Alexandra (16 page)

The crowds that gathered to watch each of the coronation events were volatile, now heatedly loyal, now expressing disapproval. And their disapproval, unfortunately for Alix, was in part directed
towards her. On the day of the tsar’s formal ceremonial entry into Moscow, Alix rode in a coach of her own some distance behind her husband, and also behind that of her mother-in-law. Loud
shouting greeted the tsar, vociferous hurrahs rang out when Minnie passed. But Alix’s coach was greeted with a hush – an eloquent silence that stung like a blow, reducing her to
tears.
⁶

Silence – an ominous silence. Not open jeering, or insults, but the quiet of rejection. Among her husband’s subjects, as among his relatives, her efforts were unappreciated. The
Muscovites, after all, knew nothing of her attempts to understand Russian culture, her hours of study of the Russian language, her sincere desire to devote herself to some charitable activity. Nor
did they know that she was carrying the heir to the Romanov throne. Once they knew more about her, and once her son was born, their reaction would change. They would be grateful.

The long ordeal of coronation day began very early in the morning, with cannon booming from the Kremlin walls and bells ringing ceaselessly. Inside the Cathedral of the Assumption, its twilit
interior aglow with shimmering gold and gleaming gems from the wall paintings, the icons, the uniforms and gowns of the glittering spectators, the endless ceremony droned on, and Alix, feeling
faint, had to struggle against dizziness. She watched as her husband, his face expressive of ‘piety and supplication’, received the crown and the imperial purple mantle was fastened
around his shoulders. With the other onlookers she was startled to see his diamond-studded
chain break and fall with a clatter to the tiled floor, just at the climactic
moment in the ceremony. Then it was her turn to kneel before him and receive, with a kiss, her own crown.

The mass, the long sermon, the sung psalms and prayers – in all the formalities took nearly five hours, and were followed by another several hours of banqueting in the Palace of Facets,
where a feast of meats and piroshki, borscht and pickled cucumber was spread out on long tables.

The heat of the day, the smell of food, the maddening cannonades and incessant peals of bells, the crowds of people everywhere must have made Alix feel dizzy and weak. Long before evening she
must have been exhausted, and by the time the illumination of the city began, at ten o’clock, and thousands of glowing lights outlined the houses, shops and public buildings, even the trees
in the park, she must have long since gone to her bed.

Three days later, the public celebration, the outdoor fair for the Muscovites, was to take place. The night before, tens of thousands of people began arriving on the outskirts of Khodynka
meadow, camping out in the open, waiting for dawn, when the turnstiles would open and they would be allowed to enter the designated area of the fair to claim their gifts and food and begin their
merrymaking.

The last time there had been a public festival on this meadow, thirteen years earlier on the occasion of Alexander III’s coronation, two hundred thousand people had attended; now, however,
there were at least twice that many, and a rumour began to spread through the immense throng that there would not be enough gifts or food to go around. They had been promised sausage, bread rolls,
sweets, nuts, gingerbread and a precious keepsake – a pink enamel mug bearing the arms of the city of Moscow and the words ‘In memory of the Holy Coronation’, all wrapped together
in a coloured kerchief stamped with the tsar and tsarina’s pictures.
⁷
They had also been promised as much free beer and mead as they could
drink, along with entertainment to last all day.

Throughout the brief night hours, people waited anxiously, made uneasy by the rumours of shortages, and made increasingly uncomfortable
by the pressing in of the crowd
itself, as more and more people came and pushed their way towards the barricades that guarded the entrance to the meadow in order to be first in line when the turnstiles opened.

A reporter for the
Russian Gazette
, Vladimir Giliarovsky, was among the waiting fairgoers, and he wrote afterwards of the terrible crush that resulted from so many massed bodies.

‘Steam began to rise,’ he recalled, ‘looking like the mist over a swamp . . . Many felt faint, some lost consciousness.’ All around him people were fighting for breath,
vomiting, succumbing to the irresistible pushing and jostling. There was no wind, no moon. Only the suffocating congestion, which worsened as dawn approached.

Just when the barriers began to fall no one was ever certain, but it was very early in the morning, long before the officially scheduled opening of the meadow. The patrols designated to control
the crowd – a hundred mounted Cossacks – could not begin to hold the people back, and within minutes a vast dark wave of humanity poured out across the meadow, trampling the flowers,
knocking over fences, rushing towards the wooden stalls where the gifts and food were kept.

‘A mass of people half a million strong,’ wrote a survivor of the surge, ‘staggered with all its unimaginable weight in the direction of the buffets. People by the thousand
fell in a ditch and ended standing literally on their heads at the bottom. Others fell straight after them, and more, and more . . . ’ People fell into abandoned wells, trenches, muddy
troughs. Those behind them, unable to stop their forward progress, simply walked or ran across the mounds of writhing bodies towards the next set of deadly cavities in the earth, into which they
themselves fell.

The screams of the trapped, helpless and dying, were horrible, and those in charge could only stand by in confusion, watching the carnage, unable to arrest the onrushing multitude.

Khodynka Field had become a deathtrap, but the authorities, including the Governor of Moscow, Grand Duke Serge, were so overwhelmed by the magnitude of the disaster that their first reaction was
to try to cover it up.

Instead of informing the tsar and his ministers of what had happened, Serge and his subordinates rounded up as many carts and wagons as they could find and attempted to
remove all evidence of the carnage. Mangled bodies, severed limbs, bloodstained clothing were loaded onto carts, then covered with tarpaulins and hauled off to the mortuaries – and when the
mortuaries were full, to be emptied into the river, into hastily dug mass graves, anywhere distant from the meadow itself.

