The czar soon retracted these concessions and repeatedly dissolved the Duma, contributing to the growing public support enjoyed by the Bolsheviks and other revolutionary groups. In , Nicholas led his country into another costly war—World War I—and discontent grew as food became scarce, soldiers became war-weary, and devastating defeats at the hands of Germany demonstrated the ineffectiveness of Russia under Nicholas.
In , the czar personally took over command of the army, leaving the Czarina Alexandra in control at home. In March , the army garrison at Petrograd joined striking workers in demanding socialist reforms, and Nicholas II was called on to abdicate.
On March 15, he renounced the throne in favor of his brother Michael, whose refusal of the crown brought an end to the czarist autocracy in Russia. In April , Nicholas and his family were transferred to Yekaterinburg in the Urals, which sealed their doom. Local authorities were ordered to prevent a rescue of the Romanovs, and after a secret meeting by the Yekaterinburg Soviet, a death sentence was passed on the imperial family.
Just after midnight on July 17, Nicholas, Alexandra, their five children, and four family retainers were ordered to dress quickly and go down to the cellar of the house in which they were being held. There, the family and servants were arranged in two rows for a photograph they were told was being taken to quell rumors that they had escaped.
Suddenly, a dozen armed men burst into the room and gunned down the imperial family in a hail of gunfire. While Nicholas II excelled in history and foreign languages, ironically, the future leader struggled to comprehend the subtleties of politics and economics.
To make matters worse, his father failed to provide him with much training in affairs of state. In , when Nicholas II was 13 years old, his grandfather, Alexander II, was assassinated by a revolutionary bomber. When Nicholas II was 19 years old he joined the army. He spent three years in service before touring Europe and Asia for an additional 10 months.
Passionate about the military, Nicholas II rose to the rank of colonel. Although he was the crown prince of Russia, while in the military he attended few political meetings except for those held by the state council and the committee of ministers.
Nicholas II inherited the Russian throne when his father died of kidney disease at the age of 49 on October 20, In fact, he confessed to a close friend, "I am not prepared to be a tsar. I never wanted to become one. I know nothing of the business of ruling. Once he ascended the throne, Nicholas II had to marry and have children expediently, in order to secure a future heir to the throne. Although a figure in the public eye, Empress Alexandra was something of a homebody, who preferred to spend the majority of her time at the palace at Tsarskoe Selo.
The couple had their first child, a daughter named Olga, in The following year, Nicholas II was officially crowned as the tsar of Russia. During a mobbed public celebration of the coronation near Moscow, thousands of people were stampeded to death. In a single month in late Nicholas became ruler of a vast empire and a married man.
Early biographical accounts concentrate on Nicholas the family man, emphasising his devotion to his wife, Aleksandra, Empress, consort of Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia , their three daughters and haemophiliac son. At their palace in Tsarskoe Selo the Tsar interspersed meetings with officials and report reading with hours taking tea, reading aloud or going for sleigh rides with his family. Nicholas inherited a problem facing Russian tsars since defeat in the Crimean War in , the conundrum of modernisation.
Rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, however, threatened political stability as demands on government multiplied, traditional pillars of support in the peasantry and landowning gentry were weakened or alienated and groups with uncertain loyalties, from impoverished industrial workers to the intellectual, professional and commercial classes, asserted themselves.
His first political statement rebuked elected representatives of local councils, the zemstvos , for "senseless dreams" of involvement in government affairs. On 12 July 25 July he inaugurated preparations for war, although he attempted to stave off hostilities in personal communications to Wilhelm II and only hesitantly gave the order for general mobilisation on 17 July 30 July.
After the retreats of summer he assumed formal command of the army in defiance of ministerial objections, replacing Nikolai Nikolaevich, Grand Duke of Russia as Commander-in-Chief. The Grand Duke was regarded in some quarters as an incompetent general, was insensitive to civilians in regions under army control, and the lack of coordination between military and civilian authority had caused chaos. Assumption of command, however, identified him even more closely with the human losses and economic dislocations of the war.
It fostered the impression that the unpopular Empress Aleksandra, unfairly lambasted for treason on account of her German origins, was left running the country with the disreputable holy man Grigori Rasputin and a succession of incompetent ministers.
By February , when crowds protesting about bread queues and calling for an end to the war and autocracy were joined on the streets of Petrograd by garrison soldiers, Nicholas II could not count on support from a parliament he had repeatedly prorogued. Pillars of conservatism in the nobility, army and imperial family had begun urging him to accede to demands for a government enjoying public confidence and secretly plotting for a palace coup.
On 2 March 15 March Nicholas signed an abdication manifesto in favour not of his ailing son but his brother, who, fearful of the Petrograd masses, declined the crown, ending years of Romanov rule. German-born Alexandra soon became the focus of discontent, as did her confidante, the mystic, Rasputin, who had been at court since and had gained great influence through his apparent ability to treat the haemophilia of Alexis, the heir to the throne.
In December , Rasputin was murdered by a group of disaffected nobles. Then in February , widespread popular demonstrations began in the capital Petrograd as St Petersburg was renamed in Nicholas lost the support of the army and had no alternative but to abdicate. A shaky provisional government was established. The tsar and his family were held in various locations, eventually being imprisoned in Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains.
In October , the Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government. Following a harsh peace treaty with Germany in March , Russia descended into civil war. On 17 July , as anti-Bolsheviks approached Yekaterinburg, Nicholas and his family were executed.
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