Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine

Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia (born Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine; 1 November 1864Template:Nbsp– 18 July 1918) was a German Hessian and Rhenish princess of the House of Hesse-Darmstadt, and the wife of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia, the fifth son of Emperor Alexander II of Russia and Princess Marie of Hesse and by Rhine.

A granddaughter of Queen Victoria and an older sister of Alexandra, the last Russian empress, Elisabeth became famous in Russian society for her dignified beauty and charitable works for the poor. Elisabeth married Grand Duke Sergei on 15 (3) June 1884. The couple never had children of their own, but their Ilyinskoye estate was usually filled with parties that Elisabeth organized especially for children. They eventually became the foster parents of Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich and Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, Sergei's niece and nephew.

After the Socialist Revolutionary Party's Combat Organization assassinated her husband with a bomb in 1905, Elisabeth publicly forgave Sergei's murderer, Ivan Kalyayev, and unsuccessfully campaigned for him to be pardoned. She then departed the Imperial Court and became a nun, founding the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent dedicated to helping the downtrodden of Moscow.

During the February Revolution of 1917, which ended the Tsar's rule in Russia, Elisabeth's brother-in-law, Czar Nicholas II, was forced to abdicate the throne. The political upheavals initially had no impact on life in the monastery. However, Elisabeth was worried about her relatives, who were under house arrest in the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo. She kept in touch with her sister Alexandra, even when she was in exile in Tobolsk, although under considerably more difficult conditions. In 1918, she was arrested and ultimately murdered by Bolsheviks. In 1981, she was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, and in 1992 by the Moscow Patriarchate.

Early life

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Elisabeth in 1871

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The Hessian grand ducal family in May 1875

Elisabeth was born on 1 November 1864, as the second child of Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, and Princess Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria.Template:Sfn Having named their firstborn Victoria, after her maternal grandmother, the new baby girl was to be named in honor of two women named Elisabeth; She was given the names Elisabeth Alexandra Luise Alix: "Elisabeth" after both St. Elizabeth of Hungary (the ancestress of the House of Hesse) and her paternal grandmother, Princess Elisabeth of Prussia.Template:Sfn

At her christening on 28 November, the infantTemplate:Sndwhose godparents, or sponsors as they were known, included her grandmother Princess Charles, her great-uncle Alexander II of Russia, her aunts Alix (Princess of Wales), (Her mother's sister, Helena) and Anna of Mecklenburg Schwerin, together with her uncles (Prince Alfred) and Fritz (Crown Prince of Prussia), she received the names Elizabeth Alexandra Louise Alice.Template:Sfn To her family, she would be known simply as Ella.Template:Sfn

Princess Alice brought up her daughters simply. An English nanny presided over the nursery, and the children ate plain meals of rice puddings and baked apples and wore plain dresses. Her daughters were taught how to do housework, such as baking cakes, making their own beds, laying fires and sweeping and dusting their rooms. Princess Alice also emphasized the need to give to the poor and often took her daughters on visits to hospitals and charities.Template:Sfn

The family was devastated in 1873 when Ella's hemophiliac younger brother Friedrich, nicknamed "Frittie", fell through an open window, struck his head on the balustrade, and died hours later of a brain hemorrhage.Template:Sfn In the months following the toddler's death, Alice frequently took her children to his grave to pray and was melancholy on anniversaries associated with him.Template:Sfn

On the afternoon of 7 November, Victoria although complaining of a sore throat, sat down to read to her brothers and sister.Template:Sfn Later that evening she began to run a fever and was put to bed.Template:Sfn The following morning, when her daughter was no better, the Grand Duchess called for the family physician, Dr Eigenbrodt, who, to Alice's great concern, discovered a white membrane on both sides of Victoria's throat, the first sign of diphtheria. This was the most traumatic and tragic sequence of events in the lives of the grand ducal family.Template:Sfn Of all six children, Ella remained unaffected.Template:Sfn

Ella was moved out of Victoria's room, On 10 November Alix fell ill.Template:Sfn On 13 November, in an attempt to keep Ella free of the disease, Alice sent her with her governess, Miss Jackson, to stay with Princess Charles.Template:Sfn

