Author: GRAND-DUC NICOLAS MIKHAILOWITCH (GRAND DUKE NIKOLAY MIKHAILOVICH)
Title: L'Imperatrice Élisabeth, épouse d'Alexandre I-er
Description: Published by Manufacture des Papiers de L'État St. Pétersbourg – 1908-1909. 3 vols. Vol. I Frontispiece, XIII, 436 pp. with 29 plates; Vol. II frontispiece, IX, 751 pp., with 33 plates and one facsimile autograph; Vol. III frontispiece, VIII, 723 pp., with 27 plates and two facsimiles autographs, all plates with tissue guards, Princess Louise Maria of Baden (1779 – 1826) was one of the many princesses who added German blood to the Russian lineage of the Romanovs, apparently not making it any less Russian, as her husband, Alexandr I, would turn out to be one of the most enigmatic of all tsars. She was married to him when he was 15 and she 14 years old, on which occasion she took the Orthodox name Elizabeth Alekseievna. During the night when Alexandr’s father, tsar Paul I, was murdered, according to Prince Czartoryski she was the only one who kept her cool, thus preventing chaos and further bloodshed. The three volumes contain her correspondence with her mother, to whom she as a dutiful daughter told everything, which makes her letters sometimes not less informative than an ambassador’s dispatches. The full publication shows a surprising side of Russian tsarism, which does not in general enjoy the reputation of liberalism, although in the end of course the public was not to know too much. So, not a word about Elisabeth’s love affair(s), nor about the persistent rumours that Alexander faked his own death in order to live on as hermit Feodor Kuzmich, of which if true Elisabeth must have been aware. The scholarly author and compiler said he did not believe the rumours, but then seems to have changed his mind before his death, murdered by the Communists in 1919. Three nice half-leather bindings, Marmered front- and backplates (code N-43)

Keywords: history chakk


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