Both parents hoped that the new baby would be a son; a male heir would become the first tsarevich born directly to a reigning tsar since the eighteenth century. As the date approached, Marie returned, bubbling with excitement. “It is understood, isn’t it, that you will let me know as soon as the first symptoms appear?” she wrote to Nicholas. “I shall fly to you, my dear children, and shall not be a nuisance except perhaps by acting as a policeman to keep everybody else away.”
In mid-November 1895, when Alexandra began her labor, artillerymen in Kronstadt and St. Petersburg were posted beside their guns. A salute of 300 rounds would announce the birth of a male heir, 101 would mean that the child was a girl. Alexandra suffered intensely in labor, and birth was protracted. At last, however, the cannon began to fire, 99 … 100 … 101 … But the 102nd gun never fired. The first child born to Tsar Nicholas II and the Empress Alexandra Fedorovna was the Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaievna. At birth, she weighed nine pounds.
The joy of having their first baby instantly dispelled all worries about whether the child was a boy or a girl. When the father is twenty-seven and the mother only twenty-three, there seems infinite time to have more children. Alexandra nursed and bathed the baby herself and sang the infant to sleep with lullabies. While Olga slept, her mother sat by the crib, knitting a row of jackets, bonnets and socks. “You can imagine our intense happiness, now that we have such a precious little one to care for and look after,” the Empress wrote to one of her sisters.
5
The Coronation
In the spring, when the ice on the Neva, used all winter as a thoroughfare for sleighs and people, began to crack, the thoughts of all Russians turned to the coronation. The year was 1896, the twelve-month period of mourning was over and the new Tsar was to be crowned in Moscow in May.
Realizing that for the forty-nine-year-old Dowager Empress Marie the coronation would be partially a reminder of the sudden death of Alexander III, Nicholas attempted to console her. “I believe we should regard all these difficult ceremonies in Moscow as a great ordeal sent by God,” he wrote his mother, “for at every step we shall have to repeat all we went through in the happy days thirteen years ago! One thought alone consoles me: That in the course of our life we shall not have to go through the rite again, that subsequent events will occur peacefully and smoothly.”
The coronation of a Russian tsar was rigidly governed by history and tradition. The ceremony was held in Moscow; nothing so solemn, so meaningful to the nation, could be left to the artificial Western capital thrown up by Peter the Great. By tradition, the uncrowned tsar did not enter the city until the day before his coronation. Upon arriving in Moscow, Nicholas and Alexandra went into retreat, fasting and praying, in the Petrovsky Palace outside the city.
While the Tsar waited outside the city, the Muscovites painted and whitewashed buildings, hung strings of evergreen across the doorways and draped from the windows the white-blue-and-red Russian flag. Every hour thousands of people poured into the city. Bands of Cossacks galloped past creaking carts filled with peasant women whose heads were covered with brilliant kerchiefs of red, yellow, blue and orange. Trains disgorged tall Siberians in heavy coats with fur collars, Caucasians in long red coats, Turks in red fezzes and cavalry generals in bright red tunics with golden, fur-trimmed cloaks. The mood of the city was buoyant: besides excitement, pageantry and feasting, the coronation meant a three-day holiday, the granting of pardons to prisoners, the lifting of fines and taxes.
On the afternoon of May 25, the day of Nicholas’s formal entry into Moscow, the sun sparkled on the city’s domes and windows. Two ribbons of troops bordered the four-mile line of march, holding back the crowds. Every balcony and window above the street was jammed with people. On one of the viewing platforms built along the street sat Mathilde Kschessinska. “It was agonizing to watch the Tsar pass … the Tsar who was still ‘Niki’ to me, one I adored and who could not, could never, belong to me.”
At two o’clock, the first squadrons of Imperial Guard cavalry rode into the streets, forming the van of the procession. Those watching from the windows could see the flash of the afternoon sun on their golden helmets and cuirasses. The Cossacks of the Guard came next, wearing long coats of red and purple, their curved sabers banging against their soft black boots. Behind the Cossacks rode Moscow’s nobility in gold braid and crimson sashes with jeweled medals sparkling on their chests. Then, on foot, came the Court Orchestra, the Imperial Hunt and the court footmen in red knee breeches and white silk stockings.