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Elisabeth in 1878

Elisabeth's sister Marie died on 16 November 1878, and her mother Alice died on 14 December.Template:Sfn Elisabeth, who had been sent to her paternal grandmother's home at the outbreak's beginning. When she was finally allowed to return home, she described the meeting as "terribly sad" and said that everything was "like a horrible dream".Template:Sfn At last Elisabeth could see the family. "It was a terrible sad meeting", she wrote "no-one daring to speak of what was uppermost in their thoughts. Poor papa looked dreadfully."Template:Sfn

Admirers and suitors

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Elisabeth of Hesse, 1883

Charming and with a very accommodating personality, Elisabeth was considered by many historians and contemporaries to be one of the most beautiful women in Europe at that time. Her cousin Princess Marie of Edinburgh wrote that "one could never take one's eyes off [Ella]" and that Ella's features were "exquisite beyond words, it almost brought tears to your eyes". Her older cousin Prince Wilhelm of Prussia called her "exceedingly beautiful, in fact she is the most beautiful girl I ever saw".Template:Sfn Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden, her sister's lady-in-waiting, reflected that she was "a very pretty girl, tall and fair, with regular features".

When Elisabeth was a young woman, her cousin Prince Wilhelm of Prussia fell in love with her. In April 1875, 16-year-old Wilhelm visited Darmstadt to celebrate Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine's 12th birthday and first expressed interest in 11-year-old Elisabeth.Template:Sfn He wrote in a letter to his mother that "if God grants that I may live till then I shall make her my bride once if you allow it".Template:Sfn When he was a student at Bonn University, he often visited his Aunt Alice and his Hessian relatives on the weekends.Template:Sfn During these frequent visits, he fell in love with Elisabeth, But she declined.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Henry Wilson, later a distinguished soldier, also vied unsuccessfully for Elisabeth's hand.Template:Sfn

The future Frederick II, Grand Duke of Baden, Wilhelm's first cousin, proposed to Elisabeth. Queen Victoria described him as "so good and steady" with "such a safe and happy position".

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Princess Elisabeth of Hesse, 1887

Other admirers included:

• Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia (the poet KR), who wrote a poem about her first arrival in Russia and the general impression she made to all the people present at the time.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
• As a young girl, Queen Marie of Romania was very fascinated with her cousin Ella. In her memoirs, she wrote that "her beauty and sweetness was a thing of dreams".
• The French Ambassador to the Russian court, Maurice Paleologue, wrote in his memoirs how Elisabeth was capable of arousing what he described as "profane passions".

Engagement and marriage

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Elisabeth in 1880

Ella and Sergei celebrated their engagement with her family at Darmstadt in February 1884.Template:Sfn

Sergei, for his part, was soon writing home to his brother Paul, "Ella is, if possible, even more beautiful. We both sit together a lot. In the mornings she is in my room, and I teach her some Russian, which is very funny. I even make her write. I also teach her the words to 'god save the tsar'. Now we often go out all over Darmstadt alone."Template:Sfn

They were first cousins once removed (Elisabeth's great-grandfather, her father's paternal grandfather, Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse, was Sergei's maternal grandfather) and had known each other all their lives.Template:Sfn There were hesitations on both sides, and Elisabeth first rejected his proposal of marriage.Template:Sfn Queen Victoria, who had anti-Russian sentiments, opposed the marriage of her motherless granddaughter.Template:Sfn Elisabeth and her surviving sisters were not pressured into following political marriages; they were allowed to follow their own inclination.Template:Sfn After the couple spent some time together at Schloss Wolfsgarten in Darmstadt in September 1883, Elisabeth agreed to marry him.Template:Sfn Their engagement was announced publicly on 26 February 1884 when Sergei returned to visit her in Darmstadt. Template:Sfn

When he arrived at the Neues Palais that February, he had with him a wealth of jewels that he showered on his bride-to-be. After they were married. Template:Sfn Among the engagement presents Sergei brought with him to Darmstadt were ropes of jewelry and brooches of ores.Template:Sfn Ella herself recalled how Sergei, having insisted that she put them all on at once, pinned each and every brooch onto her dress until she could hardly stand under the weight. 'I looked like a Christmas tree!' she wrote, 'And we had a terrible time getting them all off because we couldn't find the clasps'.Template:Sfn

