Pierre Gilliard (1879-1962) was a Swiss academic and author, best known as the French language tutor to the five children of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia from 1905-1918. In 1921, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, he published a memoir, Thirteen Years at the Russian Court, about his time with the family. Born on May 16, 1879 in Fiez, Switzerland, he initially came to Russia in 1904 as a French tutor to the family of Duke George of Leuchtenberg, a cousin of the Romanov family. He was recommended as a French tutor to the Tsar’s children and began teaching the elder children, Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia in 1905. He grew fond of the family and followed them into internal exile at Tobolsk, Siberia, following the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Bolsheviks prevented Gilliard from joining his pupils when they were moved to the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg in May 1918. Gilliard remained in Siberia after the murders of the family, assisting White Russian investigator Nicholas Sokolov. He married Alexandra “Shura” Tegleva, who had been a nurse to Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, in 1919. In Siberia, he was instrumental in unmasking an impostor who claimed to be the Tsarevich Alexei. In 1920, he returned to Switzerland via the Russian Far East. He became a French professor at the University of Lausanne and was awarded the French Legion of Honor. In 1958, Gilliard was severely injured in a car accident in Lausanne. He never fully recovered and died four years later on May, 30 1962, aged 83.