Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia in 1918, Princess Helena Petrovna, the wife of Anastasia's distant cousin, Prince John Constantinovich of Russia, reported that a guard brought a girl who called herself Anastasia Romanova to her cell and asked if the girl was the daughter of the Tsar. Helena Petrovna said she did not recognize the girl and the guard took her away. Although other witnesses in Perm later reported that they saw Anastasia, her mother and sisters in Perm after the murders, this story is now widely discredited. Rumors that they were alive were fueled by deliberate misinformation designed to hide the fact that the
History of Russia required numbers, which fit the philosophy of Nicholas I. When the Revolutions of 1848 swept Europe, however, Russia was quiet. The Tsar sent his army into Hungary in 1849 at the request of the Austrian Empire and broke the revolt there, while preventing its spread to Russian Poland. The Tsar cracked down on any signs of internal unrest. Russia expected that in exchange for supplying the troops to be the policeman of Europe, it should have a free hand in dealing with the decaying Ottoman Empire—the "sick man of Europe." In 1853 Russia invaded the Crimea peninsula and other regions,