Over 1,300 people were trampled to death at Nicholas II's coronation celebration — and that evening, the new Tsar went to a ball and danced until dawn.
Nicholas II and Alexandra were crowned Tsar and Tsarina of Russia on May 26, 1896. Four days later, the government organized a massive public celebration at Khodynka Field in Moscow, promising free gifts — food, commemorative cups, and prizes — to anyone who attended.
Rumors spread the night before that there weren't enough gifts and that the cups contained gold coins. By early morning on May 30, estimates suggest up to 500,000 people had converged on Khodynka Field in the dark — far more than the 1,800 police officers could possibly control.
As the crowd surged forward at dawn, thousands were pushed into drainage ditches and trampled. Most victims suffocated or were crushed before help could arrive. By the end of the morning, 1,282 corpses had been collected, with injured estimates ranging from 9,000 to 20,000.
When Nicholas learned of the stampede, he showed little reaction. Despite urgent counsel from aides to cancel the day's events, he appeared on a public balcony that afternoon — the area by then swept clean of bodies — and attended a lavish ball at the French embassy that evening, dancing while survivors were still being identified.
The Chinese Imperial Commissioner, Li Hongzhang, witnessed Nicholas's response and noted in his account that a Chinese emperor would never have attended a ball on such a day. Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who oversaw the celebration, earned the nickname 'Prince of Khodynka.' Nicholas himself became known as 'Nicholas the Bloody' — years before Bloody Sunday or the revolution.
Nicholas did eventually donate 1,000 rubles to each bereaved family and established orphanages for victims' children. But the symbolism had already been set: a new tsar who danced on the graves of his subjects. Russians came to see Khodynka as an omen, and history bore them out.