Catherine the Great

By Katharine Susan Anthony

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Title: Catherine the Great

Author: Katharine Susan Anthony

Release date: October 27, 2025 [eBook #77133]

Language: English

Original publication: Garden City: Garden City Publishing Company, 1925

Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CATHERINE THE GREAT ***




                  [Illustration: CATHERINE THE GREAT]


                             [Illustration]




                                CATHERINE
                                THE GREAT

                                   BY
                            KATHARINE ANTHONY

                             [Illustration]

                        GARDEN CITY      NEW YORK
                  GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING COMPANY, Inc.




                COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.


              MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                                CONTENTS


  I. FIKE OF ZERBST IS BORN                                            3

  II. SHE IS EDUCATED                                                 22

  III. RUSSIA                                                         38

  IV. SHE GOES TO RUSSIA                                              58

  V. FIKE BECOMES CATHERINE                                           80

  VI. CATHERINE BECOMES A MOTHER                                     101

  VII. PONIATOVSKY                                                   123

  VIII. ORLOV                                                        153

  IX. CATHERINE THE GREAT                                            189

  X. POTIOMKIN                                                       225

  XI. CATHERINE BECOMES A GRANDMOTHER                                266

  XII. SHE GROWS OLD                                                 300




                          CATHERINE THE GREAT




                             [Illustration]




                                   I

                         FIKE OF ZERBST IS BORN


Early in the eighteenth century, the north German town of Stettin had
all the grim and rigid characteristics of a frontier post. It was a
border town and had long been a center of warfare. The broad rich lands
of Pomerania, bursting with fertility, had been repeatedly devastated
by the march and countermarch of Russian and Prussian soldiers. High
on a strip of barren coast, the gray stone walls of Stettin overlooked
a bleak northern sea over which the boats of the great Russian Peter
had come sailing to batter and destroy the town. But if Stettin had
trembled before Peter, who was six and a half feet tall, it had
trembled even more before Frederick William who was so short that his
children called him Stumpy behind his back. Ceded finally to Stumpy by
treaty in 1720, Stettin settled down to the dull routine of garrison
life.

It was not a place in which the refinements of society flourished.
A reviving commercial life brought no relief to the rigid military
atmosphere which prevailed. Ships moved out of the harbor laden with
guildsmen’s stuff from the interior of Germany. A chamber of commerce
came into existence and a new class of prosperous trades-people
appeared on the scene. But the hereditary aristocracy of Stettin was
not prosperous. Stumpy’s officers were usually hard-up; they were
under-paid and over-regimented. Their wives led a dull life in the
Prussian garrison where society was neither gay nor gracious. Stettin
had no style.

Its military and religious grandees understood each other perfectly. In
those days the Prussian warrior was so pious and the Lutheran believer
so militant that they faded imperceptibly into each other. Frederick
William and Martin Luther worshiped an identical God.

    “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott,
    Ein’ gute Wehr und Waffen.”

The Lutheran idol was an armored hero whom a Prussian soldier could
fear and respect. He dominated the spiritual climate of Stettin
without a rival, except for the unimportant claims of a Calvinist
deity worshiped by the French governesses and emigrant school-masters
of the place. Luther had elected to throw in his lot with the German
nobles and they in turn had embraced his religion with the puritanical
devotion of recent converts. In military circles bigotry was the
fashion.

Such was Stettin in 1727, after seven years of regimentation by the
Prussian king. In that year there stood at Number One in the Grosse
Domstrasse a substantial gray stone house owned by the president of the
Handelskammer. A newly married pair took up their residence there in
early winter. They were rather ill-matched as to age, the husband being
thirty-seven and the wife fifteen. They were poor but pretentious, the
kind of gilded paupers that heralded the decline of feudalism. Prince
Christian August of Zerbst-Dornburg was the commander of a regiment
of infantry quartered in Stettin. He was one of Frederick William’s
generals, who had reached this degree of promotion after many years
of campaigning in the Prussian service. The business of soldiering had
given him little taste or opportunity for home and the family which he
was to found in Stettin was not to see a great deal of him. His wife
seemed to manage just as well without him.

The general was a cousin of the reigning Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst who
was growing old without an heir. Christian August and his brother
Johann Ludwig, of the Dornburg branch, both had an eye on the little
principality and its petty emoluments which loomed large to them. The
brothers were both pious and unmarried and were on excellent terms with
each other. It was clearly the duty of one of them to perpetuate the
family. But Johann Ludwig, the elder and the logical successor, lived
in Jever with a spinster sister and did not wish to change his state.
It therefore fell to Christian August to go forth and seek a wife. The
history of his wooing is unfortunately not known to us. Whether he
saw it as a duty or an opportunity we cannot say. At any rate, he was
successful.

Promoted to the status of a married man and the father of a family,
he was regarded by the elder but childless brother Ludwig as co-heir.
When the reigning duke finally died the two brothers inherited
Zerbst together and ruled the principality as co-regents. They were
peace-loving men who lived in harmony with each other, except for
occasional strife, stimulated, it is said, by sister Sophie Christine.
At any rate the loyal pair did not live long to rule in Zerbst. After
three years Johann Ludwig died and five months later Christian August
followed him. Two months afterward Sophie Christine was buried beside
her brothers. They died as they had lived in the narrow bonds of
mediæval clannishness. It was an unaggressive and obscure strain. Not
all the efforts of German historical research have availed to discover
any brilliance or heroism in the race.

In the meantime, the marriage of Christian August had yielded, after
some disappointments, the desired heir. This son lived to become the
last reigning Prince of Zerbst and followed in the undistinguished
steps of his ancestors. Only because he turned out to be the brother
of Catherine of Russia did he become more famous than the rest.
Catherine’s memoirs refer with vague sarcasm to the “peculiar exploits”
of his career and Schlözer speaks of him as a gentleman of “unstable
temperament.” Although married in his youth for a few brief years, he
left no heirs behind. With his death in 1793 the house of Anhalt-Zerbst
came to an end. The heroic attempt of his father to perpetuate the
family had only resulted in prolonging it by one generation. In
the personality of this sterile princeling, however, the general
commonplaceness of the Zerbst family was touched with eccentricity.
This proceeded from his mother without doubt, who was a clever,
energetic and hysterical woman.

Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp was not yet sixteen when she
married her Prussian general, yet she ruled the family from the first.
The portraits of this lady and her spouse which hang in the Potsdam
palace reveal, even through the conventional art of Pesne, marked
differences of temperament. The general has the dreamy eye that betrays
the extreme idealist, while his wife looks out with the peculiar verve
and readiness of a real woman of action. “Apparently they got on
excellently with each other,” says their daughter in her memoirs, “in
spite of the great difference in age and although their inclinations
were so different. My father, for instance, was very saving; my mother,
on the other hand, was quite extravagant and open-handed. My mother
loved pleasure and fashionable society exceedingly; my father valued
retirement. She was cheerful and wilful; he serious and austere in
his morality.... My mother passed as more clever and intellectual
than my father; but he was a man of earnest and sterling character
and well-stocked knowledge. He liked to read, as did my mother, but
all that she knew was very superficial. Her spirit and beauty had won
for her a great reputation; moreover, she understood the ways of the
fashionable world better than my father.”

Christian August had married his wife at the court of the Duchess of
Brunswick, her godmother, who had brought her up as if she were her own
child. Johanna Elisabeth was the daughter of the Bishop of Lübeck who
had twelve children. Having lost Schleswig to the Danes and finding
himself therefore in reduced circumstances, he willingly gave away
one of his children to the kind godmother who offered to bring her
up. The court of Brunswick, which thus became the home of the keen
little Princess of Holstein-Gottorp, was one of the most showy in
Germany. It was far more elegant than the court of the parsimonious
King of Prussia. Here Johanna Elisabeth seems to have grown up
partly as a much-spoiled favorite and partly as a poor relation. She
brought nothing to her marriage but the bridal chest given her by
her godmother. The newly married pair started housekeeping in the
Domstrasse house under the most frugal circumstances. Garrison life
must have seemed sordid to her after the refinements of Brunswick. One
hope at least she had. If she produced an heir she might one day become
the reigning Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst instead of being merely the wife
of a Prussian general in a garrison town.

In the meantime she made the most of being a Holstein-Gottorp, a clan
whose members had married royalty and were related to thrones. Johanna
Elisabeth’s brother had been affianced to the youngest daughter of
Peter the Great and, but for his death by the smallpox, would have
become the great Czar’s son-in-law. Johanna Elisabeth’s first cousin,
who was a nephew of Charles XII of Sweden, had married another daughter
of Peter the Great and had left a son who had claims upon the thrones
of both Sweden and Russia.

These alliances with Holstein-Gottorps were supposed to bring to Russia
a strip of sea-coast, and sea-coast was Peter’s passion. No doubt he
regretted that he had only two daughters to sell for a bit of strand.
But he never realized on these schemes and the young ladies themselves
fared badly. Elisabeth, who lost her bridegroom through smallpox,
remained unmarried all her life, while Anne, who went to live in Kiel,
was scandalously neglected by her husband. “I have to tell you,” she
wrote her sister, “that the Duke and Mavrushka [her best friend] are
quite loose. He stays not a single day at home, rides out with her in
the same carriage, or goes visiting or to the theatre.” Poor jealous
Anne was obliged to stay at home because she expected a child. Three
months after its birth, she gave up her spiritless existence and died
of “tuberculosis and homesickness.” Her son, who was called Karl
Peter Ulrich, was handed over to nurses and developed into a sickly,
unpromising boy.

But no tragedy could dim the luster of the Russian connection in the
eyes of the romantic Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp. She felt
that her husband should announce their marriage to the Russian court.
The Prince of Zerbst therefore wrote: “Imperial Highness: May you,
in your world renowned magnanimity, not take it ill that I venture
to inform you with the most humble respect that on the eighth of
November, after previous betrothal, I married the youngest sister of
the Bishop of Lübeck recently deceased in Petersburg, the Princess
Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp, in the country seat of Weheln in
Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.” This humble composition bears all the marks of
being the Prince’s own.

Soon after her marriage, the Princess made a round of visits
accompanied by her husband in order to present the general to his
numerous Holstein relatives. “In this week,” says a family letter,
“comes the Princess Elisabeth and her man.” The Holsteiners were not
especially impressed by the Prince of Zerbst and took him rather
casually from the first. As time went on the Princess managed to escape
from the dulness of her Stettin home as much and as often as possible
by making long visits to Holstein relatives in Hamburg and Brunswick.
After the first formalities of introduction were over she left her
husband at home. But she was always accompanied by her daughter on
these restless flights from the tedium of small town life.


                                   2

The ambitious Lady of Zerbst had encountered several discouragements in
the process of producing an heir. Her first child, born May 2, 1729,
in the Domstrasse house, was a girl. “It has been told me,” wrote this
girl, looking backward after forty years, “that I was not so very
joyfully welcomed when I first appeared because a son was expected.
My father, however, showed more satisfaction than his environment.”
Perhaps his natural reserve and a certain philosophy which he
undoubtedly possessed helped him to conceal his disappointment. The
Princess’s chagrin can easily be imagined. The child had nearly cost
the sixteen-year-old mother her life. We can picture the ordeal of her
confinement in the small bedroom one flight above the noisy Domstrasse:
the long Lutheran Sunday which happened also to be May-day; the morning
and evening chiming of the church bells; the religious atmosphere of a
prayerfully expectant household; the crude methods of the midwife; the
waiting cradle and the charcoal pan beside which the first-born son was
presently to be swaddled. Finally in the gray dawn of Monday morning,
at the chill hour of half-past two, a daughter was born instead of the
expected son.

As the new-born infant lay in her cradle, the charcoal pan set fire to
the floor. The board was almost burned through before anyone noticed
it, so preoccupied was everybody with the condition of the mother. The
new baby was further overlooked in several ways. Neither her birth nor
her baptism was registered in any Stettin church, an extraordinary
omission for such a pious family. The only birth record in existence
is the letter which Christian August wrote to Cousin Johann August who
was waiting with his barren wife at Anhalt-Zerbst to hear the outcome
of events at Stettin. The general announced that his consort had been
delivered that morning of a Princess-daughter who would be baptized
on the next day but one and would receive the name of Sophie Auguste
Friedrike. The little girl was always called Fike.

Of Fike’s relation to her parents, she says, “My father, whom I saw
less frequently, regarded me as an angel; my mother did not trouble
much about me. A year and a half later she bore a son whom she loved
idolatrously. I was merely endured and was often harshly and vehemently
scolded, and not always with justice. I felt this without being,
however, quite clear in my knowledge.”

This son, Wilhelm Christian, at first an object of so much pride,
soon became a source of deep concern and even of humiliation. From an
unknown cause, which was discovered after his death to have been a
dislocated hip, he was from infancy a cripple unable to walk without a
crutch. He died at the age of twelve. Johanna Elisabeth’s talent for
the enhancement of life’s experiences is shown again in her exaggerated
grief at her son’s death. “My mother was inconsolable,” writes Fike,
“and the presence of the entire family was necessary to help her bear
her grief.” Even Fike’s old grandmother journeyed all the way down from
Hamburg to Dornburg to comfort the bereaved Princess. But a second
son, Friedrich August, born in 1734, came to take his brother’s place
and eventually to become the last Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst. Two more
daughters were added to the family but both died in infancy. Of the
five children, only two, Fike and Fritz, lived to grow up.

Fike was oldest sister. She played teacher to her brothers, training
them in the art of penmanship as she had learned it from Monsieur
Laurent and Pastor Wagner. This doubtless meant a saving for
the general’s pocket-book, which was always too slender for the
requirements of Fike’s mother. When, at the age of fifteen, she held in
her hands the first money which she had ever owned and which had been
given her by the Russian Empress for card-playing, she wrote to her
father at once, “I have heard that your Highness has sent my brother
to Homburg; I know that this occasions a rather heavy expense. I beg
your Highness to allow my brother to remain there as long as necessary
for his recovery, requesting for myself the privilege of paying all his
expenses; and beg your Highness to mention a banker to whom I may send
whatever is necessary.” Her maternal attitude toward Fritz survived
for many years. As an Empress she played with the idea of making him a
Kurfürst, but nothing came of it. The best that she could ever do for
him, after she had become an influence in the international politics of
Europe, was to restore him to his modest inheritance of Anhalt-Zerbst,
which through his own and his mother’s folly had been temporarily lost.


                                   3

Born a girl, Fike’s only prospect for a career was to become the wife
of some German princeling whose rank was at least equal to that of
brother Fritz. Her chances of marriage were often discussed in her
presence. They were not brilliant. In the first place, the girl was
not beautiful. “I do not know for sure,” she says in her memoirs,
“whether as a child I was really ugly, but I remember well this was
often said of me, and that I must therefore strive to show inward
excellence and intelligence. Up to the age of fourteen or fifteen
years, I was firmly convinced of my ugliness and was therefore more
concerned with acquiring inward accomplishments and was less mindful of
my looks. I have seen a portrait of myself painted when I was ten years
old and that is certainly very ugly. If it really resembled me, they
told me nothing false.” While this confession tells us little of Fike’s
real looks as a young girl, it tells us a great deal about her private
hopes of getting a husband.

It was not as if her parents could dower her with influence or riches.
There was, for instance, her third cousin in Eutin, the son of the dead
Anna Petrovna, a peevish boy for whom no one had a good word. Sophie’s
mother dangled the sickly Duke of Holstein before her daughter’s eyes
from time to time, only to withdraw him again with the remark, “Not
him; he needs a wife who can support his rights and claims by the power
and prestige of her family. My daughter will not be suitable for him.”
More hopeful was old Bolhagen, a faithful henchman of Fike’s father,
who visited the nursery every afternoon and there spun yarns about his
travels. One afternoon when Fike was seven, the old man brought with
him a newspaper from which he read the report of the marriage of the
Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha with the Prince of Wales. “Do you know,”
said the old soldier to the governess, “this Princess is not really so
well educated as ours, and nevertheless, she is now destined to become
Queen of England. Who knows what ours may yet become?” “He then began,”
says Fike, “to preach to me wisdom and Christian virtues, and stern
morality, to the end that I might be worthy to wear a crown, should one
ever be allotted to me. This crown never again went out of my head and
has since given me much to do.”

This story indicates that the girl began to think of marriage at the
age of seven. By the time she was fifteen she had had a long time
to occupy herself with hopes and fears. In her memoirs there is no
mention of the latter. Perhaps the passage of years erased these
unhappy recollections. On the other hand, her memory for episodes in
which this Prince or that sued for her hand and was turned away by her
high-minded father is very good. Her account of how Prince Heinrich
of Prussia almost became a suitor does not quite ring true, although
one’s imagination likes to dwell on the possible consequences of such
a union. What would the aggressive Sophie of Zerbst have done had she
been immured like those other women who were married to the Princes of
Prussia, the wives of Prince Heinrich and Great Frederick himself? It
is hardly conceivable that she would have succumbed without adding a
dramatic chapter to the annals of the Prussian house.

As a portionless Princess, she had probably considered before she was
fifteen the alternative to marriage. The alternative was vivid enough.
Both sides of her family bristled with old maids. Two hundred years
of Lutheranism had failed to abolish celibacy among the daughters of
the German nobility. For, while Luther preached against celibacy, he
also preached in favor of monogamy. The combination, however, was
better adapted to the stable bourgeois class which was just beginning
to dominate society than to the restless aristocracy which had
flourished in the middle ages. The feudal families who went over to the
Reformation and the Lutheran idea of marriage were still obliged to
dedicate as many surplus daughters as ever to the abbeys and priories.
The reason is that for these princesses and other high-born ladies
there was not enough monogamy to go round.

Little Princess Fike had several aunts who lived in abbeys. There was
great-aunt Marie Elisabeth who was Abbess of Quedlinburg; and Aunt
Hedwig Sophie who was Provost in the same abbey. There was also Aunt
Sophie Christine who was Canoness of Gandersheim. Fike often went with
her mother to visit the aunts at Quedlinburg. “These two Holstein
princesses,” she says, “who remained unmarried and had to live in one
and the same house, quarreled incessantly and often refused to see each
other for years at a time. My mother often tried to mediate between
them and sometimes she was successful.”

Fike’s memories of her aunts remained ever vivid. Her portraits of
them, penned after thirty years of life in Russia, have a clearness
of detail like a Dürer drawing. “The Princess-Provost Hedwig Sophie
Augusta was a great friend of dogs and especially loved the so-called
pugs. As a child, I have been amazed to see at one time in her chamber,
which measured in size at most four cords of wood, as many as sixteen
pugs. Many of the curs had young which also lived in the same room with
my aunt. They slept and ate there and attended to their necessities.
A maid was employed to keep them clean and this took her the whole
day. A large number of parrots besides lived in the same room; one can
imagine the fragrance which reigned there! When the Princess drove
out, she had always in her carriage at least one parrot and a half a
dozen dogs; the latter even accompanied her to church. I have never
seen anyone who loved animals as much as she; she was wholly occupied
with them the livelong day and only bestirred herself for their sakes.
She had consequently grown quite stout, which with her short stature,
made her very ugly and even deformed. The Princess might have had her
talents had she taken any trouble. She wrote German and French in the
most beautiful hand that I have ever seen written by a woman.”

This dumpy old lady was an elder sister of Fike’s mother, who was by
contrast in her daughter’s eyes the perfect pattern of beauty, grace,
and fashion. Fike herself, who was not beautiful and had only her fine
handwriting and good conduct to recommend her, might easily end her
days at Quedlinburg in a room no bigger than four cords of wood, with a
family of dogs. To be sure Aunt Hedwig might have had a bigger room and
a much better thing of it altogether if she were appointed, as Fike’s
great-aunt had been, Abbess of Quedlinburg. Fike’s mother tried to
bring this about by using her influence, which she over-estimated, with
the Prussian King. But Frederick had a sister of his own who needed
this refuge and who eventually got it. Even to become a prioress, there
was competition. Everywhere there was competition in life. This was one
of the earliest lessons that Fike absorbed from her worldly-wise mother.

Another aunt, an elder sister of her father’s, is also portrayed in
her memoirs. Tante Sophie Christine, Canoness of Gandersheim, is the
same spinster lady who is said to have fomented quarrels between her
brothers, the Princes of Zerbst. “She was more than fifty,” writes her
niece, “very tall and so thin that I had at eleven years old a bigger
waist than she; she was, however, very proud of her figure. At six
o’clock when she arose she carefully laced herself in and only took
off her stays when she went to bed. She used to maintain that she had
once been beautiful but that an accident had damaged her beauty. When
she was ten years old her powder-mantle had caught fire and thereby the
lower part of her face had been seriously hurt; the chin and the lower
part of the cheeks were shriveled up and the parchment skin really
looked ghastly. She was kind and good but when she wanted anything,
very hard-headed too. Upon the various German Princes who had passed
under her inspection, she had made serious demands, and but for lack of
willingness on their part she might have been well married.

“She made wonderful embroidery and loved birds very much. Her kind
heart mostly went out to those who had suffered a misfortune. I have
seen in her chamber a thrush that had only one foot, a lark with a
broken wing, a one-eyed goldfinch, a hen whose head was half-way pecked
off by the cock, a cock whose tail-feathers had been torn out by the
cat, a lame and lop-sided nightingale, a parrot that could not use
its feet and lay flat on its belly, and many other birds of different
kinds that ran and flew about her room. I was a very lively and right
wilful child, and I remember how once I offended this Princess by doing
something for which she never forgave me. I was left alone in her room
for a few moments and the idea of opening the window occurred to me.
Naturally half of the menagerie flew out! I shut the window and ran
away. When my aunt returned she found only her little cripples left.
She could guess how this had happened and her room was in the future
closed to me.”

Fike’s gallery of portraits includes another spinster, Fräulein Khayn,
who always accompanied her mother and herself on their travels. In the
depths of the bitter-cold winter of 1740, the restless Johanna and her
daughter, together with the companion, went to visit the old Duchess of
Brunswick. “I slept in the same room with Fräulein Khayn, a companion
of my mother’s,” says Fike. “My bed stood against the wall and hers
not far from mine, with only a small passage between. Another passage
remained open between the windows and the bed of Fräulein Khayn. On a
table between the windows stood a water-pitcher, a silver basin, and a
night-light. The only door of the room was at the foot of the bed and
was closed. Toward midnight, I was suddenly awakened by someone who lay
down beside me in bed; I opened my eyes and saw that it was Fräulein
Khayn. I asked her why she wanted to come into my bed. She answered,
‘For God’s sake leave me and go to sleep quietly.’ I wanted to know
what had caused her to leave her bed and come to mine, for I saw that
she was trembling from fright and was almost speechless. When I pressed
her she said, ‘Don’t you see what is going on in the room and what is
there on the table?’ and drew the cover over her face. I got on my
knees and reached over her to draw away the curtain and see what was
going on. But I heard and saw absolutely nothing. The door was closed;
candles, basin, and silver pitcher were on the table. I told her what I
saw and she became somewhat quieter. A few minutes later she arose to
shove the bolt on the door but it was already locked. I went to sleep
again but the next morning she looked wretched and quite distracted. I
wanted now to know why and what she thought she had seen in the night;
but she answered that she could not say. I knew that she believed in
ghosts and visions and that she often claimed to have seen apparitions.
She often said that she was a Sunday child and that those who were born
on other days did not have the clear sight that she had. I related the
occurrence to my mother who was already accustomed to Fräulein Khayn’s
experiences. Often she had frightened and disturbed my mother. I have
often wondered why this adventure did not make me fearful.”

Fike must have been deeply interested in the eccentricities of all
these spinster ladies since she remembered and described them so
vividly so many years afterwards. Her mother, the Princess Johanna
Elisabeth, towered above other women and also above her honest and
pious consort, undoubtedly a superior being. The Princess had a way
of absorbing the whole environment within herself and becoming its
embodiment. Fike writes, for instance, “My mother had that year an
extraordinary adventure on the return journey to Stettin.” As the
story develops, one learns that Fike herself, the ever-present Khayn,
another attendant, and several postilions, shared along with Fike’s
mother the adventure of being lost in a terrible snowstorm. On another
occasion, when Frederick the Great ascended the throne, Fike says,
“When my father had received in the name of the King of Prussia the
allegiance of Pomerania, my mother journeyed to Berlin.” There several
events took place at court in the account of which the General is not
mentioned. Presumably as the Governor of Stettin, he accompanied the
party and had his day at court as well. In the eyes of his little
daughter, moving in her accustomed place in mother’s entourage, the
General appears to have played a minor part even when he was officially
the center of the picture.

Princess Johanna Elisabeth was a clever woman but also a bit of a fool;
that is to say, she was romantic and proud. As the wife of the Governor
of Stettin, she tried to introduce in her dull town some semblance of
court etiquette. For instance, she required Fike to kiss the hem of
the garments of distinguished ladies who visited the house. When the
old King of Prussia died, she strove to induce the ladies of Stettin
to wear mourning as the court at Berlin was doing. But so cordially
was the old King hated that not a lady would wear black for him. The
Princess and her daughter and the faithful Khayn went bravely forth for
a couple of Sundays in solemn weeds, but all the other Stettin dames
united against them and the Princess was at last obliged to give up the
fight.

While little Fike lived in a chronic state of filial bedazzlement,
she had occasional glimpses of fact that left their mark. When her
mother visited the court at Berlin, she was questioned there about the
mourning episode at Stettin. “She denied the fact,” says Fike. “I was
present and wondered greatly at this. It was the first time I had ever
heard anyone deny a fact. I thought to myself, is it possible that my
mother has forgotten something which happened so recently? I was near
to reminding her; but I restrained myself, and that was surely my good
fortune.”

The Princess was not always truthful. Deliberate falsehoods of the kind
that her daughter noted at Berlin were probably not usual. But she
was a fluent weaver of inward and outward deceptions and she usually
wore her rose-colored glasses when she sat down to her correspondence.
In this respect Fike was quite different from her mother. Although
she could lie brazenly, for reasons, she had a clear sense of reality
and her letters and memoirs are remarkable for the small amount of
romancing they contain.

Perhaps she had from her father, the Prince of Anhalt, a saving sense
of moderation. He occupies so little space in his daughter’s memoirs
that no clear picture of his character is possible. But certain traits
come through in his correspondence. In spite of his stiff pedantic
style he reports the facts more reliably than does his wife in her
more eloquent epistles. His ambition was tempered with philosophy. At
one time in his life, after his daughter had gone to Russia, he tried
unsuccessfully to become the Duke of Courland. “I am, thank God,” he
wrote, “well satisfied with what I possess, yet I should like to hear
no reproaches later that we had slept away our luck at such a favorable
moment.”

This is the only time in his history that he shows himself in a
covetous light. Perhaps his motive in grasping at Courland was to be
nearer to his daughter in Russia. He seemed to realize, as his wife did
not, that German Princesses who married into the Czar’s family had a
way of being neglected and mislaid in that vast uncharted country.




