HRH The Margrave of Meißen has informed us of the death of his aunt Princess Maria Josepha of Saxony, last surviving child of the late Friedrich Christian, Margrave of Meißen, and of his late wife the former Princess Elisabeth Helene of Thurn und Taxis.
This evening (July 16-17) we reach the fateful centennial of the martyrdom of the Russian Imperial Family.
On the evening of July 16/17, 1918, Tsar Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, Grand Duchess Olga Nicholaevna, Grand Duchess Tatiana Nicholaevna, Grand Duchess Marie Nicholaevna, Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicholaevna, and Tsesarevich Alexei Nicholaevich, accompanied by four loyal servants, were assassinated by Yakov Yurovski and his posse in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, the most Bolshevik city in post-Tsarist Russia.
The Imperial Family were kept under various forms of house arrest for nearly 17 months, starting immediately after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. This imprisonment brought them from the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, to the Governor's Mansion in Tobolsk, ending inside the lugubrious prison that the Ipatiev House eventually became.
At times, the Imperial Family were treated with respect and deference. Contact with the outside world was sporadic. Visitors were few and far between. Members of the former ruling dynasty were kept at bay. Some messages managed to get to them; replies managed to get out. It was nearly 17 months of difficulty for the Tsar and his entourage. They arrived in Tobolsk with a retinue of nearly 40 staff. By the time Yurovsky sealed their fate, only four loyal servants remained. They would also be martyred in that small basement in Yekaterinburg.
Tsar Nicholas and ten other victims met a harrowing end at the hands of their jailers. Barrages of bullets came in deadly waves. Smoke filled the room. The stench of gunpowder, blood and flesh ... the presence of death overpowering. Those who were not killed by the bullets, were stabbed and rifle butted. It was a frenzy of brutality; a vicious culmination to a heinous act.
The bodies were disposed later that early morning. Their whereabouts remained unknown for over six decades. When finally found, the site was kept secret for fear of Soviet retaliation.
In death, Tsar Nicholas II and his legacy were vilified, as was the entire tsarist period. Was he an effective ruler? That is a question over which entire books have been written. As a political leader, Nicholas II left much to be desired. yet, he was a product of his environment. As a husband, although loving, devoted, and loyal, he allowed his love for his wife to cloud his better judgement. As a father, Nicholas II seems to have excelled. His children were devoted to him, just as he was devoted to them. As Head of House Russia, Nicholas II failed. Many have criticized other Romanovs for seeking to save themselves from the revolutionary tsunami that engulfed Mother Russia. Yet, as Head of House, Nicholas II forgot that he was responsible for the survival of his dynasty. He isolated himself from other Romanovs. He caused an unbridgeable rift within the dynasty. He ignored their warnings. He led the Romanovs into an abyss of death, poverty and exile.
And yet, Nicholas II did not deserve to die in the manner that Yurovsky and his minions secured his horrific ending. His wife, their children, and those four loyal servants, did not deserve to meet the death that was reserved for them.
Let us not forget as we observe this dreadful centennial that many other members of the dynasty met equally harrowing deaths.
The night after the murders in Yekaterinburg, six other Romanovs met a brutal end in a forest outside there town of Alapaievsk. This second group of martyrs included: Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, Prince Ioann Konstantinovich, Prince Konstantin Konstantinovich, Prince Igor Konstantinovich, and Prince Vladimir Pavlovich Paley, as well as Sister Barbara, Elisabeth Feodorovna's faithful companion. Their end was just as vicious as that met by the Yekaterinburg martyrs.
Nearly a month before the ghastly events of Yekaterinburg, Grand Duke Michael Nicholaevich and his faithful secretary were brutally assassinated outside Perm.
And yet, the Bolshevik butchery was not at an end...
In January 1919, four other Grand Dukes were executed inside the walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress: Paul Alexandrovich, Dimitri Konstantinovich, Nicholas Mikhailovich, and George Mikhailovich.
Today, as we remember the victims of Yekaterinburg, Alapaievsk, Perm, and Petrograd, we must be reminded that violence begets violence. Imperial Russia, as difficult as it was for many, does not compare in the brutality and reign of terror that ensued. Modern Russia deserves better than what it has...for the reign of Putin is far worse than the Romanovs ever inflicted on their subjects.
May They Rest in Peace ...
Family and friends of the late Prince Michel of Bourbon-Parma gathered at the Hotel des Invalides (Paris) this morning to bid farewell to his earthly remains.
Besides his close family, other royals in attendance included: Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg and his brother Prince Jean, the Prince and Princess of Venice, as well as Prince Dushan of Yugoslavia. Several of the late prince's Danish descendants traveled to France to pay their respects to their father and grandfather.
Dear Subscribers and Readers,
It is with much pleasure that we announce that Issue CXVII, Volume 21.1 is printing. This is the first issue of our 22nd year of publication!
Inside Issue CXVII you will find the following articles:
1. The Return of Prince Nicholas of Romania, by Seth Leonard (with the cooperation of Nicholas and Alina-Maria de Roumanie)
2. An Imperial Bicentennial: The Tsar Liberator, by Coryne Hall
3. Grand duke Adolf Friedrich VI of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, by Marlene Eilers Koenig
4. WHO IS IN THE PHOTOGRAPH: The Family of there Infante don Carlos, by Arturo E. Beéche
5. Wittelsbach castles and palaces in Bavaria, by Susan Symons
6. Book Reviews
7. Royal News
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Michel of Bourbon-Parma: Last of the Royal Swashbucklers
By Charles Stewart 8 July 2018
The death of Prince Michel of Bourbon-Parma (1926-2018) on 7 July severs the last link binding several of Europe's royal families in history and kinship.
