-room table, Anna was reading aloud from a book that had just been published on the reign of Alexander I. She had just quoted: ‘Emperor Alexander turned to Napoleon and said to him . . .’ when a furious voice from the next room called out, ‘I never said that!’ The family looked at each other in amazement, realizing who it was who spoke.
Kuzmich ended his days in the hut built for him by Simeon Khromov. As he grew weaker the merchant asked him who he really was. The reply was, as ever, enigmatic. ‘Here lies my secret’, he whispered, pointing to his heart.
These were the last words he spoke before, just a few hours later, he died, leaving the mystery of his true identity forever unexplained.
But if Kuzmich really was Tsar Alexander, how was another body placed in the coffin, without anyone – other than Wylie and possibly one or more of the other doctors who attended him – knowing what was taking place?
A picture of him on his deathbed, painted in 1827, shows several black-coated figures standing in the room while Elizabeth sits by his bed. The Russian artist Kulakov, however, two years after Alexander’s death, must have relied on hearsay as to the actual number of persons in the room. More factually, the English Doctor Lee, who was present, left a detailed description of the tsar’s death. If the legend is true, Lee’s account must be an invention and Elizabeth, together with Wylie, must have been party to the deception that then took place.
Certainly the embalmers at Taganrog were inefficient, but if another body, already in a state of decay, was secretly smuggled into the coffin, Alexander’s closest attendants, including his wife, must have been involved in a conspiracy to allow him to escape.
It has been suggested that Elizabeth’s long sojourn at Taganrog had sinister implications, but the official explanation that her weak heart and well-known infirmity precluded the long journey back to St Petersburg was verified by her death on the way north.
Surmising that Alexander did survive, the next obvious question is how was he spirited, unseen, from the house at Taganrog? Is it indeed possible that, as has been suggested, he was somehow transferred, presumably disguised and under cover of darkness, from the house to Lord Cathcart’s private yacht?
William Shaw, 1st Earl Cathcart, as British ambassador to St Petersburg had been with Alexander all through the war with France. Travelling together, in close company, they had become firm friends. It may have been nothing more than coincidence but during Alexander’s visit to Taganrog, Cathcart’s yacht was seen lying in the harbour flying a British flag. This was quite odd, the little town on the Sea of Azov being far from a fashionable resort. What is more extraordinary, however, is that the yacht raised anchor and left the harbour on the very day that Alexander allegedly died.
Should there be any truth in the theory that the tsar was thus secretly removed by sea, the next question that arises is what happened to him during the eleven years before, as the
starets
, he appeared in Siberia in 1836. One explanation that has been put forward is that he lived as a monk in a monastery somewhere in the Holy Land during those missing years.