                             [Illustration]




                                   II

                            SHE IS EDUCATED


While Fike was still quite small, her father received an unexciting
promotion. Already Commander of the garrison, he was made Governor
of Stettin. This change did not bring the family any nearer to the
goal of the Princess’s hopes, a residence in Berlin. But it did
rescue them from the commonplace house in the Domstrasse which Fike
afterwards in the days of her grandeur referred to as “Greifenheim’s
house.” As Governor of Stettin, her father was given quarters in the
ancestral castle of the Duke of Pomerania. It was a gloomy rectangular
structure surrounding a roughly-paved courtyard and including as a
corner building a church with a bell-tower. Fike’s bedroom adjoined the
bell-tower.

The family occupied the third story of the left wing, the Princess’s
apartment being next to the entrance and her daughter’s next to the
church. Two or three times a day the little girl was allowed to visit
her mother. In her memoirs she describes how she ran through the long
corridor but does not describe the visits. The supervision over her
daughter’s education with which the Princess is credited was apparently
of the slightest. She was preoccupied with other things; an unambitious
husband and an invalid son gave her plenty to think about. Besides the
family finances were not improved by the general’s promotion. He still
clung to his parsimonious habits and was backed up by his second in
command, old Bolhagen, who as under-governor lived in the Pomeranian
castle and was always close at hand to help him out. “My father did
almost nothing without at least asking him about it,” says Fike. It was
certainly a situation which any wife would need philosophy to bear. The
harassed lady was often driven to extremes. She railed at old Bolhagen
that he “did not love her,” and she boxed her daughter’s ears from
sheer irritation.

The two Princesses came to be familiar figures at several North German
courts, for Fike after the age of eight always accompanied her mother
on her travels. Had the search for a husband already begun? Probably
so; the conversation at home seems to indicate as much. The Princess
neglected her daughter abroad, as well as at home. This did not
escape notice, and Fike occasionally had the satisfaction of having
strangers, with whom she early discovered how to get on, rebuke the
Princess for her maternal indifference. In this way, the Swedish Count
Gyllenborg incurred the life-long gratitude of the proud, sensitive
child. “When he saw,” says Fike, “how little or rather how not at all
my mother occupied herself with me, he said to her that she was not
right in giving me so little attention; that I was for my age a very
well-developed child.”

Still another partisan was unexpectedly raised up in the person of
a Catholic monk by the name of Mengden whom Fike and her mother met
at the Court of Brunswick. The monk occupied himself with palmistry
and prophecy, which were, by the way, forbidden by his Church. With
the certainty of her tendencies, the Princess gravitated toward
the sorcerer, leading by the hand the little Princess Marianna of
Brunswick-Bevern to whom she had taken a great fancy. She praised the
beauty of Marianna and demanded that the monk should prophesy a crown
for her. “He heard,” says Fike, “how my mother praised the Princess and
what she prophesied; he said to her that he saw not a single crown in
the features of the Princess but that he saw at least three above my
forehead.”

Fike never forgot this episode and related it more than once. She also
thought it sufficiently important to mention in her memoirs thirty
years later that the petted and beautiful Brunswick Princess eventually
died unmarried. The plain little Fike, who was to become the apostle of
enlightenment, continued always to believe in that fortune-telling monk.

Fike really owed her education to her French governess, Elisabeth
Cardel, and her German tutor, Pastor Wagner. With Mademoiselle Cardel
she spent her days and nights in the three small rooms beneath the
bell-tower. They were Fike and Babet to each other. Babet must be the
key to much that afterwards astonished the world in the Empress of
Russia. But what the French governess was like it would be difficult to
say. She has vanished into the limbo which is reserved for the domestic
servants of the famous. Our history books, like our etiquette books,
do not consider these people important. But almost any child takes her
nurse or governess quite seriously and is influenced by her character
regardless of the difference in their social station. The personality
of the servant who cares for genius in its helpless infancy and during
its stumbling childhood is a factor for biography to reckon with.

Certainly Babet Cardel was no ordinary servant; perhaps no ordinary
individual. She may have been an extraordinary person. All we know
of her is contained in the letters and memoirs of the pupil on whom
she left her impress. She was another genteel spinster but was of
a tougher-minded variety than the German aunts and lady companions
who otherwise figured in Fike’s life. She never saw ghosts and she
worshiped neither animals nor God too much. Without using flattery or
caresses she knew how to gain and keep the affections of her pupil.
Fike was a secretive child, yet she had no secrets from Babet, and this
was partly because Babet was clever. Her pupil had a life-long habit of
ready, off-hand scorn for stupidity.

The Cardel family were French emigrants; the father was a professor
in Frankfort. Two daughters, Madeleine and Elisabeth, made their way
to Stettin, where Madeleine was employed as Fike’s governess. When
her pupil was nearly four Madeleine was married to an advocate named
Colhard. The child made a scene at parting. “At Madame Colhard’s
wedding,” say her memoirs, “I drank too much and would not go to bed
without her. I bawled so loudly that they had to take me out and put
me to bed with my parents.” Fike passed into the hands of Elisabeth
Cardel. The two sisters were opposites: Madeleine was showy and
insincere while Elisabeth was just and consistent. Madeleine “took
great pains,” says her pupil, “to have me always appear before my
parents in such a way that I, and she also, should please them. So it
came about that I was for my years rather ‘deep.’”

Babet laid less stress on appearances and strove to counteract the
superficial methods of her sister. But Fike had acquired once for all
the knack of making an impression. She was a canny child, precocious in
her criticism of her environment and precocious in her ability to keep
her own counsel. Babet, who was something of a phrase-maker, called her
an “esprit gauche.” In mature years, Fike still delighted in the title.
“Mademoiselle Cardel and Herr Wagner had to deal with a perverse spirit
who took all that was said to her in the opposite sense.” Oppressed
by moralities and preachments, her eager, curious nature took refuge
behind a smiling but critical silence. “One does not always know what
children are thinking,” she says. “Children are hard to understand,
especially when careful training has accustomed them to obedience and
experience has made them cautious in conversations with their elders.”

Next to Elisabeth Cardel, Pastor Wagner was second in command. Fike
called herself, “half Mademoiselle Cardel’s, half Pastor Wagner’s
pupil.” With Pastor Wagner she studied religion, history and geography.
He also taught her to write German while Monsieur Laurent, a Calvinist
school-master, taught her French “calligraphy.” A French dancing-master
came to the little room beside the bell-tower, placed the four-year-old
child on a table and trained her in positions and steps. “This was
money thrown away,” remarked the affluent Empress of Russia many years
later; doubtless an echo of dear Papa’s views, hardly of dear Mama’s.
For seven long years Babet, who was musical herself, struggled to teach
her pupil the rudiments of singing but gave it up at last as hopeless.
A music-master by the name of Roellig was called in at Zerbst but his
efforts were also fruitless. A drawing teacher she never had; but
somewhere along in her career she learned both carving and engraving,
arts which she cultivated later in Russia. Her skill at embroidery
is evidenced by rich ecclesiastical robes still preserved in Russian
museums.

Fike afterwards described her teachers, always excepting Mademoiselle
Cardel, as rather a poor lot. Monsieur Laurent was “an old weak-head
who in his youth was but a dunce,” a Frenchman who spoke German “like
a Spanish cow.” The music-master was preserved in a burlesque sketch
addressed to Grimm. “About the poor devil Roellig I have never told you
yet, because you know what success his lessons had. He always brought
with him a creature who roared bass. He had him sing in my room; I
listened to him and said to myself, ‘he roars like a bull,’ but Herr
Roellig was beside himself with delight when ever this bass throat was
in action.” Concerning Wagner and Cardel, she offered as her mature
judgment: “I cherish absolutely no grudge against Herr Wagner, but
I am convinced in my inmost soul that he was a block-head and that
Mademoiselle Cardel was a clever girl.”

Fike scoffed at her education as she scoffed at her teachers. “Very
early it was noticed that I had a good memory; therefore I was
incessantly tormented with learning by rote. They called it training
the memory; but I believe it to have been rather a weakening. At first
it was Bible verses; then specially prepared pieces on the fables of
La Fontaine which I had to commit to memory and repeat. If I forgot
anything, I was scolded; I believe, however, it was not humanly
possible to retain all that I had to memorize; also I do not think it
worth the trouble. I still possess a German Bible in which all the
verses which I had to learn are underlined with red ink.”

The most valuable part of her education was incidental to her
association with Babet, “who knew everything without having learned
anything; she knew all the comedies and tragedies like her five fingers
and was very amusing.” Babet’s vocabulary and phrases were drawn from
her reading. Often she reminded her pupil that the word “Monsieur”
“never broke anyone’s jaw-bone,” a phrase which Fike assumed had been
drawn from some old comedy. She read Corneille and Racine and was
saturated with Molière, who consequently became the daily bread of
her pupil. Her favorite authority was “common sense” which she evoked
habitually. “That is not common sense,” represented a final judgment
with the governess as it eventually did with the Empress. Everybody
else in Fike’s early environment dealt in moral principles and
religious dogmas; Babet seems to have been a realist.

The governess had friends, French emigrants like herself,
intellectuals, who are to be distinguished from the simple-minded
Laurent, master of calligraphy. Babet received on Sundays in the
nursery a certain Monsieur de Mauclerc, a clergyman, who was remembered
by Fike chiefly as the editor of a History of England written by
his father-in-law, Rapin Thoiras. The Mauclerc-Thoiras circle was
pro-English, which meant in those days that they were philosophers and
liberals. With these fellow-exiles of hers Babet was intimate and her
pupil was adopted by the group. In their circle Fike had her first
experience of good conversation, which she afterwards passionately
pursued as one of the main interests of her life. Here she learned to
know as clever and delightful people those whom Pastor Wagner regarded
as heretics. “So far as Wagner was concerned, he had nothing in common
with these arch-heretics who did not understand his language; nor he,
theirs.” But Fike felt herself able through language and imagination to
bridge the mental chasm which yawned between her French governess and
her German tutor.


                                   2

The Princes of Anhalt-Zerbst were a pious line. Before the Reformation,
one of them had been a celebrated saint. The sight of him wearing a
monastic garb, emaciated by fasting and begging through the streets,
had so impressed Martin Luther as a boy that it had helped to send him
into a monastery. Zerbst had been close to the war with Tetzel about
indulgences and the contemporary Prince of Anhalt had early ranged
himself on the side of the reformer. Two hundred years before Fike was
born, Luther had been intimate with the head of the house of Anhalt
and had played chess with him. The passage of six generations had
dimmed the worldly glory of these Princes but the heritage of piety had
persisted undiminished.

Prince Christian August followed in the footsteps of his forebears.
He was a rigid Protestant, one of those puritanical Lutherans, who,
according to Frederick the Great, were still numerous in that day.
Frederick seemed to think that the cult had declined during his reign.
But the free-thinking King exaggerated the extent of his own influence,
which did not reach far beyond his own round table. The pious Princes
of Germany, the special creation of Dr. Martin Luther, were destined to
survive many centuries. Long after Frederick was dead and buried, they
continued to impress their somber personalities upon the history of
Europe by marrying into all its royal families. Fike’s father was one
of these somber personalities.

It was a matter of course that the daughter of Christian August should
be educated by an evangelical pastor. In her little room against the
church, so close that the sound of the organ came through, the parson
instructed her and put her through her so-called _Prüfungen_. These
examinations were high lights in a monotonous childhood. The reverend,
black-robed gentleman did not scamp his duty like the music-master
Roellig. He built himself into the very foundation of his pupil’s
character. Although she ultimately decided that he was a pedant and
a block-head, she never forgot his teachings. The ghost of her old
teacher accompanied her to Russia where he frequently walked and
talked, and never out of character. As a middle-aged Empress, she
would often quote him thus: “The joys of this world, according to Herr
Wagner, are not worth its pains”; or, “The world is not good for much,
said the blessed Herr Wagner, because of original sin.” Or, “You say to
me that the evils for which there is no remedy, can be met with peace
and resignation. You learned that from your father; it is exactly the
same thing that the blessed Herr Wagner, of ancient memory, used to
say.” The pastor often discoursed to his pupil on the Last Judgment.
Fike was so impressed with the difficulty of being saved that she began
to have fits of weeping at twilight. Babet found her hiding behind the
window curtains to indulge these melancholy thoughts, and induced the
child to tell her the reason. Herr Wagner was forbidden to frighten
Fike in the future with his sermons on the Last Judgment.

The pastor was the faithful representative of the Princess’s father. He
was dear Papa’s man. The Prince of Anhalt, always on the march, could
rest easy in the thought that his daughter was being firmly grounded
in the doctrine of her fathers. In addition to her daily lessons with
Herr Wagner, who was after all merely an army chaplain, she had higher
religious education from the Lutheran pastor at Brunswick. By the time
she was fourteen, the Prince could well afford to congratulate himself,
as he did, on the thoroughness of his daughter’s religious foundation.

Yet Fike did not swallow Wagner whole; she argued with him. She
declared it unjust that Marcus Aurelius and other heroes of antiquity
should be damned because they had not known salvation. The pastor
proved by chapter and verse that they were damned, but his pupil
stubbornly defended her point. Babet Cardel was called in by the irate
pedagogue and the governess patched up a peace between them. A second
argument arose on the subject of chaos. Chaos, said the teacher, is
what went before the world. “But what is Chaos?” demanded the pupil.
And again Babet had to intervene and make peace. It was the same way
with circumcision which the pastor refused to explain. Babet’s tact
was once more called into service and order restored. It appears that
Babet was not allowed to use the rod. Only dear Mama could do that. But
a quick box on the ears was more in Mama’s manner.

Fike was conscious of solid obstacles in her world. If she had been a
boy her life would have been different. She would one day have ruled
over Anhalt-Zerbst instead of Fritz. But girls do not reign. In Fike’s
home, however, everything was ruled by women. The Princess Johanna
Elisabeth managed her husband and smacked her daughter. As between
Babet Cardel and Pastor Wagner, it was always Babet who decided things
and gave orders to the pastor. If Mama had been a Prussian General,
even under the close-fisted Frederick William who wore a short coat
because he was too stingy to buy cloth for a long one, she would
not have been content with the small pay and inferior post of the
Prince, her husband. The Princess was proud and ambitious. But she had
obvious faults as a tactitian; her nerves and quick temper sometimes
betrayed her. Babet, who ruled by common sense and reason, was a better
diplomatist. Fike had to admire Babet since she herself invariably
succumbed to Babet’s methods.

An old German Baroness who lived in the Stettin household says this
of Fike’s childhood: “Princess Sophie was born, grew up, and was
educated under my eyes. I witnessed her school instruction and her
progress and I helped her to pack her trunks before her departure (for
Russia). I enjoyed her confidence to a degree that entitled me to
believe that I knew her better than anybody else. Yet I had no idea
that she was destined to attain so much fame. In her youth I noticed
in her a serious, calculating and cold personality, which was as far
removed from anything distinguished or brilliant as it was from error,
eccentricity and frivolity. In a word, I thought her just an ordinary
person.”

If the Princess of Zerbst did not make much of her daughter, it is
not likely that one of her women would have held a different opinion.
Probably the young girl was sufficiently commonplace. It remained for
circumstances to make her into the unique and powerful personality that
she came to be. For the rest, it is true that at all stages of her life
she was more cool and calculating than she was eccentric and frivolous.
To this extent the Baroness was right.


                                   3

Fike grew up in an atmosphere of illness. The first misfortune of the
kind which befell the family was when her mother lay nineteen weeks
in bed after her birth. The Princess had a delicate constitution.
In letters which are still preserved in the archives at Moscow in
a binding of pink plush lined with blue silk, she complains of the
“vapours” and the “crampe d’estomac” as afflictions from which she
habitually suffered. She could not endure blood-letting either for
herself or her children, and since this was the only resource of the
doctors of those days she was not a good patient.

Two daughters of the house died in infancy and two sons developed into
invalids. The elder had a genuine affliction, a dislocated hip, which
obliged him to walk with a crutch. The poor boy was dosed incessantly
and sent to the baths at Teplitz and Karlsbad but all in vain. The best
physicians in Germany were consulted but were never able to diagnose
his case until after his death, when he was “dissected.” His invalidism
made a profound impression on his sister. It was an expense which the
family could ill afford and it made the mother over-precious to her
second son, who, although he was not really delicate, was also sent
around to baths in search of health. The strain of the expense was long
remembered by Fike, who, as we have seen, sent the first money she ever
owned to pay for her brother’s sojourn at the Homburg baths.

With her governess, Fike read Molière’s plays in which various forms
of hypocrisy and hysteria are exposed and satirized. Through Babet’s
eyes, which had been opened by Molière, she viewed the cases of illness
about her. “You must know,” she afterwards wrote in a letter to Grimm,
“that Mademoiselle Cardel made me mistrustful toward all physicians
and medicine in general.” It remained a pet life-long prejudice.
Whenever, as Empress, she summoned a physician for a post, she usually
prefaced her appointment with the remark that she had no confidence in
his profession. She never lost a chance to criticize its pretensions.
“Tell me now,” she wrote, “why does the most Christian King assemble
all the charlatans to talk of their charlatanry? Does he believe in the
physicians?”

Her prejudice was of course not consistent. Babet Cardel, the scorner
of physicians, had never been able to cure her pupil of tone-deafness.
The Empress was sometimes plaintive about her lack and wondered
wistfully whether the physicians might not succeed where the teachers
had failed. “All that depends on the organization, does it not? Mine
is faulty. I long to hear and enjoy music, but in vain do I try. It
is noise and that is all. I long to send to your society of medicine a
prize for him who will invent an effective remedy against insensibility
to the sounds of harmony.”

Fike was herself a healthy child. She remembered only one attack of
illness in her Stettin years. Her recollection of this experience
gives us a picture of her home, its gloomy pieties and its crude
superstitions; above all, its wounded family pride due to the lameness
of the one bright hope of the house, the future Prince of Anhalt.

“It was the custom,” says Fike, “to kneel down every evening and
morning to say our morning and evening prayer. One evening as I was
praying on my knees, I fell to coughing so violently, that the strain
caused me to fall upon my left side, while sharp pains almost took away
my breath. Some one sprang to me and I was put to bed where I remained
three weeks. I lay always on the left side and had a cough, stitches
and fever. There was no proper doctor in the neighborhood. They gave
me remedies, but Heaven knows of what they consisted. Finally, after
much suffering, I was able to get up. When I was dressed it was seen
that I had taken on the form of a Z: my right shoulder was higher
than the left, the backbone had a zig-zag line, and the left shoulder
was hollow. My women and those of my mother who were taken into
consultation, decided to call my parents’ attention to it.

“The first thing done in the emergency was to command the strictest
silence about my condition. My parents were unhappy that one of their
children should be lame, the other deformed. Finally, after several
experts had been consulted with the greatest secrecy, it was decided
to seek out a skillful man who knew how to heal dislocations. The
search was vain, for they had a horror of calling in the only person
who had this kind of skill, because he was the executioner of the
place. They hesitated a long while, but finally decided to fetch him
secretly. Only Babet and a chamber-maid were taken into confidence.
The man examined me and ordered that every morning a girl, before she
had eaten, should rub with spittle first the shoulder and then the
spine. Then he himself prepared a kind of jacket which I was never to
remove by day or night except to change my linen. He came every other
day early in the morning to examine me further. Besides this he had me
wear a large black ribbon which went around my neck, passed over the
shoulder and the right arm, and was fastened in the back. In short, I
know not whether I had no tendency to become crooked or whether these
methods were effective. In any case, after a year and a half of such
treatment, hope for my health was restored. I did not lay aside the
uncomfortable jacket until I was ten or eleven years old.”

Fike’s inflammation of the lungs befell her at the age of seven. It
coincided with her period of deepest pity, her melancholy absorption
in the Last Judgment. She had been saturated with bigotry by the
conscientious long-faced Wagner. On her knees in prayer she was struck
down with a prolonged and serious illness. It was not an experience
which the seven-year-old sinner could ever forget, especially when
as a consequence she was obliged to wear for four long years an
uncomfortable strait-jacket designed by the local hangman. Pneumonia
and the Day of Judgment were welded in her mind. Having recovered
from this illness, she resumed her position as the healthy child
of the family. Not until she was fifteen years old did she fall ill
again. This was on the threshold of her Russian career when an attack
of pneumonia almost killed her while she was preparing to leave the
Lutheran church and adopt the Greek faith. It was not easy for the
daughter of Christian August and a descendant of the Anhalt Princes to
become a turncoat in the matter of religion.




                             [Illustration]




                                  III

                                 RUSSIA


The long line of Russian monarchs have all belonged to three houses:
the house of Rurik, the house of Romanov, and the house which was
founded by the Princess of Zerbst, half German and half Russian. The
house of Rurik and the house of Romanov culminated respectively in
the titanic figures of the Terrible Ivan and the Great Peter. After
them, the Ruriks and the Romanovs seemed to fall away as if exhausted
by the effort into a swift decline. The super-Czars were followed by
a twilight of feeble heirs who opened the way for usurpers and women.
Interlopers like Boris Gudunov and Sophie of Zerbst found it easy to
dispose of the descendants of these Great and Terrible fathers.

It appears that tyrants are usually under somebody’s thumb. They
are given to having favorites and to being ruled by them. Ivan
was influenced by the monk Sylvester and Peter by the pastry-cook
Menshikov. Neither was engaged in what is usually regarded as a
red-blooded masculine occupation, but they were powerful men through
their influence on their protectors who were autocrats. It is commonly
said of Peter that he sacrificed his son for the sake of the new Russia
which he had created, because Alexei was inimical to his father’s
work. Menshikov played a large objective part and no doubt a larger
psychological one in the torture and death of the miserable Czarevich.
Similarly, Ivan the Terrible followed the advice of his favorites in
browbeating the son whom he finally slew. “Give the son in his youth no
power,” said the monk Sylvester. “Break him with the rod; he will not
die but only grow stronger.”

Of all the murders which have disfigured the family-life of Russian
rulers, these two are perhaps the most revolting and at the same time
the most romantic. As themes they have intrigued the imaginations
of painters and dramatists. Ivan and Peter were primitive fathers
who recalled an age in which their deed would have been regarded as
blood-sacrifice and not as crime. They brought the practice of ritual
murder down into modern history. The inheritors of a dark tradition,
they helped to carry on a bad example for the future. Homicide in one
form or another, in family quarrels and palace-revolutions, was never
far away from the royal family of Russia. In all the struggles around
the dynasties and against them, violence has survived into modern times
as a Russian folk-way.

Peter the Great was a miracle of energy. He was a madman, who built and
destroyed with demonic power. If we knew the source of his phenomenal
energy, we should know one of the profoundest secrets of human nature.
Whence came his amazing drive, his mysterious complexities, his
staggering contradictions, his power nevertheless of being always at
one with himself in the supreme act of authority? We are forced to
believe that his enormous stature played some part in his psychological
complexity. He was six feet and seven inches tall, with the flashing
eyes of a magician and the soft lips of a woman. Memories of the
Norsemen and of Rurik the Viking who was the first ruler of Russia,
were dear to him. They urged him to the sea and to a life-long struggle
to procure for Russia adventurous outlets to the sea. He dreamed of a
campaign to India; as Rurik the Norseman had come to rule over Russia,
so Peter the Russian would one day come to rule over India. Through his
work, Europe and Asia would be united. He died without realizing this
magnificent dream but left it as a heritage for the greatest of the
women autocrats who came after him.

As the youngest son of old Alexis Michaelovich and his girl-wife,
Natalie Narishkin, Peter had at first little prospect of inheriting the
crown. But the death of his step-brother Feodor elevated Peter and his
half-brother Ivan to a double throne. The throne, which was literally
a double one built for two Czars, is still to be seen in the Kremlin.
Behind the seat of Ivan is a concealed opening through which Sophie
Alexeievna, who was regent for six years, was accustomed to whisper
responses to the weak-witted Ivan. The high-spirited Peter soon tired
of a situation which enabled his sister to rule Russia from behind the
scenes. At the age of seventeen, already a physical giant, he secured
from his brother a voluntary abdication and forced his domineering
sister into a convent. His hatred for Sophie was as intense as was his
love for his mother, the beautiful young widow who spent her life among
the colored shadows of the Kremlin. His victory over Sophie gave Peter
his first taste of violence. Then came the revolt of the Streltsi, in
which the ambitious Sophie shared. Hastening home from Europe, Peter
executed the conspirators before his sister’s convent window. With his
own hands, he severed their heads from their bodies. This was his
first actual taste of blood.

After his return home, Peter found his first wife, Eudoxia, too dull
and too orthodox. She was sent to languish with shorn locks in a
convent, while Peter began a new life with his good-natured concubine,
Catherine I, who had been a camp-follower in her time but was soon to
become an Empress and deign to let Princes kiss her hand. Peter shared
her favors with his best friend Menshikov, a practice not uncommon
in mediæval friendships. To Catherine and Menshikov Peter remained
loyal for the rest of his life. All his aberrations were in the nature
of orgies from which he always returned to his permanent favorites.
“He was a real artist in lust,” said Admiral Villebois; “and, though
hard-working, he abandoned himself from time to time to attacks of
amorous frenzy in which age and sex mattered little to him.”


                                   2

The history of morals in Russia differs from the history of morals
in the rest of Europe. This was once pointed out by Catherine the
Great in a letter to Sénac de Meilhan: “Every stranger who writes of
Russia ignores the ancient cast of its manners and morals and by this
he misleads himself many and many a time.” The woman who made this
comment on Russian life was born and brought up under the concentrated
influence of the German Reformation. Her early education taught her to
appreciate the difference.

The religious, political, and economic development of Russia has
been unique and the development of morals has been equally so. The
introduction of Christianity in the eleventh century was accompanied by
no great revolutionary upheaval. The Greek Church with its bejewelled
priests was assimilated by the Russians with suspicious ease. Religious
persecution, notwithstanding the Raskolnik burnings, never went so far
in Russia as it did in Western Europe. The Russian did not tremble
before an awful God but made a household pet of him, hanging the
icon in the corner of the best room and surrounding it with family
portraits. As late as the seventeenth century, a serious European
scholar published a work on the subject: Are the Russians Christians?
They had accepted the Christian symbols and imbued them with the pagan
spirit.

In Russia religion remained a passion play. The people slumbered on
in their mediæval idolatry while the rest of Europe struggled through
an age of passionate protestantism. The rise of private property in
the west, which was logically bound up with the monogamous inheriting
family, had no corresponding period in Russia. The break-up of the
psychology of communism which came with the growth of private property
in Western Europe, had no survival value among the Russians. The
peasants continued to hold their land in common and pagan habits
survived within the church.

Standards of conduct which derived from the Greeks were in good odor
all the way down through the eighteenth century. This is especially
true with regard to sexual relationships. That curious and fascinating
chapter in the history of European morals which deals with the rise
of romantic love had no duplicate in the history of Russia. There was
never any Russian Sir Galahad. The Byzantine Madonna never attained
the prestige of her Italian sister. She had an oriental cast of
features slightly suggestive of the queen of the playing cards. Her
dark beauty betrayed her Greek and rather pagan origin. Besides she
belonged to a cloistered sex which spent its life in terems, those
semi-oriental apartments in which the women and children were secluded
and which differed from harems only in that the Russians were not
polygamous.

