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Britain and the Tsars Britain’s ties to the rulers of Russia go back to the time of the Norman Invasion.

In four parts

988-1553
Music: Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky and Alexei Fyodorovich Lvov

© Konstantin-hramov, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source

About this picture …

St Sophia (Holy Wisdom) Cathedral in Novgorod, founded by Vladimir of Novgorod, son of Yaroslav the Wise and grandson of Vladimir the Great of Kiev, between 1045 and 1050. Vladimir’s nephew was Vladimir II Monomakh, who married Gytha of Wessex, daughter of King Harold Godwinson. Agatha, the wife of Edward the Exile (son of Edmund Ironside, the English king deposed by Canute in 1016), may have been Vladimir of Novgorod’s sister.

Britain and the Tsars

Part 1 of 4

The story of Russia began when Vikings established a Princedom in Great Novgorod just across the Baltic Sea. At the same moment, the Vikings’ Great Army was also swarming over England, and King Alfred the Great was preparing to do battle; but a Viking past is not all that the two nations have in common.

IN 988, Prince Vladimir I of Kiev was baptised a Christian;* so when the English princes Edmund and Edward, sons of Edmund Ironside, fled the Danish invasion of 1016 they naturally sought refuge with Vladimir’s son Yaroslav, in one of Europe’s great Christian courts; Edward later married one of Yaroslav’s daughters. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, Gytha, daughter of defeated English king Harold Godwinson, married Yaroslav’s grandson Vladimir II Monomakh.*

Kiev fell to Batu Khan of the Golden Horde in 1240. Irksome as the servitude was, Russia’s princes accepted it, rather than accept servitude to the Pope and Europe’s Catholic states.* The English kings meanwhile doggedly pursued their losing battle for the French crown, and for a time Russia was forgotten. But in 1480, Prince Ivan III of Moscow broke free from the Horde, and in 1534 Henry VIII broke free from Rome. The English began to look for new diplomatic friends and commercial contacts, and a fresh chapter in Anglo-Russian relations opened.

Jump to Part 2

Vladimir’s epic quest to find a religion for Rus’ began in 987, but the Baptism of Rus’ is dated to the following year, and celebrated to this day on July 15th. See The Conversion of Vladimir the Great.

So, at any rate, the Norse sagas say. See Gytha and Vladimir. For more Russian ties to Anglo-Saxon England, see Edward the Exile.

See The Trials of Alexander Nevsky.

Précis

Scandinavian settlers established the first states of Rus’ in the late 9th century. From Novgorod centre of dominance moved first to Kiev, then to Vladimir in the 12th century, and finally Moscow in the fourteenth, and just before Tudor adventurer Richard Chancellor found his way to Russia, Ivan the Terrible proclaimed himself the first Tsar of all the Russias. (59 / 60 words)

Part Two

By Alexander Litovchenko (1835–1890), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain. Source

About this picture …

‘Ivan the Terrible shows his treasures to the English ambassador Horsey’, by Alexander Litovchenko (1835–1890). Sir Jerome Horsey (?1550–1626) spent seventeen years as Elizabeth I’s ambassador to the court of Ivan IV, and as an agent of the Russia Company that was founded as a direct consequence of Richard Chancellor’s pioneering adventure in 1553.

IN 1553, wool-merchant Richard Chancellor found a passage from England to Archangel around northern Scandinavia, bypassing the jealous nations of the Hanseatic League that controlled Baltic trade. Ivan’s grandson Ivan IV, who also felt trapped by the League, was as delighted as Chancellor himself, and sent him home with letters for King Edward VI offering his new English friends favoured status as a trading partner.*

Unfortunately, Ivan IV’s reign was followed by a succession crisis, the Time of Troubles, and the instability broke the fledgling partnership with England. But the first of the Romanovs, Michael I, steadied the State; and during a historic European tour* his grandson Peter visited London, Oxford and Manchester in 1698 to research urban design for his new city on the River Neva, St Petersburg. In 1732 it became Russia’s capital — an Imperial capital, for Tsar Peter had declared himself Emperor in 1721.

Jump to Part 3

Ivan reigned as Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547, and as Tsar of All the Russias from 1547 to his death in 1584. ‘All the Russias’ meant ‘all the states of the Rus’ people’. The title had in fact been used by his grandfather Ivan III, but Ivan IV was the first to adopt it officially. History has named him Ivan ‘the Terrible’, in the sense of awe-inspiringly magnificent. Compare Psalm 47:2.

See Merchants of Muscovy.

See The Grand Embassy.

Précis

The reign of Peter the Great brought Russia (now declared an Empire) into greater contact with the West, and saw the Tsar visit Britain in 1698. As Russia’s influence grew, so did conflict with Britain, especially during the Napoleonic Wars. However, Russia and Britain eventually combined to frustrate Napoleon’s ambitions of empire, at his retreat from Moscow, and at Waterloo. (59 / 60 words)

Part Three

© Alex ‘Florstein’ Fedorov, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source

About this picture …

The Palace of the Empress Catherine the Great in Tsarskoye Selo, 18 miles south of St Petersburg, Russia. It was the summer residence of the Tsars from the middle of the 18th century onwards; from 1732 to 1917 St Petersburg, not Moscow, was the Imperial capital. One of Catherine’s most far-seeing acts was to bring British naval know-how to Russia, and Scottish-born Admiral Samuel Greig is recognised as ‘the Father of the Russian Navy’.