The late Prince Michel of Bourbon-Parma.
©Eurohistory
He led a fascinating life, straddling Europe's major Catholic and Protestant royal dynasties. He belonged to the Danish branch of the House of Bourbon-Parma, but grew up mostly in Paris and retired there and to Palm Beach, Florida. His grandfather was Roberto I de Bourbon (1848-1907), the last ruling Duke of Parma who fathered 24 children in exile. His father was the Duke's 19th child, Prince René (1894-1962), who married Princess Margrethe of Denmark (1895-1992), whose mother Marie was an Orléans exile, and whose father was Christian IX's youngest son Prince Valdemar (1858-1939) – he whose lifelong liaison with his nephew, Prince George of Greece (1869-1957), was respected by their wives and families because of the pair's discreet but steadfast mutual devotion.
Michel's sister, Anne (1923-2016) was a classmate of Philip of Greece at The Elms, an American school in Paris, and later married Philip's playmate/cousin, King Michael of Romania. Michel attended The Elms later too, and his mother is the "Meg Bourbon" mentioned in Battenberg correspondence who was one of the relatives/neighbors concerned when Philip's mother Alice began to lose her sanity in the late 1920s.
The family of Prince René of Bourbon-Parma: René, Jacques, André,
Margrethe, Michel, and Anne.
©Eurohistory
Michel twice became a hero in the 1940s, secretly parachuting with US troops into Nazi-occupied France during WWII. In 1945 the communist Viet Minh in French Indochina interned him as a prisoner of war, after parachuting in. Captured, half-starved and marched from one prison camp to another, always trying to escape yet always re-captured, watching most of his compatriots die from the rigors of nearly a year in captivity, he was finally freed by Geneva Convention negotiations, about which he would write a book. He was awarded the French Legion of Honor and Croix de Guerre, as well as the British Military Cross.
From the left: André, Jacques, Prince George of Denmark, Michael, Prince Flemming
of Denmark, and Princess Anne.
©Eurohistory
Later he took up the modern profession of idle royalty (replacing Crusades to the Holy Land, expeditions to colonies, and military commands in Europe): sports car racing.
Prince Michel of Bourbon-Parma with his mother and Princess Isabelle of France.
©Eurohistory
He married, separated from and then reunited with two princesses: 1. Princess Yolande de Broglie-Revel (1928-2014), whom he finally divorced in 1999. They had five children. 2. HRH Princess Maria Pia of Savoy (born 1934), daughter of ex-King Umberto II of Italy, whom Michel finally married in 2003. Her second pair of twins, Prince Serge and Princess Helena, born before her 1967 divorce from their legal father, Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia (1924-2016), continue to bear the name and titles of their mother’s first husband.
Prince Michel of Bourbon-Parma and his first wife, Princess Yolanda de Broglie-Revel.
©Eurohistory
Michel's eldest son by his first marriage, Prince Erik (born 1953) took up residence in Denmark, where in 19980 he married (later divorcing) his second cousin Countess Lydia af Holstein-Ledreborg (born 1955), daughter of Princess Marie-Gabrielle of Luxembourg, herself the daughter of Michel's uncle, Felix of Bourbon-Parma, Prince Consort of Luxembourg. By Erik's son, Prince Henri of Bourbon-Parma (born 1991), Michel lived to see the birth of his great-granddaughter in October 2017, Victoria de Bourbon de Parme, whose mother is Henri's fiancée (and 2nd cousin), Archduchess Marie-Gabrielle of Austria (born 1994, daughter of Archduke Carl Christian of Austria and Princess Marie-Astrid of Luxembourg).
HRH Princess Maria Pia of Savoy.
Michel's younger son by Yolande is Prince Charles-Emanuel (born 1961), a leader in the French Legitimist movement. Two of Michel's five daughters pre-deceased him, leaving non-dynastic children. Another is Amélie de Bourbon de Parme (born 1977 of Michel's affair with Laure LeBourgeois), who has two children by her 2009 marriage to Igor Bogdanoff (born 1949), one of the French twin TV stars famous for their scientific theories and bizarre lifestyles who were raised in a Gascon château by their Bohemian grandmother, Her Illustrious Highness Countess Bertha of Coloredo-Mansfeld (1890-1982, née Countess Kolowrat-Krakowsky). From her frustrated affair with the African American opera tenor, Roland Hayes (1887-1977), a daughter (Maya) was born. Bertha's husband, Count Hyeronimus, refused to recognize the child and the couple divorced quietly. Although Hayes offered to adopt the live child, Bertha declined that option.
The late Prince Michel of Bourbon-Parma and Princess Beatrice of Bourbon-Two Sicilies.
©Eurohistory
Michel was the son-in-law of King Umberto II of Italy, brother-in-law of King Michael of Romania, and first cousin of Archduke Otto (Head of the Imperial House of Habsburg), Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg, Carlos-Hugo Duke of Parma, and Prince Axel of Denmark (husband of Anne, Viscountess Anson, née Bowes-Lyon, a first cousin of HM The Queen). Michel was also the last surviving of his parents' children. His eldest brother, Prince Jacques died in 1964 in an automobile accident; Queen Anne died of old age in 2016; and Prince André died in 2011.
The late Prince Michel of Bourbon-Parma and Princess Beatrice of Bourbon-Two Sicilies.
©Eurohistory
Princess Maria Pia and the late Prince Michel of Bourbon-Parma and
Princess Beatrice of Bourbon-Two Sicilies.
©Eurohistory
The late Prince Michel of Bourbon-Parma and Princess Beatrice of Bourbon-Two Sicilies,
with Prince Michel of France, Count d'Evreux.
©Eurohistory