The seclusion of women continued to exist after the acceptance of
Christianity and Madonna-worship. It explains why romantic love did not
flower in Russia with the beginning of the Christian centuries. While
the Russians raised altars to the wonder-working virgin they continued
to build churches to masculine saints who reigned in pairs. Saint Peter
and Saint Paul were enshrined together; Saint Boris and Saint Gleb,
Saint Kyril and Saint Method were their Russian counterparts, just as
the two Czars Peter and Ivan were enthroned together. The romantic
value which the Russians attached to brotherly love is seen in the way
in which large families of brothers clung together after marriage with
the same degree of loyalty and dependence. It colors the myths and
legends of the country. Masson relates the following: “It is singular
enough that in the same countries that were said to have been inhabited
by a society of women (Amazons) who proscribed all men, a society of
Zaporogue Cossacks have dwelt, who would not suffer a single woman
among them, recruiting their forces solely by carrying away youths
from the neighboring lands. This barbarous republic was destroyed by
Potiomkin, and they who composed it were distributed in the different
armies and among the other Cossacks.” That such a myth could still
persist and be believed in the Russia of the eighteenth century is
not surprising when we remember that, prior to this century, all the
visible political and social life of the country was, as in ancient
Greek, carried on exclusively by men.

It was Peter the Great who changed all this. With his usual way of
regimenting everybody, he commanded the women to come out of their
terems and take part in society. But just as the Russian men clung to
their beloved beards when Peter commanded them to shave, so the women
clung to their precious privacy. Peter brooked no nonsense: he shaved
the men by force and sent the military officers to fetch the women to
balls and dinner parties. The ladies, however, showed courage. They
resisted emancipation bravely all through Peter’s reign and for a long
time afterward. It was not until a generation later, during the reign
of the Empress Elisabeth, that the Russian women assimilated the idea
and began to enjoy the free life which Peter’s ukas had unlocked for
them.


                                   3

After the death of the great Czar a woman sat for the first time on
the throne of Russia. The autocrat who had killed his son because he
was incompetent to rule left his country to a woman who could neither
read nor write. Good-natured, tawdry, and illiterate, the second wife
of Peter the Great became Catherine I, autocrat of all the Russias. She
ushered in a regiment of women. For three-quarters of a century Russia
was ruled by women monarchs. Except for the brief reigns of Peter II
and Peter III, the eighteenth century was dominated by three women
autocrats, Anna Ivanovna, Elisabeth Petrovna, and Catherine Alexeievna.
Russians, priests and peasants alike, who had been brought up to
believe such proverbs as: “A chicken is not a bird, nor is a woman
human” and “The more you beat the wife the better tastes the borstch,”
were obliged to bow the knee three times in succession to autocrats in
skirts. Among the Raskolniks were consistent fanatics who had to be
knouted because they refused to take the oath of allegiance to women.

Catherine I, who had eleven children, was survived by only two of
them: the melancholy Anne, married for a strip of sea-coast, and the
frivolous Elisabeth, who remained unwed. The Empress left a will
bequeathing the crown to the twelve-year-old son of the murdered
Alexei. But the boy died of the smallpox after a brief reign of two
years, and another Empress ascended the throne. His successor was Anna
Ivanovna, daughter of the weak-witted Ivan, who had “of his own free
will” surrendered the crown to Peter the Great. Ivan’s daughter, who
had been considerably Germanized since leaving her Russian terem to
become a Duchess of Courland, was now enthroned as supreme autocrat.
She was the first of the two Annas, both unbeautiful and unpopular.

Having no children, she adopted a niece, Anna Leopoldovna, the daughter
of a favorite sister. Her niece was married to Prince Anthony Ulrich of
Brunswick, a poor shadow of a man whom she much disliked and by whom
she was much disliked in return. Nevertheless, they had a large family
of children, the first of whom was destined to become the infant Czar,
Ivan VI. Scarcely was this child born when Empress Anna died, leaving
the regency for the infant Czar in the hands of Bühren, her favorite.
The mother of Ivanushka did not long submit to this arrangement. She
contrived to send Bühren to Siberia and had herself made regent in his
place.

Anna Leopoldovna was a recluse and a sloven. She left the government
to her minister, and reverted to the old terem life, spending her
days in dishabille with her favorite, Julie von Mengden and Julie’s
numerous female relations. Her neglected husband was more neglected
than ever. The Regent became more and more invisible; her retirement,
more and more obsessional. She only went forth on moonlit nights to
take the air. Ivanushka was shown to the public from a balcony on state
occasions, when for instance the Persian Ambassadors brought the first
elephants to Moscow. As the Imperial family withdrew from sight, gossip
about them ran faster and faster. The Regent was only living as women
had formerly always lived in the Russian terems, but her way of life
was now regarded as reprehensible and scandalous. Julie von Mengden,
her favorite, was after all a harmless, unambitious person but she
became a popular bogy. Anna Leopoldovna was unable to reign because
she was too shy to show herself. One of the duties of her office was
what Catherine the Great called “representation” and she neglected it.
Consequently she lasted only one year.


                                   4

In the meantime Elisabeth Petrovna had been living her own life in
her own way. Having signed her dying mother’s will, for Catherine
I could not read or write, she retired to private life apparently
without regret and left the crown to her half-brother, Peter II. The
Empress Anna who followed Peter was as ugly as Elisabeth was beautiful.
From jealousy she drove the debonair Princess away from the capital.
Elisabeth lived in the country and shared the life of the peasants.
She had a profound liking for low company and could not avoid being
picturesque. In the company of her lover Shubin, she took part in all
the peasant festivals. She loved to wear men’s clothes and for years
wore nothing else. Her tall figure and radiant beauty were at their
best in masculine attire. When she was obliged as Empress to return
to skirts again, she introduced a fashion at court of balls called
“metamorphoses,” where all the women were obliged to dress as men and
all the men as women. The metamorphoses were not popular with the
diplomats who tangled themselves hopelessly in their skirts while the
Empress marched about gracefully and happily in her velvet breeches.

Elisabeth was born under the most auspicious circumstances. Her
birthday coincided with the victory of Pultava. When Peter came
swaggering back to Moscow he was met by the announcement of the birth
of a daughter at Kolomenskoe. The great Czar cut short the victory
celebration in the Kremlin in order to post away to see his babe. It
was his eighth child and a girl, but Peter was never blasé.

Elisabeth was a pampered darling. Even as an infant she was a show
child and a prize beauty. Her portrait in the nude, suggesting the
babyhood of Venus, is one of the art treasures of the Petersburg
collection. This much admired work of art may have contributed to that
lack of modesty for which she was celebrated afterward. Her father’s
exotic taste expressed itself in the rich Spanish costumes which
formed her everyday wear, and in the pets such as monkeys and parrots
which he gave her. The child was affectionate but not intellectual.
She liked to sing and dance and amuse herself. The only book she ever
read was the Bible. Her gayety was tempered by a melancholy which
grew on her as she advanced in years. The approach of these attacks
was marked by an excess of piety to which she completely abandoned
herself. She prayed for hours at a time, fasted with enthusiasm, and
made long pilgrimages on foot to the musty shrines of miracle-working
saints. Her religious orgies alternated with periods of abandonment
to frivolity and self-indulgence. She astonished the world by these
apparent contradictions. It seemed paradoxical that she should at one
and the same time be so immoral and so religious. As she reveled in
the follies and gayeties of Butter Week, so she reveled in the rituals
and mummeries of the Greek Church. She was fully as religious as her
brother Alexei, whose orthodoxy had so infuriated Peter the Great that
he put him to the torture.

Elisabeth was, also like Alexei, intensely Russian. Although her mother
had been a foreigner and a Lutheran, and her father had been as much of
a Dutchman as he could make himself, Lisanka was pure Slav. It is true
that she preferred Petersburg to Moscow as a residence, and that she
built the great Winter Palace there in the manner of Versailles and not
of Kolomenskoe. In this respect and in her politics she followed in the
footsteps of her father. But her personal way of life was exceedingly
Russian and somewhat provincial. She loved luxury and show as much as
did Peter himself, but she was at heart a home-keeping body with a
fondness for the folk-ways of her country. Her life among the peasants
had helped to make her so. Among her lovers were no foreigners. Shubin,
Voshinsky, Buturlin, Razumovsky, and Shuvalov--there were only five
in fact though tradition makes them three hundred--were all Russians.
The two Annas were given to German favorites who were inclined to be
ambitious and efficient. Elisabeth’s lovers were an easy-going lot
who did not exploit their position. She, on her side, loved them for
their _beaux yeux_ and not for their ability or distinction. She kept
a sergeant, a hostler, a page, and a chorister in turn. Perhaps the
French Duke who once refused her hand felt more than ever justified in
his decision when he heard that the beautiful daughter of Peter the
Great had consoled herself with such simple and lowly persons.

Elisabeth adored her family. The child who was painted in the nude and
paraded in Spanish finery before an admiring world was her father’s pet
and plaything. For her sake Peter decided to make her mother his legal
wife and to crown her as Empress. The girl was still in her ’teens when
her father and mother died and her sister Anne married and went to a
foreign country. From this time on her nostalgia for these family ties
never left her. Loyalty to them was the mainspring of her life.

Elisabeth’s mother had a German physician whose name was Lestocq. He
was born in Hanover and was one of the many German doctors whom Peter
the Great brought to Russia. From the year 1713 he was attached to
Catherine’s family. Elisabeth therefore inherited him from her mother
and allowed herself to be led by him, which Lestocq was not loth to
do. He liked to pull the strings of political intrigue to gratify his
sense of power. It was he who finally persuaded Elisabeth to dispossess
the Regent and her infant son and seize the crown for herself. The
Grand Duchess was now thirty-two years old. She had no more real desire
to be Empress than her mother had had before her, but Lestocq was an
energetic manager. He induced her at last to act by telling her stories
about the torture and the convent that awaited her at the hands of
Regent Anna. He also offered her sound French money that Versailles was
ready to invest in a Petersburg revolution.

Elisabeth’s imagination was no doubt stimulated by recent events in
Austria. In October, 1740, Charles VI died and named his daughter as
his successor. If Maria Theresa had become an Empress why should not
Elisabeth Petrovna? No Pragmatic Sanction was needed in Russia where
two Empresses had already occupied the throne. If Europe was going to
ask questions, Elisabeth could produce her mother’s will which she
herself had signed. The testament read: “If the Grand Duke (Peter
II) should die without heirs, the right to ascend the throne shall
pass after him to the Czarevna with her descendants, after her to
the Czarevna Elisabeth with her descendants, after her to the Grand
Duchess; whereby masculine heirs shall have at all times preference
over feminine. But never at any time shall anyone rule over the Russian
Empire who does not belong to the Greek Church or who wears already
another crown.” The Czarevna Anna had left a son in Kiel, but he was
a Lutheran. The will in question had been declared illegal by Empress
Anna but was now restored to legality by Empress Elisabeth who thought
it best to have a document to justify what she intended to do anyway.

The revolution was not as costly as a modern theatrical revue, with
which the old palace revolutions in Russia had much in common.
Elisabeth Petrovna came to the city for the winter and kept open house
in a little palace on the Field of Mars. While the Regent remained
invisible in the Winter Palace, Elisabeth went abroad early and late
and smiled upon the population. She visited the guards in the barracks,
stood godmother to their children and gambled away her French money to
them. On fine days she sped through the snowy streets of Petersburg,
a shining Snegurotchka, with guardsmen perched on the rear of her
sleigh. The apathetic Regent bestirred herself sufficiently to reprove
Elisabeth for her improprieties. But Elisabeth knew that her mother had
not become Empress by observing the proprieties nor had Peter the Great
much regard for formalities. Her mother’s own daughter, Elisabeth had a
way with soldiers which she now used for political ends. The guardsmen
adored her.

Though Peter the Great had been feared and hated in his lifetime, he
had now been dead long enough to become a popular idol. His youngest
and his favorite daughter had only to stretch out her hand to collect
the interest on his popularity. Elisabeth’s revolution was easy, so
easy that the foreign diplomats were shocked. They reported to their
home offices that a purse of money, a cask of wine, and a handful
of soldiers had done it all. Elisabeth’s revolution was regarded
as an illustration of the political indifference and supineness of
the Russian people; but, as Bilbassov has touchily but convincingly
pointed out, the revolution of 1741 was easy because it fulfilled the
popular wish. The unlovely Annas had had their day and the turn of the
gracious Elisabeth had come. Thirty-two, unmarried, and childless--she
prolonged her beloved dynasty through a kind of political Indian Summer.

On the 5th of December, 1741, Lestocq decided that the time for action
had come. Elisabeth left her palace at midnight, and, accompanied by
Lestocq and Vorontsov, was whirled away in her sleigh to midnight mass.
After the litany, she again entered her sleigh and sped to the barracks
of the Preobrazhensky regiment. While three hundred guardsmen were
silently getting into line, she disappeared into her dressing-room and
arrayed herself as if for a première. Presently she appeared before the
soldiers in full military regalia, a shirt of mail over her shoulders
and a spontoon in her hand. If Peter the Great had fancied himself
a Viking, his daughter fancied herself a Brunnhilde. Russia had had
Empresses before Elisabeth, but she was the first to seize the throne
in masculine attire. She set the fashion for the Empress who came after
                                  her.

           [Illustration: PETER THE GREAT AND HIS SON ALEXEI]

In the dense black cold of a December night in Petersburg, the soldiers
took the oath of allegiance under their breaths. Elisabeth in her coat
of mail placed herself at the head of her warriors and marched to the
winter palace, where the sleepy Anna, though scarcely more sleepy than
usual, and the shivering Anthony Ulrich were hustled into their clothes
at the point of the sword. One hopes at least that the von Mengden
sisters bore themselves with spirit during the invasion; nothing of the
kind was to be expected of the feeble Brunswick pair. The Regent and
her household were removed by the guards to the palace on the Field of
Mars which Elisabeth had just abandoned, while Elisabeth remained in
                         the imperial chambers.

           [Illustration: IVAN THE TERRIBLE AND HIS SON IVAN

                      _From a painting by Repin_]

The baby Ivan, asleep in his cradle, was awakened by a tall shining
figure in a coat of mail. Elisabeth kissed him and cried over him. The
childless woman found it hard to let him go when the soldiers carried
him away.


                                   5

Almost the first act of the new Empress was to select her successor.
Her choice was hastily made and precipitately executed. The indolent
woman, who usually had to be prodded into action by her advisers,
showed great energy and decision in this matter. She dispatched a
messenger secretly to Kiel and brought her nephew, Karl Peter Ulrich,
to Petersburg. She told her intentions to nobody until she had the boy
safe in her keeping. He was inducted into the Greek Church, proclaimed
heir to the throne with summary haste. The determined Empress worked
the priests over-time to bring this about. To make the step irrevocable
and cut off all possibility of retreat for the boy, she liquidated
his well-founded claim to the Swedish throne. She made it a condition
of the Russian-Swedish treaty that the former guardian of her nephew,
Adolph Friedrich of Holstein, should be nominated in her nephew’s place
as heir-apparent of the Swedish crown. By these measures, Karl Peter
Ulrich was cut off from his Swedish expectations and became Grand Duke
Peter Feodorovich, a good Romanov name that was supposed to wipe out
the taint of his Lutheran past.

Elisabeth had proclaimed her nephew heir without consulting the Privy
Council or the Senate. She did not even ask advice of the nobles who
had led her party and supported her revolution. The gentlemen thus
overlooked were irritated and everybody was mystified by her driving
haste. The diplomats were obliged to find reasons for her behavior,
and there were many near at hand. Her sister’s son was her competitor
for the throne and if his claims were backed by France and Sweden they
might prove dangerous. As Grand Duke of Russia he was in the hands of
his aunt. It was also seriously suggested that the pious Empress wished
to bring another soul into the Greek Church and that she wished to find
a good excuse for not marrying.

Her devotion to the dead Anushka was a real factor, but there
was something more. Her behavior was a good deal like that of a
pathological kidnapper. She cried over little Ivan in his cradle
but she had let him go. Peter was never to escape. In her several
kidnappings, for this was only the first, she always maintained an
appearance of reasonableness. The considerations of state which she
invented to justify her abduction of her nephew and her nephew’s heir
were merely convenient excuses for the satisfaction of her desire for
children.

In spite of Elisabeth’s much heralded reputation as a voluptuary, it is
impossible to find any authentic traces of her children. Her mother’s
illegitimate offspring and those of Catherine the Great are a matter
of common knowledge. But no tradition remains to account for those
of Elisabeth. Did she actually have no children or did she dispose
of them so completely that not even a rumor of their existence came
through? It seems hardly consistent with her character as we know it
that she should have been so sensitive to public opinion as to have
drowned them. In any case she had all the symptoms of a woman who had
been disappointed in maternity. Romantic and sentimental about all
family ties, she had mourned her lost lover for twenty-five years and
cherished a feeling of widowhood. When the Grand Duke was confirmed in
the palace chapel, Elisabeth threw herself upon the ground and burst
into a flood of tears.


                                   6

Three years after the Empress had adopted Peter, she sent an envoy
to Kiel to find out something about the lad. The results of the
investigation were not what any modern child-placing agency would call
encouraging.

His mother died three months after his birth. The boy’s father, a
cruel, sickly little man, neglected his son as he had neglected his
wife. He died early, leaving Peter fully orphaned at the age of ten.
The lad was brought up by a Swedish governor named Brümmer who achieved
such bad results that he was accused of having intentionally destroyed
the boy’s character. The Russians, Bestushev and Panin, believed
that Brümmer, after discovering that Peter was to be the heir to the
Russian throne and not the Swedish, took pains to corrupt his mind
and disposition. “But I have always doubted this abomination,” says
Catherine, “my opinion is that the unsuccessful education of Peter III
is to be traced to a combination of unfortunate circumstances.”

The boy’s endowment was poor; there had been stupid Romanovs before
him. Many excuses have been suggested for his inability to learn. He
was taught Russian and Swedish alternately because he had pretensions
to both crowns, and as a result he learned neither. But many children
learn two languages whether alternately or simultaneously. Another
excuse for his shortcomings relates that the Rector of the Kiel Grammar
School who undertook to teach him Latin employed such tactless methods
that Peter learned only to hate all study. When he arrived in Moscow
at the age of fourteen he knew nothing at all. The Empress, whose
standards were certainly not very high, was much disturbed by his
ignorance and hastened to give him a tutor.

Stehlin was a forerunner of the best modern teachers of the
feeble-minded. He used concrete materials as much as possible,
borrowing from the art gallery coins and medals, picture books, globes
and models. As the Grand Duke was literally unable to sit still,
Stehlin walked up and down the room with him. For three years the
patient man kept it up, although his unconventional teaching was often
ridiculed. The scholars thought him a jester instead of a teacher.
Nevertheless Stehlin seems to have been the only one in the Grand
Duke’s environment who made any attempt to handle the boy intelligently
and sympathetically. Peter learned little or nothing, it is true, but
he remained on friendly terms with his preceptor. The mischief had been
done long before Stehlin had a chance at him. Spoiled by his nurses,
Peter had been handed over at seven to brutal Holstein officers who
subjected him to a military régime. At fourteen he was passionately
fond of military drill but had no more endurance than a baby. To play
with toy soldiers was his idea of manœuvres.

Brümmer, his Swedish governor, was a hard-boiled cavalry officer.
Stehlin said of Brümmer that he might be fit to train horses but he
was not fit to educate a human being. In order to harden his pupil, he
tortured him. His favorite punishments were to deprive the boy of his
meals, to beat him with a riding-whip, to make him kneel with naked
skin upon dry peas. The victim responded as might be expected. He was
timid and antagonistic, cowardly and boastful. He only made friends
with the meanest of the servants, those whom he was allowed to strike,
and he tortured his pet animals. By the time he was brought to Russia
to become its future Czar he was an institution case.

Life had been made too hard for Peter. His instinct of survival had
been undermined. He frequently fell ill and with every attack it was
thought that he was going to die. The grandson of Great Peter, that
miracle of human energy, had no energy at all. He was just a stupid
little boy who was destined never to grow up.




                             [Illustration]




                                   IV

                           SHE GOES TO RUSSIA


The Princess Johanna Elisabeth of Anhalt-Zerbst wrote with gilt ink
and many flourishes. Like King Frederick and every other educated
person in the Germany of her times she carried on her correspondence
in French. Her style was as ornate as her penmanship, for she never
lacked the courage of her enthusiasms. As a finished letter-writer
she lost no opportunity to display her art. When the news came that
Elisabeth Petrovna had ascended the Russian throne, she at once wrote
to congratulate the new Empress who might have been her sister-in-law.
It was an exciting moment when the reply came back, penned by the
hand of the glorious autocrat herself. Direct communication had been
established between the obscure Stettin family and the imperial court
of Petersburg. The enterprising Princess walked on air.

Luck favored her. She had in her possession a precious relic which the
Empress wanted, a portrait of Elisabeth’s dead sister Anne. It had been
painted many years before by Axel von Mardefeld, the Prussian minister
to Russia. Mardefeld was a seasoned diplomat who had survived twenty
years of service at the Russian court and expected to survive many
more. He spared no pains to ingratiate himself with the new Empress.
The portrait which he had painted of the dead Anushka gave him his
opportunity. He knew that this work of art, which had strayed out of
Russia, was now in the hands of a trustworthy person, the Princess of
Anhalt-Zerbst. Elisabeth was as eager to secure the return of this
family relic as her father would have been to import a priceless
Italian Venus. At the suggestion of Mardefeld, she wrote to her “dear
niece,” the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, and begged for the return of the
picture promising to reward the sender at the earliest opportunity.

The Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst was naturally delighted to do a favor for
the Empress of Russia. The portrait was sent at once: soon a messenger
came posting back to Berlin bearing a return gift from the Empress. It
was a miniature of Elisabeth set in diamonds worth eighteen thousand
rubles. The Princess did not allow the grass to grow under her feet.
She had her daughter’s portrait painted by Pesne, and the following
spring Uncle August of Holstein made a journey to Petersburg to bear
this offering to the Empress. Stehlin thought the workmanship was
poor; he said the elderly artist had lost his skill. But Elisabeth was
no connoisseur as Peter the Great had been. It was the portrait of a
pleasant-looking, well-grown young woman. Her Imperial Highness did not
ask for more; her feelings could supply the rest.

In the meantime Petersburg buzzed with speculation concerning the Grand
Duke’s marriage. The diplomats had been taken by surprise when the
Empress had produced her nephew as her heir, and they were resolved to
be more alert in the matter of his marriage. Gossip spoke of several
Princesses, not all of whom were real. The French Princess who figured
in the rumors absolutely did not exist. In Saxony, however, there
lived a real Princess who was sponsored by a strong party headed
by Bestushev the Vice-Chancellor. The Princess Marianna was the
daughter of August the Strong who, having more than a hundred children
altogether, did not consider them as precious as if he had been the
father of only five or six. He was willing to send Marianna to Russia.
Besides, as King of Poland he had strong political reasons for wanting
an alliance with that country. He would be delighted to marry his
daughter to the Grand Duke.

Frederick of Prussia wished at all costs to prevent this alliance.
It was a trying situation for him. He had two marriageable sisters
with either of whom he might have filled the breach. But as a brother
Frederick was too chivalrous. He belonged to one of those families
whose members hate each other cordially yet cling inseparably together
against all the rest of the world. The idea of sending Ulrica or
Amelia to Russia filled their brother’s soul with consternation. “In
order to destroy the Saxon’s project,” he wrote to Mardefeld, “propose
a Princess from some old ducal house of Germany. With regard to my
sisters, you know my opinion. I shall send neither of them to Russia. I
wonder that the Empress does not hold to her choice of the Princess of
Zerbst, since she is of the Holstein family that the Empress loves so
much. Besides there are still two Princesses in Hessen-Darmstadt, one
of whom is twenty and the other eighteen years of age.” Commenting on
his conflict at this crisis, Frederick afterwards wrote, “Nothing was
more contrary to the welfare of the state than to permit this alliance;
nothing was more unnatural than to send the Princess Ulrica there.
Woe to those politicians who sacrifice even their own blood to their
interests and ambition.” Thus Frederick agonized while the Russian
Empress kept her counsel. It appears that she never wanted Ulrica for
the Grand Duke, having destined her for another rôle, the rôle that she
later came to fill as Queen of Sweden.

The Empress’s choice was made. Her hesitation sprang from other causes.
An obstacle had to be removed; it was the near relationship existing
between the Grand Duke Peter and the Princess Fike of Zerbst. The point
was referred to the Archbishop of Novgorod and the Synod, the facts of
the relationship being given and the young lady’s name withheld--such
was Elisabeth’s passion for secrecy. The Synod reported that the Church
had no objection to the marriage; that the couple were cousins did
not count since they were related on the maternal side only. Their
relationship was therefore merely “the shadow of a relationship.”

Still the impatient Empress hesitated. A second obstacle deterred her.
This time it was a question for physicians not clergymen to settle.
Lestocq was a physician and Lestocq had serious reservations regarding
the immediate marriage of the Grand Duke. Stehlin says that Lestocq
advised the Empress to wait at least another year while other memoirs
say that the Hanover physician told the Empress to postpone the boy’s
marriage until he was twenty-one. It was plain to all observers that
the boy was under-sized and under-developed for his age. The English
ambassador said of him, “He looks very puny and he is not taller
at fourteen than the generality of children, not remarkably small,
are at ten.” The worst of it was that he did not improve in his new
environment.

The Grand Duke’s vitality was low. Whenever anything went wrong, he
fell ill and he recovered but slowly. The morbid relation between
himself and his governor Brümmer continued unabated under the auspices
of his adoring but ignorant aunt. Scenes of violence took place which
made the amiable Stehlin’s hair stand on end but which he concealed
from the easy-going Empress. His pupil was terrorized and browbeaten
by the Prussian officer and the foolish boy had no other idea of
self-defense than to fight back with blustering impotent rage. He went
so far as to threaten Brümmer with his dagger. Undoubtedly the weak boy
could be irritating.

Just before Christmas 1743, Peter fell desperately ill. His aunt was
in a panic; death had robbed her so often. Were all her plans to be
brought to naught on the eve of their bright fulfilment? She cast all
caution to the winds and decided to bring the German Princess to Russia
at once. Brümmer was sent to write a letter inviting the mother and
daughter for a visit. Scarcely was this letter dispatched than Brümmer
was sent to write another bidding the ladies to make haste. Elisabeth
was off; nothing could stop her now. Her customary indolence laid
aside, she summoned Brümmer again after a few days had elapsed and
demanded to know whether the guests from Zerbst were not already on
their way. The officer played his part between the two ladies well. To
the Empress he said that the Princess of Zerbst wished only for wings
to come flying to her Majesty. To the Princess of Zerbst he wrote that
the invitation was due to his devoted services on behalf of the House
of Holstein. He continued to bully the prospective bridegroom just as
much as ever.


                                   2

While Brümmer’s letter was traveling from Petersburg to Berlin,
the Stettin family was spending Christmas in Zerbst with Uncle
Johann Ludwig. There were three children at this time: Fike, Fritz
and Lischen, the baby who had been named for the glorious Russian
kinswoman. Christmas at Zerbst was a sober Lutheran Festival with
much hymn singing in which Fike did not shine, and gifts of handiwork
in which she excelled. Came Sylvesterabend, when the future can be
glimpsed in candle-flames, in bits of molten lead, and similar strange
messengers of fate. It was a night for Fräulein Khayn to see ghosts
if she ever saw them, for a courier was riding from Berlin to Zerbst
bearing destiny in the form of Brümmer’s letter.

