Tutor chronicled tragic last days of the Russian imperial family
Diary of Pierre Gilliard, who chose to share captivity with the Romanov family, was published by the London Illustrated News in 1921
by Pierre Gilliard was published by the London Illustrated News in January 1921.
The captivity and eventual murder in 1918 of the Russian family by the revolutionaries was recorded by Gilliard, tutor to the tsarevitch.
Gilliard, who chose to share captivity with the Romanov family after the tsar’s abdication in the spring of 1917, kept a diary, which was published by the newspaper. “History,” the diarist says, “holds no parallel to the simultaneous extermination of a whole imperial family as was perpetuated at Ekaterinburg on July 17 1918.”
The family was initially held captive in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo until their removal to Tobolsk and then to their final prison at Ekaterinburg where they were murdered.
The diarist says that to keep the imperial family occupied or to humiliate them, they were given the task of establishing a kitchen garden at Tsarskoe Selo. “Everyone was set to work, we and the servants.”
Photographs taken at the time show the tsar shovelling snow and his four daughters, the grand duchesses, wheeling heavy water butts or carrying wooden stretchers to remove dug-up clumps of turf. In one photograph, Grand Duchess Tatania is teamed with a roughlooking soldier of the guard.
According to the diarist, the tsar and empress “displayed wonderful patience and magnanimity during their 16 months of captivity. But emotion and anguish had broken the empress physically. She was confined to a wheelchair.
“But later she felt great spiritual peace and lived a life of great introspection, speaking little,” the diarist says.
Other photographs show the tsar wielding a spade in the laying out of the garden at Tsarskoe Selo. Shown with him is a sailor, one Sargony, who the diarist says was shot by the Bolsheviks for being too kind to the tsarevitch. The tsar, he says, accepted his position with “remarkable serenity and greatness of soul”.
In another picture the tsarevitch and three grand duchesses are sitting on the ground and leaning against a wooden fence, legs outstretched as they rest from their work. Their boots and clothes are stained with mud. There are no smiles. Tatania glares at the camera, while Anastasia seems close to tears. Olga appears resigned to their undignified positions. The tsarevitch looks most unhappy understandably so after living in the summer and winter palaces and town and country mansions where they enjoyed comfort and luxury.
Another photograph shows Tatania with two soldiers of the guard close by. She is leaning against a pillar. Her arms are folded and she is surrounded by an axe, spade and other garden implements. Her pet dog, Joy, is lying asleep close to her.
A painting in a salon in the palace depicts the portrait of Marie Antoinette with her children, an ominous portent.
On June 15 the diarist announces that they have completed the garden, which he describes as “magnificent”, with a variety of vegetables as well as 500 cabbages.
Now that the garden had been completed, the family were “given permission” to cut down dead trees in the park. “We move from one spot to another accompanied by our guard. We will have a good stock of firewood for the winter.”
More unusual is the photograph of Tatania and Anastasia sitting in the park surrounded by flowers. Both are dressed in smart white outfits and wearing attractive straw hats. Tatania is holding Joy. This photograph could have been taken for propaganda purposes to show how well the imperial family was being treated.
In August the family were told they were to be moved to an undisclosed destination. They were to depart at midnight on August 13.
In subsequent diary entries, the diarist becomes more subdued, even sad. They make farewell visits to the garden.
He writes: “This departure to an unknown destination fills us with foreboding.”
The first stopover was Tobolsk before moving on to Ekaterinburg. It seems that King George V, a cousin to the tsar, let the family down badly. The tsar had begged George to grant them asylum, which he did, but later withdrew the offer, fearing political repercussions in Britain. This move was criticised in certain quarters, saying that George V “knifed Nicholas in the back”.
Then came the final and fatal move to Ekaterinburg, where they were housed in the home of a wealthy merchant. It was to be their last prison.
At the station, the diarist could see Tatania walk past his fourth-class carriage, carrying Joy and dragging a heavy valise behind her. “It was raining and I saw her sink into the mud with every step she took.”
The accommodation was not comfortable. The windows were boarded up and they were assigned two bedrooms, one for the tsar, empress and tsarevitch; the other for the grand duchesses. The doors of the bedrooms were removed and the soldiers of the guard, often drunk, could wander in at will.
The family were woken at midnight on the day of the murders and told to go to the cellar for a photo shoot to show they had not escaped.
A group of men, said to be Stalin’s secret police, suddenly rushed into the cellar and proceeded to shoot and bayonet the family. In the case of Anastasia, the jewellery sewn to her underwear deflected the bullets and bayonet thrusts. She ran around the cellar, screaming hysterically until a thrust of a bayonet finally killed her. The bodies were burnt and the remains thrown down a mine.
An article in the Illustrated News reads that Nicholas “suffered more dreadfully than what the 18th century inflicted on Louis XVI of France”.
“The tsar was not tried and was not ceremoniously executed. He was shot like a dog, knowing that his whole family would be similarly butchered.
“This miserable story has at last been told in full as ever can be known,” the diarist says.
Only Joy, Tatania’s pet dog, survived.
IN SUBSEQUENT DIARY ENTRIES, THE DIARIST BECOMES MORE SUBDUED, EVEN SAD. THEY MAKE FAREWELL VISITS TO THE GARDEN
The book is available at James Findlay Collectable Books, Johannesburg.