By Assistant Editor, Kimball Worcester
It was just noon when the purple-draped train carrying the coffin and its of mourners moved out of Paddington station, while all the troops presented arms. In striking contrast to the usual din of a railway terminus, Paddington had for upward of an hour resounded only with the tramp of marching men and the wail and throb and crash of the dead march. King George gave his arm to his mother as she left her coach to board the train. On the arrival at Windsor the gun-carriage which bore the royal coffin was drawn to St. George's Chapel by seamen of the Royal Navy and followed on foot by the royal mourners. At this part of the proceedings Theodore Roosevelt and M. Pichon, representatives of the sister Republics of the United States and France, walked at the end of the long line of royal Princes. Mr. Roosevelt was carrying his overcoat over his arm and wearing evening dress.
Ten Who Were There, (6–10)
6. Stéphen Pichon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, France (1857-1933)
The representative of France at the funeral was the French politician of the Third Republic, Stéphen Pichon. An associate of Georges Clemenceau, he served several times under Clemenceau and others as minister of foreign affairs, a role in which he proved amiable, but not particularly effective. His most notable service was under Clemenceau during the latter part of the First World War and the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, but, like most of the other foreign ministers at the conference, Pichon was largely sidelined by the more forceful figure of his head of government.
7. Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich Romanov (1878 - 1918), Tsar Michael II (1917)
Grand Duke Michael of Russia appeared in the cavalcade of royalty in Edward VII's funeral cortege as the representative of his brother and sovereign, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. He and Nicholas were the King's nephews. Two years later, Michael married morganatically and set himself outside the social and royal pale of the time. He settled abroad with his wife, Countess Brasova, and son, George. It was the Great War that brought him back to his country and, ultimately, his execution. Michael served with distinction in the war, commanding the "Savage Division" (Caucasian Native Cavalry Division, made up of Muslim volunteers) on the Galician and Carpathian fronts as well as in the Brusilov offensive of 1916.
Michael was technically Tsar Michael II for several days in 1917 upon the abdication of Nicholas and his son, Alexei, but he chose to reign only as a freely elected monarch under a constitutional government, which was not forthcoming. It was Grand Duke Michael who arranged through his Danish royal relatives the passport enabling Alexander Kerensky to escape westward from the Bolsheviks in November 1917. In the early hours of 13 June 1918 Michael was shot, together with his loyal British secretary, Nicholas Johnson, outside Perm, Russia, by a Bolshevik execution squad. Their bodies were never found.
8. Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States (1858-1919)
The former president of the United States was America's special envoy at the funeral. His greatest impact on the coming war was a result of his attempt to regain the White House in 1912. In splitting the Republican vote by forming a third party, the Progressives (or "Bull Moose"), he assured the election of little-known Princeton University president Woodrow Wilson. When the Great War began, he was an early advocate for U.S. preparedness and participation.
After America joined the fray, all four of Roosevelt's sons and one of his daughters saw service overseas. His youngest son, Quentin, was killed in action while flying with the 95th Aero Squadron, probably the most famous casualty of the war for the nation. Quentin's death shattered him. He seemed to be well positioned to regain the presidency in 1920, but his health deteriorated rapidly after the loss of his son, and he died in 1919.
9. Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria (1869-1955)
Crown Prince Rupprecht's lineage gave him a curious link to the English throne by virtue of his descent from James II -- had the Jacobite succession continued in England, he could arguably have been Robert the First of Great Britain.
Rupprecht may have attended Edward's funeral as second-tier royalty, but he was certainly of premier military caliber and can be assessed as the most able of the German royal commanders in the field during the Great War. His skillful maneuvering of the Sixth Army during the Lorraine campaign thwarted France's beloved Plan XVII, drawing French troops farther east as the Schlieffen plan tried to unfold in the west. Rupprecht also held the defense of the Hindenburg Line in 1917/18. Late in the war he voiced his displeasure at the Hindenburg/Ludendorff stranglehold on command and was one of the first generals to realize the need to make peace.
Between the wars, Rupprecht was strongly anti-Hitler, and when the Second World War broke out in Europe in 1939, he and his (second) wife and children fled to Italy. In 1944 his wife and children were caught and interned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau until the end of the war. His wife died not long after the end of the war, effectively from her treatment in the camps. Rupprecht died at his family estate, Schloss Leutstetten, near Munich ten years later.
10. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany (1859-1941)
Whole libraries have been written on the Kaiser and his role in World War I. We recommend:
The Roads to the Great War Archive "Kaiser Wilhelm II" READ HERE
Part I of this article was yesterday's entry on Roads to the Great War.
Source: Over the Top, November 2010
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