The appearance of the officials of the court in gold-embroidered uniforms signaled the coming of the Tsar. Nicholas rode alone, on a white horse. Unlike the lavishly costumed ministers, generals and aides who wore rows of medals from shoulder to shoulder, he was dressed in a simple army tunic buttoned under his chin. His face was drawn and pale with excitement and he reined his horse with his left hand only. His right hand was raised to his visor in a fixed salute.
Behind Nicholas rode more clusters of horsemen, the Russian grand dukes and the foreign princes. Then came the sound of carriage wheels, mingled with the clatter of hoofs. First came the gilded carriage of Catherine the Great, drawn by eight white horses. On top was a replica of the Imperial Crown. Inside, beaming and bowing, sat the Dowager Empress Marie. Behind, in a second carriage, also made of gold and drawn by eight white horses, sat the uncrowned Empress, Alexandra Fedorovna. Dressed in a pure white gown sewn with jewels, she wore a diamond necklace around her neck which blazed in the brilliant sunlight. Leaning from left to right, bowing and smiling, the two Empresses followed the Tsar through the Nikolsky Gate into the Kremlin.
The following day, on coronation morning, the sky was a cloudless blue. In the city’s streets, heralds wearing medieval dress proclaimed that on that day, May 26, 1896, a tsar would be crowned. Inside the Kremlin, servants laid a crimson velvet carpet down the steps of the famous Red Staircase which led to the Ouspensky Cathedral, where the ceremony would take place. Opposite the staircase, a wooden grandstand had been built to hold guests who could not squeeze inside the cathedral. From this vantage, hundreds of people watched as soldiers of the Imperial Guard in red-white-and-gold uniforms took up positions on the staircase, lining the crimson carpet.
In their apartment, Nicholas and Alexandra had been up since dawn. While Alexandra’s hair was being done by her hairdresser, Nicholas sat nearby quietly talking and calming his wife. With her attendants, she practiced fastening and unfastening the clasps of her heavy coronation robe. Nicholas settled the crown on her head as he would do in the cathedral and the hairdresser stepped up with a diamond-studded hairpin to hold the crown in place. The pin went too far and the Empress cried with pain. The embarrassed hairdresser beat a retreat.
The formal procession down the Red Stairway was led by priests, trailing long beards and golden robes. Marie came next in a gown of embroidered white velvet, her long train carried by a dozen men. At last, Nicholas and Alexandra appeared at the top of the stairway. He wore the blue-green uniform of the Preobrajensky Guard with a red sash across his breast. At his side, Alexandra was in silver-white Russian court dress with a red ribbon running over her shoulder. Around her neck she wore a single strand of pink pearls. They walked slowly, followed by attendants who carried her train. On either side walked other attendants, carrying over their sovereigns’ heads a canopy of cloth of gold with tall ostrich plumes waving from its top. At the bottom of the steps, the couple bowed to the crowd and stopped before the priests, who touched them on the forehead with holy water. Before an icon held by one of the priests, they said a prayer; then the churchmen in turn kissed the Imperial hands, and the pair walked into the cathedral.
Beneath the domes of its five golden cupolas, the interior of the Ouspensky Cathedral glowed with light. Every inch of wall and ceiling was covered with luminous frescoes; before the altar stood the great iconostasis, a golden screen which was a mass of jewels. Light, filtering down from the cupolas and flickering from hundr
eds of candles, reflected off the surfaces of the jewels and the golden icons to bathe everyone present in iridescence. A choir, dressed in silver and light blue, filled the cathedral with the anthems of the Orthodox Church. Before the altar stood ranks of high clergy: metropolitans, archbishops, bishops and abbots. From their miters glittered more diamonds, sapphires, rubies and pearls, adding to the unearthly light.
At the front of the cathedral, two coronation chairs awaited the Tsar and his wife. Nicholas sat on the seventeenth-century Diamond Throne of Tsar Alexis, encrusted almost solidly with gems and pearls. Its name was derived from the 870 diamonds embedded in its surface; the armrest alone was set with 85 diamonds, 144 rubies and 129 pearls. Alexandra sat next to her husband on the famous Ivory Throne brought to Russia from Byzantium in 1472 by Ivan the Great’s Byzantine bride, Sophia Paleologus.
