On June 26, 1780, the family was informed of the Empress’s decree to send them to Denmark, to their aunt. They were stunned. “I cannot,” Melgunov wrote to Catherine, “here describe the immense fear, mixed with astonishment and joy, that struck them upon hearing these words. None of them could utter a word, but the streams of tears flowing from their eyes, frequent kneeling, and the joy spreading across their faces clearly revealed their heartfelt gratitude.” They thanked for their freedom but only asked to be settled in a small town, away from people. Interestingly, they all spoke Kholmogory, the “northern dialect,” which initially seemed strange and unfamiliar to the capital visitors, who knew they were going to people whose blood was not only Romanov but also from ancient Mecklenburg and Brunswick dukes.

On the night of June 27, the princes and princesses were taken out of the house. For the first time in their lives, they stepped beyond the prison walls, boarded a yacht, and sailed down the wide, beautiful Dvina River, a piece of which they had seen their entire lives from the window. When the gloomy fortifications of the Novodvinsk fortress appeared in the twilight of the white Arkhangelsk night, the brothers and sisters began to weep and say goodbye—they thought they had been deceived and that in reality, solitary confinement in fortress casemates awaited them. But they were reassured when shown the frigate “Polar Star” anchored in the roadstead, preparing to set sail.

Until the very end, the Antonovich family was strictly guarded, and Colonel Ziegler, specially appointed to lead the operation, received strict orders not to allow the prisoners to write or send letters and to admit no one to them. “But if anyone,” the instructions noted, “beyond expectation, dares to board the frigate by force and intends to take the princes and princesses from Ziegler’s hands, in such a case he is ordered to repel force with force and defend himself to the last drop of blood.” Fortunately, there was no clause about killing the prisoners in the instructions—apparently, by 1780, Catherine’s affairs had taken the “proper course.”

On the night of July 1, Anna Leopoldovna’s children left their homeland forever. The voyage was exceptionally difficult. For a long nine weeks, continuous storms, fogs, and headwinds hindered the “Polar Star” from reaching the shores of Norway. We do not know what the passengers thought or said. Probably, they sat closely pressed together, praying in Russian to the Russian God, dreaming of only one thing—to die together. But fate favored them. On August 30, 1780, Bergen appeared, where they were transferred to a Danish ship. They were still not free and were forcibly separated from their servants—the half-brothers and sisters, who, according to dull bureaucratic laws (since servants had no papers!), were left on Russian territory—on the deck of the “Polar Star.”

Torn from their familiar surroundings, surrounded by strangers speaking a foreign language, the princes and princesses were unhappy and clung to each other. Their aunt, the queen, settled them in the small town of Horsens in Jutland. She wrote to Catherine: “I will try to gild their chains,” to introduce them to the lifestyle of the Danish court. But these were only words; the queen never wished to see her nephews and nieces. Their small court existed from 1780 to 1807 and initially consisted of four brothers and sisters and their court staff. It lasted until 1807, when Princess Catherine, the last of the exiled, died at the age of 66. These four princes and princesses were: Catherine, born in 1741; Elizabeth, born in 1744; Peter, born in 1745; and Alexei, born in 1746.

They arrived in Horsens as state prisoners and were provided with a court and residence.

The family was allocated two farms on Torvet (where the current numbers 2 and 4 are located), which were transformed into what was to be called the “Palace” by royal order. The picture above shows the westernmost of the two farms. The reconstruction was carried out according to the drawings of the court architect Harsdorf, who visited Horsens in the summer of 1780, and the practical work was led by Harsdorf’s conductor, architect Hans Næss, and local architect Anders Kruse. In addition to the reconstruction of the two farms, two new buildings were added to the complex: a large kitchen building and a chapel. Besides the four princes, the court consisted of 46 servants, of whom 28 received daily meals at court as part of their salary. The staff included the head of the court, the intendant and his deputy responsible for court purchases, maids, footmen, cooks, kitchen maids, old women, laundresses, and many others.