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Elisabeth and her husband Sergei

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Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna in 1897

Sergei and Elisabeth married on 15 June 1884, at the Chapel of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg.Template:Sfn upon her conversion to Russian Orthodoxy, she took the name Elizaveta Feodorovna.Template:Sfn It was at the wedding that Sergei's 16-year-old nephew, Tsarevich Nicholas, first met his future wife, Elisabeth's youngest surviving sister, Alix.Template:Sfn

Grand Duchess of Russia

Elisabeth was not legally required to convert to Russian Orthodoxy from her native Lutheran religion, but she voluntarily chose to do so in 1891. Duchess Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Elisabeth's Lutheran sister-in-law who had not converted to Russian Orthodoxy, insisted that it was "a disgrace for a German Protestant princess to go over to the Orthodox faith".Template:Sfn Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had once been in love with her, declared that she converted because of "an inordinate pursuit of popularity, a desire to improve her position at court, a great lack of intelligence, and also a want of true religiousness".Template:Sfn

The new Grand Duchess made a good first impression on her husband's family and the Russian people. "Everyone fell in love with her from the moment she came to Russia from her beloved Darmstadt", wrote one of Sergei's cousins, Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia (the poet KR).Template:Sfn The couple settled in the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace in St. Petersburg; after Sergei was appointed Governor-General of Moscow by his elder brother, Tsar Alexander III, in 1892, they resided in one of the Kremlin palaces. During the summer, they stayed at Ilyinskoye, an estate outside Moscow that Sergei had inherited from his mother.Template:Sfn

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Grand Duchess Elisabeth Fedorovna in court dress

The viceregal role of governor-general of Moscow was one that was answerable only to the emperor.Template:Sfn Grand Duke Sergei was a political hardliner who shared his brother's inalienable belief in strong, nationalist government.Template:Sfn Sergei's tenure began with the expulsion of Moscow's 20,000 Jews.Template:Sfn It started four weeks before he arrived in person, after the publication of an imperial ukase by the Minister of the Interior Ivan Durnovo, by which all Jews of lower social stance (artisans, minor traders and so on) had to be expelled from Moscow. On 29 March, the first day of Passover, the city's Jewish population learned of the new decree that called for their expulsion.Template:Sfn In three carefully planned phases over the next twelve months, Moscow's Jews were expelled. The first to go were the unmarried, the childless, and those who had lived in the city for less than three years.Template:Sfn Next, it was the turn of apprentices, of families with up to four children, and those with less than six years residency.Template:Sfn Last of all, it was the turn of the old Jewish settlers with large families and/or numerous employees, some of whom had lived in Moscow for forty years.Template:Sfn Young Jewish women were made to register as prostitutes if they wanted to stay in the city.Template:Sfn

During the expulsion in January 1892, homes were surrounded by mounted Cossacks in the middle of the night, with temperatures of Template:Convert, while policemen ransacked every house. The Brest station was packed with Jews of all ages and sexes, all in rags and surrounded by meager remnants of households goods, all leaving voluntarily rather than face deportation.Template:Sfn Sergei as governor-general was petitioned by the police commissioners to stop the expulsions until the weather conditions improved.Template:Sfn While he agreed, the order was not published until the expulsions were over.Template:Sfn Some of the expelled Jews moved to southern and western regions of the empire, although there were many who decided to emigrate abroad. As a result of the expulsion, Moscow lost 100 million rubles in trade and production, 25,000 Russians employed by Jewish firms lost their livelihoods, while the manufacture of silk, one of the city's most lucrative industries, was all but wiped out.Template:Sfn

