Alexander I's Death and Destiny

Extract

THE LAST two weeks that Emperor Alexander spent in Taganrog before his official death have been recorded in the diaries of Empress Elisabeth, Prince Peter Volkonski, Sir James Wyllie, Bt., Doctor Dimitri Tarasov, and in an unsigned manuscript entitled "Official History of the Illness and Death of Emperor Alexander I." We possess also the recollections of some of the Emperor's servants, especially those of his valets Anisimov and Fedorov, but they do not contain a day-by-day record of events and very often give way to the temptation of recalling stories based upon hearsay and therefore of no historical value. Prince Peter Volkonski kept a day-by-day record and his description is the most complete if not always the most accurate. However, as a whole, the four principal witnesses have left us four different stories full of the most obvious contradictions. This state of affairs can be explained only by two suppositions: that they had to write something about Alexander's illness in view of the Emperor's determination to use it as a means of escape and, obviously, did not arrange among themselves all the details of their narratives; and (2) that some of these diaries, and especially Volkonsky's were written post factum.