For managing the large estate, the court annually received from Russia the equivalent of 28,000 Reichsthalers. More than 10,000 rigsdalers were spent on food and drinks. Salaries amounted to about 7,160 Rixdaler. The rest went to firewood, lanterns, uniforms and other clothing, as well as the operation of the stables with horses and carriages. The fact that Horsens became their place of residence was probably related to the then state secretary Uwe Høegh Guldberg, who came from there. From Russia, only a priest and two servants accompanied them; the rest of the court consisted of Danes. At first, they led a very restricted life under strict supervision, but later they were allowed freer communication with the townspeople.

The Russian Empress took upon herself all expenses for the family’s arrangement. The money was paid to the Danish government, to which the court intendant had to present an annual report. The family helped the city’s poor and schoolchildren.

In 1807, Princess Catherine died and was buried with princely splendor, as were later her three brothers and sisters, in the chapel on the southern side of the choir of the monastery church. On the chapel wall hung a black stone plaque with inscriptions about the four brothers and sisters. Princess Catherine asked Emperor Alexander to provide the people who surrounded her in exile with a suitable pension. The same was granted to officials and servants who had long been with the family.

Just as their lives passed in shadow, so the only thing preserved from them are their silhouettes.

This image is presumably a gift to the widowed Queen Juliane Marie from Princess Catherine, who carved it herself. It is kept in the state archive. (Rigsarkivet)

And they, like old birds released into freedom, were unadapted to it and began to die one by one. The first to die was their leader—Princess Elizabeth—in October 1782. In 1787, Prince Alexei died; in 1798, Prince Peter. The longest-lived was the eldest, Princess Catherine, the very one who was dropped in the turmoil of the night coup on November 25, 1741.

In August 1803, Emperor Alexander I received a letter as if from another, long-gone era. Princess Catherine Antonovna asked the tsar to take her home, to Russia, to a monastery, complaining that, taking advantage of her illnesses and ignorance, the Danish courtiers and servants were robbing her and “using all the money for their own benefit, and that they were once very poor and had nothing, but now they have become rich because they were always deceitful… I cry every day and do not know why God sent me here and why I live so long in this world, and I remember Kholmogory every day because it was paradise for me there, and here—it is hell.” The sovereign was silent. And, having received no answer, the last daughter of the unfortunate Brunswick couple died on April 9, 1807.

The emperor was silent because Russia, having ruined the fates and lives of these unfortunate people, guilty only of being born, immediately after their exile abandoned them. When in December 1780 the Russian envoy in Copenhagen, Baron Sacken, conveyed to Empress Catherine II the question from the Danish government: would Russia publish a notice about the exile of the Brunswick family abroad, the empress replied: “We wish that you, if such a question is repeated, respond on your own behalf that all these princes are considered by our loyal subjects as strangers to Russia, born, except the eldest, at a time when their parents were removed and their whereabouts were unknown for thirty-nine years, therefore you do not think that anything about unknown people completely foreign to our empire could be published by us, and in any case try to show that neither we nor our state are at all interested in the persons of the Brunswick princes and princesses, whose present life benefits are owed solely to our humanity.”

When the court was dissolved in 1807, the palace was dismantled, most of the inventory, including items from the chapel, was sold at auction, and the iconostasis and icons were sent to Copenhagen; none of this has survived. From 1810 to 1829, the palace was the residence of Princess Charlotte Frederikke.

The entire complex was demolished in 1915.

Sources:

Igor Vladimirovich Kurukin: Anna Leopoldovna

Evgeny Viktorovich Anisimov: Secrets of the Forbidden Emperor

http://danmarkskirker.natmus.dk/uploads/tx_tcchurchsearch/Aarhus_5653-6060.pdf

http://danmarkskirker.natmus.dk/uploads/tx_tcchurchsearch/Aarhus_6153-6157.pdf