In 1891, Ella and Sergei's arrival in Moscow was marred by tragedy that September, not long after Paul and Alexandra arrived at Ilyinskoye to spend the late summer with them. One afternoon, the 21-year-old grand duchess Alexandra, who was seven months pregnant with her second child, followed the path down from the back of the house to the waiting small boat and she suddenly collapsed. Her frantic husband, brother-and sister-in-law felt were helpless to help, and doctors were too far away.Template:Sfn The midwife was called Alexandra and gave birth to a tiny premature baby boy, Alexandra died 6 days later. Alexandra's sudden death was crushing and an unbelievable a blow to Paul, Sergei and Ella.Template:Sfn

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Hessian family in mourning

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painting by Friedrich August von Kaulbach

Worse news was soon to follow when, during the first week of March 1892, Grand Duke Louis suffered a paralytic stroke that brought his family hurrying to his bedside.Template:Sfn Ernie, Alix, Victoria, and Irene, He raised his whole face off the pillow, put out his hand, and stroked Ella's face. On the evening of 13 March, he lapsed into a coma and died.Template:Sfn

The couple never had children of their own,Template:Sfn but their Ilyinskoye estate was usually filled with parties that Elisabeth organized especially for children. It was rumoured that their childlessness was due to Grand Duke Sergei's homosexual tendencies. Template:SfnThey eventually became the foster parents of Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich and Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, Sergei's niece and nephew. Maria wrote in her memoirs about her aunt Ella: "she and my uncle seemed never very intimate. They met for the most part only at meals and by day avoided being alone together. They slept, however, up to the last year of their life together, in the same great bed."Template:Sfn Maria and Dimitri resented their aunt and uncle, blaming them for the forced separation from their real father, who had abandoned them.Template:Sfn

Elisabeth was instrumental in the marriage of her nephew-by-marriage, Tsar Nicholas II, to her youngest sister Alix. Much to the dismay of Queen Victoria, Elisabeth had been encouraging Nicholas, then tsarevich, in his pursuit of Alix.Template:Sfn When Nicholas did propose to Alix in 1894, and Alix rejected him on the basis of her refusal to convert to Orthodoxy, it was Elisabeth who spoke with Alix and encouraged her to convert.Template:Sfn When Nicholas proposed to her again, a few days later, Alix then accepted.Template:Sfn

Assassination of Grand Duke Sergei

File:Ivan Kalyayev.jpg

Photograph of Ivan Kalyayev taken just after the assassination. I threw the bomb from less than four steps. I was taken by the explosions, I saw the carriage flew to pieces... My overcoat was strewn with splinters of wood all around, it was torn and burnt, there was blood on my face...

On 15 February 1905, the family attended a concert at the Bolshoi Theatre in aid of Elizabeth Feodorovna's Red Cross War charities.Template:Sfn A terrorist organization that knew the route, the Socialist Revolutionary Party's combat detachment, had planned to assassinate Sergei that day. However, one of their members, Ivan Kalyayev, noticed the children in the carriage and decided to call off their attack. To kill the Grand Duchess and the children would surely have sparked a wave of apprehension throughout the empire and would have set back the revolutionary cause by years.Template:Sfn After lunching with his wife at Nicholas Palace on 17 February, Sergei left unaccompanied for the Governor General's mansion.Template:Sfn Because of the looming threat, Sergei had refused to take his adjutant, Alexei, since he was married and a father. The arrival of the Grand Duke's recognizable carriage, drawn by a pair of horses and driven by his coachman Andrei Rudinkin, alerted the terrorist who had been waiting in the Kremlin with a bomb wrapped in newspapers.Template:Sfn

Just before 14:45, the carriage of the Grand Duke passed through the gate of Nikolskaya Tower of the Kremlin and turned the corner of the Chudov Monastery into Senatskaya Square. From a distance no more than four feet (1.2 m) away and still some 60 feet (18 m) inside the Nikolsky Gate, Ivan Kalyayev stepped forward and threw a nitroglycerin bomb directly into Sergei's lap.Template:Sfn The explosion disintegrated the carriage, and the Grand Duke died immediately.Template:Sfn Scattered all over the bloodstained snow lay pieces of scorched cloth, fur, and leather. The body of the Grand Duke was mutilated, with the head, the upper part of the chest, and the left shoulder and arm blown off and completely destroyed.Template:Sfn Some of the Grand Duke's fingers, still adorned with the rings he habitually wore, were found on the roof of a nearby building.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

