Seeds of Revolution
While Waldemar was refining his design to bring down the Russian monarchy through revolution, an event that would reshape the fate of Russia itself took place.
On March 13, 1881, Tsar Alexander II of Russia attended a military review at the Mikhailovsky Manege.
When the parade ended, the Tsar paid a visit to the residence of Grand Duchess Catherine—wife of his cousin Grand Duke Michael—where he drank tea and made pleasant conversation before climbing into his carriage for the journey home.
Up to that point, it had been an entirely ordinary day in an entirely ordinary routine.
It might have remained so, had it not been for the People's Will.
The People's Will was a radical populist terrorist organization active in the late nineteenth-century Russian Empire—one that quite literally took Russian politicians, nobles, and soldiers as its targets for assassination.
To the Tsar's great misfortune, members of that organization lay in ambush along the route he planned to take home.
"Die, oppressor of the people!"
At the signal from People's Will member Perovskaya, Nikolai Rysakov hurled the first bomb.
BOOM!
The charge detonated square against the carriage, spraying shrapnel that wounded bystanders all around.
"Aaagh! My eyes!"
"My leg—I can't move my leg!"
The street became a scene of chaos—injured civilians and wreckage torn from the shattered carriage.
Belatedly, the Tsar's bodyguards—who had been watching his route—rushed in.
"Your Majesty! Are you unharmed?"
"I am… I am fine."
Alexander II looked upon the people wounded by the bombing and felt a deep pity for them.
"How badly are the injured?"
"A great many are seriously hurt, Your Majesty."
"Then I shall examine the situation myself and offer comfort to the victims."
"What? Your Majesty, that is absolutely out of the question."
"You must think of Your Majesty's safety."
The bodyguards and the coachman alike begged the Tsar not to leave the carriage.
"I am the father of the Russian people. Shall I simply stand and watch while my children bleed?"
The Tsar brushed aside their protests and stepped down from the carriage.
That decision proved fatal.
The moment the Tsar alighted, the second attacker lying in wait—Ignacy Hryniewiecki—threw a bomb at the Emperor's feet.
No one had time to react.
BOOM!
The second charge exploded beneath the Tsar, tearing his legs to shreds and flinging the mangled limbs across the ground.
"Your Majesty!"
Everyone present recoiled in horror at the appalling sight.
Barely clinging to consciousness, Tsar Alexander II spoke weakly to his attendants.
"Take me to the palace… and let me die there."
A few hours later, in accordance with his final wish, the Tsar was carried to the Winter Palace, where he drew his last breath.
It was a wretched end, wholly unfitting for the reforming monarch who had issued the Emancipation Edict freeing the serfs and who had been preparing to establish a parliament with civilian representation.
The international community was stunned by the crime.
Governments everywhere denounced it as "a shock to the civilized world" and condemned the terrorism of anti-government forces in the strongest terms.
"The United States condemns this assassination and stands ready to support any measure the Russian government may take in response."
America's declaration of support was only the beginning; Germany, too, sent its own message of solidarity to Russia.
"Is this the Germans signaling that they wish to reconcile with us?"
The new Tsar, Alexander III, interpreted the German gesture as the opening sketch of an effort to mend the strained relations that had festered ever since the Congress of Berlin.
There was some truth to that reading.
"If we do not want to hand the Russians over to the French, we must keep a hand on them as well."
Bismarck judged the moment ripe for coaxing the Russians back into the fold.
Yet within Germany itself many voices disagreed with the Chancellor's view—chief among them the conservative bureaucrats and the military establishment.
"At the Congress of Berlin, Russia lost all trust in us. We, for our part, saw with our own eyes the hostility they displayed. With the situation so clear, what possible good can come of taking Russia's hand? Do you mean to throw our ally Austria into a panic?"
"We could never have accepted both Austria and Russia as allies in the first place. How could anyone pen two nations with such contradictory aims and interests inside the same fence?"
Even the Empire's supreme ruler, Wilhelm I, shrank from any improvement of relations with Russia.
"The Russians threatened us with war. Why on earth would we conclude a treaty with men who behaved as little better than enemies?"
Despite the determined opposition of the Kaiser, the army, and the conservative officials, Germany chose the path of reconciliation with Russia.
Yet the Second League of the Three Emperors began to emit discordant notes before the documents were even ready.
"The House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen is to inherit the Romanian throne? What kind of joke is this?"
Russia fiercely opposed the succession of a German princeling to the Romanian crown.
