Story by David V. Herlihy

or three long months, Nicholas Romanov and his entourage had been imprisoned in a villa in Yekaterinburg, Russia, just east of the Urals. In the early hours of July 17, 1918, a Bolshevik official roused Nicholas from his bed and led the ex-tsar down to the cellar. In their wake trudged Nicholas’s wife Alexandra, a son, four daughters, the family physician, and three servants. After the commandant had his unsuspecting charges huddle in front of a dank wall, as if to pose for a group photograph, he obligingly provided two chairs for the mother and son because both were too sickly to remain standing. He then pulled out a scrap of paper from his pocket and read aloud a brief execution warrant. Before the condemned could even fully fathom their fate, a dozen soldiers stepped forward and opened fire. Minutes later, when the smoke had cleared, the commandant himself fired two more bullets to silence the faint moans of young Alexei, the would-be heir to the Russian throne. Under the cover of darkness, the killers brought the 11 corpses to a nearby forest and buried them in shallow graves that would remain undiscovered for decades. The tragic tale of that glamorous but doomed royal couple has long captivated the public. The classic film Nicholas and Alexandra, released in 1971, depicted their stunning trajectory, starting with the rich and dashing Russian bachelor’s courtship of the lovely German-born princess. The film captured the genuine love that they had for each other (it was a rare royal romance) and for the beautiful children that would be born in rapid succession. When at last a son and heir to the throne was born, after four daughters who were ineligible to rule on account of their gender, the parents were devastated to learn that he was stricken with hemophilia, a rare and often fatal blood disorder. In the film, Nicholas comes across as a devoted family man, and Alexandra as a pious and protective matron. But the film also exposes their bizarre reliance on the devious mystic Grigori Rasputin, and Nicholas’s disastrous leadership characterized by a callous indifference to the plight of the Russian masses, who are mired in abject poverty. The seemingly inevitable outcome is the fall of the house of Romanov and the rise of Vladimir Lenin and communism. Alexei Nikolaevich, tsarevich of Russia, wasn’t permitted to ride a bike on his own as he suffered from hemophilia and a crash could kill him. Before he was allowed Story by David V. Herlihy a tricycle of his own (pictured on the cover), he was a passenger on a bike pedaled by a royal attendant so he could join his family in their love of bicycles. 10 ADVENTURE CYCLIST JUNE 2019 WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO ADVENTURECYCLING.ORG/MEMBERS 11 The recent centennial of the brutal Romanov murders has alliance with his French counterpart, visited the Russian renewed the public’s fascination not only with Russia’s last pavilion at the Universal Exhibition, feasted at banquets, king and queen, but also with the entire Romanov dynasty. carried on with his mistress, and dodged the bullet of a For just over 300 years, a succession of tsars and tsarinas, would-be assassin. Somehow he still found time to purchase including such notable personalities as founder Peter the one of those slender, gravity-defying vehicles that had just Great and the incomparable Catherine the Great, ruled begun to rattle about Paris. over nearly one-sixth of the earth’s land. They gradually Or so legend has it. Andrey Myatiev, a Russian bicycle transformed a predominantly agricultural country into a collector and historian, has been unable to trace the original major world power. source of that 1867 claim, which only seems to have gained One minor — yet intriguing — aspect to the last half currency years after the purported fact. Moreover, the century of Romanov rule is the family’s affinity for cycling. velocipede held by the Imperial Bicycle Museum, said to be To be sure, since the introduction of the first human- that vehicle, is in fact a latter model made in 1869 or 1870 by powered vehicles (or “velocipedes” as they were generally the Compagnie Parisienne. called), European royals had occasionally lent makers their Still it is entirely possible that Alexander II did indeed encouragement. In 1858, for example, Edward, Prince of spot the first-generation bicycle while he was in Paris. Wales (the eldest son of Queen Victoria, who happened to Widely considered the most Western-leaning and liberal of be Alexandra’s grandmother), patronized Willard Sawyer, the modern tsars (he freed Russian serfs two years before a maker of quadricycles. In 1868, the 12-year-old son of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation), he might Napoleon III gleefully rode his newfangled bicycle in well