The coronation ceremony lasted five hours. After a lengthy Mass came the formal robing of the Tsar and Tsaritsa. Then Alexandra knelt while the Metropolitan prayed for the Tsar. While everyone else remained standing, Nicholas alone dropped on his knees to pray for Russia and her people. After being anointed with Holy Oil, Nicholas swore his oath to rule the empire and preserve autocracy as Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias.* Then, for the first time and only time in his life, the Tsar entered the sanctuary to receive the sacrament as a priest of the church. As Nicholas walked up the altar steps, the heavy chain of the Order of St. Andrew slipped from his shoulders and fell to the floor. It happened so quickly that no one noticed except those standing close to the Tsar. Later, lest it be taken as an omen, all these were sworn to secrecy.
By tradition, a tsar crowned himself, taking the crown from the hands of the Metropolitan and placing it on his own head. In planning his coronation, Nicholas had wished to use for this purpose the eight hundred-year-old Cap of Monomakh, a simple crown of gold filigree said to have been used by Vladimir Monomakh, twelfth-century ruler of Kievan Russia. Besides emphasizing his attachment to Russia’s historic past, Monomakh’s Cap had the distinct advantage of being light: it weighed only two pounds. But the iron etiquette of the ceremony made this impossible, and Nicholas lifted onto his head the huge nine-pound Imperial Crown of Russia made in 1762 for Catherine the Great. Shaped like a bishop’s miter, it was crested with a cross of diamonds surmounting an enormous uncut ruby. Below, set in an arch supporting the cross and in the band surrounding the head, were forty-four diamonds, each an inch across, surrounded by solid masses of smaller diamonds. Thirty-eight perfect rosy pearls circled over the crown on either side of the central arch. Nicholas let the gem-encrusted crown rest on his head for a moment. Then, reaching up, he took it off and carefully placed it on Alexandra’s head. Finally, he replaced it on his own head and Alexandra was given a smaller crown. Nicholas kissed her and, taking her hand, led her back to the two thrones. The ceremony ended with Empress Marie and every member of the Imperial family approaching to do homage to the crowned Tsar of all the Russias.
Despite the length of the ceremony, Alexandra later wrote to one of her sisters that she had never felt tired, so strong were her own emotions. To her, the ceremony seemed a kind of mystic marriage between herself and Russia. At the coronation, she left behind the girl who grew up in Darmstadt and England. In her heart she now truly thought of herself, not only as Empress, but as “Matushka,” the Mother of the Russian people.
At the end of the service, the newly crowned monarchs walked from the church wearing brocaded mantles embroidered with the double-headed Imperial eagle. They climbed the Red Stairway, turned and bowed three times to the crowd. From thousands of throats roared a mighty cheer. From the muzzles of massed cannons, thunder rolled across the city. Above everything, making it impossible for a man to speak into the ear of his neighbor, clanged the thousands of bells of Moscow. From the towers and churches of the Kremlin the concentrated ringing of the bells obliterated all other sounds.
Among the seven thousand guests who dined at the coronation banquet, among the grand dukes and royal princes, the emirs and ambassadors, was one room filled with plain Russian people in simple dress. They were there by hereditary right, for they were the descendants of people who, at one time or another, had saved the life of a Russian tsar. The most honored among them were the descendants of an old servant, Ivan Susanin, who had refused under torture to tell the Poles where young Michael Romanov, first of the Romanov tsars, was hiding. At hundreds of tables the guests sat down and found before them a roll of parchment tied with silken cords. Inside, in illuminated medieval lettering, was the menu. The meal consisted of borshch and pepper-pot soup, turnovers filled with meat, steamed fish, whole spring lamb, pheasants in cream sauce, salad, asparagus, sweet fruits in wine, and ice cream.
On a dais beneath a golden canopy, Nicholas and Alexandra dined alone, according to ancient tradition, watched from the galleries by the cream of the Russian nobility. The highest court officials personally passed them their golden plates. During the lengthy meal, foreign ambassadors were admitted one by one to drink the health of the Imperial couple. For the rest of the day, Nicholas and Alexandra greeted their other guests, moving through the great Kremlin halls, hung with blue silk and lined with gilt chairs. All day the Tsar wore the huge coronation crown, so big that it came down almost over his eyes. Resting directly on the scar made by the Japanese fanatic, its great weight soon gave him a headache. The Empress walked at his side, still in her silver-white dress, her train supported by a dozen pages.
