1919: a Russian empress finds refuge in Malta
April 12, 1919: a secret telegram was sent to the Governor of Malta, Field Marshal Lord Methuen, by the Colonial Secretary Lord Milner, stating that:
“HMS Marlborough due at Constantinople today is proceeding to Malta arriving probably on Tuesday to land the following persons who are on board: Empress Marie, the dukes Nicholas and Peter, their wives, family and suite, making altogether 25 to 30 people. Please receive her with as little ceremony as possible and unofficially, and you had better not meet them yourself. They will arrive practically destitute without clothes or money. Pending decision as to where they are to go, temporary accommodation will be required, but it is not considered desirable to house them where the Governor is in residence. His Majesty suggests San Antonio may be available. Do not allow arrival or any reference to it to appear in the local papers. All proper expenses of maintenance and clothing will be refunded to you.”
The empress was fleeing from Russia after the outbreak of the Bolshevik Revolution in which her son, Tsar Nicholas II, and his family were executed in 1918. The dowager empress had managed to proceed to the Crimea where there were other members of the imperial family who were protected by loyal officers. However, when the Russian forces took over Odessa, grave danger loomed.
It was then that the British warship HMS Marlborough was directed to take on board, from Yalta, the dowager empress (tsarina) and the other royal members to be taken to Malta via Constantinople, arriving on the island on April 21.
The Russian entourage – 17 Romanovs, including the empress’s daughter, the Grand Duchess Xenia, with five of her children, together with six dogs and a canary – was housed at San Anton Palace where they stayed in residence till their departure from Malta on April 29.
The party also included Princess Obolensky (a maid of honour), Prince Dolgourouki (an equerry) and two tall Cossack bodyguards who kept 12hour watches over the dowager empress, with one of them sleeping across the threshold of her bedroom door every night.
One of the party that made it to Malta was Prince Yousoupoff, who was married to the daughter of Grand Duchess Xenia and had been involved in the killing of the notorious Rasputin in 1916. It seems that he had suffered head wounds during Rasputin’s killing and, according to the equerry, he always wore a small velvet skull cap to conceal them.
Governor Methuen had vacated San Anton and moved his family to The Palace at Valletta so that preparations would be made to receive the empress and her suite as befitted her rank, with all arrangements under the supervision of Captain Robert Ingham (1892-1973). In a few words culled from the brief diary kept by Captain Ingham, published in 1949, it is stated that:
“…we continued to make everything even more perfect in the Palace, and fitted up an old Chapel, making it conform as far as possible to a Greek Orthodox church. We had a simple but beautiful altar carved from the local stone, [and] Salvo, the head gardener, went round putting finishing touches to the lovely private gardens.”
Ten years earlier, in April 1909, the dowager empress had visited Malta, in what were certainly much happier circumstances, with her elder sister Queen Alexandra and her husband King
Edward VII of Great Britain, and had attended almost all the official functions that were organised, including a visit to Verdala Palace, a visit she recalled in 1919.
She referred to San Anton as “a beautiful palace” and planted a tree in the private gardens on April 26, an event commemorated by a marble tablet. On April 28, the dowager empress had tea with Lady Methuen at the Palace in Valletta before departing from Malta the next day on HMS Nelson en route to England.
The dowager empress was very pleased with her treatment in Malta, especially with the arrangements and comportment of Captain Ingham, who was presented with a tie-pin with a pearl and diamonds as a memento. The captain was also given four ruby and diamond
Duchess Xenia.
One object to which the empress objected was the tree at San Anton Gardens that had been planted by Kaiser Wilhelm II when he visited Malta in 1904. Actually, she detested all things Prussian (and German), a great dislike dating back to her younger days in 1864 when Prussia had wrested the provinces of Schleswig-Holstein from her native Denmark.
In England, the dowager empress lived for a while at Frogmore and other residencies, including, for a time, at Marlborough Palace, but after the death of her sister Alexandra in 1925, she ultimately retired to her holiday villa Hvidore, near Copenhagen in Denmark, where she passed away on October 13, 1928, aged 80. She was interred at Roskilde Cathedral, on the island of Zealand, which was the traditional burial site for Danish monarchs.
She had often expressed her wish to be interred next to her husband and this wish came true when, after a 2005 agreement between Queen Margarethe II of Denmark and President Vladimir Putin of Russia, her body was reinterred on September 28, 2006, next to her husband, Tsar Alexander III at the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg.
A few words about the life of this Dowager Tsarina would not be amiss here.
Marie Feodorovna was born on November 26, 1847, the fourth child and second daughter of the future King Christian IX of Denmark and his wife Louise of Hesse-Kassel. In Denmark, she was known as Princess Dagmar, but called Minnie by the family. She was beautiful as well as intelligent; in fact, when she married studs
Grand
into the Russian royal family, she didn’t know how to speak any Russian but she mastered the language within a few years and was so proficient that her husband wrote to her in Russian. She was very likeable and very fashionable, described as “the best dressed woman in Europe”.
In 1863, her father acceded to the Danish throne and, a year later, she was engaged to Nicholas, the heir to the Russian throne. It was a love match but, unfortunately, he passed away on April 22, 1865.
His last wish was that Dagmar would marry his younger brother, the future Tsar Alexander III. In June 1866, the engagement of Alexander and Dagmar was announced and, after being educated in Russian court etiquette and converting to Orthodoxy in October 1866, their marriage took place on November 9, 1866, in the imperial chapel of the Winter Palace at St Petersburg. Now, Dagmar became the Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna of Russia but, because French was practically the first language at the Russian court, she was more known as “Marie”.
The marriage was a happy one and the couple had six offspring. The eldest, the future Tsar Nicholas II, was born in 1868 and he was followed by Alexander in 1869 who died from meningitis in infancy. Marie bore four more children who all reached adulthood: George (b. 1871), Xenia (b. 1875), Michael (b. 1878) and Olga (b. 1882).
Since her mother-in-law, Empress Maria Alexandrovna, was frequently abroad for health reasons, Marie had often to fulfil the role of first lady of the court though she rarely interfered with politics.
On March 13, 1881, Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. Marie’s husband ascended to the throne with the title of Alexander III and the couple were crowned at the Assumption cathedral in the Kremlin, Moscow, on May 27, 1883. For greater security, the royal family moved to the Gatchina Palace, about 50 kilometres outside St Petersburg, where they lived for the next 13 years.
Marie was engaged mainly in philanthropic work and was the head of the social scene, not forgetting to make annual trips with her children for family reunions in Denmark. On November I, 1894, Tsar Alexander III passed away at the early age of 49, and was succeeded by his son Nicholas II. Marie thus became the dowager empress.
Marie remained popular with Russians, more than her son and his wife. At first, she acted as political adviser to her son, the tsar, but after an heir was born to Nicholas, Marie was replaced as the tsar’s political confidant and adviser by his wife Alexandra, certainly not the best of choices in the circumstances. To give just one example, Marie did not convince her son and his wife to send Rasputin away. Her later years were marred with family troubles, including the death of her son George in 1899.
Revolution came to Russia in 1917, and the tsar was deposed in 1918. She moved to relative safety in the Crimea but refused to leave Russia. It was only due to the urging of her sister Alexandra that she agreed to leave the Crimea on HMS Marlborough which brought her to the safety of the Maltese islands.