While the German armies in the west prepared for their great struggle upon the Marne, and farther east the Black Legion drove ever deeper into the Baltic provinces, another struggle—far smaller in scale, though hardly insignificant—was unfolding around a long polished table within one of the magnificent chambers of the Great Peterhof Palace, west of Saint Petersburg and overlooking the tranquil waters of the Gulf of Finland.
What had begun as an orderly private conference between some of the most powerful men in the Russian Empire had been thoroughly disrupted by the arrival of one comparatively small and extraordinarily angry figure. Evidence of the intruder's wrath lay everywhere. Reports concerning the destruction of Russia's air arm, the collapse of whole formations and the worsening refugee crisis had been scattered across the floor, some crushed between furious little hands and others trampled beneath sharp ivory heels until their carefully prepared figures disappeared beneath creases and smeared ink.
Near the head of the table, one magnificent gilded chair—more throne than ordinary furniture—lay defeated upon its side. Its occupant had risen only minutes earlier in an attempt to intercept the intruder, only to be shoved firmly backward by two delicate white-gloved hands and silenced by several high-pitched words delivered with considerably greater force than the push itself.
The unfortunate man now standing beside the table, blue eyes wide and mouth slightly agape, was Emperor Nicholas II.
At forty-six, Nicholas Alexandrovich was in considerably better physical condition than he had been as a younger man. Years earlier he had embraced one of Oskar's more fashionable innovations, installing modern private gyms within several Imperial residences and adding structured strength training to the outdoor pursuits he had always enjoyed. Riding, swimming, wrestling, tennis and long motorcycle rides with Alexandra had left his compact body lean, muscular and surprisingly powerful beneath the immaculate military uniform.
He remained of fairly ordinary height and could hardly compete with the increasingly ridiculous standard of masculine royalty the Iron Prince had planted in the popular imagination, but there was nothing frail about him. With his reddish-brown beard carefully trimmed, hair neatly arranged and medals gleaming across his chest, Nicholas looked every inch the healthy, disciplined Emperor of Russia.
His difficulty at that particular moment was not strength, rank or authority.
It was finding the resolve to use any of them.
Every minister and general around the table kept glancing toward him for salvation, as did the guards and servants hovering uncertainly beyond the open doors. Nicholas understood their predicament perfectly because he shared it.
The woman terrorising his government was his wife.
Alexandra Feodorovna had taken possession of the very place at the head of the table where Nicholas himself ought to have been standing and was now lecturing the assembled leadership of the Empire with such conviction that generals twice her size sat before her like chastened schoolboys.
To Nicholas there remained something almost endearing about it.
She was his Alix. His Sunny. His beloved wife of nearly twenty years—and, when sufficiently provoked, apparently capable of declaring war upon the Russian General Staff all by herself.
More than anything, however, Nicholas worried about her. Alexandra had suffered for years from troublesome palpitations and periods of weakness, though swimming, regular exercise, careful diet, breathing routines and improved medical treatment had reduced them from a serious burden to an occasional reminder that even an Empress possessed limits. So long as she did not exhaust herself completely—as she presently seemed determined to do—she remained vigorous, healthy and remarkably strong.
What troubled Nicholas far more was how she had come to be there at all.
Somehow Alexandra had obtained a confidential report describing the horrifying scale of Russia's recent losses. Nicholas suspected even those figures had been softened before reaching him; bad news possessed an unfortunate habit of growing more optimistic with every official hand through which it passed. Whatever the precise truth, the numbers had been terrible enough to send Alexandra storming into the council.
The report had never been intended for her.
Nicholas had a fairly good suspicion as to how it had reached her.
Rasputin.
The Siberian mystic possessed an irritating talent for discovering things that were none of his concern, and Nicholas had watched his influence over Alexandra, their daughters and Alexei deepen steadily over the years. At first he had tolerated it. Alexandra found extraordinary comfort in him, and whenever Alexei suffered one of his terrible episodes, Rasputin somehow seemed capable of calming her when physicians could not.
