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During the war the government machine signalfailed to meet its immense tasks and to co-operate withthe various voluntary organziations run by the progressives.The bureaucracy, not the progressives, suppliedthe ministers, who were the appointees of the tsar.They were nonentities or worse. Public accusations oftreachery were made. There was no leadership fromabove, no concerted policy; nothing but drifting incompetenceand senseless routine like a horse on adisconnected treadmill. In the last year of tsarism therewere four different prime ministers, four differentministers of interior, three different war ministers, andthree different foreign ministers.Nicholas II, pitiable had he not been tsar, was responsiblefor this final divorce of the government fromthe country. Ruled by his wife, he proved incapableeven of reigning. He was possessed of many amiablequalities as a private individual, but the Rasputinscandals (see p. 195) and his refusal to listen to any saneadvice or to choose any ministers who might inspiresome confidence, and give at least a semblance of unifiedleadership, had produced a situation so electric thateven members of the imperial family were talking ofa palace revolution, such as Russia had known so oftenin the eighteenth century. As the last hour of tsarismbegan to strike, the tsar for his part was writing tocommiserate with the empress on the children havingcaught measles and to complain: "I greatly miss myhalf-hourly game of patience every evening. I shall takeup dominoes again in my spare time" (8th March 1917).On that day disorders broke out in Petrograd. Withina week it was Revolution. So completely was Nicholasestranged from all sections of society that there wasnothing for him to do but to abdicate immediately. Hedid so, for himself and his young son, in favour of hisbrother the Grand Duke Michael. The Grand Dukedeclined to assume the crown until it was offered to himby a constituent assembly. That was the end of theRomanov dynasty, and with it the end of any unquestionedauthority for many a long year of travail.The war had brought tsarism to its downfall. With73