[The following is regarding the execution of Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, a relative of the Romanov dynasty, as well as several other members of the Russian nobility, by the Bolsheviks in the early 20th century.]
But the man who killed her husband wasn’t alone in his hatred of blue bloods, and by 1917 the Bolshevik movement had gained an unstoppable momentum. Being even faintly royal was tantamount to a death sentence, and in 1918 Elisabeth was arrested on the orders of Lenin; she’d been offered the opportunity to flee Russia but chose instead to remain with her order. For several months, Elisabeth was shuttled from town to town, under the brutal hands and ruthless eyes of the Red Army Guard.
The Bolsheviks, having heard about the tsar’s assassination, decided that the rest of the family needed to die as well. On the night of July 17, 1918, the same day the tsar and his family were killed, Elisabeth and several other members of the Russian imperial family were woken by Red Army guards and bundled into the back of a cart.
According to one of the assassins, a soldier named Ryabov, her murderers chose an abandoned half-flooded mine shaft some 65 feet deep outside a small village in the Russian countryside for their evil deed. Ryabov recalled that the princess and the others were thrown down the shaft in the hopes that they would drown or die in the fall; they didn’t, so their executioners tossed a hand grenade after them. Incredibly, the victims were still alive, so the soldiers tossed in another grenade. “And what do you think – from beneath the ground we heard singing! I was seized with horror. They were singing the prayer: ‘Lord, save your people!’” recalled Ryabov. “We had no more grenades, yet it was impossible to leave the deed unfinished. We decided to fill the shaft with dry brushwood and set it alight. Their hymns still rose up through the thick smoke for some time yet.”
About three months later, White Army soldiers, the anti-Bolshevik forces, discovered the bodies in the mine. Elisabeth’s horrible death and divine life inspired the Russian Orthodox church to canonize her in 1981 and declare her a martyr in 1992.
Source:
McRobbie, Linda Rodriguez. “Famous Last Words.” Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories From History-- Without the Fairy-Tale Endings. MJF Books, 2013. 283-84. Print.
Further Reading:
Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, later Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia (Russian: Елизавета Фëдоровна Романова, Elizabeth Feodorovna Romanova; canonized as Holy Martyr Elizabeth Feodorovna): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Elisabeth_of_Hesse_and_by_Rhine_(1864%E2%80%931918)
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov / Lenin
If you enjoy this type of content, please consider donating to my Patreon!
No comments, yet...