On the morning of New Year’s day the family all went to church. When
the bells began to ring the little procession emerged from the castle,
two stiff old men and a frail little nine-year-old boy accompanied
by their numerous women folk, among whom the youthful Sophie walked
as tall as any of them. It was time that she should be married, but
dowerless and plain how was she to find a husband? Fike’s thoughts
were at this time fixed on her Uncle George, a younger brother of her
mother’s who had been paying her court. Although the Princess of Zerbst
had encouraged her brother’s suit, viewing him favorably as a bird in
the hand, the melancholy George had not really asked his niece to marry
him. Still, on this New Year’s day Fike’s thoughts were with her uncle
as she sang out of key with the others the long, chanting hymns of the
Lutheran service.

While the family sat at dinner the courier arrived. A package of
letters was handed to the General who tore off the outside covering and
gave a thick missive to his wife. As the Princess read, her daughter
sitting next to her caught sight of the words “... with the Princess
your eldest daughter.” From that moment Uncle George was forgotten.
The shrewd girl guessed the contents of the twelve-page letter in her
mother’s hands although nothing was said to her. Her parents shut
themselves up in the library for three days with ostentatious secrecy
while the rest of the household buzzed with excitement. Behind the
closed doors the old General was putting up a stubborn resistance. He
did not wish to send his daughter to Russia for the same reason that
Frederick did not wish to send his sister there.

“At the express and particular command of her Imperial Highness,” said
Brümmer’s letter, “I have to inform you, Madame, that the Empress
wishes that your Highness accompanied by the Princess your eldest
daughter, shall come hither as soon as possible and without loss of
time and repair to whatever place the Imperial Court at the moment may
be. Your Highness is too clever not to understand the true meaning of
the impatience of the Empress to see you here as well as the Princess
your daughter of whom report has said so much that is lovely. There are
times when the voice of the world is not other than the voice of God.

“At the same time our incomparable Monarch has expressly charged me to
inform your Highness that his Highness, your consort, shall under no
circumstances come with you. Her Majesty has very important reasons
for wishing it so. A word from your Highness will, I believe, be all
that is necessary to fulfill the will of our divine Empress.” Brümmer
enclosed an order for ten thousand rubles payable in Berlin and another
credit for two thousand rubles payable in Petersburg.

A second courier arrived two hours later bringing a letter from King
Frederick who, like Brümmer, took all the credit for the invitation,
urged the need of secrecy, and repeated the injunction of the Empress
about leaving the General at home. Elisabeth Petrovna guessed that
Fike’s father would be a hindrance to her plans. She had bought off
the guardian of Karl Peter Ulrich by transferring to him the boy’s own
claim to the Swedish throne. In the same canny spirit, she limited her
dealings to the mother of the bride whom she wanted for the Grand Duke
and excluded the girl’s father from any share in the negotiations.
Having put the General firmly in his place she left it to his
over-lord, the King of Prussia, to keep him there. Even had the Prince
been a man of aggressive character, which he certainly was not, his
hands could not have been tied more effectively.

Three days sufficed to demolish the General’s resistance. On the fourth
of January, the Princess Johanna Elisabeth penned her replies to the
letters. Her correspondence with Elisabeth has unfortunately been lost;
the Empress was notoriously careless with letters. In her answer to
Frederick the Princess declared her intention of bowing to the will
of Providence and of following the instructions of the Empress to the
last detail excepting one. “I understand completely the necessity for
secrecy which your Majesty has recommended. Yet for various reasons,
which can be more easily understood than written, I have been obliged
to initiate the Prince, whose discretion I will guarantee, into the
secret. I hope thereby to have merited no reproach.” She had really
considered the possibility of taking Fike off to Russia without her
father’s knowledge.

Preparations for the journey were simple. The trousseau of the German
Princess consisted of little more than a traveling apprentice might
have carried in his bundle. Three dresses, a dozen chemises, and as
many handkerchiefs were all that Fike had to pack for that mid-winter
journey. The Baroness von Prinzen who afterwards said in her memoirs
that she had helped Catherine the Great to pack her trunks for Russia
rather overstated the case. The packing of Fike’s trunks must have
been a simple matter. It was a source of life-long chagrin to her
that she came to Russia without a bridal chest. Her mother at least
had had that. She had no bed-linen of her own and was obliged to use
her mother’s sheets. No deeper humiliation for a German bride can
be imagined. Even as an old woman Fike could not forget it. It was
something which she had always to make up. Because she had come without
sheets to Russia she was obliged to put through the Partition of Poland.

On the 10th of January, 1744, Fike’s mother set forth, ostensibly
for the Berlin Carnival. The party consisted of the General, who was
to accompany them as far as Schwedt, the Princess and her daughter,
two attendant Fräuleins, an officer named Lattorf, and a cook. They
made their first stop in Berlin. The Princess hastened to an audience
with the King and Minister von Podewils who invested her with the
responsibility of furthering the Prussian cause with the Russian
Empress.

In Berlin, the Princess continued as formerly to neglect her daughter.
Her tactlessness was illustrated by an incident described in Fike’s
memoirs. “When the King of Prussia, who knew exactly the object of the
journey, learned that I had arrived in Berlin, he wished without fail
to see me. My mother said I was ill. Two days later he caused her to be
invited to dinner with the Queen, his consort, and expressly requested
her to bring me with her. My mother promised but when the time came
she went alone to the court. When the King saw her he inquired about
me. She replied that I was ill. Whereupon he replied that he well knew
that it was not true. Then she said that I was not dressed for court,
to which he answered that he would postpone the dinner for me until the
next day. Finally, my mother said that I had no court dress. He ordered
that one of his sisters should send me one. At last my mother saw there
was no way out of it and sent me word that I should dress myself and
come to the palace.”

It was late in the afternoon when Cinderella arrived. During supper she
sat at the right hand of the King, who paid her elaborate eighteenth
century compliments. The shy girl blushed furiously, but kept her head.
It was the one and only meeting of these two great monarchs. Between
the Princess of fourteen and the King of thirty-one no vital contact
was made; it was an official occasion. But his flattery lingered with
her always like a pleasant dream. She only hated sister Ulrica, who was
too precious to be sent to Russia and whose dress the King had offered
to lend her.

In the middle of January, the Princess’s coach rolled out of Berlin.
Lumbering through the deep frozen ruts of the outer streets, it took
a northerly direction as if homeward bound for Stettin. The snowless
winter obliged the party to travel on wheels as far as Riga, while the
bitter winds sweeping down from the Baltic waters made the journey a
severe ordeal. They lost no time, however. Frederick had ordered fresh
relays of horses at every post. No expense had been spared; were not
the rubles of the Russian Empress to pay for everything? But real
comfort was not procurable at any price. Few travellers, except the
couriers, took the post road from Berlin to Petersburg at this time of
the year. The quarters in which the party sought their night’s lodging
were just endurable. “As the rooms in the stations were not heated,”
the Princess wrote her husband, “we were obliged to go into the common
room which was not unlike a pig-sty; the master and mistress, the house
dog, the cock and the children,--children everywhere, in cradles, in
beds, on the stove, on mattresses--everything was rolled together in
disorder like weeds and roots. There was nothing else to be done; I
ordered a bench to be brought and lay down in the middle of the room.”

In spite of the cold and discomfort, they hastened onward, through the
short days and the long nights. The Princess wrote her husband about an
encounter with robbers but her daughter’s description of the journey
contains no reference to any adventure of this kind. More exciting
for Fike was the great comet of 1744 which they saw while crossing
Courland. Against the background of the long black nights and the
tedium of the never-ending journey, accented by the hoof-beats of the
flying horses, the comet lingered in the girl’s memory as something
awful and unforgettable. The cold grew worse and worse. The ladies wore
woollen masks to keep their faces from freezing. Fike’s feet succumbed
to the frost and were so swollen that she had to be carried to and from
the carriage. She also made herself ill drinking beer. “In these last
days I had a little indigestion,” she wrote to dear Papa, “but it has
had no further consequences. I was partly myself to blame because I
had drunk all the beer I could find along the way. Dear Mama has put a
stop to that, and I am well again.” This was priggish Fike travelling
to Russia in her fifteenth year. She obeyed her dear Mama but dear Papa
could understand her better about the beer.

Having said goodbye at Schwedt, the General returned to Stettin with
his secret. The town marked the disappearance of his wife and daughter
and rumors began to circulate. They made the Prince uncomfortable.
He wrote a letter which overtook the Princess at Köslin and asked
permission to announce the journey in the newspapers. But the Princess
said no. “It seems to me essential that you should hold back the
announcement in the newspapers of my journey until I have passed Memel.
Likewise the prayers for a safe journey which you plan to have said in
the churches of Zerbst must be postponed.” As far as Memel, she felt
that she could manage the trip without any special aid from Providence.
From Königsberg she wrote to Fike’s grandmother, who drew a yearly
pension of ten thousand rubles from the Russian Empress. The aged
Duchess was the only one of Sophie’s relatives who did not join the
protest against the marriage. The Abbess of Quedlinburg and the Duchess
of Brunswick were outraged. They heaped reproaches on the head of the
General whom, without regard to justice, they made the scapegoat for
his wife’s proceedings. They bombarded the Prince with long letters
which reminded him of the tragic fate of Princess Charlotte who had
married Alexei Petrovich and the sad plight of the Brunswick family
imprisoned by Elisabeth. The Prince was harassed by Holstein and Anhalt
relatives at the same time, since he had luckily remained where both
sides of the family could get at him and relieve their feelings. The
Princess Johanna Elisabeth was not surprised; she had not expected
their support.

“I did not doubt,” she wrote to her husband, “that our journey to
Moscow would stir up a storm. Religion and rivalry give the best
grounds for that. But the Tante [the Abbess] as little as we would have
had the power to turn aside the wise decrees of Providence. We cannot
ascribe my journey here and the entire circumstance to anything else
and we can be assured that the All-Wise One fulfils thereby purposes
for us inscrutable.” To arguments like this the pious General had no
reply. But still disturbed by memories of the unhappy marriage of
Princess Charlotte, he asked his wife to stiffen the terms on Sophie’s
behalf in the marriage contract. He wanted for his daughter the
guarantee of a pension with a home if possible in Holstein if not in
Livonia. Nothing of the kind was ever even discussed by his wife after
her arrival in Russia.

Thanks to the foresight of the Princess, none of this opposition was
started until mother and daughter were safe beyond the Russian border.
As far as Riga, the Princess travelled under the name of the Countess
of Rheinbeck, the cognomen which Brümmer had suggested for the purpose.
In Fike’s memoirs, she says that her mother assumed a fictitious name
for the journey but she could no longer remember it. At Riga the
travellers were met by escorts, compliments and presents. “At mid-day,”
wrote the Princess, “I met Chamberlain Narishkin, whom her Imperial
Majesty had placed at the head of a guard of honor that came to meet
me as a mark of distinction. He brought me letters and greetings from
her Majesty who overwhelmed me with honors and compliments. A quarter
of a mile from the city I was met by Vice-Governor Prince Dolgorukov.
We drove across the ice of the Dwina. As the carriage in which I was
sitting was just beyond the end of the great bridge, the first salvo
was fired from the great guns on the fortresses. I found ready to wrap
us in the sleigh two splendid sables covered with gold brocade for my
daughter and myself, two collars of the same fur and a coverlet of
another fur, quite as beautiful.”

Wrapped in their rich sables, the travellers climbed into the long
Russian sleigh, designed by Peter the Great, and flew over the snowy
chaussées that led to Petersburg. On a brittle February day they
arrived at the Winter Palace. The Empress and the court had gone away
to Moscow. Petersburg was empty, but a small group of courtiers had
remained to welcome the German guests. The Princess was more than
bedazzled by the reception they gave her. “It seems as if I were in
the suite of her Imperial Majesty or of some great monarch. It does
not seem real that all this can happen to poor me, for whom at only a
few places a drum was ever stirred and at others not even that. Here
everything goes on in such magnificent and respectful style that it
seemed to me then and now at the sight of the luxury surrounding me as
if it all were only a dream.”

Fike’s memories of her arrival in Petersburg are appropriate to a
fourteen-year-old girl. She remembered the names of the four young
ladies of honor who came forward to welcome her and the names of
the men they subsequently married; the fourteen elephants which the
Shah of Persia had given to the Empress and which actually performed
tricks in the snowy palace court-yard; the carnival and the wonderful
coasting expedition led by Semion Kyrilovich Narishkin; above all she
remembered and described to the last knot and ringlet the extraordinary
style of hair-dressing favored by her new Russian friends. Once in
the Petersburg palace, the girl promptly forgot all the hardships of
the journey. Her mother, a little tired but ever busy with her pen,
continued her stream of correspondence with Zerbst and Berlin. “Fike
bears the fatigue better than I, yet we are both well, praise be to
God. May He continue to guide and direct us.” This to her husband, the
General; to King Frederick, she wrote rather less piously: “Considering
the hardships of the season, the journey and the change of air, I
should need to have an iron constitution to keep up my resistance. My
daughter is more fortunate. Her youth supports her health and like
young soldiers who scorn danger because they know nothing about it, she
delights in the splendor by which she is surrounded.”

In some subtle way, the conquering spirit of the Princess of Zerbst
began to fail her as soon as she arrived in Russia. It was equally
evident that Fike, from the moment when Narishkin helped her with a
jest into the sleigh at Riga, was swimming with the current. Not that
the Princess was aware of falling behind in the race. Courageous and
confident, she attacked the great task before her, her diplomatic
mission from King Frederick and von Podewils. She had found everything
in Petersburg just as they had said. Things had to be changed.
Bestushev, the enemy of Prussia, must go. While her mother pursued
these political interests, Fike was learning to stand on her own feet
in a strange environment. For the first time she allowed herself the
luxury of a cold-blooded judgment of the Princess’s character. It
happened on the journey from Petersburg to Moscow.

“After the departure from Petersburg,” says Fike, “the sleigh in which
my mother and I were traveling struck in turning against a house,
whereby an iron hook became dislodged and fell, striking my mother
on the head and shoulder. She insisted that she was severely hurt
but outwardly there was nothing to be seen, not even a bruise. This
incident delayed our journey by several hours.” In describing the
accident, her mother says, “I believed myself to be wounded but I was
not. The blow had struck with full strength against the fur; otherwise,
without doubt, my head, neck and arm would have been crushed.” Only the
costly furs given by the Empress had saved her.

With this one interruption, the train of thirty sleighs, each drawn
by ten horses, dashed onward without pause. They intended to arrive
in Moscow before the Grand Duke’s birthday, on the twenty-first of
February. The way was prepared. Bonfires burned at night along the
snowy highway. Post-stations sprang up suddenly out of the snow-drifts,
ready with hot coffee and fish soup, while fresh horses stood waiting
in their dugas. The excitement was intense. At four o’clock on the
third day, the flying train came suddenly to a halt within seventy
versts of Moscow. An envoy from the Empress met the party here with
the request that they should delay their entrance into Moscow until
after darkness had fallen. While they waited, the travellers arrayed
themselves with as much care as possible. Fike put on a close-fitting
dress of rose-colored moiré silk, trimmed with silver.

The horses were again put to the sleighs, this time sixteen instead
of ten to each, and the train leaped forward. Sievers, the Empress’s
envoy, seated himself beside the Princess of Zerbst, and urged the
coachman forward at every breath in true Russian style. The procession
drew up before the Golovin Palace at eight o’clock in the evening. It
was just six weeks since the country cousins had driven with so much
caution and secrecy out of the little Lutheran town of Zerbst.

They were received on the stairway by the Prince von Hessen-Homberg,
General Adjutant of the Empress, who conducted them to their chambers.
Scarcely had they laid aside their heavy sables when the Grand Duke
came running into their room, unable longer to control his impatience
to see them. At ten o’clock Lestocq appeared with greeting and a
summons from the Empress. Attended by the Prince von Hessen-Homberg
and the Grand Duke, the two Princesses made their way to the Empress’s
reception room. As they passed from room to room, the court ladies
and gentlemen were presented and bowed low to them. “It is impossible
to say how all those present stared at these Germans from head to
foot,” wrote the Princess to her husband. Yet those musty old aunts at
Quedlinburg who opposed the journey would have wished the Princess of
Zerbst to forego this triumph.

The Empress advanced to her threshold to meet them. “She allowed me,”
exulted the Princess, “scarcely time to take off my gloves and embraced
me, I must say, with tenderness.” In rhetorical French, the Princess
delivered an address of gratitude for all the Empress had done for the
Holstein-Gottorp family. The Empress replied that her own blood was
not more dear to her than that of the Princess and that all she had
done was nothing in comparison with what she intended to do. It was a
meeting of Greek with Greek. Fike was at last presented and embraced.
The Empress invited the company to be seated, but, since she herself
was too excited to sit down, nobody else could do so. The reception
lasted for half an hour. At one point the Empress abruptly left the
room to conceal the tears she was obliged to shed. They were called
forth by the strong resemblance between the Princess Johanna Elisabeth
and her deceased brother once betrothed to the Empress Elisabeth.
Fike’s memoirs say nothing of these tears, although her mother was much
affected by them.

Fike preserved for us, however, the appearance of the Empress at this
time: “More than anything else, I was astonished by her great height,”
she says. “I must say one could not behold her for the first time
without astonishment at her beauty and her majesty. She was tall and,
though rather stout, it did not detract, as no lack of freedom was
noticeable in her movements. Her head was very beautiful. On this day
she wore an enormous hoop-skirt, which she loved to do when she made
a grand toilette and which she only did when she showed herself in
public. Her dress was of shimmering silver taffeta trimmed with gold
lace; she wore a black feather on her head standing upright a little
to one side with many diamonds in a coiffure of her own hair.” The
young girl in the rose-colored moiré frock never forgot the picture.

The next morning, the Princess and her daughter were summoned to the
audience chamber by the Empress. “A few moments later, the Empress
in grand attire came from her dressing-room. She wore a brown dress
embroidered in silver and quite, that is as far as head, neck and waist
were concerned, covered with jewels.” She presented the ribbon and star
of Saint Catherine to her guests. Then she passed on to mass. When
they next saw her, she was on her way to confession; the next time, to
communion. A few days later, on her way to the Troitsky Monastery, she
came to say farewell “in a long-sleeved gown of black velvet adorned
with all the Russian orders; that is, the order of Saint Andrew as a
scarf, of Saint Alexander about the neck, and of Saint Catherine on
the left side.” There seemed no possible limit to all this grandeur.
Elisabeth had ten thousand dresses and five thousand pairs of shoes.

But Fike, her mother’s own child, was not over-awed. She expanded in an
atmosphere where ostentation was the rule. With precocious tact, which
she owed either to her own glands or to Babet Cardel but scarcely to
her mother, she established herself securely in this glittering and
treacherous environment.


                                   4

Prince Christian August had given his daughter a book as a parting
gift. It was a treatise by a professor at Halle which discussed
at tedious length the differences between religious creeds. He
had prepared to go with this book a memorandum of instructions for
his daughter’s use. It was headed: “Pro Memoria, so ich meiner
gemahlen mitgegeben.” Somewhere along the route, how attentively
can be imagined, Fike had read this document, and had written one
of her primmest letters to dear Papa thanking him for his “gracious
instructions.” The first half of the memorandum was taken up with
religious counsel and the second half with her future marriage. The
General’s style is an awkward contrast to the fluent preciosity of his
wife. He addressed his daughter in the third person and outlined her
future duties thus:

“Next to the Empress, her Majesty, she has to respect the Grand Duke
above all as her Lord, Father, and Sovereign; and withal to win by care
and tenderness at every opportunity his confidence and love. Her Lord
and His will are to be preferred to all the pleasures and treasures of
the world; and do nothing which he dislikes or which causes him only a
little pain; and still less to insist on her own will.

“Never to enter into familiarity or badinage, but always have respect
as much as possible.

“To regard the domestics and favorites of her Lord with a gracious
mien; not to demand the services of her Lord but ever to respond to the
favor and love of her Lord.

“To speak with no one alone in the audience chamber and to conduct
herself always according to etiquette there.

“To detest and avoid playing cards for high stakes, which is a mark of
avarice and self-interest.

“To take charge herself of the pocket money which may be given her,
to guard it and to pay it out gradually to a servant on an account,
in order that she may not submit herself to the trusteeship of a
governess; to employ it for her use and pleasure, and with it to do
good, in order that she may win for herself and not for others instead
of her the love and inclination of her dependents.

“To intercede for no one, because one may not understand the laws and a
one-sided report cannot be trusted, and the side discriminated against
becomes a disgruntled enemy; and he whom one helps out with such
intercessions forgets the good deed and goes and sins again.

“Especially to enter into no affairs of government in order not to
irritate the Senate.”

At fifteen Fike was not mature enough to appreciate the irony of this
document and probably she never came to be. The abject submissiveness
which her father thought appropriate to her status as a wife had
certainly never been exemplified by her vivacious mother. She must have
been aware that her father played a minor part in the family life at
Stettin and at Zerbst, but it was a condition in her little world which
from sheer familiarity seemed only natural. What could be more normal
than that the man of the family should be kept in leading strings? Few
girls in her situation would have contrasted her father’s theories with
his actions and Fike certainly did not.

Frederick the Great always kept the delusion that he had played the
chief rôle in this German-Russian marriage. But he over-estimated his
actual part. If Elisabeth had found it necessary to spirit the young
Princess away against his royal will she would have done so. Since it
was not necessary she welcomed his timely and useful aid. At the right
moment Frederick promoted Prince Christian August to the post of Field
Marshal, and after Fike had gone to Russia he helped to reconcile her
father to her conversion. “My good Prince of Zerbst was very restive on
this point,” he wrote. “I had a great deal of trouble in overcoming his
religious scruples. He responded to all my representations with: ‘Meine
Tochter nicht Griechisch werden!’” His struggles died away gradually
under the tactful treatment of his free-thinking King who persuaded
him that Greek and Lutheran were the same. “Lutherisch-Griechisch,
Griechisch-Lutherisch, das gehet an,” the submissive General repeated.
If the King of Prussia said so what else could a Prussian officer reply?

The marriage was made by three women. It was begun by the Princess
of Zerbst and the Empress of Russia and carried through by the
fifteen-year-old Fike who took charge of the campaign herself when
her mother’s tactics failed. None of the men-folk who might have been
expected to influence the situation did so. Those like Lestocq and the
Prince of Zerbst who offered contrary advice were over-ridden. The
others were permitted to play the part of benevolent bystanders.




                             [Illustration]




                                   V

                         FIKE BECOMES CATHERINE


“My daughter,” wrote Fike’s father, “is already so well grounded in her
religion that she knows the principles of the true redeeming faith, and
that no one can win or attain it by his own works, vows or the words of
the saints, but that all must proceed alone from the merit of Christ,
the Son of God. Whatever resembles this faith she can herself prove and
accept; the other not.... To compel or persuade my daughter to accept
a strange religion in which she herself finds errors is never to be
advised.... And rather eventually to give up the regency than to suffer
offense in her conscience.”

These solemn words made a deep impression on the girl. The admonitions
which related to her marriage, the Empress, and the Senate were not
so serious. She felt herself able to cope with these concrete forces
but the abstraction called conscience is a more terrifying thing. “I
beseech you,” she wrote, replying to her father in his own vein, “to be
assured that your admonitions and precepts will be forever implanted
within my heart, as is the seed-corn of our holy religion in my soul.
I pray God to give me the strength which I need to withstand the
temptations to which I shall be subjected. Through the prayers of your
Highness and of my dear mother, God will grant me this grace which my
youth and weakness cannot give.”

Fike still believed when she penned these lines that she would be
acceptable in Russia as an Evangelical Grand Duchess. In common with
her God-fearing father she put her trust in the precedent supplied
by the Grand Duchess Charlotte. Their trust was misplaced. Peter the
Great was liberal in religious matters, but his daughter was orthodox.
Peter did not himself go to church and took pleasure in exposing the
sham miracles of the wonder-working Virgins of Russia who were able to
shed real tears before their worshippers. His daughter did not inherit
his skeptical spirit. She was loyal to the Russian Church and a lover
of miracles. Her mother’s will provided that no one should occupy the
Russian throne who did not profess the orthodox faith. Fike perceived
the finality of this at once. “From my entrance into the empire,” she
said, “I had been firmly convinced that the heavenly crown could not
be separated from the earthly one.” On the threshold of her new life
she was plunged into a conflict with her conscience. She wrestled with
temptation and the scars of her struggle remained with her through life.

“The change of religion,” wrote Mardefeld to King Frederick, “gives the
Princess infinite pain and her tears flow abundantly when she is alone
with persons of whom she is not suspicious. Nevertheless ambition is
gaining finally the upper hand.” Remembering the religious conflict
of his own youth, Frederick was alarmed. But he put his faith in the
Princess Johanna Elisabeth. “It only remains, Madame, for me to beg
you to overcome the repugnance of your daughter for the Greek Church,
after which you will have crowned your work.”

Fike was converted by Simon Todorsky. Having studied four years at
the University of Halle, at that time a hot-bed of theology, he knew
the language of Luther well. What was more to the point in dealing
with the young person from Zerbst, Todorsky was familiar with the
subtleties of higher criticism which the intellectuals of Halle had
recently invented. These were things of which good Pastor Wagner,
who, after all, was only an army chaplain, had never even dreamed.
With the assistance of Todorsky’s hair-splitting, Fike was able to
see that there was very little real difference between the Lutheran
and the Greek Church. If only her father had not continued to harry
her conscience. “Thou shouldest not take this trial frivolously,”
he wrote, “must search thyself with care whether thou art really in
thy heart inspired by inclination; or whether, perhaps, without thy
being aware of it, the marks of favor shown thee by the Empress and
other high-placed persons have influenced thee in that direction. We
human beings often see only that which is before our eyes. But God in
His infinite justice searches the heart and our secret motives, and
manifests accordingly to us His mercy.”

As the awful shades of Judgment Day closed about her, Fike fell ill.
Once before in childhood she had succumbed to an attack of religious
terror complicated by pneumonia. In Russia she repeated the experience.
“The physicians ascribe the disease,” wrote her mother, “to the
inflaming of the blood caused by the hard journey.” For twenty-seven
days the child hovered between life and death. In unconsciousness and
delirium she made the decision which her father had urged her to weigh
so carefully. Believing that Fike might die, the Princess suggested
that a Lutheran clergyman should be called to her bedside. But the
sick girl said, coming for a moment to consciousness, “Why? Call Simon
Todorsky rather. I would like to speak with him.” It was a triumph of
diplomacy, anyway presence of mind which was to carry Fike through
every crisis of her life.

During her convalescence, Fike resumed her lessons with the Russian
priest, a fact which her mother carefully concealed from the Prince
of Zerbst. As soon as she was able to hold a pen, she wrote a stiff
respectful letter to her father asking permission to change her
religion. She sent her greetings to Uncle Johann Ludwig and promised to
write to him by the next post. “My hand is still very weak,” she said,
“so that I cannot do it to-day.” The two old Puritans at Zerbst with
their white wigs and pious ways were vastly important to Fike although
nobody else felt that they had to be conciliated.

