The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 55

1'" jp- 4. i. Kx, i. mr 1 i ISA 1 The Murder of the Half Crazy Czar Paul Great X' vf Tj' I Grandfather of Czar Nicholas. This Crime HlilVii The Murder of the Half Crazy Czar Paul Great Grandfather of Czar Nicholas.

This Crime Was Perpetrated With the Connivance of Paul's Son, and This Fact Caused Nicholas to Brood Long Over It Alexander Nicholas closely resembled him, and Alexander II. and Alex- who was dying. Alexander ander III. These were all exchanged clothes, with this recent ancestors who had sailor and walked out into the been confronted with eira- world as a beggar. Then, traitor problems and trials dition says, he made his way to his own.

When they into Siberia, reappeared years appeared they always ad- later as a hermit in a remote vised him to take a course Siberian province and, under The Unhappy Czar Ivan Deposed Descendant of Peter the Great, Murdered in Schluesselburg Castle by His Jailers at the Command of Catherine the Great been taken into the employ- cisions of peace and war on the ravings, partly insane, pent of this designing scoun- perhaps partly fraudulent, of the priestesses of Delphi, drel and made to serve his Modern generals and statesmen have sometimes placed purposes. He admitted to me their trust in omens, witchcraft and astrology. The great that he. and the court officials Napoleon Bonaparte believed that a certain star in the employed tricksters to keep heavens guided his actions to. Success, and sought the "Papa," as he called the Czar, advice of gypsies concerning his decisions, in a pliable frame of mind.

Having said this, I must admit that the Ozar's super-Many reliable European stitions and credulities exceeded anything I have ever writers have, moreover, al- heard of in history, ancient or modern, ready told the world how the About the time of my final break with Rasputin the palace was infested with these Czar's abasement before this charlatan was at nearly its spiritualistic apparitions. lowest depth. I was told that Nicholas placed Rasputin This mental tendency of on his throne and worshipped him as if he were God. The the Czar will explain why he dirty impostor was surrounded by holy images and can-fell so easily a victim to' Ras- dies arranged as on an altar. Then the Czar knelt down putin's frauds.

Rasputin was before this vile creature and addressed him in this manner uysj" ml if ''f'h4 Old Print Illustrating the Murder of Czar of action that would benefit Rasputin or some the name or eoaor Kous- peter by 0rdef pf His Wif Catherine mitch, led a solitary life, filled -a i tu with kindness for the poor and the Great' an Ancestral Memory That humble for nearly forty Troubled Czar Nicholas Greatly other, unscrupulous per son in entourage, nor auvot fn years, trying to make atone- inetnM a ment for his sins. He died in an ignorant, illiterate, half- (Oh, holy Gregory! Thou art our Saviour! Thou ii i i u.il i i tt j-ou, tiecuiuujy uic aiuijr, iu a nut uo uigger man a uia. pesaui, not cicvci xmpusiur ime rauier rumppe aione can save xiussia ana our mronei xiear us, we De-cow's stall. and some of the earlier court impostors. He could not seech thee! Give us thy counsel in this dark hour of The "sDiritM of this mvstical and Wendarv Cznr have imposed on the Czar by his own cleverness.

It was a melancholy temperament not unlike that of Nicholas II. Alexander 1fl1 hfm imnli'catad in would appear in poor Nicholas's bedroom at nijrht and crv n's wd demented nature, his strange, uncouth features While Rasputin would hardly have had the cleverness auu gianujj eyes uiai maue iMicnoias ueueve ne was io conceive sucn a system oi iraua, ne iook aavanxage vo the assassination of his ito him iu sepulchral tones: tne assassination or nis the full of the Czar's delusions. His greed, his demands Srh The dive spirit took up 'if abode in strange places, of self-indulgence knew no bounds, and they were always "A Z'r: -r; according to Czar Nicholas's philosophy. We must re- gratified, as far as lay in the power of the Czar to heve that Alexander trust the saint who stands by you every day. Give member, however, that superstition has been shown in gratifythem.

Rasputin preyed on the Czar and Czarina's the passed nis latter years as a penitent hermit. reeiy to. saint. countless instances by highly intelligent whom we credulity by an astounding system of mock religious cere- Czar Alexander, according to this legend, was visiting "The saint' referred to was Rasputin, who inspired should expect to be more reasonable. The ancient Greeks, monies, which were carried to the point of madness.

I 1 a hospital one day when he came upon a soldier who these spiritualistic manifestations. The spiritualists had the most intelligent people of antiquity, based.their de- shall describe them in a later chapter. How tke Czar's Mind Was Affected hy Ancestral. Crimes and Tragedies Tvan had hpen denrived of his throne bv Catherine's for Czar Nicholas, lay in the murder of his grandfather, Alexander on March 31, 1881. Alexander had liber-ated the serfs and planned futher reforms.

His murder proved Ihe existence of Russian terrorists, who would shrink from no act of revolution, however extreme. And yet we are not without strong suspicions to-day that Czar Alexander's own secret police acquiesced in his murder. In recent years this crime was always opportunely used by Nicholas II. 's entourage as an incentive to spur his weak will to some new tyranny or massacre. The Winter Palace in Petrograd held horrible memories for Nicholas of the murder of his great-great-grandfather, Czar Paul in 1807.

