less influence in Russia than in other countries, and as every Russian Princess has, for a hundred and fifty years, been German in origin, German by training, German by pride of birth, German by prejudice, the Teutonic influences have necessarily been supreme in the Russian Court. Nor must we forget that every German Princess coming to Petrograd would bring with her a numerous suite of ladies-in-waiting and court officials, so that the German Court colony was automatically increasing. Indeed it is no mere chance that the capital, the military harbour and the chief imperial residences should all have German names—Kronstadt Oranienbaum, Schlussenburg, Petersburg and Peterhof. Peterhof has been the Russian Potsdam. Petersburg has been the outpost of Germany in the Russian Empire, the "feste Burg" of Prussia until the eve of the war.
IV
From what has been said, it is obvious that the national Romanov dynasty, founded in 1613 by Michael Romanov, patriarch of all the Russias, ceased to be a Romanov dynasty at the death of Empress Elizabeth in 1761. With Peter III, it is a German dynasty which ascends
