text: On the night of her husband's assassination, Maria Feodorovna thought to imitate the example of her mother-in-law and tried to seize power to become empress regnant on the grounds that she had been crowned with Paul. It took her son Alexander several days to persuade her to relinquish her reckless claim, for which she had no party to support her. For some time afterward, whenever her son came to visit, the Dowager Empress would place a casket between them containing the bloodstained nightshirt that his father was wearing on the day of the murder as a silent reproach. The strained relationship between mother and son improved though and thanks to the new Tsar, 42-years-old Maria Feodorovna kept the highest female position at court and often took the emperor's arm in public ceremonies, while Empress Elizabeth had to walk behind. This custom of precedence and superiority of the Dowager Empress over the reigning monarch's wife was introduced by Maria and was unique to the Russian court, though it caused resentment with her eldest daughter-in-law. Perpetuating the tradition of Catherine II, she attended parades in military uniform, the cordon of an order across her breast.
  Charity Institutions
  In May 1797, Tsar Paul asked Maria Feodorovna to oversee the national charities. She encouraged a thorough inspection of prospective foster parents and limited admissions "from the street", measures which decreased the inflow of new orphans and considerably reduced mortality. By 1826, the mortality rate was reduced to 15% per annum, a figure outrageous by modern standards but a great improvement on the 18th century.
  Even after her husband's death, Maria Feodorovna continued to manage all the empire's charitable establishments and control the bank for loans. By 1828, their total assets exceeded 359 million roubles, the largest capital assets in all of Moscow. After the end of the Napoleonic wars, the Board of Trustees capitalized on the recent disaster by building cheap rental housing on its properties. As a result of this policy, the new facilities housed up to 8,000 residents of all ranks in the 1820s. These institutions existed until the Russian Revolution of 1917.