On impact, the carriage horses had bolted towards the Nikolsky Gate, dragging with them the front wheels and coachbox as well as the semi-conscious and badly burned driver, Rudinkin, whose back had been riddled with bits of bomb and stones. He was rushed to the nearest hospital, where he died three days later. Kalyayev, who by his own testimony had expected to die in the explosion, survived.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Sucked into the vortex of the explosion, he ended up by the remains of the rear wheels. His face was peppered by splinters, pouring with blood.Template:Sfn Kalyayev was immediately arrested, sentenced to death, and hanged two months later. The Grand Duchess rushed to the scene of the explosion.Template:Sfn Stunned but perfectly controlled, she gave instructions, and, kneeling in the snow, helped to gather up Sergei's remains.Template:Sfn The remains were placed on a stretcher and covered with an army greatcoat.Template:Sfn

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Grand Duchess Elizabeth in Mourning, 1906

According to Edvard Radzinsky,

Elizabeth spent all the days before the burial in ceaseless prayer. On her husband's tombstone she wrote: 'Father, release them, they know not what they do.' She understood the words of the Gospels heart and soul, and on the eve of the funeral she demanded to be taken to the prison where Kalyayev was being held. Brought into his cell, she asked, 'Why did you kill my husband?' 'I killed Sergei Alexandrovich because he was a weapon of tyranny. I was taking revenge for the people.' She replied, 'Do not listen to your pride. Repent... and I will beg the Sovereign to give you your life. I will ask him for you. I myself have already forgiven you.' On the eve of revolution, she had already found a way out; forgiveness! Forgive through the impossible pain and blood -- and thereby stop it then, at the beginning, this bloody wheel. By her example, poor Ella appealed to society, calling upon the people to live in Christian faith. 'No!' replied Kalyayev. 'I do not repent. I must die for my deed and I will... My death will be more useful to my cause than Sergei Alexandrovich's death.' Kalyayev was sentenced to death. 'I am pleased with your sentence,' he told the judges. 'I hope that you will carry it out just as openly and publicly as I carried out the sentence of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Learn to look the advancing revolution right in the face.'Template:Sfn

Religious life

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Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna as a nun after her husband's death

Deeply affected by the Grand Duke's death, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna retired from the royal family and founded the Russian Orthodox convent of Martha and Mary, where she dedicated herself to the care of Moscow's poor and suffering.Template:Sfn Part of the obligations of the sisters of the Martha and Mary convent was to make an annual pilgrimage to the sepulchral church in memory of the Grand Duke on the day of his repose, 4 February.

Elisabeth wore mourning clothes and became a vegetarian. In 1909, she sold off her magnificent collection of jewels and other luxurious possessions; even her wedding ring was not spared.Template:Sfn With the proceeds, she opened the Convent of Saints Martha and Mary and became its abbess.Template:Sfn She soon opened a hospital, chapel, pharmacy and orphanage on its grounds.Template:Sfn

Elisabeth and her fellow nuns worked tirelessly among the poor and the sick of Moscow. She often visited Moscow's worst slums and did all she could to help alleviate the suffering of the poor.Template:Sfn For many years, her institution helped the poor and the orphans in Moscow by fostering the prayer and charity of devout women.Template:Sfn

On October 17, 1910, Grand Duchess Elizabeth took leave of her sisters and boarded her train en route for Germany.Template:Sfn She arrived at Wolfsgarten for a cheerful reunion with the rest of surviving family. Her ill health was aggravated by the high anxiety her sister, Alexandra, felt for her son. From the first signs of hemophilia six weeks after his birth.Template:Sfn From Moscow, Elizabeth had observed this mounting dependence with dismay.Template:Sfn She knew all about Rasputin's true nature, and she had none of her sister's naive credulity.Template:Sfn Soon after his acceptance by the imperial couple, rumours began to spread in St. Petersburg society that Rasputin had been a member of the Khlisti.Template:Sfn Elizabeth warned Alexandra several times that the "holy man" was a fraud and a lecherous drunkard, but Alexandra would flatly refuse to believe her.Template:Sfn In 1915, the All-Russian Zemstvo Union was organised under Elisabeth's auspices to provide support for sick and injured soldiers during the First World War.

