A police force of 1,800 men failed to maintain civil order, and a catastrophic crowd crush occurred.

The Emperor and Empress made an appearance in front of the crowds on the balcony of the Tsar's Pavilion in the middle of the field around 2 p.m. By that time, the traces of the incident had been cleaned up.

The same day as the catastrophe, I was taking a walk along the Khondinka [sic] and I met many groups of people coming back from that site and carrying the Tsar's gifts.

Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich was very depressed by what had happened; he gave Vlasovski orders to return to him every hour with detailed reports on the progress of the investigation into the causes of the disaster.

[5] Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich warned the tsar not to go to the French ball, but Nicholas II attended nonetheless.

"[6] Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, then Governor-General of Moscow, became known as "the Prince of Khodynka" and the Emperor received the nickname of "Nicholas the Bloody".

The crowd staying overnight at Khodynka, awaiting the start of the distribution of lunch and mugs pushed against buildings and there was a terrible crush, and awful to say trampled around 1300 people!!

Actually there was nothing going on: we looked from the pavilion at the huge crowd that surrounded the stage from which the orchestra played all the time the anthem and "Glory."

After dinner, left at 2.Leo Tolstoy was so moved by the tragedy that he wrote the epic tale "Khodynka: An Incident of the Coronation of Nicholas II".