Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his wife Tsaritsa Alexandra, a detail from a portrait of the Russian imperial family in 'An Ambassador's Memoirs' by Maurice Paléologue, the last French Ambassador to the Russian Court.
"The Emperor spent hours over these maps and his plan of a spring campaign, and when he left the billiard room he locked the door and put the key in his pocket. I have never seen him more completely the soldier, the commander in chief of a great army. All this time, from December, 1916 to February, 1917, the Russian front was comparatively quiet, furious snowstorms preventing the advance either of our own or the enemy's forces. Alas! The storms interfered also with railroad transport and Petrograd and Moscow were beginning to feel the pinch of hunger, a fact that gave their majesties constant concern."
Extract from the memoir of Anna Viroubova, confidant to the Empress Alexandra, and one of the few people the Empress associated with. From her description, Viroubova gives the impression Tsar Nicholas, autocrat and Commander of the Army, was planning his spring offensives in isolation. They would never happen. Their majesties, Nicholas and Alexandra, may have been constantly concerned about the state of the citizens of Petrograd, the capital, and Moscow, the two most important cities in the Russian Empire, but they had isolated themselves the rest of the government and the Russian people.
Memories of the Russian Court by Anna Viroubova, page 196, copyright © 1923 by The MacMillan Company, publisher: The MacMillan Company, publication date: 1923
1917-02-06, 1917, February, cold, winter, hunger, Tsar Nicholas II, Tsar Nicholas, Nicholas II, Nicholas