In after years, when she had become Catherine the Great, Fike made
light of the whole business of conversion. When her daughter-in-law had
to go through the same experience, she spoke of it merely as a routine
chore. “As soon as we have her here we shall go about the conversion.
In order to convince her, we shall need about fourteen days. How much
time will be needed to teach her to read the confession of faith
correctly and distinctly in Russian, I do not know.” The fourteen
days were taken from Fike’s own experience; it was after two weeks of
Todorsky’s hair-splitting dogma that she had succumbed to pneumonia and
the temptings of ambition. Though she could speak of her conversion so
casually in after life it had almost killed her at the time. The great
crimes of which she was accused as Empress made less impression on her
conscience. As Catherine the Great she identified herself with Henri
le Grand of France, that brilliant wayward monarch who changed his
religion for the sake of a crown. It was only one of many ways in which
she tried to justify her departure from her father’s church.

On the twenty-eighth of June, pale from a three days’ fast, Fike was
confirmed and re-christened. The Empress had a gown made for her
exactly like her own, of red _gros de Tour_ worked with silver. Her
godmother was the aged Abbess of the Novodeviche Convent, bowed with
years and steeped in sanctity. The Empress with her fondness for
tableaux, had arranged all. Krazny, the gorgeous red so beloved by the
Russians, dominated the scene. Kneeling on a big square cushion, the
convert recited the creed in a clear unfaltering voice. She had learned
it, she says, “by heart, like a parrot.” Indeed she had learned it
twice, for Simon Todorsky, the priest, had taught her the Ukrainian
pronounciation, and Basil Adadurov, the tutor, had taught her the
Russian. For the public ceremony she chose the Russian. As her clear
young voice rang out in the first response, the tears of the assembled
company gushed forth. Fike maintained her self-control, which gave an
impression of deep sincerity and religious fervor and was much praised.
“Her bearing from the moment when she first entered the church,” wrote
her mother, “and throughout the entire ceremony was so full of nobility
and dignity that I should have admired her had she not been to me that
which she is.”

Standing before her in embroidered and bejewelled robes, the
Archbishop of Novgorod intoned: “Wherefore art thou come to the Holy
Orthodox Church of God and what seekest thou from her?” And Fike
recited in stereo-typed phrases a long melodious creed, in which among
other things she professed: “I believe and confess that faith alone
is not sufficient for our justification, but that good works also
which proceed from faith and charity, withal as badges of Christ are
necessary to salvation; without the same faith is dead according to the
testimony of holy writ....

“I believe and confess that the pictures of Christ and the mother of
God, the Virgin Mary, as those of other saints should be preserved and
should be duly venerated, but should not be worshipped.”

Fike’s mother sent an enthusiastic but discreet description of the
ceremony to her spouse. It was a detail to her that her daughter’s name
had been changed, but the girl’s father and her aunts would probably
be hurt. The name Sophie was a good Russian name, none better, but
it happened to be that of the rebellious sister whom Peter the Great
had locked up in a convent. Therefore Elisabeth hated it. So Fike was
baptized Catherine Alexeievna for Elisabeth’s mother and Sophie Auguste
Friedrike ceased to exist. The Princess of Zerbst broke the news to
her husband as tactfully as possible. “In order to seal publicly such
a confirmation,” she wrote, “a name is added; our daughter will be
Catherine and the Alexeievna follows the custom of the country and
means daughter of August; for the name August, according to the dialect
here, can not be rendered other than Alexei.” The Princess of Zerbst
had taken lessons in the Russian language to please the Empress but her
progress had not been so great. It is possible that she believed that
August and Alexei were the same in Russian though probably she knew
better. In any case her little fiction would scarcely be discovered by
the German General. The rumblings from Zerbst and Stettin died down.
The Prince was pleased because his daughter was a Grand Duchess and
addressed her by this sonorous title. The Princess continued to call
her daughter Fike and carped at her husband for adopting the title
of Grand Duchess. “Fike will think that you no longer love her,” she
wrote. But the Prince continued to be respectful. As his daughter had
once trusted him to understand her weakness for beer he now trusted her
to understand his weakness for etiquette. He was swaggering for them
both.

After her confirmation, Catherine Alexeievna followed the Empress from
cloister to cloister, for Elisabeth had come to spend more and more
of her time as a pious pilgrim. She had apartments in the Troitsky
Monastery where she sometimes lived with her court. The Abbot of
Troitsky and the Bishops of Moscow and Petersburg accompanied her
everywhere. With her three priests, she appeared in the box at the
opera and even at masquerade balls. The young Grand Duchess could not
imagine good Pastor Wagner in the rôle of polite escort and cavalier.
Her new church had undreamed-of possibilities of romance. Kiev, which
she visited with her aunt, seemed a kind of orthodox Arabian Nights.
“Here as in all cities which we had touched since Moscow,” she wrote,
“the clergy of Kiev came to meet us. As soon as the church banners were
visible, we left the carriages and entered the city on foot behind
the cross. The Empress betook herself to the Petchersky Cloister and
entered the church containing the wonder-working portrait of the Holy
Virgin said to have been painted by Saint Lukas. Never in my whole life
have I been so impressed as by the magnificent splendor of the church,
in which all the saints’ pictures were covered with gold, silver and
jewels....”

“Toward the end of our stay in Kiev, the Empress visited with us a
monastery where a comedy was to be played. The performance began
at seven in the evening. We had to go through the church to reach
the theatre. The play consisted really of several plays: there were
prologues, ballets, a piece in which Marcus Aurelius had his favorite
hanged, a battle in which Cossacks fought with the Poles, a fishing
scene on the Dnieper, and choruses without number. The Empress held out
until about two o’clock in the morning; then she sent to ask whether
it would not end soon. The answer came back that only half of the
performance had been given but if her Majesty so ordered they would
stop at once. She replied that they should finish soon; they begged
only for permission to burn some fire-works....”

Such was Christianity in Russia: images covered with gold and
silver, pieces about a pagan named Marcus Aurelius, and outbursts of
fire-works. As the pupil of Pastor Wagner, and the daughter of her
father, Catherine could not fail to realize that these things proceeded
from Satan and from Satan alone. She knew though she dared not admit
it that they were idolatrous. And yet she reveled in them. Dr. Martin
Luther had thrown an ink-stand at the Devil when he put his head
through the window. Every true Christian knew the Evil One on sight
and made short shrift of him. The Prince of Zerbst, her father, had
once encountered him. It was during a visit of the Prince at Rome that
the Pope had tempted him to become a Catholic. But the Prince had not
yielded to the blandishments of anti-Christ because, like the heroic
Doctor Luther, he recognized the Wicked One in spite of his pompous
disguise. The Prince of Zerbst returned to his army and his church
unharmed. As a matter of fact it is doubtful whether he had ever seen
Rome and still more doubtful whether the Pope had paid any attention to
an obscure German Protestant. But legend is as good as history if the
legend is believed, and the Prince’s daughter had been brought up to
admire this heroic steadfastness of her father’s. Of course the Russian
Church was like the Lutheran and not the Roman, as Father Todorsky
had explained to her and as she had explained to dear Papa. Catherine
Alexeievna, however, rebaptized in the Greek faith, found it tactful to
conceal a great deal from her father about her new faith and the things
the Russians did in the name of their religion.


                                   2

The Empress’s attachment to the young Princess had been strengthened
by her illness, while the two elder women had been alienated from
each other. When Catherine fell ill the Empress was sojourning in her
Troitsky retreat. The court physician rushed to the sick girl’s aid and
prepared to bleed her. To their astonishment the Princess of Zerbst
forbade the operation. She had always been panicky about blood-letting,
and she stubbornly refused to have her daughter bled. The doctors were
outraged. They sent a messenger in haste to their Empress who could not
believe her ears. She ordered her carriage and her favorite and posted
to Moscow.

Arriving after candle-light, Elisabeth and Razumovsky entered the
sick-room and found the patient unconscious. The Empress seated herself
on the side of the bed, took the girl in her arms, and told the doctors
to go ahead. The mother was summarily excluded from the room and
Lestocq bolted the door. During her illness, Catherine was bled sixteen
times, often as much as four times a day. Her mother’s opposition was
set down by the court as showing a lack of natural maternal affection.
The Empress praised the girl’s courage and presented her with a pair of
ear-rings and a necklace worth twenty-five thousand rubles. She removed
the Princess of Zerbst as head nurse and put the Countess Rumiantsov in
her place. The chasm between the mother and daughter was broadening.

Though hurt by all these slights, the Princess of Zerbst could not
learn by experience. The climax of her tactlessness came at Easter.
Catherine had a piece of blue and silver brocade which Uncle Johann
Ludwig had given to her in parting, a rich fabric woven by one of
the looms of Zerbst. Her mother coveted the piece and at last sent
a messenger to ask for it outright. Catherine resigned her treasure
reluctantly, which the Countess Rumiantsov, who acted as spy as well
as nurse, observed and reported to the Empress. Elisabeth forthwith
sent two gorgeous lengths of stuff to the convalescent girl and openly
expressed her opinion of this thoughtless mother. Before they had been
in Russia two months, Catherine had won an ally in the Empress while
her mother had created in her a bitter enemy.

In the meantime the foreign offices of Prussia, France and Sweden were
leaning hard on the Princess of Zerbst to whom they looked for aid
in forming an alliance with Russia. The Princess was fascinated by
her political mission and did not realize that her mismanagement of
her daughter’s affairs failed to help the cause of Prussia with the
Empress. The Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bestushev, favored an
alliance with Austria against Prussia. He called the King of Prussia
“predatory” and the King of Prussia called Bestushev “corrupt.” History
has shown that both gentlemen were correct.

Bestushev’s influence with Elisabeth was supreme because he had been
a protégé of her father’s. At fifteen he had been sent abroad and
educated by Peter the Great. He then entered the diplomatic service and
lived for twenty years or more in western Europe. Bestushev was one of
the most versatile and gifted Russians of his day. His name was known
throughout Europe as the inventor of a medicine called Bestushev’s
Drops, which was popularly regarded both as an elixir of life and also
as a healing dose for hysterical ladies. When Catherine the Great
ascended the throne, she bought the formula for Bestushev’s Drops and
published it as a benefaction to the human race. With all her scorn
of doctors she had great respect for Bestushev’s Drops. She used them
always in her own family.

Bestushev’s researches in the black arts had other consequences. He
employed in the department of foreign affairs a German by the name of
Goldbach, who tampered scientifically with mail. In such matters the
Russians supplied the will but they usually employed a German to do the
deed. Goldbach opened the French Ambassador’s letters and read there a
great deal that was not intended for the eyes of the Empress of Russia.
He therefore laid the correspondence before Elisabeth who read that she
was frivolous and indolent and that her chief interest in life was in
changing her costume four or five times a day. She furthermore learned
of the secret correspondence going on between the King of Prussia and
the Princess of Zerbst and of the strong influence which the Princess
was supposed to wield upon herself. It would be mild to say that the
Empress was angry. Bestushev’s method of gaining his end was simple and
successful.

The Empress struck at once. She ordered the French Ambassador to leave
Moscow within twenty-four hours and to make for Riga without even
touching Petersburg. It was the same Chetardie who had provided French
money for her revolution, but he went at once. It was a famous exit.
Bestushev continued quietly to mix the cards. He was now after the head
of the meddling Princess of Zerbst.

At Troitsky the Empress and her train occupied a suite of pleasant
chambers with low ceilings, English clocks, and Dutch stoves. She had
domestic tastes and warm affections and satisfied in this retreat her
desire for a quiet family life. Here and at Monplaisir, where she had
a summer kitchen in which she cooked with her own hands, she lived
her happiest moments. The cosy family atmosphere was interrupted by a
painful explosion which took place between the Empress and the Princess
of Zerbst after Bestushev had pulled the strings quietly to this end.

The Empress and her guests had just arrived from Moscow. The Empress
had made the journey on foot, leaving the others to overtake her
in carriages. The entire party entered the gates in the form of
a procession, which first turned into the Cathedral for mass and
afterward became a sort of English house-party in which affairs of
state and sociability were indiscriminately mixed. “After the midday
meal,” Catherine says, “when the Grand Duke had come to our chambers,
the Empress entered unexpectedly and commanded my mother to follow
her into the next room. Count Lestocq went in with them. Awaiting my
mother’s return, I seated myself with the Grand Duke upon the window
ledge, and we chatted. The conversation in the closed room lasted a
long time.”

The first to appear was Count Lestocq who, assuming his best German
manners, said to the young girl, “There is nothing left for you but to
pack your things; you will start at once on your home-ward journey.”
Lestocq did not waste courtesy on fallen favorites, but he was not
always shrewd enough to know who had fallen and who had not. Then
the Empress appeared at the door. For a moment her imposing figure
towered beneath the low ceiling, her blue eyes flashing with anger.
Behind her appeared the culprit, the Princess of Zerbst, her eyes red
with weeping. The two young people hastily sprang down from the high
window-seat and stood in attitudes of respect. The impulsive Elisabeth
laughed, kissed the boy and girl who were to make up to her for the
romantic marriage she had missed, and passed quickly out of the room.
Lestocq’s prophecy was not fulfilled. The Princess and her daughter
were not sent home.

Frederick the Great was to feel the effects of this family quarrel
in the Seven Years War. Elisabeth’s dislike of the Prussian King was
greatly strengthened by the explosion at Troitsky. The Princess of
Zerbst she never forgave. Mardefeld, the Prussian minister, was allowed
to linger for a time, but when the Princess of Zerbst returned to
Germany, the Empress demanded Mardefeld’s recall. She hit upon the
humiliating device of requiring the Princess herself to go to the King
of Prussia and deliver the message requesting his minister’s recall.
The Prussian Ambassador, who had survived twenty years at the Russian
court and had landed on his feet after two palace revolutions, was
finally wrecked by his alliance with the Princess of Zerbst. Frederick
the Great lost substantially then and afterward by enlisting the
diplomacy of Catherine’s mother. He did not forget it.


                                   3

In all her difficulties, Catherine could look for no support from her
natural protector and future consort. If she had been an average girl,
the defective Peter would still have been a child beside her. But she
was far from being an ordinary girl. The fifteen-year-old Princess was
more than a match for the two adult women who fancied they were leading
her. To steer her course between the Empress and her mother took all
her attention at first. For a time she disregarded the Grand Duke as a
factor in the situation.

Her account of their relationship shows that they met like children,
without any thought of a more mature relationship. “The Grand Duke
appeared to rejoice at my arrival. In the first days he was very
complaisant toward me.” During her illness, his good will continued.
“During my sickness the Grand Duke had shown me much attention. When
I became better he continued this. I seemed to please him; but I can
neither say that he pleased me nor displeased me. I only knew how to
obey and my mother had to marry me.” The boy gave her his confidence,
chattering like a child about everything that came into his head. He
confided to her his former love for Princess Lapukin whom the Empress
had banished from the court and whose place had been taken by Catherine
herself. The girl, who was passionately proud, could not understand
that these were the outpourings of a fragile sexless boy. She only saw
that her lover was indifferent and pretended to the others that she did
not see it.

“When the fair weather came we moved over into the Summer Palace. Here
the visits of the Grand Duke grew less frequent. I must say this lack
of attention and his coldness so to speak on the eve of our wedding did
not exactly incline me in his favor. The nearer the time came, the less
could I hide from myself the possibility that my marriage might be very
unhappy. But I had too much pride and too much self-respect to allow
the world to suspect that I thought myself unloved. I regarded myself
too highly to believe that I was contemptible. The Grand Duke had a
somewhat free manner with the ladies-in-waiting of the Empress which
did not exactly please me, but I restrained myself from speaking about
it and no one knew my deepest feelings. I tried to distract myself by
romping in my chamber with my maidens.”

The Grand Duchess did not understand that the Grand Duke’s attachments
to other ladies was as childish and unvirile as his attachment to
herself. She says in her memoirs that at this time she scarcely knew
the difference between the sexes. But jealousy was an old familiar
feeling. Far back among the dim memories of her Stettin childhood was
the shadow of a dreadful day when a baby brother had upset her world.
She did not like those memories. “I should have been the most unhappy
creature in the world if I had allowed myself to be carried away by
feelings of tenderness for him,” she says of the Grand Duke. “He would
have ill-repaid me and I should have died of jealousy, which would have
done nobody any good. So I tried to control myself in order that I
might not be jealous of a man that did not love me. But in order not to
be jealous there was only one means: not to love him.”

The Grand Duchess grew high-strung and nervous. It was not the first
time that she had failed to meet the requirements of an important
situation. Born a girl, she had disappointed her parents’ hopes of
the succession at Anhalt-Zerbst. Lacking beauty, she had not been
attractive to suitors. And now that her future husband did not love
her, she had to reassure herself that she was not “contemptible.” Under
the stress of bruised self-feeling, she became capricious and masterful
with her maidens. Covering the floor of her room with mattresses, she
had all eight of them sleep in her room. Another time she led the
damsels out for a midnight walk through the gardens of Peterhof for
which they were all roundly scolded. Like a Sultana she divided the
custody of her possessions among them, entrusting her jewels to one,
her laces to another, her linen to another and so on. She cut her front
hair short, wore it in a kind of frizzled bang and ordered her girls to
do the same. Some of them wept and pleaded but the Grand Duchess had
issued a ukas. She would not be moved. Peter the Great had not relented
when old men wept and begged to be allowed to keep their beards. Let
Maria Petrovna, the Skorodov sisters, and the two dwarfs dry their
tears and order in the barber at once to cut off their hair exactly
like the Grand Duchess.... In addition to her elaborate hair-dressing,
Catherine had taken on the habit of painting her face.


                                   4

The Empress arranged the marriage for her two adopted children as if
they had been puppets or ballet dancers. No such marriage had ever
been seen in Russia except perhaps the famous ice festival in the
reign of Anna Ivanovna, when Prince Galitsin married his Lilliputian
bride. To satisfy a whim of their Empress the couple had been escorted
to an illuminated ice-palace on the Neva and put upon a bed made of
ice. Fortunately for Catherine and Peter they were to be married in
mid-summer. The date was originally set for July the first, but was
postponed twice. Not until late in August was everything finally ready.
All summer long the Empress was so taken up with preparations that
she suspended all affairs of state. Her own ministers and the foreign
ambassadors had nothing to do but play cards and drive in the Nevsky
Prospect.

For months in advance the fashionable world was busy providing itself
with “the richest clothes possible” since nothing less was specified by
the ukas issued by the Empress. Bales of silk, velvet, and brocade were
constantly arriving from England and Germany, for the Russians were no
weavers. The English ambassador wrote home complaining of the Empress’s
neglect of official business when he might have better congratulated
his country on the increased importation of English goods in Russia.
From German looms came the heavy cloth-of-silver from which Catherine’s
wedding gown was made. It was a rigid structure with a bodice shaped
over a wooden form, to which was suspended a train more than three
yards long. The fabric was spun silver and the whole thing weighed upon
her like a suit of armor.

Clad in this unyielding garment and bearing on her head a ponderous
crown of jewels the Grand Duchess spent a miserable day. She held out
bravely during the wedding ceremony in the church of Our Lady of Kazan
and throughout the state repast in the Winter Palace afterwards. But
just before the ball began, she humbled her pride and begged to have
the crown removed for a few minutes. The Empress, who thought this
might bring bad luck, reluctantly consented.

The wedding was a triumph for Elisabeth’s maternal pride. She ordered
every detail of the ceremony with jealous tyranny, not omitting to
command the bride to take a bath the evening before. Early next morning
she sent for Catherine to come to her chamber to be robed in state.
There ensued a heated argument between the Empress and the barber
concerning the bride’s style of hair-dressing. Catherine sat before the
mirror and seemed to take no part. There was not a rift on this day
in her good relations with the Empress. A supreme satisfaction in the
great event united them completely.

Although it was also the wedding day of the Grand Duke, he played a
rather minor part. The ill-starred boy had managed to contract the
smallpox recently and appeared at his nuptials with a dreadfully
pockmarked face. His august aunt always dreaded his public appearances
lest some piece of childish misbehaviour on his part should disgrace
the Romanov family. Peter bore himself sufficiently well on his wedding
day, however, to cause no comment among the on-lookers. His only
caprice was to offend his bride. While the young couple were still
kneeling opposite to each other, waiting the final words of the priest,
one of the court ladies whispered in the Grand Duke’s ear. “I heard
him say to her,” says Catherine, “‘Clear out! Such nonsense!’ Then he
turned to me and told me that she had advised him not to turn his head
while he stood before the priest, for whoever of us first turned our
head would die first and she did not wish him to be that one. I thought
this compliment not very friendly on our wedding day but I did not
allow myself to notice it. She saw, however, that he had repeated to
me her good advice. She grew red and made reproaches, which he again
repeated to me.”

At ten o’clock, the Empress herself conducted the young people to their
apartment and left the Grand Duchess with her maidens. She was relieved
of her burdensome wedding garments and put to bed beneath a velvet
coverlet. “All of them went away,” Catherine’s narrative relates, “I
remained alone more than two hours and did not know what I should do.
Should I get up again? Should I remain in bed? I knew nothing. Finally
my new lady of honor, Madame Kruse, came and informed me with great
merriment that the Grand Duke was waiting for his supper which was
about to be carried up to him. After his Imperial Highness had supped
well, he came to bed; and as he laid himself down, he began to talk
of how it would amuse his servant in the morning to see us both in
bed. Then he fell asleep and slept soundly until the next morning. The
cloths of fine linen on which I lay were very uncomfortable owing to
the summer weather and consequently I slept badly; all the more as the
morning gray of the daylight disturbed me considerably, for the bed had
no curtains, although otherwise furnished magnificently in red velvet
with silver embroidery. Madame Kruse attempted the next morning to
question us young married people. Her hopes however proved unfounded.
And in this condition our affairs remained during the next nine years
without the least change.”

The Empress was not satisfied with one day’s celebration of the
marriage. The festivities were prolonged for ten days. The streets were
given over to merry-making; heralds on horseback, fountains spouting
wine, fire-works and white nights, and all the bells and cannons of
Petersburg made a continuous carnival. An unbroken succession of
dinners, operas, masquerades, and quadrilles crowded upon each other.

The Princess of Zerbst was hard put to it to describe these festivities
adequately to her spouse. For he was not present. Somehow the
invitation which should have brought the Prince of Zerbst to his
daughter’s wedding had never been sent. He had expected it from week to
week, since Frederick had told them that it would surely come. In the
end, the old Prince was overlooked and had to console himself with his
wife’s description of his daughter’s wedding. The exuberant Princess
wrote, “The Grand Duchess sends you her respects, but has no time to
write, since it is still so new for her to be with her husband. They
can scarcely be separated for a quarter of an hour.”

The little Grand Duchess moved through everything like an automaton.
She stepped through the white and gold quadrilles with tears in her
eyes. “Never in my life,” said she afterward, “have I seen a more
woeful and stupid amusement than were those quadrilles.” The beginning
of her honeymoon was just as woeful. “After my wedding,” she said, “I
felt best when I was with my mother. I strove all the more eagerly to
stay with her as my household could scarcely be called pleasant. The
Grand Duke had nothing but child’s play in his head; he gave himself
up to playing at soldiers, surrounded by his menials in whom alone he
showed any interest.”




                             [Illustration]




                                   VI

                       CATHERINE BECOMES A MOTHER


Two weeks after the wedding, the Empress sent the young married pair
with the Princess of Zerbst to Czarskoe Selo. It was the month of
September and the birches were turning to gold. But the bride had
suddenly lost her enthusiasm for the Russian scene. For the first time
she was homesick for Germany and dreaded the moment of her mother’s
departure. “At that time I would have given much if I could have left
the country with her.”

She was sustained, however, by a new sense of power and importance
which came from having money in her pocket. This enabled her to
patronize her mother by assuming her debts, for the extravagant
Princess had obligations amounting to seventy thousand rubles and no
idea how she was ever going to meet them. Catherine promised to pay
in her mother’s stead a sum which was absurdly beyond her means, for
the Empress allowed her only thirty thousand rubles a year. Lifted so
suddenly from the meager circumstances of her Stettin life, the Grand
Duchess had no measure for her newly acquired riches. They seemed to
her limitless. Of course she was in a position to come to her mother’s
assistance and she came. Even if her new husband did not love her she
was a rich woman now and could afford to be generous. This was the
beginning of a labyrinth of debt in which she progressively involved
herself until it brought her within a few years to the verge of
bankruptcy.

At the end of September the Princess of Zerbst and Fräulein Khayn
set forth on their homeward journey. They were laden with presents
from the Empress. Two chests filled with Chinese and Damascene stuffs
accompanied the travellers; and to console the long-neglected Prince of
Zerbst, his wife carried with her as gifts from the Grand Duke diamond
shoe-buckles, diamond coat-buttons, and a diamond-studded dagger. The
party was escorted by Catherine and Peter as far as Krasnoe-Selo, the
old Red Village of the Czars, where the Princess and her daughter saw
each other for the last time. “I wept a great deal,” says Catherine,
“and in order not to make me still more sad my mother went away without
taking leave of me.”

As soon as she arrived home, the Grand Duchess went to find her
favorite maiden Maria Petrovna Shukov, to comfort her in her
loneliness. But the girl had disappeared during Catherine’s absence.
It developed that she had been sent away at the suggestion of the
Princess of Zerbst. The Princess and the Empress had put their heads
together over the unpromising status of the newly-made marriage and
the banishment of Maria was the result. They remembered the part which
Julie von Mengden had played in alienating the former regent, Anna
Leopoldovna, from her husband, and they feared that Maria Shukov might
play a similar part by increasing the estrangement between Catherine
and Peter. The Grand Duchess learned then that she could never have a
confidante in the future.

Anything which reminded Elisabeth of Anna Leopoldovna’s family was
hateful to her. She wished to forget the deposed Regent if possible,
but the wretched woman, as if to revenge herself on the Empress, had
continued to increase her family at regular intervals. Four children
had been born to her at Kolmogory, two of whom were sons. The Major in
charge sent a faithful report of each birth to the Empress, who tore
his reports to pieces. At last he sent a report which she did not tear
into pieces. The prolific Anna had died in childbed. The Empress gave
orders that the body of the deceased Regent should be dissected, and
brought to Petersburg for burial. Accompanied by the Grand Duchess,
both draped in heavy black, she attended the funeral ceremonies in the
Alexander Nevsky Cathedral where the ill-starred Anna was laid to rest
between her grandmother and her mother. Her grandmother was the old
Czarina Prascovia Feodorovna, who had laid a curse on her daughter,
and her mother was the daughter who had been cursed. The unlucky Anna
weighed on Catherine’s conscience not a little.

The death of Anna occurred about nine months after the marriage of the
Grand Ducal pair. The Empress gave them another month of grace while
she repaired with her favorite to spend May at Czarskoe Selo. Presently
she returned, advancing upon the sterile couple like a threatening
Juno. She had apparently expected that the Grand Duchess would, without
preliminary warning or symptoms, present her with a Romanov heir in the
ninth month after marriage. Disappointed in her hopes, she took drastic
measures to remedy the situation.