CORDIAL relations with Britain were renewed during the 1760s by Catherine the Great, who made Imperial Russia one of the Great Powers of Europe thanks in no small part to Scotsman Samuel Greig, whom she appointed to revitalise the Navy.*

In 1801, Napoleon Bonaparte, bent on European domination, persuaded Paul I to harass the British in India, and prevailed on Alexander I to impose sanctions in 1807. Napoleon’s schemes were ruined when his assault on Moscow and humiliating retreat in September 1812 subsequently led to final defeat by the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo in 1815.* But he had sown distrust. Russia and Britain allied to help Greece win independence in 1832; but shortly after a young John Wesley Hackworth began Russia’s railway revolution in 1836,* lingering fears for India led Britain and Russia into conflict in Afghanistan, and then the Crimean War of 1853-56.* By the 1860s, Russophobia in Westminster was feverish, but Alexander II’s state visit to Windsor Castle in 1874 promised something better.*

Jump to Part 4

See Samuel Greig.

See Retreat from Moscow and The Battle of Waterloo.

See Russia’s First Railway.

The Afghan Wars of 1838-42 and 1878-1880, and the Crimean War of 1853-1856. See The Crimean War.

Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone accused Russophobes of an ugly nationalism: see An Exceptional Nation; free-trade campaigner Richard Cobden MP warned that critics had misunderstood the Russian national psyche: see Misreading Russia; and pioneering journalist William Stead accused anti-Russian newsmen of Playing with Fire.

Précis

In the years after the Crimean War, relations between Britain and Russia so improved that one of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters married the Tsar, and another married his uncle. However, in 1917 Russian socialists took the opportunity provided by war in Europe to seize power at home, murdering the royal family in cold blood, and beginning seventy years of brutal oppression. (59 / 60 words)

Part Four

Photo from the United States’ Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain. Source

About this picture …

The family of Tsar Nicholas II in about 1914. The Tsar and the Empress Alexandra are seated in the middle, with Marie just behind her right shoulder and Anastasia on the stool. Olga and Tatiana are standing at the back, and Alexei is seated at the front.

IN 1894, Victoria’s granddaughter Alix married Alexander II’s grandson, the future Tsar Nicholas II. Nicholas’s uncle Sergei had already married Alix’s sister Elizabeth, a convert to the Russian Church, and between her restraining influence* and the family’s ties to Britain hopes rose on both sides of a lasting friendship. British merchants brought profitable mining and retail businesses to Russia (Moscow’s flagship department store was Muir and Mirrielees) and Russians caught football fever from Scottish expats.*

Even the Great War strengthened the bond.* More than four million Russians gave their lives as allies of Britain and France against the German Empire’s aggressive expansion. Yet, to Lenin’s Marxist revolutionaries Europe’s distress was an opportunity. After slipping into Russia from Germany,* in 1917 Lenin masterminded the murder of the entire royal family in a bloodthirsty coup, and a thousand years of history ended with a pistol-shot. Over the centuries Tsars had done some terrible things; but they paled by comparison with what followed.

Copy Book

Today she is venerated as a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church. See posts tagged St Elizabeth the New Martyr (2).

See Herbert Bury’s recollections of a Russian choir singing Rule, Britannia! for him during the Great War, in Prav’, Britaniya!.

Read how Herbert Bury told the Tsar that the English were in Russia ‘Not to Exploit, Sir, but to Help’. See also a quick history of the Moscow department store Muir and Mirrielees, and the remarkable sporting career of Arthur MacPherson.

See Winston Churchill on Germany’s Secret Weapon.

Précis

At the turn of the twentieth century, relations between Russia and the United Kingdom began to thaw, thanks in part to the ties of marriage between the two royal families. Our peoples began the Great War as allies; but in 1917 the Communists seized power in Russia, and with the assassination of Emperor Nicholas the burgeoning friendship was abruptly ended. (59 / 60 words)

Related Video

God Save the Tsar!, set to music by Alexei Fyodorovich Lvov (1799-1870), and performed by the Mikhailovsky Theatre orchestra and choir, at the State Hermitage, St Petersburg.

Further information

Suggested Music

1 2 3 4

Liturgy of St John Chrysostom

The Lord’s Prayer

Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Performed by the USSR Ministry of Culture Chamber Choir, conducted by Valery Polyansky.

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March of the Slavs

Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Performed by the Mikhailovsky Theatre orchestra and choir, at the State Hermitage, St Petersburg.

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‘The Year 1812 Solemn Overture’

Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Performed by the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, the Mendi Rodan Symphony Orchestra and the Jerusalem academy Chamber Choir, conducted by Eitan Globerson.

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‘God Save the Tsar’

Alexei Fyodorovich Lvov (1799-1870)

Performed by the Mikhailovsky Theatre orchestra and choir, at the State Hermitage, St Petersburg.

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Transcript / Notes

Боже, Царя храни!
Сильный, державный,
Царствуй на славу, на славу намъ!

Царствуй на страхъ врагамъ,
Царь православный!
Боже, Царя храни!

God, save the Tsar!
Strong, sovereign,
Reign for glory, for our glory!

Reign to make foes fear,
Orthodox Tsar!
God, save the Tsar!

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