The Tsar's Dragons
8 primary works
Book 1
The first of a trilogy based on the exploits of John Hughes, who founded a city in Russia in the 1800s
In 1869, Tsar Alexander II decided to drag Russia into the industrial age. He began by inviting Welsh businessman John Hughes to build an ironworks.
A charismatic visionary, Hughes persuaded influential people to invest in his venture, while concealing his greatest secret - he couldn't even write his own name. Hughes recruited adventurers prepared to sacrifice everything to ensure the success of Hughesovka (Donetsk, Ukraine). Young Welsh men and women fleeing violence in their home country, Jews who have accepted Russian anti-Semitism as their fate, and Russian aristocrats: all see a future in the Welshman's plans.
In a place where murderers, whores, and illicit love affairs flourish, The Tsar's Dragons is the story of a new beginning in Hughesovka, a town of opportunity.
Book 1
The first instalment of Catrin Collier's The Tsar's Dragons tells the epic historical saga based on the true story of how John Hughes, a lowborn, illiterate Welshman, founded Russia's iron industry on the steppes of the Ukraine.
In 1869 John Hughes travelled to Russia at the invitation of Tsar Alexander II to build an ironworks and instigate the industrialization of Russia.
Not everyone welcomes John and the Tsar's plans. Necessity forces Count Nicholas Beletsky to sell John land, although he abhors `dirty' industry and is furious when son Alexei reveals his ambition to become an engineer. The Jews, who live apart in their shtetl, refuse to believe that John's plans will halt the persecution of their race. The Cossacks in the village of Alexandrovka, soon to be swallowed by John's new town, queue to sell John their land and coal mines that have been worked in the same primitive fashion or centuries.
Undeterred, John signs up workers in Wales, but not all leave in search of fortune. Some, like brother and sister Richard and Anna Parry, are running to escape violence. Will they, and John's right-hand man Glyn, find the peace they search for in John's visionary new town?
Book 2
The second volume in Catrin Collier's epic The Tsar's Dragons series, set in the late nineteenth-century Russian Empire. Welsh industrialist John Hughes has built an ironworks on the Russian Steppe - and a city bearing his name has grown up around it.
For people like Hughes' right-hand man, Glyn Edwards, who has found love in a new country, and Anna Parry, a Welsh orphan who has found fulfilment working in Hughesovka's hospital, the city is a chance to build a new life - but fresh arrivals from their hometown have come to cause trouble and threaten the peace and stability of that new existence. Meanwhile, for ambitious Russians like Alexei Beletsky, the city offers a chance to change their homeland for the better - but Alexei still has to deal with the prejudices of the locals as he marries a Jewish girl, Ruth, and the new couple make enemies both Russian and Jewish.
Book 2
In contrast to those who joined wagon trains to seek their fortune in the American West, John Hughes and his workers trek east. Shipping the machinery needed for his ironworks across the steppe by bullock train, Hughes heads for the land he's bought from Count Beletsky, who has no time for either foreigners or industry. Beletsky is at odds with his wilful, forward-thinking son, Alexei, who is protected by his quick-witted grandmother, the Dowager Catherine Ignatova.
Nearby is the Cossack village of Alexandrovka, where men hew coal out of shallow pits, and a Jewish shtetl, home to Nathan Kharber, a doctor forced to return to his village by the death of his parents. To Nathan's horror, he discovers his sister Ruth has fallen in love with Alexei. He knows, as they do, that if their love is discovered both risk being ostracized, if not killed, by their communities.
The trek from the port of Taganrog to the immigrants' new home is long, onerous, and beset by problems when the autumn rains begin. Fighting mud and disease, Hughes's party are escorted by the Tsar's Cossack soldiers. There, on the journey, Alexei discovers it is not only the civilian Cossacks he and Ruth need to fear, but an entire regiment hell bent on wiping Jews from the face of the earth ...
Book 3
None know better than Dr Peter Edwards and his wife Sarah, who worked through the London pandemic of 1866, how quickly cholera can strike. When Countess Beletsky, her daughters and servants, and John's workers succumb, Peter fights for their lives tirelessly until he too falls victim.
The only doctor within a hundred miles is Nathan Kharber, a Jew distrusted by the Russians. Nathan knows if he fails to save his Christian patients, the Cossacks will hang him as they have other doctors of his faith for centuries.
While the immigrants wait to discover if Nathan can save Peter, Glyn, Richard, the Countess, and her daughters, John Hughes and Sarah Edwards both find themselves fighting an ignorance born in thousands of years of superstition on the Russian Steppes.
Book 4
Book 4
When Alexei Beletsky brings John Hughes news of an impending pogrom planned by Misha, a captain in the Cossack regiment, he conceals more than he tells him.
Engaged to a Jewess, Ruth, Alexei is aware that Captain Misha Razin has been motivated by more than the age-old hatred of the Cossacks for the Jews. Misha is in love with Alexei's cousin Sonya, but Sonya has already given her heart to a Jew, who dare not declare his love for a Christian because he cannot bear the prospect of being shunned by his people and his religion.
John, Glyn, Richard, and Alexei enlist the assistance of the local orthodox priest, Father Grigor, and the commandant of the Cossacks. They devise a plan - one which they hope will avoid a massacre. But can they dissuade Misha and save an entire community, or will blood run in the streets of the shtetl as it has done so many times before?
Book 5
The Cossacks have always been cavalier with safety in their mines, believing it manly to take risks. But when a score of Cossack miners are trapped underground, it falls to the Welsh miners to save them - at a cost. The Tsar rewards the bravery of the rescuers with gold medals, but when John, Glyn, Richard, Alexei, and the women travel to St Petersburg, both Sarah and Glyn's Cossack mistress Praskovia remain in Hughesovka to help nurse the victims of an epidemic of typhoid that began in the pit houses.
But Sarah has another reason for remaining.
While the men are away, Sarah leaves Hughesovka forever, carrying a secret that has driven her from the first real home she has ever known and the only friends she has.
Meanwhile, unbeknown to the immigrants, Richard's first love, Alice, and Glyn's estranged wife, Betty, are travelling the long miles to Hughesovka, along with Richard and Anna's younger brothers. But what will chapel-going Betty, who has a surprise of her own for Glyn, make of Glyn's exotic, Titian-haired housekeeper who is soon to become the mother of his child?