DISGRACED GRAND DUKE.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1652, 20 January 1913, Page 7

DISGRACED GRAND DUKE.

MICHAEL AND THE THRONE OF RUSSIA. ' By Telegraph—Press Association-Copyright , St, Petersburg, January 17. A sensation has boen caused/ by the curt language of the ukase setting'up a guardianship over the Grand Dulce Michael, brother of the Tsar; and heir presumptive'to the throna. of Russia, and preventing him from becoming regent in the event of the present Tsar dying before the, Tsarevitch attains his'majority, ' Tho ukase was issued against the Dowager, Empress's wish. '■'< .

The Grand Dnko Michael has taken a villa at Nice. He'hitherto lived on his property at Orel, inßussia, as Count Brasoff,The woman whom' he married was first, married to a zemstovo doctor, then an army'offioer of the. Grand , Duke Michael's regiment, who divorced tier, " I PALACE INTRIGUES, I: FEUD IN ROYAL HOUSEHOLD. \ With-his mother and his sisters, nursing him back to life, the little heir to the throne of the Russian Tsar seems likely to recover from the latest and most mysterious of . tho many plots to destroy him; It must not be, hastily assumed, according : to; sinister reports in well-informed .European dailies, that the death of the eight-year-old, Alexis Nicolaiovitch, Ataman or Hetmhn of all the Cossacks, commander of the Finland Guard, aad chevalier of the Order of St. Andrew, Grand Duke and heir to all the Rnssias, was planned by revolutionists. There is authority for. the assertion that a plot to make away with the Tear's only son had been hatched by a grand-d'ueal clique as' long., ago. as last March. ■ ri.Tho present plight of the royal child is ascribed in' official aocounts. .. of his misadventure aboard his father's yacht to : accident. Ihere.is a. barely . creditable tale of a Nihilist with a knife. Later, and more circumstantial than the other accounts, is a story of an intrigue within tho palace of Tsarskoye Selq involving royal relatives of the Tsarevitch.

It is true, as tho Paris "Aurore" points out, that the disrepute into which Russian Grand Dukes generally have fallen causes the attribution to, them of many disgraceful intrigues with which they have no connection. Nevertheless, the latest mystery of tho , court of Russia .coincides with an exacerbated stago of the fued in the Imperial family, in' St. Petersburg. Tho long and sullen quarrel between the Tsar and his brother, the acute, difference between the Tsar's mother and the Tsar's, wifo, and the conflict at court over the education of the Tsarevitch combine,. the French paper, says, to make even the wildest, rumour plausible.

_ Matters will not bo mended, hints 'the Pans "Action,' by the recovery of the child. His mother will insist to the last upon the course of training outlined by herself, and her husband for their youngest and dearest. ■ The crisis 6oems due to the mother's persistence in an antiMuscovite course. ■ We read, for example, that the influences to' which the lad is subjected in _ his. most impressionable years are neither pious from a Russian standpoint nor patriotic.' Thus we have the heir to the throne of Peter the Great growing up: among German barons and Danish princesses, receiving the training of a sailor, and seldom, if ever, enjoying adequate Telieious instruction' in that faith of which he is the hereditary defender. The controversy - has extended far beyond: the limits of the 'royal family involved, The army and Church have long aohed with the feeling animating the grand dukes. A well organised palace revolution may have been the result, unless we ascribe the recent events to terrorist conspiracies, of whioh there is doubt.