Lately, however, Nicholas had begun wondering whether tolerance had become negligence.
Rasputin was no longer merely a spiritual adviser. He had become healer, confidant and something disturbingly close to an indispensable presence within the private life of the Imperial family. Nicholas had ignored the massages, the strange rituals, the so-called holy baths and the familiarity with which the Siberian had gradually inserted himself into places few men should have entered.
Alexandra believed in him, and Nicholas believed in Alexandra.
For years that had seemed reason enough.
Now he was less certain.
Yet recognising the problem was considerably easier than doing anything about it. Nicholas could scarcely bring himself to confront Rasputin; how, then, was he supposed to order Alexandra from the room?
His Alix.
His darling Sunny.
Even now, while she stood before the assembled military leadership of Russia furiously beating a confidential report against the polished table as though determined to slap an uncooperative lump of dough into submission, Nicholas could not quite see the disruptive Empress everyone else plainly saw.
He saw his wife.
And, rather inconveniently, he thought she looked magnificent.
Alexandra was forty-two now, only four years younger than he, yet the passing years had treated her generously. Five children and periods of uncertain health had changed the slender girl Nicholas had married, but riding, swimming and years of disciplined exercise had preserved her strength and elegance while motherhood had softened her into a fuller, unmistakably mature beauty.
His eyes wandered over her almost despite himself.
The ivory court gown swept outward from her hips in embroidered silk and lace before narrowing tightly around her waist. Above it, the low décolletage framed the soft, rounded fullness of her milk-pale breasts as they rose and fell with every angry breath. Between them rested a delicate jeweled Orthodox cross, slipping occasionally into the deep hollow of her cleavage before emerging again in a little flash of gold.
Nicholas's gaze lingered there a moment longer than statesmanship strictly required.
He had seen his wife dressed and undressed more times than he could count, yet nearly twenty years of marriage had done remarkably little to cure him of staring.
His eyes finally climbed higher, over the smooth pale skin of her chest and the graceful line of her neck to the face he knew better than any other. Alexandra's soft mouth was drawn into an angry little line, her cheeks flushed, and her remarkable blue-grey eyes burned beneath long lashes with enough fury to make senior generals avoid them.
Her auburn-brown hair had begun the afternoon arranged with Imperial precision. Now several silky strands had escaped and curled along her cheeks and neck, and Nicholas found himself remembering with thoroughly inconvenient clarity how that same hair felt threaded between his fingers.
It was absurd.
His armies were being mauled. His ministers were being berated. Confidential reports were being beaten against Imperial furniture.
And Nicholas was admiring his wife's neckline.
Yet that was Alix. Furious or affectionate, perfectly composed or wonderfully dishevelled, she remained in his eyes the same woman with whom he had fallen hopelessly in love as a young man—only older now, stronger, fuller and somehow more beautiful for the years they had shared.
Unfortunately, none of this supplied him with the slightest idea of how to stop her.
Then the report struck the table again with a hard crack, jolting Nicholas from his thoroughly unstatesmanlike admiration of his wife. Alexandra spun toward him at once, brandishing the paper like an accusation. Her flushed face had settled into an almost wounded pout, and when she spoke the naturally light pitch of her voice sharpened into the furious chatter of an enraged little squirrel.
"This is all your fault! These five hundred thousand poor men—they are dead because of you!"
She flung the report against his chest. Nicholas flinched and caught it awkwardly before it fell, staring at her as the anger in her face threatened to dissolve into tears.
"They are all gone, Nicky. All of them. Gone to Heaven, and you stand there while the newspapers tell everyone that this is war." Alexandra stamped one ivory heel against the floor and pointed at him as though conducting some furious little orchestra. "This is not war. This is slaughter. Deception. Utter humiliation!"
Nicholas wanted to go to her. The tremor in her voice and the wetness gathering around those blue-grey eyes awakened every instinct he possessed as a husband, but the look she gave him warned plainly that approaching her would be interpreted as another offence.
Instead Alexandra whirled back toward the ministers and planted both palms upon the table with a flat slap.
