The coronation of the young sovereigns took place in Moscow on May 14th, 1896. Fate seemed already to have marked them down. It will be remembered that the celebrations were the occasion of a terrible accident which cost the lives of a large number of people. The peasants, who had come from all parts, had assembled in masses during the night in Hodinskoïe meadows, where gifts were to be distributed. As a result of bad organisation there was a panic, and more than two thousand people were trodden to death or suffocated in the mud by the terror-stricken crowd.
When the Czar and Czarina went to Hodinskoïe meadows next morning they had heard nothing whatever of the terrible catastrophe. They were not told the truth until they returned to the city subsequently, and they never knew the whole truth. Did not those concerned realise that by acting thus they were depriving the Imperial couple of a chance to show their grief and sympathy and making their behaviour odious because it seemed sheer indifference to public misfortune?
Several years of domestic bliss followed, and Fate seemed to have loosened its grip.
Yet the task of the young Czarina was no easy one. She had to learn all that it meant to be an empress, and that at the most etiquette ridden Court in Europe and the scene of the worst forms of intrigue and coterie. Accustomed to the simple life of Darmstadt, and having experienced at the strict and formal English Court only such restraint as affected a young and popular princess who was there merely on a visit, she must have felt at sea with her new obligations and dazzled by an existence of which all the proportions had suddenly changed. Her sense of duty and her burning desire to devote herself to the welfare of the millions whose Czarina she had become fired her ambitions, but at the same time checked her natural impulses.
Yet her only thought was to win the hearts of her subjects. Unfortunately she did not know how to show it, and the innate timidity from which she suffered was wont to play the traitor to her kind intentions. She very soon realised how impotent she was to gain sympathy and understanding. Her frank and spontaneous nature was speedily repelled by the icy conventions of her environment. Her impulses came up against the prevalent inertia about her,[9] and when in return for her confidence she asked for intelligent devotion and real good will, those with whom she dealt took refuge in the easy zeal of the polite formalities of Courts.