Fallen Eagles: The End of the Romanov Dynasty in Russia: Eye Witness Testimonies

In 1913, Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra led the nation in celebrating three hundred years of Romanov rule in Russia. Four years later, it was all over. Tsar Nicholas always considered himself to be unlucky, but he compounded his genuine misfortunes by making catastrophic calculations in defiance of at least three of the best chief ministers any sovereign has ever had – Sergei Witte, Pyotr Stolypin and Vladimir Kokovtsov. His biggest mistake of all was to mobilize the Russian army on the German border in 1914, thus provoking Germany into a declaration of war. After three years of horrendous losses and deprivation among his people, Nicholas was forced to abdicate in March 2017. His abdication was followed by the house arrest of the immediate Imperial Family, first in Tsarskoe Selo, then in Tobolsk, and finally in Yekaterinburg, where they were executed in July 1917 along with four retainers. Nicholas’ brother, Grand Duke Michael, had already been killed four days earlier in Perm, and six more of his family were executed the next day in Alapayevsk. Four more Romanov grand dukes faced a firing squad at the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg at the end of January 1919. Yet thirty-five prominent members of the Romanov family managed to escape to Western Europe, seventeen of them via the Crimea where they were rescued from their Bolshevik captors by the German army and then evacuated on a British warship. ‘Fallen Eagles’ provides eye witness accounts from the Imperial Family itself, friends, servants, jailers and executioners as to what happened to the Romanov dynasty between 1917 and 1919.Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra have been declared saints by the Russian Orthodox Church for their sufferings during this period.Read more