have taken a shine to the curious contraption that public, helping to spark “velocipede mania.” And by the aspired to become the “people’s nag.” time Nicholas was crowned tsar in 1894, scores of princes And the tsar might well have snapped one up then and princesses across Europe were eagerly partaking in the and there, as did a number of other foreigners in Paris at bicycle boom. that time (notably one C. G. Wheeler of Chicago, who was Among royal families, the Romanovs can easily claim reportedly America’s second cyclist, after the patentee the strongest connection to the bicycle. Clinching their case Pierre Lallement). Even if the middle-aged autocrat had no is the Imperial Bicycle Museum at Peterhof, formerly the intention of riding the thing himself, he may have wanted Romanovs’ grand seaside summer resort, some 15 miles west one to give to his five rambunctious sons, whose ages at the of Saint Petersburg. There reside a dozen cycles that once time ranged from seven to 22. belonged to various Romanovs. In any case, several of the tsar’s sons were definitely Indeed, the family’s involvement with bicycles began cycling within a decade — though perhaps not in the manner practically with the bicycle itself. In June 1867, shortly after that their father had intended. In late 1876, the tsar’s second- selling Alaska to the U.S., the tsar Alexander II (Nicholas’s youngest son Sergei — aged 19 — described in his diary grandfather) headed to Paris. There he negotiated a strategic a reckless romp through the Winter Palace, the family’s 12 ADVENTURE CYCLIST JUNE 2019 primary residence in Saint Petersburg (the imperial capital elitist and purely recreational in spirit. By the early 1890s, city) that now houses the Hermitage Museum. Wrote Sergei most cyclists, including Alexander’s wife, the Empress Maria under the tagline December 9 (as translated from Russian): Feodorovna, were happily cruising about on the third- generation bicycle, the remarkably tame safety. It is unclear Here is a frost! -25°! Mom [the whether the emperor himself ever made the transition. But Empress Marie of Hesse] ordered even if he did, a report published in an American cycling sbiten [a hot and spicy Russian journal in 1892 stressed that he was still riding exclusively as tea], scarves, mittens, and felt a thrill seeker: boots to be handed out to our cab drivers in front of the palace. The mighty and bewhiskered tsar of Russia has several times Then I rode with my brothers on a been reported as coasting down the Ural Mountains before velocipede through all the halls of breakfast as a means of stimulating his appetite, and finding the Winter Palace. I was on a four- unlimited enjoyment in the hair-raising performance. wheeled one. I was very amused and we rolled everywhere, even in front Two years later, at age 49, Alexander III died suddenly of the guards who didn’t intervene. from kidney failure. His eldest surviving son, 26-year-old Nicholas, immediately took over the reins of government. By Apparently, Sergei rode a quadricycle whereas his all accounts, he was totally unprepared for the job. He tried brothers had a mix of machines, including perhaps a to buckle down — hastily marrying his fiancée, Alexandra tricycle or even a bicycle. A two-wheeler at that time would — and he did his utmost to follow in his father’s reactionary presumably have been a “high wheeler” of the sort that footsteps. But he quickly proved utterly unfit to rule the vast had become popular in Britain (though it had yet to gain a Russian empire. foothold in the U.S.). In 1905, after a decade of tenuous reign, Nicholas was In 1881, Sergei’s father, Alexander II, finally fell victim to nearly relieved of his duties. His oppressed people had an assassin. A young revolutionary managed to land a bomb had enough. That year, his army had mowed down scores at the feet of the tsar, who was traversing Saint Petersburg in of peaceful protesters who were demanding better living his bulletproof carriage. Mortally wounded, he suffered an conditions. An ill-advised war against Japan proved both agonizing death with his grandson Nicholas at his bedside. bloody and futile. Only by reluctantly agreeing to cede Alexander’s oldest son and namesake (Nicholas’s father) some power to the Duma, an elected assembly, did Nicholas thus became Alexander III. He was a powerful, hulking manage to salvage his teetering regime. man with a gruff temperament. Infused with a desire for Although the new tsar was widely denounced in the revenge, he quickly gained a reputation for being ruthless foreign press as “Bloody Nicholas,” he was in fact a gentle and regressive. soul who had little interest in amassing riches or wielding For all his flaws, he was nevertheless the first certifiable great power.

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