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Elizabeth, 1914

In April 1916, Ella visited the dowager empress at the Anichkov palace where the talk was of nothing but the need to dispose of the peasant Rasputin.Template:Sfn Frustration was reaching boiling point, and in the face of Alix's obstinacy, Ella knew that it could not be long before someone would be driven to act.Template:Sfn

However, Elisabeth was worried about her relatives, who were under house arrest in the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo. She kept in touch with her sister Alexandra, even when she was in exile in Tobolsk, although under considerably more difficult conditions.

In 2010, a historian claimed that Elisabeth may have been aware that the murder of Rasputin was going to take place and secondly, she knew who was going to commit it when she wrote a letter and sent it to the Tsar and the two telegrams to Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and her friend Zinaida Yusupova. The telegrams, which were written the night of the murder, reveal that Elisabeth was aware of who the murderers were, before that information had been released to the public, and she stated that she felt that the killing was a "patriotic act".Template:Sfn

Death

In 1918, Vladimir Lenin ordered the Cheka to arrest Elisabeth. They then exiled her first to Perm, then to Yekaterinburg, where she spent a few days and was joined by others: the Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich; Princes John Konstantinovich, Konstantin Konstantinovich, Igor Konstantinovich and Vladimir Pavlovich Paley; Grand Duke Sergei's secretary, Fyodor Remez; and Varvara Yakovleva, a sister from the Grand Duchess's convent.Template:Sfn They were all taken to Alapayevsk on 20 May 1918.Template:Sfn

File:Алапаевская шахта.jpg

Mine shaft in Siniachikha where Elisabeth and her family were killed

At noon on 17 July, Cheka officer Pyotr Startsev and a few Bolshevik workers came to the school. They took from the prisoners whatever money they had left and announced that they would be transferred that night to the Upper Siniachikhensky factory compound.Template:Sfn The Red Army guards were told to leave and Cheka men replaced them.Template:Sfn That night the prisoners were awakened and driven in carts on a road leading to the village of Siniachikha, some Template:Convert from Alapayevsk, where there was an abandoned iron mine with a pit Template:Convert deep.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Here they halted. The Cheka beat all the prisoners before throwing their victims into this pit, Elisabeth being the first.Template:Sfn Ryabov tossed in a grenade after them and grenades were then hurled down the shaft.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Following the explosion, he claimed to have heard Elisabeth and the others singing an Orthodox hymn from the bottom of the shaft. Unnerved, Ryabov threw down a second grenade, but the singing continued. Finally a large quantity of brushwood was shoved into the opening and set alight, upon which Ryabov posted a guard over the site and departed.Template:Sfn

Early on 18 July 1918, the leader of the Alapayevsk Cheka, Abramov, and the head of the Yekaterinburg Regional Soviet, Beloborodov, who had been involved in the execution of the Imperial Family, exchanged a number of telegrams in a pre-arranged plan saying that the school had been attacked by an "unidentified gang".Template:Sfn A month later, Alapayevsk fell to the White Army of Admiral Alexander Kolchak. Lenin welcomed Elisabeth's death, remarking that "virtue with the crown on it is a greater enemy to the world revolution than a hundred tyrant tsars".Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Elisabeth's last words were: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."Template:Sfn

New research published in the book Крестный путь преподобномученицы Великой княгини Елисаветы Феодоровны на Алапаевскую Голгофу, by Russian Orthodox Church historian Ludmila Kulikova in 2019, challenges the traditional, life of a saint and the belief about Elisabeth during her time in the mine shaft. According to the original documents of the preliminary investigation in 1918 by investigator Nikolai Alekseevich Sokolov, Elizabeth's body was found "vertical, her arms folded over her body...both hands...tightly clenched, fingers bent, her nails sunk into the skin...head, eyes and nose were tied with a handkerchief folded in four layers". Thus, she could not have sung Orthodox hymns nor could she have bandaged the head of Prince John Konstantinovich as traditionally believed.

