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.
CHAPTER FIVE
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 hundreds 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
