the dungeons of Troubetskoy Bastion. All four were to be shot early the next morning as hostages in response to the murders of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany. At 3 a.m. on the following day, the four Grand Dukes were taken outside the fortress and stripped to the waist, despite the fact that it was almost . His three cousins were each escorted, with a soldier on each side, towards a trench that had been dug in the courtyard. The fusillade of shots sent them reeling into the trench, joining thirteen other bodies in the mass grave. Grand Duke Paul, who was too emaciated and too sick to stand, was carried on a stretcher. Before he was murdered, he was heard saying «Lord, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing». He was killed shortly afterwards. Grand Dukes Paul, Michael, George and Dmitri were buried in a mass grave in the Fortress, the Bolsheviks having refused the distraught Princess Paley the right to bury her husband. On 31 January 1919, The Petrograd Pravda published the news about the execution of the four Grand Dukes. In 1981, Grand Duke Paul was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad as a holy martyr. In 1999, he was rehabilitated by the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia. Ancestry Notes References Alexander, Grand Duke of Russia. Once a Grand Duke. Cassell, London, 1932, ASIN: B000J3ZFL2 Belyakova, Zoia. Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna and her palace in St Peterburg. Ego Publishers, Chavchavadze, David. The Grand Dukes, Atlantic, 1989, Cockfield, Jamie H. White Crow: The Life and Times of the Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich Romanov, 1859–1919. Praeger, 2002, King, Greg. The Court of the Last Tsar. Wiley, 2006. . Hall, Coryne. Danish efforts to Help the Imprisoned Romanovs. Published in Royal Russia N 6. 2014. . Hall, Coryne. The English Dacha at Tsarkoe Selo. Royalty Digest Quarterly. 2007 N 1. ISSN 1653-5219 Lee, William & Davidson, Lisa. Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich. Published in The Grand Dukes. Eurohistory, 2012. Marie Georgievna, Grand Duchess of Russia. A Romanov Diary: the Autobiography of the Grand Duchess Marie Georgievna of Russia. Gilbert's Books, 2012. Papi, Stefano. Jewels of the Romanovs. Thames & Hudson, 2013. Paley, Princess. Memories of Russia, 1916–1919. Herbert Jenkins Ltd, 1924. ASIN: B000O5UBBE Perry, John and Pleshakov, Constantine. The Flight of the Romanovs. Basic Books, 1999, . Van der Kiste, John. The Romanovs 1818–1959.