"And then there is that man. That Oskar." Her mouth twisted around the name. "A liar, a deceiver, a devil wrapped in silk who has spent years worming his way into this family. Look at Tatiana! Ever since she met him she has been fascinated by him. She learns German because of him, waits for his letters, blushes when he praises her and now tries to defend him whenever anyone says what he truly is. He has been charming our daughters beneath our noses, Nicky, and you allowed it!"
A faint movement passed around the table. Nicholas stepped forward before his wife could convince herself of anything still more alarming.
"My dear, please. You exaggerate. Oskar has never shown personal ill will toward this family. His correspondence with the girls has always been proper, and much of the health advice he sent us has plainly been beneficial. Whatever else he may have done in this war, surely—"
"Do not."
Alexandra's interruption cut through him like glass.
"Do not insult me with hope. I know exactly what this is. He played us, Nicky. All of us."
She turned upon the gathered ministers, her chest rising and falling beneath the ivory gown as her fury gathered itself anew.
"For years we accepted his polite letters, his soft words, his friendship, his cooperation, his German trade. We listened while he spoke of health and progress and peace as though Germany and Russia might remain civilized neighbours forever. He made us believe that he was civilized."
Her lip curled.
"And now Rasputin brings me stories from the people themselves. Oskar drives the men east—all of them. Grown men, old men, boys, even little male infants—and sends them into Russia by the hundreds of thousands while the women and girls are conveniently permitted to remain behind beneath German rule."
Alexandra looked around the table as though the conclusion ought to have been obvious to every competent man present.
"And you expect me to believe that has nothing to do with what sort of man he is?"
Several ministers exchanged uncertain looks.
Alexandra noticed.
"He keeps the women," she said accusingly. "Of course he does. The great womanising beast already surrounds himself with more women than any respectable Christian man could possibly require, and apparently even that is insufficient. Now he empties Poland of husbands and fathers and leaves hundreds of thousands of women behind for himself."
Nicholas shut his eyes for one long moment.
"My dear—"
"Do you even understand what happens next?"
That question silenced him.
Alexandra turned slowly toward the table again. For a moment her expression became almost solemn.
"Winter is coming."
Several eyebrows rose.
"In winter the crops stop growing. Snow comes. Roads become difficult. The cold settles everywhere. These poor people have lost their homes, their coats, their food, their possessions—everything—and apparently we have neither the trains nor the supplies to care properly for all of them."
So far, the argument was sufficiently sensible that several ministers cautiously nodded.
Then Alexandra continued.
"And what are the women supposed to do?"
Nobody answered.
"Exactly. They will have nowhere warm to go except to him."
A peculiar silence followed.
Alexandra pressed one gloved hand dramatically over her heart.
"All those hundreds of thousands of Polish women and girls, driven by cold and hunger into that man's bed."
For several seconds the assembled leadership of the Russian Empire attempted very hard not to contemplate the logistical requirements of placing several hundred thousand women into one bed, even allowing for the extraordinary size of the man supposedly occupying it.
Nicholas stared at his wife.
Even he had become uncertain how they had arrived here.
Alexandra, however, was visibly horrified by the picture her own imagination had constructed.
"And those who refuse him? Those we cannot feed or house?" Her expression tightened. "They will starve. They will freeze. And meanwhile their husbands, fathers and sons are being driven into Russia with nothing."
She swept her gaze across the ministers again.
"So tell me what happens then. What happens when you fill the heart of Russia with hundreds of thousands of angry men who have lost their homes, their possessions, their livelihoods and the women they love?"
No one answered. Partly because the question was serious. Partly because nobody in the chamber, Nicholas included, was entirely certain where his sweet Sunny intended to take it next.
"They will write letters where skill, paper and pen allow it," Alexandra continued, her voice turning colder, "angry letters, bitter letters, letters filled with everything that has been taken from them. And those who cannot write—or who discover that nobody is listening—will riot. They will demand bread, weapons, revenge, blood. Rasputin tells me some already are."
Her gaze snapped toward the Minister of War.