In truth, Carol I—whom the Romanians had already elevated as their prince in 1866—did not cease to be a monarch merely because he had not yet held a formal coronation as king. Russia's reaction to Carol's accession was nothing more than a display of discontent, no more and no less.
Even so, Russia's discourtesy was more than enough to inflame German tempers.
"Insolent Ivan dogs. Getting hammered by our ruble short-selling last time wasn't lesson enough for them, it seems."
The insult offered to a relative of the Sigmaringen branch stung the Hohenzollern main line as well.
"And you still say we need better relations with these Russian scoundrels?"
Even with the plain contradiction between Germanic and Slavic ambitions for influence in the Balkans laid bare, Bismarck pressed on with his foreign policy.
"Diplomacy means swallowing a certain amount of inconvenience and moving past it."
Under Bismarck's influence the episode was papered over, yet the German conservative bureaucrats and the military reconfirmed for themselves that they and Russia were simply not cut out for partnership.
"Reconciliation with those Russian bastards? Spare me."
Still, once Bismarck set things in motion, the secret negotiations advanced swiftly.
Through those under-the-table talks Alexander III took the measure of German thinking.
The concrete terms Bismarck offered were as follows.
First: Germany had no direct interest in the Balkan question and would therefore give its full support to any settlement negotiated between Russia and Austria.
Second: should Russia clash with Britain in Asia, Germany would maintain the strictest neutrality.
Third: for the sake of peace on the European continent, the monarchical states of Germany and Russia must stand together.
"Do the Germans actually mean this in earnest?"
Russia could not take Bismarck's promises at face value. After all, the Germans had already deceived them more times than anyone cared to count.
"Trust us just once more. It's a good deal for both sides."
"This once. Only this once."
The death of Tsar Alexander II thus painted a picture that led toward Russo-German reconciliation and, beyond that, the rebirth of the League of the Three Emperors.
Yet the shockwaves from the Tsar's murder did not stop at rearranging the international order.
They also left irreversible scars upon the internal affairs of that vast country Waldemar had always watched so carefully—Russia itself.
The new Tsar, Alexander III, believed his father's death had sprung from the very liberalism that had granted "the people" their freedoms.
For that reason Alexander III swept aside every liberal and reformist policy of his father's reign and returned to conservative reaction.
"A constitution? Russia has no need of such a thing. The Tsar's will is the supreme command of the Empire."
"Your Majesty—surely that goes too far?"
"Now that I look at it, even the grumbling of malcontents like you is becoming tiresome. I hereby declare a state of emergency."
"Your Majesty, are you in your right mind?"
"Freedom of the press, freedom of publication—Russia needs none of it. So keep your mouths shut and live quietly."
To underwrite his conservative-reactionary politics, Alexander III embraced the doctrines of Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Procurator of the Holy Synod, and rejected parliamentary democracy, universal education, and freedom of the press outright.
"What kind of country is this?"
"That remark has been censored."
The abrupt political retreat drove the liberals and reformists who had pinned their hopes on Alexander II's reforms into despair.
As a result, even those who had once pursued moderate reform within the system began transforming into radical revolutionaries opposed to the monarchy itself.
"That dog of a Tsar. One day he will pay for this."
"If he plugs his ears and pretends not to hear, we'll open them with a bullet!"
It would not be wrong to say that the seeds of the revolution that would one day shake Russia to its foundations first germinated in that very moment.
Waldemar did not involve himself in events inside Russia—he lacked the means in any case—but he watched the current of affairs with close attention, searching for any corner that might later prove useful.
Between the radical Russification policies and everything else, there seem to be plenty of soft spots to poke.
For the time being, Waldemar decided to scatter a little bait.
"You want us to bring minority intellectuals from inside Russia and give them employment in France, Your Highness?"
"Yes."
Waldemar judged that his expansive French estates could easily absorb them.
"Is there any real reason to hire them—at greater expense—when we already have Frenchmen available?"
"Of course there is. This is for a very large investment."
"If that is Your Highness's wish, I shall gather the people."
Schneider accepted Waldemar's request. He had already planned a stop in Russia to recruit new models for Playguy, so the errand presented no real difficulty.
Having dispatched Schneider to Russia, Waldemar sank into thought.
I won't need to lift a finger myself. France—the land of revolution—will plant rebellious ideas in their heads for me.
Waldemar had begun to cultivate a fireworks display that only he would ever get to watch.