Nicholas Nikolaevich
Grand Duke of Russia
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (18 November 1856 – 5 January 1929) was a Russian general in World War I (1914–1918). The son of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (1831–1891), and a grandson of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia, he was commander in chief of the Imperial Russian Army units on the main front in the first year of the war, during the reign of his first cousin once removed, Nicholas II. Although held in high regard by Paul von Hindenburg, he struggled with the colossal task of leading Russia's war effort against Germany, including strategy, tactics, logistics and coordination with the government. After the Gorlice–Tarnów offensive in 1915, Tsar Nicholas replaced the Grand Duke as commander-in-chief of the army. He later was a successful commander-in-chief in the Caucasus region. He was briefly recognized as the Emperor in 1922 in areas controlled by the White Armies movement in the Russian Far East.
His Majesty's Life Guards Hussar Regiment (until 1855 – the Hussar Life Guards Regiment) was a Guards Hussar regiment of the Army of the Russian Empire. At the end of 1774, Empress Catherine II ordered Prince Grigory Potemkin to form a hussar squadron of 130 people and two Cossack escort teams for service under Her Majesty; the squadron was named Leib Gusarsky, and the Cossack teams: one – Donskoy, the other – Chuguevskaya, and ordered to be at the highest court. In April 1775, the squadron was made up of Black (64 people), Yellow (25 people), Serbian (20 people), Moldavian (25 people), Wallachian (11 people) and Hungarian (two people) hussar regiments and was replenished with volunteers from the nobles, the best men of the army regiments and foreigners of beautiful appearance and tall stature. The contingent had to be made up of the best appearance and "living creatures", as well as honest and sober people. Throughout the reign of Catherine II, the squadron and escort teams carried the protection of Her Majesty. On January 24, 1798, the Life Hussar Cossack Regiment was divided into 2 regiments: the hussar squadrons made up the Life Guards Hussar Regiment, and the Cossack ones – the Life Guards Cossack Regiment. On February 19, 1855, on the occasion of the accession to the throne of Emperor Alexander II, who had been the chief of the regiment since 1818, the regiment was ordered to be called His Majesty's Life Guards Hussar Regiment.
The Holstein-Gottorps of Russia retained the Romanov surname, emphasizing their matrilineal descent from Peter the Great, through Anna Petrovna (Peter I's elder daughter by his second wife). In 1742, Empress Elizabeth of Russia brought Anna's son, her nephew Peter of Holstein-Gottorp, to St. Petersburg and proclaimed him her heir. In time, she married him off to a German princess, Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst. In 1762, shortly after the death of Empress Elizabeth, Sophia, who had taken the Russian name Catherine upon her marriage, overthrew her unpopular husband, with the aid of her lover, Grigory Orlov. She reigned as Catherine the Great. Catherine's son, Paul I, who succeeded his mother in 1796, was particularly proud to be a great-grandson of Peter the Great, although his mother's memoirs arguably insinuate that Paul's natural father was, in fact, her lover Sergei Saltykov, rather than her husband, Peter. Painfully aware of the hazards resulting from battles of succession, Paul decreed house laws for the Romanovs – the so-called Pauline Laws, among the strictest in Europe – which established semi-Salic primogeniture as the rule of succession to the throne, requiring Orthodox faith for the monarch and dynasts, and for the consorts of the monarchs and their near heirs. Later, Alexander I, responding to the 1820 morganatic marriage of his brother and heir, added the requirement that consorts of all Russian dynasts in the male line had to be of equal birth (i.e., born to a royal or sovereign dynasty).
Awards: Sach and star of the Order of St. Andrew the Apostle the First-Called, Cross and star of the Order of Saint George, Stars of the Imperial Order of Saint Alexander Nevsky and the Imperial Order of Saint Prince Vladimir.