"And you dare tell those men that Russia cannot even arm them?"
Vladimir Sukhomlinov stiffened beneath the accusation. "Your Majesty, the difficulty is not willingness. We simply do not possess enough modern rifles, ammunition, boots, equipment and trained officers to arm every man who arrives demanding a place in the army."
"Shortages?" Alexandra repeated incredulously. "How can Russia suffer a shortage of weapons? Our history is nothing but wars. Russians have been killing and being killed for centuries, and now suddenly you tell me there is nothing left with which a Russian man may fight?"
Sukhomlinov opened his mouth, but Alexandra was already warming to her own reasoning.
"I think the problem is not weapons at all. I think you gentlemen simply lack imagination."
She folded her arms beneath her chest and gave the Minister of War a surprisingly satisfied little smile, as though after several minutes of furious contemplation she had finally discovered the solution his entire ministry had somehow overlooked.
"When the brave men driven from these lost lands arrive at our stations asking to fight, we should not turn them away merely because there are not enough of your wonderful new rifles or perfectly fitted boots. Give them something else."
The room became very still.
"Muskets," Alexandra said. "Old rifles. Axes. Knives. Sabres. Bows, if we still have them. Whatever exists in the arsenals."
Several generals stared at her.
"And if there are no weapons at all, then what of a man's own hands? A strong man can kill with his fists. He can throw a stone. He can swing a piece of wood. Surely we have not become so dependent upon machines that we have forgotten men were perfectly capable of killing one another before anyone invented a repeating rifle."
Sukhomlinov's lips twitched despite himself. He suppressed the reaction almost immediately, though the picture forming inside his head was difficult to dismiss: enormous columns of angry peasants armed with obsolete muskets, hunting bows, axes and improvised shields marching courageously into the machine guns, mortars, aircraft and armoured vehicles of the Black Legion.
It was insanity.
Yet beneath the insanity existed the one Russian advantage Alexandra understood perfectly.
Numbers.
"We have millions of men," she continued. "Millions. Men who are angry, patriotic and desperate to reclaim what was stolen from them. If they are willing to fight, then let them fight. If they are willing to die for Russia, then let them die for Russia rather than starve uselessly beside railway tracks when the snow comes."
Her expression softened strangely then, acquiring something almost devotional.
"What is a life freely offered to something greater? We light candles before the altar knowing each flame will eventually disappear. Yet while it burns, it gives its light to God. These men are offering their light to Russia. Should we really tell them their sacrifice has no value merely because our factories failed to make enough rifles?"
Several ministers shifted uneasily.
Nicholas had heard enough.
He stepped toward her carefully, one hand rising toward her shoulder. Alexandra's breathing had quickened again and there was a bright flush high upon her cheeks. However much her health had improved over the years, he knew better than to let her continue driving herself into greater and greater agitation without attempting to intervene.
"Alexandra," he said gently, "this is becoming extreme. Please, sit down for a moment and—"
She spun toward him before his hand could reach her.
One white-gloved finger struck accusingly toward his chest.
"Be quiet, Nicky, and let me speak for once."
Nicholas stopped.
Alexandra's voice sharpened into that furious little squirrel-like pitch he knew so well.
"Someone must say what needs to be said, because you certainly will not. You are too soft, Nicky. You always have been."
He flinched.
Only slightly, but Alexandra saw it. Tears were gathering in her eyes now, and that hurt him considerably more than the insult itself.
"This is why we are here," she continued, and now the accusation seemed directed less at the government than at her husband personally. "We hesitate. We hope. We wait for reasonable men to behave reasonably while everything around us collapses. We keep believing there must be some limit beyond which Oskar will not go."
Her mouth tightened.
"But he does not hesitate. He kills. He takes. He decides what he wants and reshapes the world around himself until everyone else is forced to live with his decision."
She gestured toward the men around the table.
"And we sit here discussing everything like gentlemen."
That changed the room.
