With the personal failure of Nicholas II. this book has nothing to do. From the very first day that he had ascended the Throne of Russia it had been evident to any person gifted with the talent of observation that his reign was bound to end in disaster and in ruin; that all the work performed by his late father, who, after all, when things are well considered, had been a great man and a wise Sovereign, would very soon be destroyed by his want of character and of principle and by his abominable selfishness. People, however, had hoped that during the years supreme power remained concentrated in his hands at least blood would not flow. No one’s imagination had conceived the horrors of Mukden and of Tsu Shima, nor the massacres which took place at Tannenberg and in the Polish plains. No one had suspected that the rivers would be dyed red while he went on living unconscious and unconcerned about all the misery which would remain forever associated with his name. When destiny was at last fulfilled in regard to him, it was discovered that it had also been fulfilled in regard to Russia, and this was what the country could not bring itself to forgive him; this is what his ancestors also would not have pardoned him had they been able to arise out of their graves, and to Rend the gold brocade Whereof their shroud was made[A] [A] Longfellow, “The White Czar.” in horror at all the evil perpetrated by their unworthy descendant. Yes, in the past they had been a strong race, these Romanoffs, about whom no one thinks any longer to-day in the vast realm that owned them once as its masters and lords. But it would be useless to deny that crimes without number were committed by them and that injustice flourished during the centuries when they could dispose absolutely of the fate of millions and millions of human creatures whom they killed and tortured at their will and according to their fancies. Perhaps it was a just punishment for the ruthless cruelty of some of them that the glories of their race came to an end and perished, together with all the traditions that had surrounded them for such a long time, because of the follies, sins, mistakes, blunderings, iniquities, and indecisions of a weak, characterless, and half-witted man and of a superstitious, intriguing, and half-demented woman. THE END Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: cemetery of Tsarkoye=> cemetery of Tsarskoye {pg 148} had had the oppportunity=> had had the opportunity {pg 159} this extraordinary Revotion=> this extraordinary Revolution {pg 262} permitted to comnunicate=> permitted to communicate {pg 284} were bring hurled=> were being hurled {pg 287} the tone of his his supplications=> the tone of his supplications {pg 162} End of Project Gutenberg's Confessions of the Czarina, by Paul Vassili