Nicholas II of Russia | Notable Biographies

(1868/05/18 - 1918/07/17)

Nicholas II of Russia
Russian Czar (1894-1918)

He was born on May 18, 1868 in Tsarskoe Sielo.
Eldest son of the Tsar Alexander III.
In 1894, he married Alix of Hesse, German Princess who adopted the name of Alejandra Fedorovny to convert to the Russian Orthodox religion . His father died that same year. At the coronation ceremony held in 1894 in Moscow, gifts were prepared to be distributed among the attendees. However, among the ranks of guests waiting to collect the present began spreading the rumor that wouldn't be enough for everyone. This produced an unstoppable rush towards the tables set with gifts. The Stampede caused hundreds of dead, trampled and suffocated by the crowd.
He tried to preserve the absolute power of the Russian monarchy, refusing to grant concessions to those who called for greater political liberalization. Without skills to direct the State relied on the advice of his wife, whose Mystic beliefs were a clear influence on him.
The Russian expansion in the Far East by the Tsar himself concluded in the catastrophe of the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905), which led to the outbreak of the revolution of 1905. While this rebellion forced him to accept the existence of a representative Assembly, the Duma, which would limit the monarchical autocracy, Nicolás II continued thinking that it was only responsible before God of their management as monarch, so it avoided the conversion of Russia into a genuine constitutional monarchy.
Despite the good relations maintained with his cousin William II of Germany, their respective States clashed when erupted in 1914 the First world war. The military defeats and the suffering which this conflict resulted in the Russian people increased the bad image of the Tsar, especially when he had personally assumed command of the army in 1915, so was forced to abdicate in March 1917.
The Bolsheviks him kept prisoner until together with his wife and their five children, were driven in the company of his Entourage to the basement of the farmhouse of the merchant Nikolái Ipatiev; they were lined up and shot by 11 soldiers on July 17, 1918. Not all were killed on the spot and several of the daughters of the Tsar were topped with blows of butt and bayonet, because bullets clashed against the jewels that hid sewn under their dresses.
The bodies were buried twice in different places, for no trace, since the soldiers doused them with sulphuric acid. The remains attributed to the Tsar, his wife and three children were found in 1979, and after being identified, buried in Saint Petersburg in 1998. The remains of two of the children found in 2007 to 70 meters from where it rested the first, were certified as the Grand Duchess Maria and Tsarevich Alexei.
The Archbishop's Council decided in 2000 to canonize Czar Nicholas II and his family as martyrs of communism. The Russian Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the last of the Romanov Dynasty was killed illegally by Bolshevik revolutionaries.