Legacy and canonisation

Fate of the remains and commemoration

On 8 October 1918, White Army soldiers discovered the remains of Elisabeth and her companions, still within the shaft where they had been killed.Template:Sfn Despite having lain there for almost three months, the bodies were in relatively good condition. With the Red Army approaching, their remains were removed farther east and buried in the cemetery of the Russian Orthodox Mission in Peking (now Beijing), China.Template:Sfn In 1921, the bodies of Elisabeth and of Sister Barbara (Varvara Yakovleva), one of her nuns, were taken to Jerusalem, where they were laid to rest in the Church of Mary Magdalene at Gethsemane.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Elisabeth was canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1981, and in 1992 by the Moscow Patriarchate as Holy Martyr Elizabeth Feodorovna.Template:Sfn Her principal shrines are the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent she founded in Moscow, and the Saint Mary Magdalene Convent on the Mount of Olives, which she and her husband helped build, and where her relics (along with those of Nun Barbara (Varvara Yakovleva, her former maid) are enshrined.Template:Sfn

File:Church of Mary Magdalene IMG 3547.JPG

Tomb and mosaic icon of Princess Elizabeth

Saint Elizabeth the New Martyr is commemorated on three days in the liturgical year of the Russian Orthodox Church: on the feast day of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russian Church (Sunday nearest 25 January (O.S.)/ 7 February (N.S.), on the anniversary of her martyrdom (5/ 18 July) and on the anniversary of the uncovering of her relics from the mine (28 September/ October 11). A fourth feast day, the anniversary of the transfer of her relics to Jerusalem (17/ 30 January), is commemorated on the ROCOR liturgical calendar. She is one of the ten 20th-century martyrs from across the world who are depicted in statues above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey, London, England, and she is also represented in the restored nave screen installed at St Albans Cathedral in April 2015.

A statue of Elisabeth was erected in the garden of her convent in Moscow after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.Template:Sfn Its inscription reads: "To the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna: With Repentance".Template:Sfn

Relics and rehabilitation

In 2004–2005, the relics of Saint Elizabeth were brought to Russia, the CIS and Baltic countryies, where more than 7 million people came to venerate them.Template:Sfn According to patriarch Alexei ll (1929–2008), "the long queues of believers to the relics of the holy new martyrs are another symbol of Russia's repentance for the sons of hard times, the country's return to its original historical path".Template:Sfn The relics were subsequently returned to Jerusalem.Template:Sfn

On 8 June 2009, the Prosecutor General of Russia officially posthumously rehabilitated Elizabeth Feodorovna, along with other Romanovs: Mikhail Alexandrovich, Sergei Mikhailovich, John Konstantinovich, Konstantin Konstantinovich, and Igor Konstantinovich. "All of these people were subjected to repression in the form of arrest, deportation and being held by the Cheka without charge", said a representative of the office.

Honours

• Template:Country data Grand Duchy of Hesse: Dame of the Order of the Golden Lion, 1 January 1883
• Template:Country data Russian Empire: Dame Grand Cross of the Order of St. Catherine, 1884
• Template:Flagcountry:
  • Queen Victoria Golden Jubilee Medal, 1887
  • Royal Order of Victoria and Albert, 2nd Class

See also

• Canonization of the Romanovs

Further reading

• Millar, Lubov, Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia, US edition, Redding, California., 1991, Template:ISBN
• Zeepvat, Charlotte. Romanov Autumn, 2000, Template:ISBN
• Belyakova, Zoia. The Romanovs: the Way It Was, 2000, Template:ISBN

External links

• Template:NPG name

Orthodox sources

• Life of the Holy New Martyr Grand Duchess Elizabeth, by Metropolitan Anastassy
• Pilgrimage to Alapaevsk
• Photo Library of Saint Elizabeth

Orthodox hymns to Saint Elizabeth

• Akathist to the New Martyr Elizabeth
• Canon to the Holy and Righteous Nun-Martyrs Elizabeth and Barbara New Martyrs of Russia

Secular sources

• Murder of the Romanovs at Alapayevsk
• American Reporter Interviews Elisabeth in 1917
• HIH Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna by Countess Alexandra Olsoufieff