At the coronation ball that night, the Kremlin shimmered with light and music. The gowns worn by Russian women were thought by foreign ladies to be shockingly far off the shoulder. There were tiaras, necklaces, bracelets, rings and earrings, some with stones as big as robins’ eggs. Grand Duchess Xenia, Nicholas’s sister, and Grand Duchess Elizabeth, his sister-in-law, were covered with emeralds. Other women were drowning in sapphires and rubies. Alexandra wore a thick girdle of diamonds around her waist. Nicholas himself was draped with an enormous collar, made of dozens of clusters of diamonds, reaching around his entire chest. Even in a day which had seen a thousand kingly fortunes, the jewels that appeared that night brought gasps of awe.
That night the entire city of Moscow glowed with the light of special illuminations. Within the Kremlin itself, the churches and public buildings were lit by thousands of electric light bulbs which all flashed on when Alexandra pressed a button hidden in a bouquet of roses. Outside, millions of candles flickered in the streets and homes. At ten o’clock, when Nicholas and Alexandra walked onto a Kremlin balcony overlooking the river to gaze at the city, their faces shone with reflected light. Even after they went to bed, the walls of their bedchamber in the Kremlin apartment still were covered with shadows from the illuminated city outside.
The day following the coronation belonged to the people of Moscow. Grand Duke Serge, who was Governor General of Moscow, had arranged the traditional huge open-air feast which the Tsar and the Empress would attend in a field outside the city. Cartloads of enameled cups, each stamped with the Imperial seal, were to be given away as souvenirs, and the authorities had ordered hundreds of barrels of free beer.
Khodynka Meadow, the field selected for this mass festivity, was a training ground for troops of the Moscow garrison and it was crisscrossed by a network of shallow trenches and ditches. It was the only place which could accommodate the hundreds of thousands of Muscovites expected to pour out of the city to see the new Tsar and Tsaritsa.
The night before, thousands of people walked to the meadow without bothering to go to bed. By dawn, five hundred thousand people waited, some already drunk. The wagons loaded with cups and beer began to arrive and draw up behind skimpy wooden railings. The crowd watched with interest and began moving forward, full of good nature. Suddenly a rumor passed that there were fewer wagons than had been expected and that there would be beer enough only for those who got there first. People began to run. The single squadron of Cossacks on hand to keep order was brushed aside. Men tripped and
stumbled into the ditches. Women and children, knocked down in the mass of rushing, pushing bodies, felt feet on their backs and heads. Their noses and mouths were ground into the dirt. Over the mutilated, suffocating bodies, thousands of feet relentlessly trampled.
By the time police and more Cossacks arrived, the meadow resembled a battlefield. Hundreds were dead and thousands wounded. By afternoon, the city’s hospitals were jammed with wounded and everybody knew what had happened. Nicholas and Alexandra were stunned. The Tsar’s first frantic impulse was to go immediately into a prayerful retreat. He declared that he could not possibly go to the ball being given that night by the French Ambassador, the Marquis de Montebello. Once again, the uncles, rallying around their brother Grand Duke Serge, intervened. To adorn the ball, the French government had sent priceless tapestries and treasures of silver plate from Paris and Versailles, along with one hundred thousand roses from the south of France. The uncles urged that Nicholas not magnify the disaster by failing to appear and thus giving offense to France’s only European ally. Tragically, the young Tsar gave in and agreed.
“We expected that the party would be called off,” said Sergius Witte, the Minister of Finance. “[Instead] it took place as if nothing had happened and the ball was opened by their Majesties dancing a quadrille.” It was a painful evening. “The Empress appeared in great distress, her eyes reddened by tears,” the British ambassador informed Queen Victoria. Alexander Izvolsky, later Russian Foreign Minister, declared that “far from being insensible, they [the Imperial couple] were deeply moved. The Emperor’s first impulse was to order a suspension of the festivities and to retire to one of the monasteries. The Tsar’s uncles urged him not to cancel anything to avoid greater scandal.”
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Tragic, Compelling Story of the Last Tsar and his Family Page 8