[The following is in regards to the successful assassination by terrorist revolutionaries of the Russian Tsar Alexander II. He was killed on the second attempt by a hand-thrown stick of dynamite.]
”I was deafened by the new explosion,” Dvorzhitsky [The police chief] recounted, “burned, wounded, and thrown to the ground. Suddenly, amid the smoke and snowy fog, I heard His Majesty’s weak voice: ‘Help!’ Gathering what strength I had, I jumped up and rushed to the tsar. His Majesty was half-lying, half-sitting, leaning on his right arm. Thinking that he was merely wounded heavily, I tried to lift him, but the tsar’s legs were shattered, and the blood poured out of them.
”Twenty people, with wounds of varying degree, lay by the sidewalk and on the street. Some managed to stand, others crawled, still others tried to get out from beneath bodies that had fallen on them. Through the snow, debris, and blood you could see fragments of clothing, epaulets, sabers, and bloody chunks of human flesh.”
In the midst of this nightmarish scene, Alexander was heard to mutter several times, “Cold, I’m cold.” Then, when his brother Michael arrived, the tsar said, “Take me home quickly!” With his life slowly draining away as the blood continued to pulse out of his ruined legs, he was placed on a sled and rushed to the Winter Palace. One of the men who helped move him was the third assassin, his unexploded bomb still on hand.
The emperor’s nephew, Grand Duke Alexander (“Sandro” to the family), hurried to the palace when he heard what had happened. “The big spots of black blood on the marble steps and then along the corridor showed us the way to the tsar’s study,” he recalled. “Father [Grand Duke Michael, the emperor’s brother at the scene of his assassination] stood in the doorway, giving orders to the servants… Emperor Alexander II lay on a couch by the desk. He was unconscious… He looked horrible… One eye was shut, the other stared ahead without expression… Members of the Imperial Family came in one after the other. The room was overflowing… The heir [soon to be Alexander III] came in and wept, saying, ‘This is what we have come to,’ and embraced the grand dukes, his brother, Vladimir Alexandrovich, and his uncle, Mikhail Nikolayevich.
”Princess Yuryevskaya [Katya], half-dressed, ran in. They said that some overzealous guard tried to stop her from entering. She fell on top of the tsar’s body, covering his hands with kisses and shouting, ‘Sasha! Sasha!’ it was unbearable.”
Source:
Farquhar, Michael. “Chapter 11 – Alexander II (1855-1881): “A Crowned Semi-Ruin”.” Secret Lives of the Tsars: Three Centuries of Autocracy, Debauchery, Betrayal, Murder, and Madness from Romanov Russia. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2014. 217-18. Print.
Further Reading:
Alexander II (Russian: Алекса́ндр II Никола́евич, tr. Aleksandr II Nikolayevich)
Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russia (Russian: Александр Михайлович Aleksandr Mikhailovich)
Alexander III (Russian: Алекса́ндр III Алекса́ндрович, tr. Aleksandr III Aleksandrovich)
[Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia (Russian: Влади́мир Александрович)][(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duke_Vladimir_Alexandrovich_of_Russia)
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