A Brief History of the House of Windsor by Michael Paterson

1917, the tsar had been forced to abdicate, to be replaced by a moderate Provisional Government that committed itself to keeping Russia in the war (vital as a counterweight to the Western Front). Partly because of this, further upheavals that autumn had replaced the Provisional Government with Bolshevism. The country’s new rulers proceeded to get out of the war, on any terms whatever, as soon as it could be managed. They also imposed on members of the imperial family a more stringent confinement than the house arrest they had previously suffered.
    The Romanovs were George’s cousins, and the relationship between them had been close. The two men were three years apart in age, and of a similar physical appearance. In the manner of royalty in those days, the families met in various countries and on a number of occasions, both official and informal. The last had been in 1913 when they attended, both wearing German military uniform, the wedding of the kaiser’s daughter. Nicholas, his wife, four daughters and son were now in considerable danger. Apart from being George’s relations they had been allies through the difficult years of war. He offered them asylum in Britain.
    He came to rue this decision, however. The Russian Revolution had encouraged socialists in other countries to dream of similar success. This was especially the case if the overthrow of government would lead to abandoning the war at once. Not since the French Revolution had there been such a direct, implacable and serious threat to monarchical rule. Among the British working class there was open admiration for Russia’s new government (the tsars, autocratic and despotic, had featured in British demonology since at least the time of the Crimean War). Although the prime minister, David Lloyd George, was sympathetic to the plight of Nicholas and his family, George reconsidered his invitation. It might jeopardize the security of his own throne if he made a show of supporting an absolute monarch. Afterwards it was widely assumed for decades that the prime minister, a Liberal who had no reason to favour autocrats, was the one who was against helping them. The papers of the king’s private secretary, however, suggest that it was with George himself that the final decision lay. The offer of asylum was quietly withdrawn. The tsar and his family, imprisoned in the Urals and treated with increasing harshness, were murdered by the Bolsheviks in July 1918.
    In view of this, it may be assumed that the king regretted the failure of his own or any other government to protect Russia’s imperial family. This has proved to be the darkest stain on his reign, and he has never been forgiven by Russian monarchists. He did not at any rate allow personal doubts to stand in the way of rescuing other royals in danger. He sent a warship, HMS
Marlborough
, to the Crimea to evacuate the tsar’s mother and sister. He had the Royal Navy rescue another royal family – the Greeks – when they lost popularity and had to flee (with them was their infant son Philip, who would later marry King George’s granddaughter).
    After four years, the Central Powers could no longer sustain the burden of war. The first to crack, and to seek peace talks without reference to the others, had been Austria in 1917,though nothing came of this. The following year – on 29 September 1918 – Bulgaria made a separate peace with the Allies. Turkey followed on 30 October, and then Austria–Hungary, the nation which had begun it all, on 3 November. The patriarchal emperor, Franz Joseph I, who had reigned since 1848, had died in 1916. His successor, Emperor Karl I, was young and inexperienced. Though willing to do whatever he could to keep the throne – including approaching the enemy behind the kaiser’s back – it was already too late. His armies had been defeated and his realms were disintegrating. Since the war had begun, parts of this empire, notably Hungary and the Czech lands, had been of questionable