The details of Alexandra's proposed peasant army might have been absurd, but the accusation beneath them was not. Germany—at least as Russia now understood Oskar's Germany—was no longer observing many of the restraints the Russians had expected to govern a European war. Reports spoke of prisoners being killed, populations expelled, laws imposed upon conquered territory and military practices that Russian commanders had scarcely imagined before encountering them.
Alexandra's real question therefore lingered uncomfortably beneath everything else she had said.
If Oskar was no longer playing by the old rules, why should Russia?
For several seconds nobody answered.
Then Sergei Sazonov inclined his head.
"Your Imperial Majesty," the Foreign Minister said carefully, "if I may speak… there may be other measures available to us before we resort to something quite so extreme."
Alexandra's blue-grey eyes snapped toward him.
"Speak."
Sazonov hesitated only briefly before answering.
"Well, firstly, if General Rennenkampf has indeed defected and abandoned the First Army to place himself beneath German protection, then he is lost to us as a commander. That much is obvious." His expression remained carefully neutral. "But he is not necessarily beyond our reach."
Something shifted around the table.
Nicholas frowned. "What exactly are you suggesting?"
Sazonov lowered his voice. "That we remove him. Rennenkampf has betrayed the Empire at the moment of its greatest need. If he is permitted to live comfortably beneath German protection, Oskar will make use of him—not merely for whatever military intelligence he carries, but as a symbol. A Russian general of German blood abandoning the Tsar and being welcomed into Germany could prove exceedingly useful among the Baltic Germans and anyone else considering where their loyalties truly lie."
He paused before adding, with considerably less emotion than the subject deserved, "So we ensure that he does not enjoy that opportunity. Nor, ideally, should those closest to him be permitted to become useful instruments in his place."
Nicholas stared at him.
Alexandra, however, smiled.
There was still wetness around her eyes, but Sazonov's cold decisiveness evidently appealed to something in her that all the careful military explanations had not.
"Yes," she said. "Yes. That is correct."
Then her gaze sharpened.
"And not only him."
Several ministers visibly stiffened.
Alexandra drew herself upright, cheeks still flushed from anger, and when she spoke again her light voice carried almost painfully clearly through the chamber.
"Oskar must die as well."
The words settled heavily over the table.
Nicholas immediately frowned. "Alix, that is—"
"Necessary."
She gave him no room to finish.
"He believes himself untouchable. His soldiers worship him. His followers speak of him as though God Himself placed that monster upon the earth and wrapped him in iron." Her expression hardened. "Then we must prove that he bleeds like anyone else."
Alexandra glanced around the table as though searching among the men for somebody willing to understand what seemed perfectly obvious to her.
"And perhaps we use his own arrogance against him. He surrounds himself with civilians. Refugees move through the territories he occupies. Women remain where the men have been expelled. He trusts women because he imagines every woman who looks upon him must inevitably adore him."
The idea was sufficiently extreme that several men merely stared.
"You would use civilians?" one minister asked.
Alexandra looked at him.
"Yes."
There was not the slightest hesitation in her answer.
Nicholas stepped forward again. "That is not war."
Alexandra turned toward him.
"That is winning."
The word stopped him.
"And if we do not win, Nicky, what precisely do you imagine becomes of us?"
Nobody answered, because for all the extravagance of her reasoning, the larger question required no imagination at all. Russia's western armies were reeling, German forces were entering the Baltic, and Oskar's victories were beginning to threaten not merely provinces but the structure of the Empire itself.
Alexandra turned back toward the ministers.
"We act, or we allow him to decide our future for us. And we must use what Russia possesses." Her voice began gathering speed again. "Men. Millions upon millions of men. Especially those who have been driven from their homes and arrive here furious, humiliated and desperate to take them back. We cannot leave them rotting beside railway stations and in camps, waiting for food we cannot provide while they beg us for the opportunity to fight."
Her palm struck the table.
"We already have armies assembling. The Seventh at Odessa. The Ninth around Kiev. The Tenth at Minsk. They are marching to reinforce what remains of the front, so give these displaced men to them. Give them weapons where weapons exist. Give them whatever else can be found where they do not."