This time it was Bestushev and the Empress who put their heads
together. Bestushev, it will be remembered, had not favored this
marriage and Elisabeth’s discontentment with its results directed
her thoughts toward him. At her wits’ end, she asked him to devise a
régime, a program, for the young people, which he did with spirit and
enthusiasm. He gave the Empress an elaborate memorandum concerning the
behaviour of the Grand Duchess and a still more elaborate memorandum
concerning the behaviour of the Grand Duke. The instructions were
for the use of the guardians who were to take charge of the pair.
Bestushev’s document rehearsed at length the faults of the Grand Duke:
his disrespectful behaviour in church; his weakness for toys and tin
soldiers; his familiarity with pages and lackeys; his low language,
his grimaces, his indecencies at table. In short, the Vice-Chancellor
drew a picture of the Russian heir-apparent that might have been
mistaken for the portrait of a child in bibs. All of its statements are
confirmed by Catherine in her memoirs. The rules which he prepared for
the Grand Duchess consisted entirely of prohibitions, chief of which
was a ban on all private correspondence with her mother, the Princess
of Zerbst. This drove the girl to underground communications in which
she became at last very skilful and learned to use it for political
ends.

The keystone of the new régime was the appointment of a married couple
as guardians. The Choglokovs were chosen for special reasons. Maria
Choglokov had married her husband for love and was known to all the
court as the pattern of a faithful and devoted wife. Bestushev brought
the young matron to the Grand Duchess’s apartment and introduced her as
the new governess or duenna. “Immediately,” says Catherine, “I began to
weep violently.” This did not help to ingratiate her governess. The
atmosphere became hysterical. Catherine went to bed for a whole day and
had to be bled the next morning. The Empress came and scolded angrily.
Young wives who did not love their husbands always wept; Catherine’s
mother had assured her that Catherine had no objection to marrying the
Grand Duke; she, the Empress, had not forced her to marry him; and,
finally, now that they were already married there was no use in crying
about it. Thoroughly frightened at the Empress’s display of temper,
Catherine murmured, “Little mother, forgive me, I am in the wrong.” She
feared that the Empress would actually beat her as she did sometimes
beat the ladies and gentlemen of the court.

The new duenna performed her duties well, setting the good example
which the Empress had expected of her. “From 1746 until the death of
her husband,” says Catherine, “who died in the year 1754, we really
never saw her except pregnant or in childbed.” The Grand Duchess
hated the prolific Maria and no wonder. Scarcely was the wretched
Anna Leopoldovna well underground than this new and vivid reproach
sprang up before her very eyes. The Kolmogory family had been at least
invisible but Maria’s babies were born under her very eyes and were
heralded as important public events. Bestushev wrote to Count Vorontsov
in London, “In these days it has pleased her Imperial Majesty to
commission Nicolai Naumovich Choglokov to journey to the Roman Emperor
to congratulate him on the attainment of his high distinction; he will
not, however, depart before his wife has been delivered; that is, the
middle of March.” On the 14th of March Bestushev added: “In these days
Maria Semionovna ... has given birth to an infant daughter. And Nicolai
Naumovich will depart soon from here to Vienna.”

The Empress hoped apparently that Maria’s fertility was something which
the Grand Duchess might acquire by association and imitation. Yet year
after year passed by and the miracle did not happen. Catherine remained
childless while Maria bore a child every year. In writing her memoirs
drops of gall fall from her pen whenever she speaks of the Choglokovs.
“Although he was loved so much he was not at all lovable. Of all the
people in the world, he was the most puffed up and conceited; he
thought himself extraordinarily beautiful and clever. He was a stupid
coxcomb, arrogant and spiteful, and at the least quite as malicious as
his wife, who was so not a little.” The Grand Duchess allowed herself
small revenges that were not quite refined. One of her maidens had
a trick of imitating with a pillow the walk of the pregnant Maria.
Catherine encouraged her in this performance by peals of appreciative
laughter. Her spitefulness extended itself to Maria’s sister Marfa.
“How far the stupidity of this woman went is shown by the following
pretty story: she was quite astonished at the cleverness of the midwife
who prophesied that she would bring either a boy or a girl into the
world. She could not understand whence the midwife had this knowledge.”

Madame Choglokov and her sister were Skavronskys, nieces of the
Empress. They represented the stock from which Elisabeth had sprung on
her mother’s side. The Skavronskys were more prominent in the Empress’s
environment than the Romanov side of her family, and Catherine
liked to remember that the Empress was a Skavronsky. The houses of
Zerbst and Holstein, although impoverished, did not produce women as
weak-witted as the Empress’s nieces. Catherine found in that comparison
a satisfaction for her resentment and jealousy.


                                   2

Her memoirs describe a nine-years’ purgatory of mental and physical
suffering. She says but little of her attitude toward the Grand Duke
but that little is significant. When the Empress accused her of not
loving him, she spoke the truth, for Catherine says herself that, as
a protection against jealousy she schooled herself to be indifferent
toward her husband.

Peter, who had all the pride which goes with a weak personality,
tried to console himself in the usual way. He became a good deal of
a ladies’ man. In tender glances and in compliments he was not at
all backward; he could give an excellent imitation of a young man in
love. His pose was so good that it deceived his aunt and humiliated
his wife. He became better and better at it. Finally he entered into a
relationship with Elisabeth Vorontsov who came to be regarded as a real
mistress. Catherine knew that Peter was incompetent to have a physical
relationship but she realized that others did not know it. As Peter’s
affectations grew his actual condition became worse. Nor did the stony
indifference of his wife help to make bad matters any better. On the
contrary, it helped to make them worse. The Grand Duke crystallized
into a little manikin incapable of feelings of any kind.

Catherine’s life was full of illness and hypochondria. A catalogue of
her ailments can be made up from her reminiscences. She fills up pages
with stories of headaches, toothaches, insomnia, influenza and measles.
She describes these afflictions with a serious attention to detail
which she scarcely achieved in describing the Turkish Wars of her
later years. She says impressively that her colds were so severe that
she used twelve pocket-handkerchiefs a day. At one time her physician
thought she had tuberculosis. He ordered her to bed and put her on a
diet of ass’s milk. She suffered from a consuming fear of smallpox and
every time anything went wrong with her she believed herself stricken.
Once it turned out only to be measles, but her spots, she assures us,
were as large as rubles. All of her illnesses and afflictions during
those years were the worst that could be suffered and survived.

The story of her skull-bones has a dramatic climax and a happy ending.
“During this entire year,” says the heroine, “I suffered continually
from headache and sleeplessness. Madame Kruse brought me as a so-called
medicine a glass of Hungarian wine after I lay in bed, which I was
supposed to drink regularly every evening. I refused this remedy for
sleeplessness and Frau Kruse drank it in my stead and to my health.
After I had returned to the city, I complained to Dr. Boerhaave of
my sufferings. He was a very sympathetic man; he also knew the kind
of life I lived and knew my relation to my husband as well as to my
environment. He bade me show him my head some morning before my hair
was dressed and carefully he went over the skull. Finally he said that,
although I was seventeen years old, my head had the formation of a
six-year-old child; that I must be very careful and never allow the
upper part of my skull to get cold; in short, the bones of my head had
never yet closed up. He believed that the bones would only close up
when I had reached the age of twenty-five or twenty-six and that this
was the cause of my headaches. I followed his advice and it was a fact
that the separation between the skull-bones disappeared only when I was
twenty-five or twenty-six years old as he had prophesied.”

This happy cure of Catherine’s skull coincided with the birth of her
first child which occurred when she was halfway between twenty-five
and twenty-six. Apparently her physician was also something of a
fortune-teller who could read the future, predict events, and give
accurate dates.

Catherine pictures her experience with toothache and tooth-pulling
with more than Russian realism. Twenty-five years after she had lost
a tooth, she could seat herself at her writing table and recall in
fancy the painful moment when her physician and her surgeon and a male
assistant had removed it. After the operation was completed it was
discovered that the Grand Duchess had lost a piece of jaw-bone “as
large as a ten-sous piece.” The surgeon wished to examine the wound but
the patient would not allow him to touch her. “I learned then,” she
says, “that the pain which one suffers often creates hatred toward the
one who causes it.” In the midst of her absorption in her tragedies,
Catherine was capable of flashes of psychological insight.

“My situation was really not to be laughed at,” she says. “I stood
completely isolated among all the people there. Meantime I had
accustomed myself to it; the reading of good books and my cheerful
turn of temperament helped me easily over the situation. Besides I had
a presentiment of future destiny which gave me courage to bear all
that I had to bear and to endure daily unpleasantries from more than
one side. Already I wept much less when I was alone than in the first
years.”

The Empress had given Oranienbaum to Peter for a summer residence.
Here the young people led a comparatively free life. Catherine used
her freedom to go duck-hunting, rising at three o’clock in the morning
to pursue her sport. With one old man for an attendant, she sometimes
took a boat and followed her game far out into the open waters of
the Finnish gulf. As she roamed about alone in the white light of
the summer dawn, her romantic musings were mingled with ambitious
thoughts. “At that time I read only romances which heated my phantasy,
of which verily I had no need.” She wore men’s clothes on her shooting
expeditions, as Elisabeth had once done before she became Empress. But
her thoughts were occupied far more than Elisabeth’s had ever been with
thoughts of the crown and the succession.

Sometimes for as much as thirteen hours a day she rode horseback. It
was an exercise which she passionately loved. Whenever she touches
on the subject of her skill as a rider, her vanity gets entirely
out of hand. Her prowess was such that her riding master wept tears
of enthusiasm and, speechless with joy, could only run to kiss her
riding-boot. The actress in blue velvet whom little Fike had seen at
the age of three could hardly have expected more! Catherine’s horseback
riding soon became another source of conflict between herself and the
Empress. She preferred to ride astride and the Empress feared that
this might be the reason why she had no children. The Empress forbade
the practice and Catherine did not dare to disobey her openly. But
she had an English saddle made with a movable pommel, so that she
could ride either sidewise or astride. When safely out of sight of the
Empress and her nasty Skavronsky relations, she rode as she pleased.


                                   3

In Bestushev and his drastic Instructions, Elisabeth had exhausted her
last resource of discipline. But her disappointment and chagrin caused
her to continue in a thousand petty ways to harass the Grand Ducal
pair. They were kept on a nursery régime of liberties. Neither of them
was allowed to leave the house even for a drive without the express
permission of the Empress. She regulated their slightest movements,
ordering them from the Winter Palace to the Summer Palace or from
Petersburg to Oranienbaum without a moment’s notice. Sometimes she
allowed them to form a part of her entourage when she took a journey.
Catherine complains, however, that the Empress always omitted her from
her hunting parties, although she knew how passionately the Grand
Duchess loved to ride and shoot. On the other hand the Empress always
remembered to include her in her religious pilgrimages.

Catherine describes Elisabeth’s excursions in a rather critical spirit.
There was for instance a trip to Reval when she had to sleep in a
kitchen where bread was being baked and where the ovens sent out a
terrible heat. Sometimes the Empress’s party spent the night in tents
and Catherine recalls rather scornfully those forlorn occasions when
storms came on and the wind blew out the torches and the rain soaked
the finery of the courtiers. Once they went to visit a Wonder-working
Virgin in a holy cloister but she could not possibly be seen because
the boards on which she was painted were covered with black filth. In
this carping spirit Catherine described the Empress’s best shows, and
yet she felt surprised and injured because the Empress did not like
her. “Her dislike of me,” she said, “has increased from year to year,
although my entire aim has been to please her in everything. The Grand
Duke is a witness that I have done everything to persuade him also to
do this. My respect, my obedience in all that she has wished, has been
carried to the uttermost limit to which a human being can carry it.”
Yet the Empress called her, “Ochen upriany,” very stubborn, and refused
to see her for weeks and months at a time.

During the second spring following her marriage, Catherine received
the news of her father’s death. The Prince had died of a stroke of
apoplexy. Catherine wept so violently and long that the doctors came
and bled her. Still she wept on. The Empress grew impatient and finally
sent word through Madame Choglokov that Catherine should dry her tears.
“My father had been no King, and the loss was not so great.... But to
the credit of her Majesty, I cannot believe that the woman said to
me what she had been commanded to say, for that did not exactly show
goodness of heart!” Catherine was allowed to wear mourning for only
six weeks and was limited to mere black silk instead of crêpe. “I must
confess,” writes Catherine, “that to-day (twenty-five years later) I
cannot think of it without rebellion in my heart.”

The Empress’s irritation made her variable temper more variable than
ever. She grew more restless and eccentric. Every day she had the
furniture shifted in her apartments. Her people were left waiting hours
and days for orders which she delayed for mere whims. Once the Grand
Duchess remained sitting upright on a chair fully dressed for early
mass while the hours slowly passed from four o’clock in the morning to
three o’clock in the afternoon. The Empress had summoned her to go to
church but had changed her mind at the last moment and gone to the bath
instead.

The wishes of the young court were never consulted, even formally,
about anything. A favorite attendant would vanish overnight and be
heard of next in Astrakhan, Orenburg or Kazan whither he had been
banished. Always, Catherine says, the exiles passed first through
the court called the Secret Chancellary, a form of inquisition which
was the terror and horror of Russia at the time. One day the Grand
Duke’s Holstein servants were suddenly sent back to Germany without
warning, and he was left alone with Russians whom he detested. Another
day Catherine’s attendant, Madame Kruse, who happened also to be a
Holsteiner, was suddenly dismissed and replaced by Madame Vladislav,
who was a Russian. The Empress had apparently hit upon the forlorn hope
that it might be German influence which kept the young couple sterile.

Catherine’s new woman, Prascovia Nikitichna Vladislav, made an
important contribution to her education. Prascovia was about fifty and
her gossip about the Russian grandees and their families went back
to the time of Peter the Great. Catherine was fascinated by these
histories which gave her the orientation in Russia that she needed.
Peter would not listen to Prascovia. He was homesick for Holstein and
as the German group which once surrounded him grew less and less and
finally disappeared completely, his Heimweh increased. The last to go
was Baron Lestocq, who was imprisoned for five years in the Fortress of
Saint Peter and Saint Paul and finally banished to Uglitch. The Empress
was done with Germans for all time.

Catherine seemed to forget very easily the old friends of her mother’s
party and to pass on quickly to an alliance with the Russians. In time
she found herself and Bestushev, the official enemy of that party, on
the same side and even united in their political schemes. She had an
elasticity of temperament which was her one salvation in her trying
circumstances. For there is no denying they were intensely trying.
“For eighteen years,” she writes, “I have led a life from which ten
others would have gone insane and twenty in my place would have died of
melancholy.”

The petty persecutions of the Empress were the only thing that drew the
young couple together. When Catherine was scolded by her duenna, Peter
flared up in her defence. In return, Catherine gave Peter advice and
comfort when he fled to her in terror at the threats of the Empress
and his governors. But Catherine found his fears excessive; with a
certain detachment and objectivity she recognized that they were beyond
the ordinary and uncontrollable. She wondered at this trait at first
and yet sympathized with him; but later on when other things had come
between them, her wonder changed to scorn. Her story of the Grand Duke
and his abhorrence of the Russian bath shows that she early appreciated
the dangers into which the young man’s stubbornness was leading him.

During the first week of Lent, the Empress ordered Catherine and Peter
to go to the steam bath, as a part of the regular preparation for
communion. The Grand Duke excitedly refused. He would not enter the
bath; he had never been there before and it was a ridiculous ceremony
anyhow to which he attached no significance. Besides, the bath was
harmful and would make him ill. “He did not wish to die; his life was
his most precious possession. The Empress could never force him to
the point of going there.” To all this Madame Choglokov replied with
equal heat. She threatened the young man with the fortress of Saint
Peter and Saint Paul and reminded him that the son of Peter the Great
had perished from disobedience. “Much of this,” Catherine reflected,
watching Madame Choglokov, “comes from herself but much is from the
Empress. I came to the conclusion that the threat of the fortress
must have come from the monarch and I saw in it a sign of her strong
resentment against the Grand Duke.”

The mischief-making Maria reported all this back to the Empress, whose
wrath flared out in her usual strong language: “Very good; if he is
so disobedient toward me, I will not kiss his damned hand any more.”
This was faithfully carried back to the Grand Duke who said, “That
depends on herself. But I will never go into the bath. I cannot bear
the heat.” The Empress kept her word and her nephew kept his. Yet she
never gave up the attempt to force him into the bath. He was not again
threatened with the fortress, but he always felt the threat lurking
in the background. The quarrel made a great impression on the Grand
Duchess who tells of it at length in her memoirs. She regarded it
correctly as a symptom of something extreme in his character, but she
could not understand it. Her common sense was baffled by the behaviour
of a youth who feared the Russian bath more than he feared imprisonment
in a fortress. In his obstinacy and excitement, Peter gave various
reasons for refusing to obey the Empress but he scarcely gave the real
one. The Russian bath was a social affair, participated in by naked men
and women. The custom, a mere everyday fact in Russia, was regarded
with horror in Germany and the rest of Europe. The young Grand Duke was
still a German and, without being clearly aware of why he felt that
way, he dreaded the exposure and found it unendurable. Imprisonment
was a trifle by comparison. The Grand Duchess took this hurdle as she
took others in her new life. She had been brought up a puritan and a
protestant. But she no longer lived in Zerbst; she lived in Russia
and did as the Russians did. The Grand Duke continued to dwell in an
imaginary Holstein of his own which was as different as possible from
the Russia which lay around him.


                                   4

Elisabeth’s capriciousness increased. Having changed her furniture
and everything else in her environment that could be changed, at last
she changed her favorite. The easy-going Razumovsky was displaced and
relegated with honors and riches to private life. There is a tradition
that the Count had been secretly married to Elisabeth. Whether this
be true or not does not matter much. The time had come for him to go.
The discarded lover retired to the Anitchkov Palace which the Empress
had built for him and where he dreamed away his life for another twenty
years. Razumovsky was a charming decoration on the early reign of
Elisabeth Petrovna. He was wholly impractical and without ambition of
any kind, a poetic indolent Ukrainian. He was loyal to his mistress to
the end and devoted to her successor, Catherine the Great.

Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov, the new favorite, was a cousin. As the Empress
grew older she suffered increasingly from melancholy which she strove
to lighten by drawing the circle of relatives closer around her. Ivan
Ivanovich was ably supported in his new duties by his family. He had a
sister, a cheerful person whom the Empress relied upon to rescue her
from low spirits. He had besides two brothers who guarded him on both
flanks and reaped a rich harvest of monopolies. The Shuvalov brothers
were ambitious and grasping as the Razumovskys had never been. Their
advent made a great difference at court, for the Empress, who became
more indolent and fantastic every day, gave more and more power to
the Shuvalovs. She had failed in her dearest scheme: her nephew and
successor, the Grand Duke Peter, had no heir.

With the year 1750 the problem of an heir seemed to grow desperate.
In the Grand Ducal camp a realistic view was growing up. It was
represented chiefly by Madame Vladislav, Catherine’s lady-in-waiting,
and by the mother of young Sergei Saltikov, a young chamberlain of the
Grand Duke. Slowly the idea took shape without anybody’s expressing
it that the Grand Duchess might, by merely transgressing her marriage
vows, redeem the situation. By some means this idea was insinuated
into the heads of the stupid Choglokovs who afterwards thought they
had invented it. Maria Choglokov suggested it to Catherine; put it to
her, so to speak, as her patriotic duty. It seems rather odd that all
of them had been so slow in coming to this plan. Apparently Catherine
would have gone on indefinitely in the dilemma if the older married
women had not finally suggested a way out.

Catherine wrote two accounts of her affair with Sergei Saltikov. One
was set down only three or four years after it was over, and the other
she wrote in her old age. The old lady’s story is a lively romance,
portraying an ardent courtship, a horseback ride, a lonely island, and
an importunate lover. The young woman’s story is less romantic and
more political. She says in this version: “Madame Choglokov used all
possible arts of persuasion to seduce me. This and the attractiveness
and talents of him for whom she spoke would have found less resistance
in another than in me. It is really true that I was distinguished by
discretion and exemplary innocence.”

Sergei Saltikov was a merry and irresponsible youth without ulterior
ambitions. His relations with the Grand Duchess began in the year 1752,
In December of that year the Grand Duchess reported miscarriage. The
following July the same misfortune befell her. She seemed doomed to
bad luck and delay. Not until the 20th of September, 1754, did she
actually become a mother. On that date she bore a son. “There was
inexpressible joy over it,” is her laconic comment. It was about this
time, according to her memoirs, that her skull-bones closed up.

Whether the Empress was aware of the intrigue between Catherine and
Sergei Saltikov we do not know. We do know, however, that with the
year 1754 her attitude toward the young count underwent a decided
change. Choglokov and his wife saw great possibilities for the future,
hoping to reap the credit for the new and gratifying turn of events.
When the Empress began to turn a friendly gaze upon the young court,
Choglokov lost his head and tried to woo her. Catherine admits that she
and her mischievous Sergei encouraged this indiscretion which invited
dangers unforeseen by their inexperience and youth. The brothers
Shuvalov were strongly intrenched and were ready to make short shrift
of any rival. At a masquerade ball, the softened Empress encouraged
Choglokov with tender glances. Ivan Ivanovich, the favorite, saw them
and his clan closed in around her, at once, and insidiously. In the
end Choglokov was insulted by the Empress in public. “She called him,”
says Catherine, “in a public conversation at dinner a blockhead and
a traitor, which he so took to heart that he fell into the jaundice.
Kandoid, the Shuvalov’s man, was called in, and, as he had long known
that the patient was an enemy of theirs, believed that he would do them
a favor by murdering him. At least all the doctors who were called
in during his last days maintained that he had been treated like a
creature whom one wished to kill. Four days after his death his wife
was told that she could remain in Moscow.... I believe that Saltikov
would have been banished at that time too if I had not been pregnant
and they had not feared to afflict me with this grief.”

At last the midwife declared that the moment was at hand. The Empress,
who occupied adjoining chambers, was summoned from her bed at two
o’clock in the morning. She swept upon the scene in a mantle of blue
satin, for the room was cold with the chill of a late September dawn.
At noonday the child was born. The Empress waited only for the midwife
to bathe and swaddle the infant. Then she called the priest and had
him christened Paul. This was the name of the first child born to
her mother and Peter the Great, a bastard son who had died at the
age of three. Commanding the midwife to carry the child in front of
her, the Empress retired to her own apartments where she arranged a
nursery and cared for him with her own hands. If he whimpered she
ran to him at once; her devotion became the subject of wide comment
and general praise. It gave rise to the rumor that the child was
actually Elisabeth’s own and not Catherine’s at all. The Empress was
not displeased with the rumor; there were moments in her last years,
years given over to vapors and moods, when she almost believed the myth
herself. That she had done violence to the young mother in kidnapping
her child never entered her head. She asked Maria Theresa of Austria,
that prolific mother whom she had always envied, to be godmother to her
child. Austria should realize that Russia also had an heir.


                                   5

Very little is known of the father of Paul. The unhappy life of
Catherine’s son and his final insanity have set many writers and
historians at work discussing his heredity. But they always have
assumed that his father was Peter III and that his grandfather was
Peter the Great. If this were true, the deficiencies of Catherine’s son
would be easy to explain, for heredity on the Romanov side left much to
be desired. Peter the Great had a weak-witted brother and Peter III had
a mental twist. But all this has nothing to do with Paul, who was not a
Romanov but a Saltikov.

We must rely upon Catherine’s memoirs for the little that we know about
the Saltikovs. Sergei and Peter were brothers in the service of the
Grand Duke. Their father was the General Saltikov who had welcomed
Catherine and her mother in Riga on their way to Russia. The mother
of the Saltikov brothers had been a Princess Galitsin and a loyal
helper of the Empress Elisabeth when Elisabeth seized the throne.
The tradition is that Maria Saltikov had squandered her virtue for
Elisabeth’s cause. However this may have been, the Empress was devoted
to this lady and attached her two sons to the court of the Grand Duke.
Sergei was a great favorite of Peter’s and often slept with him. At the
time when Maria Saltikov promoted the affair between her son and the
Grand Duchess she was a confirmed invalid, but she seems to have kept
her initiative and energy to the last. As she had helped her Empress
gain a throne she now stood ready to help her gain an heir for it.

Sergei Saltikov was a typical ne’er-do-well. Catherine tried to make
the most of her lover in her memoirs but not a great deal could be made
of him. He was a merry fellow, a brunet, who said of himself when he
was once attired in a silver costume that he looked “like a fly in the
milk.” Catherine says of him that he “was beautiful as the day; no one
could compare with him, even in the great court, still less in our
own. He was not without spirit and possessed those charming manners
which one acquires from living in the world of fashion and especially
at the court. In the year 1752 he was twenty-six years old. His birth
and other qualities made him an outstanding personality. He had his
faults, which he knew how to conceal; his greatest faults were a
tendency to intrigue and a lack of strong principles. This however was
unknown to me at that time.”

She then passes on to his brother Peter, whom she presents in quite a
different light. Peter “was a fool in the fullest sense of the word,
and had the most stupid physiognomy that I have ever seen in my life:
great leaden eyes, a turned-up nose, a mouth always half open. Besides
he was a terrible tattle-tale.” Evidently Peter was no credit to the
Saltikov family. Yet he happened to be the uncle of her son.

It was afterwards said of Paul, when he became Paul I of Russia, that
his physiognomy with its turned-up nose was considered even by himself
too ugly to be imprinted on his coins; and that when the crowds of
Paris gathered to look at him they cried out, “My God, how ugly he
is!” His looks, we might fairly conclude, were a gift which the bad
fairies of heredity had borrowed from Uncle Peter. There were other
disadvantages which the bad fairies doubtless took from the Saltikov
family, for Paul was afflicted in several ways which always remained a
puzzle to his mother.




                             [Illustration]




                                  VII

                              PONIATOVSKY


After the birth of her son, the Grand Duchess recuperated but slowly.
The icy winds from the Neva penetrated her apartment and she suffered
continually from colds. She was querulous. Her chamber, in which she
was obliged to pass all her time as a convalescent, was too small.
Eight archins in one direction and four in the other, it measured but
little more than the humble room in Stettin in which Catherine herself
had been born. As a Grand Duchess, she resented these narrow walls; she
resented the badly drawn pictures on the tiles of her Dutch stove; she
resented the Grand Duke’s tobacco smoke which invaded her premises;
and she resented the “wretched pieces of jewelry” which the Empress
had been pleased to give her. The present of a hundred thousand rubles
which accompanied the jewels was the sole bright lining of her cloud.
Catherine always needed money.

But even this joy was tarnished by the fact that the Empress
immediately borrowed the whole sum back again and did not repay her
until the following January. The Empress recalled the money because the
Grand Duke, on hearing that his wife had received it, raised a great
outcry on his own behalf. As there was no money in the treasury with
which to silence him, the Empress hastily sent to the Grand Duchess
and asked for the loan of her treasure. Obviously Catherine was in no
position to refuse; besides she eventually got it back again. It was
not so with her baby, which the Empress had taken away without once
saying by your leave and which was never restored to her. Here also,
apparently, the young mother believed herself in no position to refuse,
for she allowed the Empress to rob her without a single protest. Her
acquiescence was complete. She was permitted to see the child but
rarely, and when she did consoled herself with criticisms of the way
his foster-mother took care of him. “From sheer over-carefulness, he
was literally smothered. He lay in a very hot room entirely wrapped
in flannel, in a crib made of black fox fur and covered with a wadded
satin coverlet. Above this was a red velvet coverlet lined with black
fox fur.... The sweat ran down his face and down his whole body.” Yet
she made no attempt to rescue him. To try it would have been useless,
for the autocrat of all the Russias was easily supreme in her own
household. Catherine also probably had too little confidence in her own
rights of possession.