The ghastly procession of blood-stained wagons moved along streets gaily decorated with banners and flags hailing the newly crowned tsar. Onlookers became curious, then recoiled in horror. For
in their haste the labourers who had endeavoured to clear away the human debris had been less than thorough; bloody arms and hands dangled down below the edges of the tarpaulins, and a terrible,
unmistakable stench rose from the carts – the stench of blood and death.

Then too there were the survivors, thousands of them, walking glassy-eyed and filthy towards their homes, limping and bleeding, some clutching their coronation gifts and mugs. Seeing them, and
wanting to help, some aristocrats drove in their carriages to Khodynka, and took the wounded to hospitals.

By ten-thirty in the morning news of the terrible catastrophe was spreading through Moscow, and it was no longer possible to keep it from the palace. The tsar was informed that many of his
subjects were dead, though the estimates of the dead and wounded were much lower than the actual numbers.
⁸
He was asked whether, out of respect
for the victims, he would cancel the day’s activities, which included not only his appearance at Khodynka Field but a ball at the French embassy. Most likely influenced by his advisers, Nicky
said no, that he would go ahead.

When Alix learned, from one of her ladies, of the events at Khodynka she was shocked, and sorrowful. That the coronation should have occasioned such suffering and loss seemed a monstrous wrong.
No doubt she could not help thinking, as many others did, of the ominous breaking of her husband’s diamond chain at the
moment of his crowning. It had been a portent
of calamity – and now the calamity had arrived.

For the head of state to appear in public in the aftermath of the Khodynka disaster seemed to her a serious mistake; for herself, she would have preferred to spend the day visiting the
hospitals. (Here, albeit under sad circumstances, was her opportunity to be of help.) But she could not go against Nicky’s official decision, and besides, she knew that that decision had a
political dimension. Had she not shown herself at the French Embassy ball, it would have been said that her absence was due to her pro-German sympathies.

Besides, the public did not seem, at first, to want the festivities to be cancelled. Throughout the morning, fairgoers continued to stream onto the meadow by the thousands, enjoying the warm
sun, ignoring the sight of corpses being dug out of the trenches and laid out on the ground, and swarming around the pavilion where the tsar was to make his appearance that afternoon. It was a
ghoulish spectacle, with bands playing, people milling about, eating and drinking, while quite nearby, improvised mortuaries were being created, with bodies hastily covered with tree branches,
linens, banners torn down – anything to hide the grisly remains. It was not possible, however, to hide the crows that gathered over the meadow, eager for carrion, or to disguise the units of
the fire brigade, small horse-drawn trucks, which continued to come and go all afternoon, carrying the dead from the field.

The blaring of the National Anthem announced the arrival of the tsar, and when he appeared on the balcony of his pavilion, with Alix beside him, the crowd cheered lustily. He made a brief
speech, but did not allude to the loss of life. (In his diary, however, Nicky conscientiously recorded noticing the presence of corpses near the pavilion.
⁹
) The pageantry went forward as planned, regiments of soldiers marching past in smart order, guns firing salute after salute, people singing, delegations of peasants coming
before the tsar to pay their respects and receive his blessing. The parade of pageant cars bumped their way across the uneven plain, carefully avoiding the deep ditches and craters, and the long
afternoon spun itself along, or so it appeared, towards a satisfactory ending.

Alix, however, was tired and emotionally drained, and although she went to the French Embassy ball, and danced the opening dance with the ambassador, she and Nicky did
not stay for the midnight supper and returned home relatively early.

By now the long eventful days were catching up with her, the disappointing reception she had received, the tiring ceremonies and banquets, the hours of standing, the heat, the excitement –
and the wrenching calamity on Khodynka Field. Her stomach churned, and she was often close to tears.
¹⁰
She still did not disclose her
pregnancy; there was too much turmoil in the family. Serge was blamed for having failed to forestall the tragedy, and when he offered to resign as Governor of Moscow, Nicky was blamed for refusing
to accept his resignation.
¹¹
Rifts between Sandro and Serge, Aunt Miechen and Minnie resurfaced. KR noted in his diary that ‘muted
antagonism’ arose between Minnie and Alix, and the latter, pale and ill, looked as though she was badly in need of rest.

As the days passed, the mood in the city darkened. The workers’ strike continued. Muscovites dressed in black for the Khodynka victims, some twenty thousand of them, so it was believed,
and blamed the police, the city officials, even the doctors for the huge loss of life. Serge was called ‘The Prince of Khodynka’, the tsar ‘Bloody Nicholas’. Alix became
‘The German Bitch’, and it was said that she had laughed and danced in heartless abandon at the French ambassador’s ball, heedless of the suffering of the people.

Alix faded, suffered, and in the end, succumbed to her weariness and anxiety. Her body rebelled, and she miscarried her baby.
¹²

What had begun in joy and celebration was ending in a season of disaster, with the crown of the Romanovs tarnished by tragedy and the heir to the throne, the boy whose existence Alix had kept as
her secret, lost in a swirl of blood.

The warm June sun continued to shine down over the domes and rooftops of Moscow, but now it was a city in mourning, and the crows, bloated and sated, floated like dark wraiths in the cloudless
blue sky.

I
n the summer of 1896, Empress Alexandra made a serious effort to launch a charitable project. She called it ‘Help Through Handwork’,
and envisioned a vast number of workshops all across Russia where, under the leadership of aristocratic women, poor women would come to learn to sew and to do other handcrafts. A committee, of
which she would be the head, would supervise this network of workshops and direct its operations.
¹

It was an ambitious project, modelled on charitable enterprises in Germany and England and inspired by Alix’s own fine needlework, which she wanted to teach others to imitate, with the
ultimate aim of raising money through the sale of embroidered garments, the money to be distributed to needy families. Her aims were high-minded and unselfish; she wanted no glory, only the chance
to undertake a project that could improve the lives of the poor, and to satisfy her need to contribute to the alleviation of want.