Several ministers exchanged uncomfortable looks, but Alexandra continued as though the logic had become self-evident.
"Let the Germans drown in the blood of the people they have wronged if that is what it takes. Let every kilometre they advance cost them another thousand lives, and another thousand after that. No machine is infinite. No invention is immortal. Men can be replaced more easily than one of Oskar's precious contraptions, and Russia has men enough to make even his machines disappear beneath them."
Her eyes burned.
"Our ancestors endured invasions before machines existed. They endured because Russia refused to disappear. We will do the same."
The room remained silent, caught somewhere between rejection and the uncomfortable recognition that beneath Alexandra's extremity lay the oldest Russian strategic resource of all: depth, population and endurance.
Sazonov appeared considerably less disturbed than most.
"There is a certain clarity in Her Majesty's argument," he said thoughtfully.
Sukhomlinov looked sharply toward him, but the Foreign Minister continued.
"I do not mean that every measure proposed should be adopted exactly as stated. But decisiveness matters. The displaced population is already angry. Fear is spreading through the Empire, and anger requires direction. If men are willing to fight Germany rather than turn their frustrations upon their own government, then that willingness has political as well as military value."
He folded his hands before him.
"Such sentiment can be directed."
Nicholas shifted uneasily at the choice of words.
Before he could respond, Vladimir Sukhomlinov finally leaned forward.
"Your Majesty, no."
His voice carried the grounded irritation of a professional soldier who had tolerated enough theory.
"The principle of making use of displaced manpower is perfectly sound. The rest goes too far."
Alexandra rounded upon him. "Too far?"
"Yes." Sukhomlinov held her gaze. "Men are not armies merely because they are angry. They require weapons, ammunition, officers, food, transport and some understanding of what they are being ordered to do. Send an untrained mob armed with axes and old muskets against machine guns, modern artillery and armoured vehicles, and courage will not transform the result. We will lose them by the tens of thousands and accomplish nothing."
"Nothing?"
Alexandra stepped around the table toward him.
"What Oskar does is nothing? He kills prisoners. He ignores the Hague conventions whenever they inconvenience him. He declares Russia uncivilized, calls our allies terrorists and then insists this is not even a war but some grand 'special military operation' in which apparently only Germany may decide what laws still matter."
The insult stung more deeply than some of the men wished to admit. Whatever they thought of Alexandra's conclusions, they had all heard the German declarations. Russia had effectively been placed outside the moral category in which Oskar claimed civilized states deserved reciprocal restraint.
Alexandra saw the reaction.
"He drives our people from their homes, takes their land, divides families according to rules he invents himself and then lectures Europe about law." Her voice sharpened. "And you tell me that we must remain restrained?"
She shook her head.
"No. Enough. If he has thrown the old rules into the dirt, then Russia must at least ask whether continuing to obey them alone is simply another form of surrender."
She straightened between the chairs of the generals, her anger suddenly becoming quieter.
That change worried Nicholas more than the shouting had.
"Perhaps," Alexandra said slowly, "we should stop pretending this remains a civilized war."
Nobody moved.
She looked around the table.
"Do we not have chemists?"
Silence.
"Do we not possess poisons?"
Understanding travelled quickly through the room.
One of the officials farther down the table murmured, "Your Majesty, surely you cannot mean—"
"We make the enemy fear the ground beneath him if that is what victory requires." Alexandra's voice remained frighteningly steady. "If conventional weapons are insufficient, then perhaps Russia develops others. Something his armour cannot simply laugh at. Something his machines cannot intimidate."
"Gas?" somebody whispered.
Alexandra's expression acquired a cold certainty that Nicholas no longer found remotely endearing.
"Yes. If such weapons can be made, then we consider them. Rasputin himself has spoken of unseen poisons, of things capable of breaking men without sword or bullet. Why should Oskar alone be permitted to invent new ways of fighting?"
That was finally enough.
"Enough of this."
Nicholas had not shouted, but the firmness in his voice caused the entire chamber to stop.