Three weeks after the child’s birth, Saltikov was sent to Sweden to
announce the event. “That depressed me greatly,” says Catherine,
“because I was thereby exposed to the talk of the whole world.” She
must have felt even at that early date that her secret was pretty
widely known. It could have been no comfort to her, sitting alone
in her little drafty, smoke-filled room, to hear, as she soon did,
that the frivolous Saltikov was continuing his Don Juan career in the
Swedish capital. “I held fast to what I had begun,” she writes, “less
from inclination than from steadfastness, and worked for his return,
tirelessly conquering obstacles and battling with all my strength
against every hindrance.” Through her new alliance with Bestushev
success was achieved. Sergei Saltikov returned to Petersburg during the
Carnival season.

With great difficulty the Grand Duchess arranged a rendezvous and
waited until three o’clock in the morning for a lover who never
came. There was an elaborate explanation, how he had been dragged
into a Freemason lodge by one of the Dolgorukys, and could not
escape. But the Grand Duchess, much as if she had been an honest
wife, was not deceived. She no longer opposed the plan which had
been suggested of sending Saltikov to Hamburg as resident envoy. His
departure was delayed from week to week, but Catherine’s influence
was not causing the delay. The Empress did not get around to signing
his official papers, and this was what kept the young man waiting.
Elisabeth Petrovna was growing more and more dilatory every day in the
performance of her duties, more and more irregular in her habits, more
and more uncertain in her health. Her passionate attachment to the baby
in the fox-fur cradle had not given her the new lease on life which
might have been expected.

The effect of Saltikov’s neglect on the feelings of the Grand Duchess
was soon apparent. She says in her memoirs that, brooding in her
winter of solitude, she decided definitely to assert herself, to
let her environment know that she would not suffer insult without
retaliation. Had she not after all risen to her supreme obligation?
Had she not given to Russia an heir? She was entitled to consideration
and was determined to have it. Looking about for a scapegoat, she did
not have far to seek. Saltikov was safely out of reach in Hamburg
and the Empress was rapt in her phantasy cloud. But the brothers
Shuvalov remained within reach, and she found to her joy that they
were vulnerable. Neither of the brothers was clever and Alexander was
disfigured by a grimace--an ugly facial _tic_. It was easy to make
people laugh at the Shuvalovs and her _bon mots_ at their expense ran
through the town like wild-fire. She says that her attack was supported
by Count Razumovsky, ex-favorite of the Empress, and his brother
Kyril. But their support must have been weak, however willing. The two
Razumovskys were artists and dreamers and feeble fighters even for
their own cause.

Catherine throve on her new aggressiveness. Soon another enemy was
added to her list. A mysterious Herr Brockdorf had come up from
Holstein and had quietly established himself in the retinue of the
Grand Duke. The Grand Duchess did not like Herr Brockdorf and pursued
him with her mockery. She gave him a nickname, “Baba-ptitza” (a pelican
for ugliness!) and wherever the somber Holsteiner went he heard it
whispered after him.


                                   2

Following the birth of Paul, the breach between the Grand Duke and
the Grand Duchess widened. “After my confinement,” says Catherine in
her memoirs, “he usually slept in his own chamber.” The change of
habit broke the only tie which existed between them. For nine years
he had slept in chastity beside his wife. But something disturbing,
incomprehensible had come between them, and he was no longer at ease
in his wife’s bed. He made futile efforts to attach himself to other
ladies of the court, but his enthusiasm wandered and failed to strike
root anywhere. His interest in military occupations began to absorb all
others.

More and more he occupied himself with his favorite toys, soldiers
made of lead, wood, starch, or wax. Whole regiments were set up on
tables and operated by means of ingenious mechanical devices, in making
which the youth, who had never been able to learn anything from his
tutors, showed a high degree of skill. Entering his room one day, the
Grand Duchess found a dead rat on a gallows and was informed that a
military execution had just taken place following a court-martial of
the culprit. On another occasion when the Grand Duke was expecting a
visit from a lady to whom he was paying court, he called his wife to
survey the bower which he had prepared for her. “He showed me,” says
Catherine, “how, in order to please the lady, he had fitted it out with
muskets, military caps, shoulder-belts, so that it looked like a corner
in an arsenal.”

The year which followed the birth of Catherine’s child and the
retreat of the Grand Duke from her bed saw a marked increase in the
preoccupation of the latter with his military toys. By the time her
second child was born, which was three years later, his preoccupation
had grown abnormal and he was capable of the following extraordinary
display. He had been called by the midwife, says Catherine in her
description of that night, and after some delay put in an appearance.
“He entered my chamber in his Holstein uniform, booted and spurred,
with a scarf around his body and a great dagger at his side; that is,
in complete regalia. Astonished at this pomp I asked him the reason for
this elaborate costume. Whereupon he replied that only in time of need
could one know one’s true friends; in this costume he was prepared to
do his duty. And the duty of a Holstein officer was to be true to his
oath and defend the Ducal House against all enemies. Because I was not
well he had come to my aid.”

Catherine decided that her consort was drunk and sent him back to bed.
Although she was an accurate observer of the Grand Duke’s behaviour,
she had no real comprehension of the nature of his affliction. His
old tutor, Stehlin, who had once made such heroic efforts to teach
him, was apparently the only person in the young man’s environment
who perceived the morbid element in his behaviour. Stehlin called it
his “marotte militaire,” that is to say, a kind of “folie militaire,”
something which surpasses the limits of normal youthful folly. The
Empress was merely angered at every eccentricity and hurled punishments
and penalties upon the offender’s head. “That damned nephew of mine has
angered me unspeakably,” she would say. “He is a monster; may the devil
fly away with him.”

The crux of the Grand Duke’s military obsession was his devotion to
Frederick of Prussia, the greatest military general of his age. It was
clearly not the thing for the heir to the throne of Russia to bestow
his heart thus unreservedly on a foreign potentate and especially on
one with whom Russia was actually at war. Peter’s strange devotion
is reasonably explained in Poniatovsky’s memoirs: “One must assume
that his nurse and his earliest teachers in his fatherland had been
Prussian and devoted to the King of Prussia. For from childhood on he
nourished such a strong and at the same time such a comical feeling of
veneration and love for this Prince that the King of Prussia once said
about this passion (for it was really a passion): “I am his Dulcinea.
He has never seen me and has fallen in love with me like Don Quixote.”


                                   3

The military madness of the Grand Duke found a congenial ally in the
person of the mysterious man from Holstein, Herr Brockdorf, whom
Catherine so cordially detested and nicknamed “the pelican.” The
red-haired Holsteiner, who wore a “miserable, discontented look because
the corners of his mouth hung down to his chin,” hated the Grand
Duchess cordially in return. He repaid her compliment about the pelican
by announcing that he had come to Russia to “tread upon the serpent,”
meaning thereby no other than Catherine herself.

Brockdorf was apparently a nondescript visitor of no real political
importance, but his influence over Peter at this crucial period has
given him a place in history. Exactly what this oddly assorted pair
had in common is hard to say. Perhaps it was the protestant complex
which united them. We know that Peter’s only reading was the Lutheran
prayer-book, which he imported from Germany by the hundred, and we
suspect that Herr Brockdorf’s references to “the snake” in Catherine
was his metaphorical way of saying that she had gained the reputation
of being an immoral woman. At any rate the contest between Catherine
and Brockdorf was intense and their feud a bitter one. They competed
for influence over the Grand Duke who wavered back and forth between
them as guides and advisers in the management of the affairs of his
beloved Holstein.

It was shortly after the entrance of Brockdorf on the scene that the
first real quarrel took place between Catherine Alexeievna and Peter
Feodorovna. The encounter assumed a significant form. “His Imperial
Highness came to my room one evening after dinner,” says Catherine,
“and declared to me that I really was becoming too unbearably proud,
but he would soon bring me to reason. I asked him wherein this pride
consisted and he replied that I carried myself too upright. Thereupon I
asked him whether I should bend my back to please him, like the slaves
of the Sultan! At this he grew angry and repeated he would soon bring
me to reason. I asked him how he would do this. Thereupon he placed
himself with his back against the wall, half-way drew his dagger and
showed it to me. I asked him what that meant, whether he would fight
me. Then I also must have one. He thrust his half-drawn dagger again
into its sheath and said my malice had grown to be something quite
amazing....”

It was through the kind offices of Brockdorf that a regiment of
Holstein soldiers appeared at Oranienbaum in the early summer of 1775.
The Grand Duke’s military play had suddenly become a dangerous reality.
Soldiers of lead and wax no longer satisfied him. He was obliged to
have flesh-and-blood toys, strong burly fellows who had to be housed
and fed and who quarreled with the Russian guard already stationed
at Oranienbaum. “These accursed Germans are all sold to the King of
Prussia,” said the Russians. “They are traitors brought to Russia.”

The Grand Duchess realized the danger of this new development. She
decided to eliminate herself from the situation as completely as
possible and devoted her summer to reclaiming waste land and planning
a large English garden. The Empress’s advisers, the Shuvalovs, also
realized that the presence of the Holstein soldiers at Oranienbaum
was undesirable and yet they found it curiously impossible to make
Peter see the point or to persuade him to remove this very disturbing
element. Like parents trying to get a child to exchange a dangerous toy
for a safe one, the Shuvalovs decided to present the Grand Duke with
real Russian soldiers for his games. In the spring of 1756, they sent a
detachment of one hundred cadets to Oranienbaum for Peter to command.
But the Grand Duke was not so easily duped. The Russian cadets might
remain but the number of his beloved Holsteiners continued to increase.
The accommodations of the little village were strained, giving rise to
more friction and more rumors....

While the Grand Duke delighted in playing with his Holstein soldiers,
he found the administration of the government, for which he had been
responsible since the age of nineteen, tedious and burdensome. He
relied much on the Grand Duchess whom he called Madame la Ressource.
While Brockdorf contested her influence in Holstein affairs, she
nevertheless retained first place in the long run. It was a great
relief to Peter to hand the seal over to her along with all important
and difficult documents and to forget the government of Holstein while
he paraded his fascinating soldiers. In time it came about that the
diplomats who had anything to say about Holstein consulted Catherine
directly and accepted her decision. Things went on in this wise for a
series of years until the Empress, suddenly discovering that Holstein
was being ruled by the Grand Duchess, issued a ukase that the Grand
Duke should take care of these political matters himself. It was a
ukase, however, which commanded the impossible.


                                   4

In the autumn of 1755 an Englishman came to Petersburg. He was a man
just past middle age, a Whig, and an aristocrat. He had been for nine
years in the diplomatic service and was known for his caustic wit and
elegant manners. His satirical poetry was much admired. These talents,
however, were not always an asset. Six years previously he had been
sent to Berlin as Ambassador at the court of Frederick the Great. But
Frederick had not liked the biting tongue of the man and had asked for
his removal. The Englishman was sent back to his old post at Dresden
where August the Strong was apparently oblivious to his satire. Not
being a satirist himself, as was Frederick the Great, perhaps he could
more comfortably endure the presence of a rival. Transferred to the
Court of Petersburg, the sophisticated Englishman found himself in
a still less intellectual atmosphere than that of the Saxon court.
Catherine says that the art of conversation was unknown among the
Russian courtiers of that time. The arrival of a polished diplomat who
dealt in brilliant talk and repartee could not fail to make a great
impression on the Grand Duchess although most of his barbs were lost
on the card-playing court which surrounded Elisabeth. The name of the
interesting Englishman was Sir Charles Hanbury Williams.

As Ambassador to the Saxon Court, Williams had spent much time in
Poland, over which August of Saxony ruled as elective king. In Warsaw,
the Chevalier had made friends with the Czartorisky clan and the
Poniatovsky family. A strong-minded daughter of the Czartoriskys had
married Count Stanislas Poniatovsky and her son was likewise Count
Stanislas. The young man was adored by his mother and patronized by
her brothers, the powerful Czartoriskys. His career was the subject of
earnest family conclaves. When Sir Charles Hanbury Williams offered to
take him to Russia as Secretary it was decided that Stanislas should
go. The Ambassador was almost twenty-five years older than his Polish
secretary and called him his son. In Petersburg they lived together in
the house of Count Skavronsky on the bank of the Neva.

The Grand Duchess met them both for the first time on St. Peter’s
day at Oranienbaum. She sat beside Chevalier Williams at supper and
conversed with him while she admired the graceful dancing of his
secretary. It was the beginning of a political and personal alliance
which rapidly developed among the three. Poniatovsky became her lover,
while the Chevalier, ever attentive from the background and regularly
corresponding with her, was in some curious vicarious fashion also in
love with the fascinating and aggressive Catherine. Sitting at supper
one evening with Poniatovsky vis-à-vis, the Grand Duchess threw out
this remark, ostensibly addressed to the French Ambassador, “There was
never a woman bolder than I; I have an unbridled temerity.” There was
much recklessness in her at this time.

The English Ambassador had come to Russia with a special mission
from George II, who was anxious lest Frederick the Great should turn
covetous eyes on Hanover as he had on Silesia. Williams was empowered
to offer an annual subsidy of five hundred thousand livres to Russia in
return for which Russia was to stand ready to aid Hanover against any
possible depredations on the part of the Prussian King. Such a treaty
between England and Russia, Williams actually got signed in September
1755. But no sooner was this done than the wily Frederick put through
the Treaty of Westminster in which he and the German-English George
mutually guaranteed their possessions against both France and Russia.
This created a complicated situation for the English diplomat. The
Russian Empress loathed Frederick the Great and wanted no allies in
common with him. Russia therefore disregarded the treaty begun in the
Fall of 1755 and refused to accept the five hundred thousand livres
which England had sent. Williams spent his time in Petersburg trying in
vain to induce the Russian government to take his money. He also found
himself in the curious position of having to represent the interests of
Frederick the Great after he had started to work against them. Opposed
to him was the whole French party headed by the powerful Ivan Shuvalov,
favorite of the Empress. The Chevalier was left to cultivate the Grand
Ducal court and this he did with whole-hearted enthusiasm. He advised
Catherine about the government of Holstein which was at that time in
her hands and succeeded in buying the Grand Chancellor Bestushev with a
pension of twelve thousand rubles a year from the English Government.

Unfortunately for his schemes, Bestushev was no longer a power at
court. Ivan Shuvalov had gathered the reins into his own hands as the
health of the Empress declined. But Williams regarded Bestushev as
a fine capture. He wrote an enthusiastic account of his success to
Catherine and concluded his letter thus: “These are the scenes written
in haste which will make delightful anecdotes for a future century.
You alone have my secret; my heart, my life, my soul are yours. I
regard you as a creature wholly superior to myself. I adore you and my
adoration goes so far I am persuaded that I can have no merit apart
from you.... Here is my castle in Spain which I have been building for
some time and with which I often amuse myself. When you come to your
place on the throne, I shall not be here. I shall come here at once....
I should wish to come with the character of ambassador in my pocket
but I should not wish to produce it, because that would oblige me to
maintain a rank and etiquette which would disturb me. And I flatter
myself that I should live much with you as a faithful servant and
humble friend. I should have the entrée to and profit by your hours of
leisure, because I always love Catherine better than the Empress....”

Both Poniatovsky and Williams have left extensive records of their
experiences in Russia. This is how Catherine looked at the age of
twenty-six in the eyes of her Polish lover. “At this time she had
attained that degree of beauty which represents for every woman to
whom beauty is given at all the climax of its development. Her hair
was black, her skin a dazzling white and vivid red; she had large
blue, round, very expressive eyes, very long black lashes, a Greek
nose, a mouth which seemed to ask for kisses. Her arms and shoulders
were surpassingly beautiful; she had a tall graceful figure and her
walk was very agile though full of nobility, the sound of her voice
was pleasant, and her laugh as joyous as her temperament.” The Grand
Duchess found in Count Poniatovsky the romantic lover for whom she had
all her life been longing.


                                   5

During the summer of 1756, Count Poniatovsky departed for Warsaw to
make a brief visit. He failed to return at the expected time and the
Grand Duchess bestirred herself to have him recalled to Russia as
Polish Ambassador. She enlisted Williams and Bestushev to this end and
showered favors upon them until the two elderly diplomats began to be
jealous of each other. She had done her work almost too well. At last,
however, she succeeded in her purpose and the Grand Chancellor was able
to secure the young Pole’s return. He imposed as a condition, however,
that Poniatovsky should no longer live with Williams on such intimate
terms as formerly. The way was now clear for Poniatovsky’s return, but
still he lingered in Poland. What was the obstacle? A letter which he
sent to Catherine explains the cause of his delay.

“And this is how it is. By dint of questioning me with all the
tenderness and adroitness possible, my mother understands clearly what
it is that makes me so ardently wish to return to you.... I pressed
her more strongly to consent formally to my return; she said to me
with tears in her eyes that she foresaw with grief that this affair
was going to cause her to lose my affection on which she depended for
all the happiness of her life; that it was hard to refuse some things
but in the end she was determined not to consent. Upon which I was
beside myself; I threw myself at her feet and begged her to change
her sentiments. She said, melting into tears, ‘This is just what I
expected.’ Nevertheless she went away, pressing my hand, and left me in
the most horrible dilemma I have ever experienced in my life.... Oh,
Poutres [his nickname for Catherine] ... share with Bonn [Williams]
this story about my mother and beg him to write my father and ask him
to send me back over there because I am necessary to him. For among
other things she disputes with me that I am necessary to him....”

With the assistance and encouragement of one of his Czartorisky
uncles, the young Count finally escaped from his mother and arrived
in Petersburg in time for the Russian Christmas of 1756. He remained
in Russia as the lover of Catherine for another year and a half, and
left the country finally in July, 1758. Catherine’s daughter, the Grand
Duchess Anna, born in December, 1757, was Poniatovsky’s child. The
infant was taken from the mother by the Empress just as the first one
had been and put into the nursery with her three-year-old half-brother.
She did not long survive under the Empress’s régime and seems to have
been soon forgotten by her mother and her father. The life and death of
the little Grand Duchess Anna, wafted so carelessly in and out of her
mother’s career, was the slightest of slight episodes. Catherine was
absorbed in political intrigue. Her alliance with Chevalier Williams
and Grand Chancellor Bestushev had developed her talents in this
direction, and she allowed herself to go far and to take great risks.
She saw the death of the Empress approaching and the accession of Grand
Duke Peter to the throne. What would then be her position and that of
her son by Saltikov?

A midnight encounter which took place between Poniatovsky and the
Grand Duke at Oranienbaum caused the Pole to leave Russia and showed
Catherine how desperately uncertain her footing had become. The Count
was accustomed to come and go in disguise. Wearing a blond peruke he
would say, “Musician of the Grand Duke” and would pass unquestioned.
But one mid-summer night his ruse failed to save him from embarrassing
developments. Poniatovsky tells the story thus: “On this night I met
unluckily in the woods at Oranienbaum the Grand Duke and his whole
retinue, all of them half drunk. They asked my _izvostchik_ whom he
was driving. My page replied, ‘A tailor.’ We were allowed to pass. But
Elisabeth Vorontsov, lady-in-waiting of the Grand Duchess and mistress
of the Grand Duke, who was present, made a few joking remarks about
the alleged tailor which put the Grand Duke into a bad humor. As I
was leaving the pavilion where I had spent several hours with the
Grand Duchess and which she occupied under the pretense of taking a
water-cure, I was suddenly stopped, after taking a few steps, by three
mounted men, who, sabres in hand, seized me by the collar and dragged
me before the Grand Duke.”

According to Catherine’s story, Brockdorf the pelican played a
prominent part in this scene. The Holsteiner advised the Grand Duke to
kill the prisoner. But Peter had no such intention; he only exposed and
ventilated the scandal. Poniatovsky was allowed to go free after the
episode had become known to the entire court. With broad patronizing
jokes, the Grand Duke invited the Pole to Oranienbaum and facilitated
his meetings with the Grand Duchess. The Shuvalov tried to reassure the
Count, but neither Catherine nor her lover were reassured. “I could not
but remark,” says Poniatovsky, “that all was not clear and that it was
time for me to go away.” Catherine says that she perceived through this
episode that her lot was finally separated from that of the Grand Duke;
that she must either perish with him and through him or save herself
and her children and the state from shipwreck. After Poniatovsky’s
departure for Poland, the Grand Duchess went into strict retirement.
Soon after he left, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams left Russia also.
The Chevalier was strangely reluctant to go away. He should have gone
early in the summer, but he could not decide on his itinerary. At
first he planned to journey through Poland but changed his mind and
decided to go through Sweden. He got as far as Finland and then came
back again saying that his horses had fallen ill. Again he hesitated
and it was not until the end of October that he finally took leave of
Catherine at Oranienbaum. She was extremely depressed by his leaving
and wept the whole day when he came to say farewell. The separation
seems to have added the last straw to the Chevalier’s unstable mental
condition. After a stormy passage from Kronstadt, he arrived in Hamburg
already a sick man, and almost immediately he was declared insane by
the physicians and taken to England. A year later he ended his life by
suicide and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Two months after his death, Catherine wrote to the Russian envoy in
Warsaw the following confidential message: “Count Poniatovsky is out
of humor with me, but he is wrong if he believes that obstacles or
other incidents can detach me from him. I put my profession of faith
into your hands, and I desire only the moment of our reunion; I wish
he would place himself above all vulgar trifles. There is so much
complexity in my present rôle that I have need of that enthusiasm which
he pretends I sometimes inspire. Adversity shall not conquer me and if
it is necessary to triumph, courage will not be lacking. I esteem and
love Poniatovsky above all the rest of the human race. He must be sure
of that, and if I have good fortune events will prove it. In the name
of God, do not remind your hearer [Poniatovsky] of the scene with the
late Williams who, while haranguing me began to sob; you will picture
me inspiring you with courage and the surface will be smiling....”

These cryptic messages indicate that the relationship between Catherine
and Williams was more emotional than the political situation required.
The complexity of her rôle in January, 1761, the last year of Empress
Elisabeth’s life, took all of her attention. During this winter
especially she strove to ingratiate herself with the Russian public,
possibly because she realized that her recent intimacy with foreigners
tended to recall the fact that she herself was not a Russian. Her
assurances of affection for Poniatovsky were still sincere at this time
for his successor did not arrive in Petersburg until the following
March. It was not wholly accidental that her new lover was a Russian.


                                   6

The part which the Grand Duchess Catherine played in the Seven Years’
War was devious if not exactly traitorous. In the spring of 1757, the
Russian army advanced against Frederick the Great, the “blasphemous
Prince” whom Elisabeth Petrovna so cordially detested. Austria and
France breathed a sigh of relief to see their ally at last in motion.
But General Apraxin, in charge of the Russian forces, got into the
fight with extreme deliberation. He captured Memel and Grossjägerndorf,
and then, to the astonishment of all the world, began a most
unaccountable and hasty retreat toward the Russian border. Petersburg
buzzed with excitement. The French and Austrian ambassadors demanded
an investigation, which the outraged Empress was prompt in ordering.
Before the eyes of Europe, her armies had let down her allies.
Apraxin’s only excuse for his retreat was that he was too far away from
provisions.

In the investigation which followed all clues seemed to lead
mysteriously to the Grand Duchess but none of them ever quite reached
her. Bestushev was arrested and subjected to an inquisition which
lasted intermittently for a year. Nearly all the questions put to
him by the commissioners related in some way to Catherine. In the
end, still without having incriminated her, he was sent into exile.
Adadurov, Catherine’s old teacher, and several other subordinates who
had been confidential messengers between Bestushev and herself, were
also arrested, investigated, and banished to remote parts of Russia.

Finally Apraxin, the star culprit in this historical affair, was
recalled from the army and arrested on the border as he entered Russia.
A court of inquiry was set up on the spot and the General was subjected
to a trial which carried on into the summer. On the first of August
his ordeal was brought to an unexpected close. He suffered a stroke of
paralysis and died in twenty-four hours. Like Bestushev, he had not
incriminated the Grand Duchess seriously, even though he had in his
possession several letters written by her to himself. These letters
were taken from him by Count Alexander Shuvalov, the man with the
grimace which Catherine had so often ridiculed, and were safely carried
back to the Empress Elisabeth. Except for the fact that the Grand
Duchess was not allowed to write letters at all, there was nothing
incriminating in this correspondence.

No real evidence ever came out against her. Bestushev had found time
to destroy all his documents before he was arrested and Catherine, on
hearing of his arrest, destroyed every scrap of written paper in her
possession. She made a clean sweep of everything. An innocent sketch of
herself, written at the age of fifteen, was sacrificed with the rest,
a loss which she always regretted. We must assume that she felt that
there was no time to lose. All her closest friends and associates were
tried and convicted. She alone survived the crisis without serious
consequences.

The historian Bilbassov was able to prove to his own complete
satisfaction by the total absence of documentary evidence, that the
Grand Duchess Catherine, throughout the whole shady Apraxin business,
never once wavered in her loyalty to Russia. Her correspondence with
Chevalier Williams, however, indicates that she played with fire at
this time and was only saved from the charge of treason by her amazing
instinct for self-preservation. Believing the Empress to be on the
verge of death--and apparently the infatuated Williams helped her to be
over-confident about the near gratification of this wish--she realized
that the Grand Duke Peter would in that event instantly reverse any
attack on Frederick the Great. Hoping for the Empress’s death and
encouraged by a fit that the unfortunate lady one day had in public,
she schemed to hold Apraxin back from the German campaign. Just what
she did to cause the General to turn in his tracks as he did and when
he did is a fact not knowable to history since Catherine burned up all
her papers. But if the Russian general on this occasion betrayed his
Empress and his country, the Grand Duchess was without doubt one of the
influences which led him into this serious and fatal mistake.

There came at last a dramatic midnight scene in which the Grand Duchess
faced the Empress and saved herself once for all. After the arrest of
Bestushev, she spent many weeks in an agony of suspense. At last she
wrote a letter to the Empress asking for an interview, and waited for
an answer six weeks longer. By this time she was actually and literally
walking the floor, a symptom which belies the good conscience which
Bilbassov would have us believe she enjoyed at this crucial time.
By pretending to be sick and calling in her father confessor, who
interceded on her behalf, she managed at last to induce the Empress to
receive her. Her courage and resourcefulness throughout this crisis
prove that her famous boast of intrepidity made to impress Poniatovsky
in the presence of the French Ambassador was not an empty one.

