Nevertheless she fought bravely against these terrible odds, and she applied herself to give to the Czar some of the energy which he lacked, and of which perhaps she possessed too much. It was then that she paid different visits to the Front, a thing which she had never been allowed to do whilst the Grand Duke Nicholas was commander in chief, and she tried to cheer up her husband, and to encourage him in the new responsibilities which he had assumed when he had dismissed his uncle and taken upon himself the functions of Commander in Chief of the Army. He had been forced into his decision by the general wish of the public, who were dissatisfied with the Grand Duke Nicholas, and hoped that the presence of the Sovereign at the head of his troops would infuse courage into the hearts of the latter and induce them to make every effort against the foe. But the troops were not to blame for the reverses which had overtaken them; the lack of ammunitions was the cause of the evil, and this could not be remedied by any commander in chief, but would have required a thorough and radical reform in the whole administration of the War Office. There existed no one in Russia powerful enough to enforce this reform. In the circumstances in which the country found itself placed, it would have required the energy and the iron will of a Peter the Great to overcome the obstacles standing in the way of any reforms of a sweeping nature, and Russia had for sovereign Nicholas II., the weakest that had ever carried the sceptre of the Romanoffs.