Alexandra turned toward him, eyes flashing. "My love—"
"No."
This time Nicholas did not retreat.
"This has gone too far."
He reached instinctively toward her arm, hoping perhaps that physical contact might calm what words had failed to contain, but Alexandra slapped his hand away.
"Do not touch me!"
Several men around the table flinched.
"This is partly because of you," she continued, turning all that fury upon him again. "You listened to him. You trusted him. You believed every polite assurance he gave us."
Nicholas stiffened. "I acted according to what I believed was right."
"And he acted according to what he planned."
Her answer came immediately.
"He prepared while we trusted him. He moved his wealth and his interests out of Russia before the war. He built his army, built his machines and prepared Germany while we continued telling ourselves that reason would prevail."
Her voice dropped.
"He knew, Nicky."
She looked directly into his eyes.
"And you did not."
That struck deeper than anything she had said before.
For several moments Nicholas said nothing. The old instinct was there—to hesitate, to explain himself, perhaps to ask another man at the table whether Alexandra's accusation was fair. Instead he drew a slow breath and forced himself not to look away.
"We cannot undo what has happened."
His voice was quiet.
"So we decide what happens next."
The room changed almost immediately. Alexandra's fury remained, but the discussion had finally returned to something Nicholas could control: armies, maps and decisions that had not yet been made.
"The Second Army is shattered," he continued. "First Army is retreating without Rennenkampf. Poland is collapsing and the Baltic is threatened."
His gaze travelled around the table.
"What do we do?"
For once Alexandra did not answer.
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich leaned forward instead, placing both hands upon the map.
"We hold."
The simplicity of the answer carried more weight than another speech would have.
"We stop attempting to recover everything at once. We reinforce the new line, delay the Germans and give the Empire time to assemble its strength."
Nicholas looked down at the formations marked east of the collapsing front.
"With what?"
"The Seventh Army from Odessa. The Ninth from Kiev. The Tenth forming around Minsk. Move them toward the threatened sectors and place the whole concentration beneath Zhilinsky."
Several men exchanged doubtful looks at the name.
The Grand Duke noticed.
"Yes, Zhilinsky has failed badly. But he understands the theatre, already possesses what remains of the Northwestern Front's command structure and, at present, replacing every officer who has suffered defeat would leave us with nobody commanding anything. Give him the reinforcements and make this his final chance."
Nicholas studied the map for several seconds.
"And if he cannot hold with three additional armies?"
The Grand Duke's expression remained grave.
"Then we will know the problem is considerably larger than Zhilinsky."
Nicholas slowly nodded.
"Very well. Seventh, Ninth and Tenth go to him. Full authority to reorganize what remains of the front."
Something resembling direction entered the room at last.
Then someone asked, "And the Guards?"
Silence returned.
The Sixth Army remained tied to the defence of Saint Petersburg and the approaches to the capital. Committing it meant reducing the military shield around the Imperial government itself.
Nicholas did not answer immediately.
Sazonov did.
"If the situation is truly as grave as these reports suggest, then the immediate danger no longer lies within the capital."
All eyes turned toward him.
"The population is frightened, certainly, but not presently revolutionary. Quite the opposite. Fear of Germany has accomplished what years of speeches could not. The public looks outward. Whatever grievances existed yesterday are increasingly being buried beneath anger at invasion, refugees and defeat."
His eyes moved over the table.
"For the moment, Germany is absorbing hatred that might otherwise have been directed toward us."
Nicholas clearly disliked the implication.
Nevertheless, he understood it.
"Only part of the Sixth," he said finally. "Saint Petersburg will not be left undefended."
Sukhomlinov nodded. "That can be arranged."
Sazonov then glanced toward the casualty and refugee reports scattered across the table.
"And the displaced population?"
Nicholas closed his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them, his gaze went briefly toward Alexandra.
"We use them."
Something flickered across her face.
"Those genuinely fit for military service will be attached to the reinforcing armies," Nicholas continued. "Not thrown forward with sticks, but organized properly. Give them rifles where rifles can be found and place them under officers capable of turning them into soldiers."