Paul, the son and successor of Catherine the Great, became an insane and capricious tyrant in middle life. Everybody about him felt in danger of his life and even his son, the Czarevitch Alexander, went "in fear of death. The court entourage, therefore, decided to remove the Czar. Plato Zuboff, the last favorite of Catherine, headed the conspiracy, and there is "strong reason to believe that the Czarevitch was cognizant of it. His incurable gloom in later life may well have been caused by the knowledge that he had assisted in his own father's murder.

The Semenovski Regiment, won over to the conspiracy, guarded the approaches to the palace. In the middle of the night Zuboff, Count Pahlen, Count Bennigsen and others proceeded to the Czar's bedroom, carrying a lamp When Paul saw them enter he knew why they had come, for his father had perished in a similar manner. General Bennigsen. with a sword in his right hand, pointed to a declaration of abdication in his left, which he ordered Paul to sign. 'You traitor!" yelled the Czar.

HE palaces of the Czars have been steeped with I tragedy from the earliest days. The Romanoff has a history of crime and murder equaled by that of any other European royal house a history of crime' and murder committed not only against, the people, but against members of the reigning family occupants of the throne. These facts must be borne in mind in considering the deplorable mental condition of Czar Nicholas. It is un-" thinkable that a man should escape the evil effect of such bloody ancestral memories. When Czar Nicholas found himself alone in the splendid halls of his palaces, he could call to mind a grandfather blown to pieces, another ancestor choTced to -death, another with his brains beaten out.

He could recall chiK dren of his race murdered by their nurses, one Czar mur- dered by his brother, princesses of the line wronged and Jetrayed, unhappy Romanoffs of other days tortured, hidden in dark dungeons for( years and never seen again. Ivan, the Terrible, who marrjed a Romanoff, seems to have put his curse, on the family' It is Wue that the male line of Romanoff was ended after the time of Peter the Great, but the Czars always used the name, and the curse remained with it. The most recent murder in Czar Nicholas's family was that of his uncle, Grand Duke Sergius, a gloomy tyrant, during the revolutionary disturbances in 1905. Its tragic interest was greatly increased by the cruel position in which it placed the Grand Duke's wife, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, the sister of the Czarina, who has received much sympathy from the common people. Far greater historical importance, greater significance predecessor) the Empress Elizabeth, a woman of ferocious temper though of less ability than Catherine.

Elizabeth kidnapped the youthful Czar Ivan and his mother and exiled them to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, where the mother died of misery and starvation after a few years. Peter the Great had high gifts, but his torture of his only son Alexis before his execution for an unproved con spiracy stands out as one of the most grewsome tragedies of the Romanoff family. Peter had also begun by disposing of a brother and sister. And so, wading through page after page of horror, we go back to the days xf Ivan the Terrible, the supreme assassin. Words can hardly describe the cruelties of this monster.

Because they attempted to secure a small degree of liberty, Ivan massacred the inhabitants of Novgorod witb appalling cruelties. Every day from five to one thou sand-Novgorodians were brought before Ivan and his son and put to death by torture or fire. Seme were tied to sledges and dragged into the Volkhov, others flung over the bridge into the river, wives with their. husbands, mothers with their children. The inhabitants of Moscow were treated even worse.

Ivan crowned his atrocities by killing his own son with an iron bar. To catalogue all the grewsome crimes that have stained the family history of Czardom would fill a library. The few mentioned here are sufficient to have exercised a degenerative influence on the feeble mind of the descendant of these ancient monsters. The monk IHodor will continue his revelations oa these pages next Sunday. He leaped on the conspirators and fought like a demon.

lamp fell to the ground, and in the darkness the con-spirators wound a sash around the demoniac Czar's neck and twisted it. As he was slow in dying, they pressed a cushion over his mouth and knelt on it till he was dead. Equally horrible was the murder of the preceding Czar, Peter III. He was a drunken boor, who inherited the throne by indirect descent from Peter the Great. Fate married him to Princess Catherine of Anhalt-Zerbst, afterward known as Catherine the Great, the most masterful woman in Europe.

Catherine gathered the reins of power in her own hands. Peter threatened to depose her, and Catherine's followers seized and imprisond him. 4 Alexis Orloff, her most notorious favorite, then undertook to remove him." Having carried Peter off into captivity. Orloff offered the bibulous Czar a glass of liquor in Russian fashion. Peter found that it was poisoned and cried for help.

Orloff and his fellow conspirators threw the Czar down and started to strangle him. They tried to choke him with a running noose made from a napkin. Peter managed to get this off his head and then the gigantic Orloff bent over the Czar's prostrate form and slowly choked him to death with his fingers about his throat. Assassination was a habit' with Catherine. The deposed Czar Ivan VI.

a poor creature descended from Peter the Great, lingered somewhere in Russia. Catherine decided that he must o. He was seized and confined in one of the slimy dungeons of Schluesselburg Castle. A spy was then hired to lead the poor creature into a conspiracy to regain his throne, and on the strength of this his guards killed him. i 1.1'.