Grand Duke Nicholas becomes Viceroy of the Caucasus

Removed from the supreme command, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich received a new post far from the main front. Tsar Nicholas II appointed him his Viceroy in the Caucasus, commander-in-chief of the Caucasus Army and appointed ataman of the Caucasian Cossack hosts. The British chronology of the war records the appointment under 8 September 1915. Formally, however, it bore the same date as the Tsar’s assumption of command, 23 August by the Julian calendar, that is 5 September. According to Nicholas II’s diary, the Tsar signed the rescript to the Grand Duke in Mogilev a day later. In it he expressed to his kinsman his own and the fatherland’s deep gratitude for his wartime labours.

In Tiflis, today’s Tbilisi, the Grand Duke replaced the 78-year-old Count Illarion Vorontsov-Dashkov. Vorontsov-Dashkov had governed the Caucasus since 1905 and since the beginning of the war had been the nominal commander of the Caucasus Army. He took no direct part in the operations against the Turks, however. In the winter of 1914, during the Battle of Sarikamish, command in the field was taken over by General Nikolai Yudenich, while the Viceroy concerned himself mainly with the army’s rear. The old and ailing count received the honorary title of general attached to the Tsar’s person and left for the Crimea, where he died in January 1916.

The appointment was widely regarded as an honourable removal of the Grand Duke. The Caucasus was nevertheless an important front. In the summer of 1915 the Russians were fighting the Turks in the area of Lake Van. At the beginning of August they gave up Van itself, but Yudenich’s counter-stroke at Karakilise threw the Turks back and allowed the lost ground to be recovered. On top of this came the unsettled situation in neighbouring Persia. The new Viceroy was to concentrate in his hands civil authority over the whole country and supreme authority over the army. Since the affairs of administration required his constant presence in Tiflis, direct command at the front remained in Yudenich’s hands. At the same time the Grand Duke took trusted men with him. His previous chief of staff at Stavka, General Nikolai Yanushkevich, became his assistant for military affairs. Prince Vladimir Orlov, until then one of the Tsar’s closest associates, who had been removed from court for his hostility to Grigori Rasputin, was also sent to the Viceroy.

On the evening of 7 September Nicholas Nikolaevich took leave of the Tsar at the station in Mogilev and, together with his brother, Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich, left for his estate of Pershino near Tula. He spent several weeks there and only then went on to Tiflis. He remained in the Caucasus until 1917. Under his authority the Caucasus Army captured the fortress of Erzurum in February 1916, one of the greatest Russian successes of the war.