Sukhomlinov nodded approvingly.
"And those we cannot arm," he said, picking up the thought, "need not remain idle. Labour battalions. Supply columns. Entrenchments. Railway and road construction. Depots. Agriculture."
"Move others deeper east," Nicholas added. "Ukraine can absorb agricultural labour. Siberia needs settlers, railwaymen, miners, lumbermen—people willing to work."
Now the discussion changed character completely.
Millions of displaced people ceased being merely a humanitarian catastrophe on paper and became something the government could begin sorting into categories: soldiers, labourers, farmers, settlers, railway workers.
Sazonov allowed himself the faintest smile.
"Siberia alone could absorb enormous numbers if properly organized. And people employed there are people fed there, rather than men gathering angrily at railway stations in European Russia."
He did not need to say the rest.
Population became labour.
Labour became production.
Production became endurance.
"And externally," Sazonov continued, "we should not conceal the severity of what Germany is doing to us."
Nicholas looked at him. "Explain."
"The more threatening Germany appears, the stronger our case becomes abroad. Britain already understands what a German-dominated Europe would mean. France certainly does. And the United States may prove increasingly important if this war continues."
His tone remained perfectly matter-of-fact.
"Loans. Industrial contracts. Rifles. Machine tools. Food. Eventually perhaps more. Every German excess makes assistance to Russia easier to justify."
Nicholas looked once more across the map.
"So we endure."
That was the first strategy spoken that afternoon which seemed large enough to contain everything happening to them.
Not victory.
Not yet.
Endurance.
Alexandra remained unimpressed.
"I am disappointed," she said quietly.
Several men looked toward her.
"You still speak of caution, restraint, organization, steps to be taken tomorrow because apparently nothing unpleasant may ever be done today."
Her mouth tightened.
"You still hesitate. All of you."
Sukhomlinov's expression hardened.
Alexandra did not care.
"You lack the courage to do what is necessary. You lack the will. You lack the balls, and yet you sit here calling yourselves men while another man tears our Empire apart."
That landed badly.
Very badly.
Several ministers looked away. Sukhomlinov went rigid.
Nicholas stepped forward immediately.
"My love, stop this now."
Alexandra turned on him. "You would rather speak than act with the determination victory requires."
"And you would rather burn the world than think."
The sharpness of his answer finally stopped her.
For several seconds husband and wife simply stared at one another.
Nicholas's anger faded first, but the firmness remained.
"Listen to yourself, Alix. There are steps between defeat and madness. We reinforce. We stabilize the front. We make use of our population intelligently. We rebuild what has been broken."
He paused.
"Even if Germany has abandoned restraint, Russia will not."
Then, after the briefest hesitation:
"Not yet."
That qualification did not escape anyone at the table.
Nicholas continued before Alexandra could seize upon it.
"If these measures fail, then we decide what comes afterward. But we do not begin by sending peasants with axes against machine guns or turning half our own country into a poisoned wasteland merely because fear has convinced us that extremity is the same thing as strength."
Alexandra stared at him, breathing hard.
Then some of the tension finally left her shoulders.
"So be it."
Her voice had become cold.
"Do as you wish."
She gathered her skirts and stepped back from the table.
"But when this fails, Nicky, do not come to me and tell me nobody warned you."
With that she turned and crossed the chamber. The great doors opened before her, servants scrambling out of the way, and slammed shut again behind her hard enough to rattle the glass in the cabinets.
Silence descended.
Nicholas remained standing for several seconds, staring at the doors through which his wife had vanished.
Then he released one long, exhausted breath.
A servant hurried forward to right the gilded chair Alexandra had overturned earlier. Nicholas waited for him to finish, lowered himself into it and rubbed one hand slowly across his forehead.
One by one, the men around the table resumed their seats.
No more shouting. No more furious squirrel. No proposals to arm peasants with bows or poison the earth beneath the Germans.
Only maps, reports, and the war.
Nicholas looked down at the broken eastern front.
"Continue," he said quietly.
And they did.