The Empress, who habitually turned night into day, summoned her to
an audience at half-past one in the morning. Alexander Shuvalov,
grimacing, came to call her. Catherine pictures for us with brief
strokes the room in which she was received by the Empress: the three
windows, the wash-stand with gold utensils, the tall screen, and,
behind the screen, the favorite of the Empress and the defender of
the political interests of France--Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov. In the
gold wash-basin she saw the crumpled letters which she had written
to Apraxin, a detail which gives us by the way a picture of how the
Empress Elisabeth respected important documents. When Catherine arrived
in this room, she found the Grand Duke already there before her. In
his presence, in that of Alexander Shuvalov, and in that of the hidden
Ivan Ivanovich,--a solid trio of her enemies--she was obliged to defend
herself. The manner in which she rose to the occasion shows that the
woman loved danger; she ate it like cake.

She began by throwing herself at the Empress’s feet and asking to be
sent home to her mother. Elisabeth reminded her that she had children
in Russia; Catherine replied that the Empress was a better mother to
them than she herself could possibly be. Elisabeth further reminded
her that the Princess of Zerbst had fled to Paris; Catherine replied
that her mother had been driven out of Germany by the persecutions of
Frederick the Great, the enemy whom Elisabeth hated. What chance had
a mere emotional Empress against astuteness like this? Elisabeth fell
back upon her real grievance.

“You are immoderately proud. Do you remember one day in the summer
garden when I came up to you and asked you if you had a crick in your
neck because you scarcely greeted me?”

“Ah, my God. How could Your Majesty believe that I could be proud
toward you? I swear to you that I had not the least idea that your
question of four years ago signified that.”

“You fancy that nobody alive is as clever as yourself.”

“If I really believed this of myself, then my present situation and
this conversation seem best designed to cure me of my error: until this
very day, I have not understood, out of mere stupidity, what you wished
to say to me four years ago....”

At this point the Grand Duke began to talk with Alexander Shuvalov in
the background, taking sides against Catherine. For a moment the two
women allowed the Grand Duke to enter the quarrel, and then excluded
him again. He was not really worthy to close with either of them in
combat. The Empress brushed him aside and returned to the attack.

“You mix into all kinds of matters which do not concern you. During the
Empress Anna’s time, I was not allowed to do that. How could you, for
example, have the audacity to issue commands to Field Marshal Apraxin?”

“I? It never once entered my head to issue commands to him.”

“Can you deny that you have written to him? Your letters lie there in
the basin....”

The Grand Duchess knew full well that there was nothing in the letters
which Alexander Shuvalov had travelled so far to bring home to the
Empress. She rehearsed their contents now.

“Bestushev says,” Elisabeth persisted, “that there were many more
letters.”

“If Bestushev says that, he lies.”

“Good. If he lies, he shall be put to torture.”

It was the Empress’s last shot and still the Grand Duchess did not
flinch. Elisabeth began to walk up and down the room, while Catherine
and the Grand Duke fell to quarrelling with each other. It was apparent
from the Grand Duke’s remarks that he was under the influence of the
Vorontsov family and nursed the idea of putting Elisabeth Vorontsov in
the place of Catherine. He was not aware that this project appealed
neither to the Empress nor to Ivan Shuvalov behind the screen. “This
went beyond the mental capacity of his Imperial Highness, who believed
all that he wished,” says Catherine, “and pushed aside every other
thought which happened to interfere with the one that momentarily
governed him.”

At three o’clock in the morning the Empress dismissed them. The Grand
Duke left the room first and vanished down the corridor with his usual
long flying strides. Catherine returned to her chamber and undressed
herself. It was the middle of April and the white dawn filled the room
in which for so many days past she had paced the floor in suspense and
sleeplessness. She went to bed and slept soundly.


                                   7

It was true that Catherine’s mother, the Princess of Zerbst, had
fled to Paris. The redoubtable Johanna Elisabeth had, by a series
of political errors, succeeded at last in reaching the city of her
dreams, the haven of art and fashion for which she had always longed.
To achieve this paradise she had made a stormy pilgrimage; and her joy
in her achievement was to be short-lived, for her residence in Paris
proved to be her undoing.

In the year 1758 she was living at Zerbst with her son, Friedrich
August, the reigning Prince. It can not be said that she was living
altogether quietly there, for Fritz had married a young wife with whom
his mother did not get on well. According to the Princess, Fritz also
did not get on well with his wife, who had been an obscure Princess
of Hessen-Kassel. After five years of marriage, they still had no
children. Presumably the domestic atmosphere at Zerbst was anything but
pleasant, although the relations of the trio with the outside world
were peaceable enough. The Princess of Zerbst received a comfortable
pension from the Empress of Russia and there was at least a hope that
the future Empress, who was Fritz’s own sister, would one day succeed
in making him a real Kurfürst of Germany. The Zerbst family had only to
be good and await events.

Suddenly the French foreign office cast an eye on this little
principality. Would it not be possible to use the Princess of Zerbst to
influence her daughter, the Grand Duchess of Russia, who was suspected
of being pro-English and anti-French? The French office decided to
take the chance. A dashing French officer, the Marquis de Fraigne, was
dispatched on this mission and arrived without difficulty at the castle
of Zerbst. Although France and Germany were at war, little Zerbst had
declared itself neutral. A French officer might therefore visit the
Prince in perfect safety, protected by its neutrality. De Fraigne
lingered on at Zerbst, while the weeks passed by in pleasant social
converse. The Princess Johanna Elisabeth wrote letters to her daughter,
which never reached their destination but conveyed to Frederick the
Great all that he needed to know.

Suddenly the little idyl became a volcano. Frederick the Great was
not pleased to have a French officer tarrying at Zerbst. He sent
a detachment of soldiers to arrest the stranger and remove him to
Prussian soil where he could be properly court-martialed. But the
Marquis argued his case and presented his side so well that the
Prussian soldiers retired without him. The offended Frenchman, aided by
the foolish Prince of Zerbst and the still more foolish mother of the
Prince, sent an indignant protest to the King of Prussia. After all,
Zerbst was neutral, and the Prussians ought really to apologize.

Frederick’s answer was prompt: a squadron of artillery appeared before
the old gray walls of Zerbst. Either de Fraigne would come out or the
walls would go down. The Marquis decided to give himself up, and the
Prussians took him quietly away. But the Princess of Zerbst and her
son had pushed the issue too far and Frederick was not going to let
them off too easily. He imposed a penalty of a hundred thousand ducats
and the supply of forage enough for a regiment. It was a devastating
penalty; it wiped them out. In desperation the Princess and her son
fled the situation and abandoned the principality to the Prussian King.
In their haste they left behind them the young wife of the Prince. Or
did she perhaps decline to go with them? Perhaps she thought she had
nothing to lose by remaining with the Prussian occupation. However
this may have been, she did not long survive the flight of the others.
Within less than a year, she died of a stroke of paralysis. It began to
look as if the house of Zerbst was doomed to extinction.

In the meantime, the fleeing mother and son went first to Hamburg.
From Hamburg Fritz departed to enlist in the Austrian army and fight
Frederick the Great, while his mother went on to Paris. She believed
that the French government would welcome her with open arms after the
great sacrifice that she had made for that country. But the French
government lacked appreciation. They now knew as much about Johanna
Elisabeth as Frederick the Great knew when she came back from Russia
with Mardefeld’s dismissal in her _chatelaine_. The Princess loved
intrigue but she was doomed to fail in it; her projects always turned
against her, as if she tried to crack a whip too long for her strength
and was caught in the bite of its cruel tapering end.

The French government made ineffectual attempts to delay the progress
of the Princess as she hastened toward Paris. They sent a last
desperate message to arrest her at Brussels, but Johanna Elisabeth was
on the last lap of her journey to Paris before the message arrived.
There was a certain pathos in the letter which Berni, the foreign
minister, wrote to the French resident at Petersburg. “The Princess
of Zerbst hastened so that the letter which explained the necessity
of postponing her arrival in France did not reach Brussels until she
was already in Valenciennes, from which one could not prevent her from
coming on to Paris.” Berni wished the Empress to understand that he
had not connived at the Princess’s flight to France.

Elisabeth was furious with the Princess of Zerbst. The mother’s
behavior coincided with the daughter’s meddlesomeness in the Apraxin
business. The full wrath of the Empress fell upon the mother’s
frivolous head; she promptly withdrew the lady’s pension. The Princess,
who pretended to observe an incognito in Paris as Countess of
Oldenburg, set up an establishment and plunged into literary and court
society. Suddenly she found herself cut off without a sou. Her letters
to the Empress are pitiable. As her creditors pressed her harder and
harder, she multiplied her petitions. The Empress condescended to be
positively vindictive. She sent a message to the bankrupt woman that,
after first paying her debts, she ought to leave Paris. This silenced
the poor woman at last.

This was in the autumn of 1759, and the Princess was already ill of
dropsy. She passed the winter in bed attended by physicians. Her
letters to Russia ceased to petition for money; she seemed to realize
that Elisabeth was inexorable. The Grand Duchess, who did not know of
her mother’s financial distress, sent her a present of some tea and
rhubarb. But the Princess died before this little gift arrived. It was
only with the greatest effort that Catherine and Ivan Shuvalov, whom
she finally persuaded to help her, could induce the Empress to pay the
debts of the deceased Princess. Elisabeth was willing the Princess’s
personal effects should be sold at public auction. It was hard even for
the favorite, Ivan Shuvalov, to persuade her to save her kinswoman’s
memory from this disgrace. Toward Johanna Elisabeth she had always
been revengeful.


                                   8

The Empress did not long outlast her enemy. For many years she had
really been an invalid. She had secretly imported a famous French
physician who said that she suffered from hysterical “vapors” and
convulsions. Elisabeth’s personal physician was a Greek, Kondoidi, who
at first refused to consult with the foreign specialist. After much
diplomatizing on the part of the French and Russian governments, the
rivals at last consented to meet. It turned out that they agreed in
their diagnosis of melancholia and hysteria, and so they shook hands
over the poor Empress who continued to get no better. Nothing more
definite than this was the Empress destined to die of. Owing to the
convulsions to which she was subject, her death seemed several times
imminent; but then she would suddenly pull herself together and death
would recede to a respectful distance. Her illness dragged on like
the Seven Years’ War and the outcome was as unpredictable. From the
beginning of the year 1761, however, her condition patently grew worse.
During the summer she fell into convulsions which caused her to lose
consciousness for several hours at a time. On Christmas Day, 1761, she
died, at the age of fifty-two. Her span of life was but slightly less
than that of her tall turbulent father, Peter the Great, who died at
fifty-three.

There were three people who had awaited her death with varying
degrees of impatience. To Frederick the Great the news was manna in
the wilderness; it made him at last victor in the Seven Years’ War.
To Grand Duke Peter, it was the release of all his dreams; as Czar of
Russia, he could now follow his illusions wherever they led him, even
to the last limits of destruction. To Grand Duchess Catherine, it was
not altogether opportune. Three years before she had been more eager
for Elisabeth’s death than she was when the Empress at last made way
for her. Catherine was at this time pregnant with her third child and
more than ever at odds with the Grand Duke, her husband. Her new lover
was Gregory Orlov, a handsome young captain of artillery.

While Peter celebrated his accession to the throne with the usual
ceremonies, she withdrew herself discreetly from the public gaze. She
draped herself in heavy black and paid her daily homage to the corpse
of the Empress, kneeling for hours beside the sarcophagus. According to
custom the body lay exposed to public view for six weeks. In the fifth
week, with her own hands and without a quiver, she placed a golden
crown on the head of this malodorous object. It was her final act of
obeisance to the Empress who preceded her.




                             [Illustration]




                                  VIII

                                 ORLOV


In the six weeks which intervened between the death and burial of
Elisabeth Petrovna, the new Czar had offended public opinion in
numberless ways. While the Grand Duchess was diligently observing all
the rituals ordained by the Greek Church for the dead Empress, Peter
III was conducting himself like a boy just let out from school. His
sharp strident tones could be heard down the corridors, conveying
the joyous excitement he was unable to control. He could not kneel
endlessly beside the coffin, as Catherine did, nor even stand, but
paced restlessly about the church talking and grimacing. On the day of
the funeral his grotesque behaviour shocked the people in the street.
He was in a good humor, says Catherine, and allowed himself his little
joke.

As the long procession passed through the Nevsky Prospect, across
the bridge, and into the island fortress of Saint Peter and Saint
Paul, Peter walked immediately behind the coffin. He wore a mourning
robe of state with a long train, the end of which was borne by Count
Sheremetiev. The Czar’s little joke was to stop in his tracks from
time to time and then hasten forward with long strides to overtake
the coffin. The unhappy Count was unable to manage the train of his
master, which flapped wildly in the wind to the great delight of the
Czar who repeated the jest again and again. The procession was finally
so jammed by this trick that a messenger was sent forward to stop the
leaders until they could catch up. The new Czar who amused himself so
well at the funeral of his late aunt, was nearly thirty-five years old.
The public was scandalized and his courtiers blushed for him before
the gossips of Europe. Still they continued to kiss the hand of his
Imperial Highness and to observe all the forms of supreme respect. Like
crows they circled in awe around this feeble image of dignity and awe.

The reign of Peter III lasted altogether six months. His ukases were
a hodge-podge of foolish and reasonable commands. One day he gave an
order that the gentlemen of the court might hunt ravens and other birds
in the streets of Petersburg; also that they might shoot on sight
all dogs found in the vicinity of the palace. Another day he freed
the nobles from compulsory military service. Although the princes
and counts were delighted with this law, they still mistrusted their
capricious emancipator and feared his next measure. Petersburg was
filled with rumors of what it might be. It was reported that Peter III
meant to divorce Catherine and to marry Elisabeth Vorontsov, and that,
to cement this innovation, all the other ladies of the court would be
required to divorce their husbands and take new ones. So jumpy was the
public and so whimsical was their Czar that this nonsense was easily
believed.

Wherever Peter III appeared in public his reputation for capriciousness
grew. When he went to see the guard changed, which he often did, he
would beat the soldiers and even the spectators. Countess Dashkov
tells a story of how his negro servant Narcissus was redeemed by a
ceremony after having had a fight with the scavenger of the regiment.
It was at a military parade. An officer suggested jokingly, “Let
Narcissus pass three times under the banners of the regiment.” Peter,
intensely serious, was delighted with the idea; he insisted that the
points of the banners should draw blood from the negro’s head, which
caused Narcissus to set up a loud yell to the immense amusement of
the officers and the solemn satisfaction of the Emperor. His beloved
Narcissus had been cleansed by a ritual. Numerous stories of his
behaviour survive as sufficient evidence that his mind had wholly lost
its unity and integrity. Bilbassov says of his condition, “a man of
sound sense and clear memory can not understand the conceited blindness
in which the Duke of Holstein, who had become Emperor of Russia, lived.
The frequent drunkenness of Peter III does not explain it.... It must
be traced back to the unfortunate coincidence between the personal
qualities of Peter III and the unlimited power which became his by
inheritance.... He had lost the power to think straight.”

The pathos of his condition was that it inspired in his environment
so much hatred and so little sympathy. As a rule, only the women, to
whom he turned with childish appeal, took pity on him. Even Catherine,
his wife, who has gone down in history as his greatest enemy, wrote
tolerantly of him in her memoirs, “He did not have a bad heart; but a
weak man usually has not.” And Elisabeth Vorontsov, his mistress, was
loyal to him all through the final crash of his fortunes with which his
brief reign came to an end. Her behavior in that crisis shows that her
attitude toward Peter all along had had something in it besides the
mere ambition which was supposed to have guided her. But Peter had no
friend among the men. He was afraid of men and therefore he challenged
and insulted them on every occasion. From the period of his early
fights with his tutors, it could be foreseen that Peter’s greatest
safety in the future would consist in keeping as far as possible
away from his own sex. It would be an ominous day for him if he were
ever cut off wholly from the mercy of women and cast entirely on the
protection of men.


                                   2

The political acts of Peter III were of a kind which no Czar of Russia
could have perpetrated and survived. He prattled about his devotion and
allegiance to the King of Prussia with an openness which embarrassed
even the Prussian representative. One of his first steps as Czar
was to make peace with Prussia. Not satisfied with a mere cessation
of hostilities, he signed a treaty of eternal peace with Prussia in
April, 1762. It was celebrated with great pomp and ceremony, during
which the Czar brought forth his famous toast to the “3 times 3.” On
being questioned he said that the trio whom he had in mind consisted
of himself, Peter III, George III of England, and Frederick III of
Prussia. When it was pointed out to him that Frederick was only the
II’d, it did not disturb him in the least nor interfere with the
elaborate design of fireworks which he ordered to burn upon the sky
above the Neva this historic alliance: “3 × 3.” It was a union over
which Elisabeth Petrovna, now sleeping in the Fortress of Saint Peter
and Saint Paul, and Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, now sleeping in
Westminster Abbey, had once waged a long and bitter controversy. Peter
had suddenly brought it to pass, like a mischievous child. But it was
too much like a harlequinade. What Europe wanted to know was, how long
would it last? Peter was playing with big destinies.

His domestic policies were as ill-inspired as his foreign policies. The
whole of Russian politics revolved around the two pillars: the army and
the church. During his seventeen years as Grand Duke in Russia Peter
had never made friends with either. Soon after his accession he issued
an order confiscating the possessions of the church and allowing the
priests an income from the state. This of course was never executed as
the six months of his reign were not long enough to accomplish such
a revolution. It sufficed however to solidify the antagonism of the
people toward a Lutheran Czar who had no respect for icons and priestly
robes and who read the German Bible. They believed he wished to change
their creed.

Peter’s tactlessness with the army was no less damaging than with the
church. He made his uncle, Prince George of Holstein, generalissimo
of the Russian army. This was a double error, in that he placed a
foreigner in command and resigned to him a place which as Czar he
should have filled himself. He took away the long, loose Russian coats
of the soldiers and put them into tight German uniforms. His next step
was to mobilize the army for a campaign against Denmark. He was Czar
of all the Russias yet a few square miles of Holstein territory in
the possession of Denmark occupied all his attention and filled all
his military dreams. “He had a passionate love,” says Catherine, “for
the little corner of the earth where he was born. He was constantly
preoccupied with it. He had left the land of his birth at the age of
twelve or thirteen years; his phantasy grew heated whenever he spoke of
it, and because no one in his environment, beginning with myself, had
ever been in this wonderful land according to his accounts, he told us
daily stories about it which put us to sleep but which we were supposed
to believe. He grew angry when he saw that we did not believe him.”
This had been his attitude as Grand Duke; as Czar of Russia he behaved
as if he had just come into his own as the ruler of Holstein and seemed
to forget entirely his vast Russian domain.

His indifference to being crowned was a part of his satisfaction with
the rôle of mere Duke. It was immemorial custom to crown the Czars of
Russia in Moscow, in the Kremlin, with all the colorful pageantry of
the Church and Army arrayed against that rich Byzantine background.
Peter neglected to make any preparations for this ceremony. His model
in all things, Frederick the Great, had never been crowned; nor had
Frederick’s father before him. As a matter of fact, both of these
Prussians, father and son, were too penurious to spend money on
coronation spectacles. But the Czar did not question their reasons;
the precedent was sufficient. When Frederick heard that Peter was
dilatory about his coronation ceremony, he was alarmed and wrote to the
young Czar urging him to proceed at once to Moscow and crown himself
there. He reminded Peter III that Ivanushka was still living in the
Schlüsselburg fortress and that he represented a possible rival to the
throne. The Czar was impervious to this good advice. He replied that
the crowns were not ready. The months passed and the campaign against
Denmark was his only interest. But even this he postponed from time
to time. Almost ready to march, he nevertheless decided to delay a
few weeks in order to celebrate his name-day, June 29, with the usual
garden party gayeties at Peterhof.


                                   3

During the six months of Peter III’s reign, Catherine lived in strict
retirement. When obliged to appear in public, she wore heavy black
draperies edged with costly ermine which served a double purpose: they
showed her respect for the late Empress whom she genuinely mourned and
they concealed her pregnancy. In April the new Winter Palace of stone
overlooking the Neva, which had been built by Elisabeth, was completed.
The Imperial family moved out of the old wooden palace on the Nevsky
Prospect, of whose drafts and other discomforts the Grand Duchess had
often and bitterly complained. Here Catherine was assigned rooms at
the opposite end of the palace from the Czar, where on April 11th she
bore a son. He was called Alexei Gregorevich Bobrinsky. His last name
was taken from the beaver skin in which the new-born babe was wrapped.
Bobrinsky went through life as Alexei, son of Gregory. With this child,
Catherine abandoned finally the pretense that he was the son of Peter.
Her eldest son, Paul Petrovich, remained as the sole representative of
this fiction.

Catherine concealed the birth of her second son and brought him up in a
school for cadets. Her position was too insecure to allow her to keep
Orlov’s child with her. As with the other two, she was again deprived
of any maternal satisfaction in the care of him. Ten days after her
confinement, on her thirty-third birthday, she appeared in public to
receive the customary congratulations. She carried off the occasion
as if nothing had happened. Little Bobrinsky’s birth had not caused a
ripple on the surface of things. Presumably the Czar did not even know
of his existence. Catherine subsequently bore two daughters to Orlov
who were spirited away even more completely than little “beaver-skin”
had been. They were brought up under fictitious names at court and
properly married in the course of time. The legends do not tell us
whether their lives developed happily or otherwise.

Four months after his accession, Peter III called his wife a “fool”
in public; it was at the great dinner of state given to celebrate the
peace with Prussia. To Peter’s foggy mind this doubtless seemed only
a casual insult, as was the case when he made Count Buturlin into a
life-long enemy by calling him a “son of a bitch” at a dinner party.
The Czar sat at the head of the table and proposed a toast to the
Imperial family. As the pokals clattered down upon the board, Peter
observed Catherine sitting in her place. He sent the adjutant who stood
behind his chair to inquire why she had not risen and the adjutant
returned with the reply that she herself belonged to the Imperial
family. The silly inconsequential Czar leaned forward in his place and
shouted down the table, in the presence of the assembled Russian nobles
and foreign diplomats, “dura” which means “fool.” It is the epithet
which one _izvostchik_ bawls out to another in a street argument. The
Empress’s eyes filled with tears and she turned to Count Stroganov
who stood behind her chair and begged him to say something amusing to
keep her from crying. It was for Catherine the last straw. Two months
from that date the reign of Peter III came to an end and the reign of
Catherine II began.

The conspiracy which the Grand Duchess had made during her intimacy
with Poniatovsky and Williams had been more elaborate than the one in
which she now engaged. In those days, three years before the Empress
died, Catherine had had plenty of money--English money--at her command.
She says herself that on the day of Elisabeth Petrovna’s death she was
literally bankrupt; she had not sufficient credit to order herself a
new dress for Christmas. “On this day,” she adds, naïvely regretting
that she had not ordered it, “the Empress died, something which I had
not been able to foresee.” Ten years afterward she still regretted the
dress she had foregone.

In the year 1762, as Czarina, she found herself in the possession
of an income. This time it was Russian money not English money at
her disposal, and she had acquired other Russian resources as well.
Formerly, Catherine’s confederates had been foreigners; this time there
was no suspicion of foreign influence in her friendships. The five
brothers Orlov were the center and the focus of her plans and there
were enough of them to do most of the underground work needed in the
barracks. Alexei, the eldest, was a tough-minded person who had some of
Catherine’s own strength. Gregory, the second brother and her lover,
famous for his good looks, was softer and more sensitive. There still
remained Ivan, Feodor, and Vladimir, who moved under Alexei’s orders.
It was a typical Russian brotherhood with Alexei as leader. The Orlovs
all lived in the barracks where they quietly suborned the guards with
gossip and money. Count Kyril Razumovsky, Lieutenant-Colonel of the
Ismailov Regiment, had long been subservient to Catherine’s charm. He
gave her no trouble and his military position was useful to her. One
woman, the Countess Catherine Dashkov, who played a showy though rather
a dummy rôle in the preparations and their execution, must be included
among the inner circle of conspirators. They were all Russians of
ancient Russian lineage, except Catherine herself, who liked to forget
that she had German blood in her veins.

The Countess Dashkov occupies a prominent place in the history of
Catherine’s revolution. Her memoirs were published as early as 1840
and were the first authoritative account to be circulated in Europe.
In the stories which multiplied around her name during the nineteenth
century she figures as an Amazon and a leader only second to Catherine
the Great. She was actually not very important. Her age precluded
that, for she was only nineteen when Catherine deposed Peter and
ascended the throne. The Countess had a strategic value due to the
fact that she was the sister of Elisabeth Vorontsov, Peter’s mistress.
Her allegiance to Catherine’s party divided the Vorontsov family as
Catherine wished to divide it. She was a possible source of information
concerning the other camp but she was also a possible channel for
leakage in the opposite direction. For this reason, Catherine tells us,
she was not fully initiated in the secret plans of the Empress and the
wholly devoted Orlovs. The Empress had a rendezvous with her Dashkov
at which we may assume the nineteen-year-old Countess told all she
knew without being told much in return. Catherine once wrote to her,
to reassure her anxiety about a rendezvous, “As for your reputation,
it is better established than that of the whole calendar of saints.”
The scorn is a bit transparent. Peter III, with all his stupidity, put
the case clearly enough when he said to Countess Dashkov, “My child,
you would do well to recollect that it is much safer to deal with
honest blockheads like your sister and myself than with great wits,
who squeeze the juice out of the orange and then throw away the rind.”
Catherine was not quite so egoistic as Peter made her out. She did not
throw away the rind; she preserved it carefully. The Countess Dashkov
enjoyed the patronage and protection of the great Empress all her life.

Another confederate of the Empress in her conspiracy was Nikita
Ivanovich Panin, the governor of her son. Panin had lived fourteen
years in Stockholm as Russian Ambassador. There he had imbibed the
concepts of liberalism and had formed a vague picture of Russia
as a constitutional monarchy. Panin’s critics say that he did not
sufficiently realize the political differences between a compact
little country like Sweden, with its one blood and one faith, and the
vast empire of Russia with its conglomerate races and cultures and
religions. To his delight, Panin found, on his return to Russia when
he was recalled to educate the infant Paul, that the Grand Duchess
Catherine had also imbibed the new ideas from her diligent reading of
French authors. Panin took hope for the future of his country when a
liberal Empress would be in a position of power. This powerful position
he pictured in a special way. Like other observers about the court,
he perceived the tragic impossibilities of Peter as Czar and imagined
that in some way he would have to be supplanted. Panin’s solution of
the future, however, was to elevate Paul as actual emperor and Paul’s
mother as Regent. He wished to establish a régime like that which
Elisabeth Petrovna had overturned, that of Ivanushka and his surly
mother, Anna Leopoldovna. Panin prepared elaborate schemes to this end,
some of which he put on paper. The Grand Duchess, prior to 1762, read
his plans with interest. After 1762, she declared that she had never
really agreed to them.


                                   4

On the night of the 27th of June, 1762, the Imperial family was
more than usually divided, although the morrow was to usher in the
celebration of the Emperor’s name-day. Peter Feodorovich slept at
Oranienbaum; Catherine Alexeievna slept at Peterhof; and the little
Grand Duke slept in the Summer Palace at Petersburg in the care of
Nikita Panin. It was planned that the Czar and his retinue would drive
over the next morning from Oranienbaum to Peterhof where the usual
name-day celebration would take place. Catherine, unattended except by
a maid, waited at Peterhof for her husband and his gay party to come
over from Oranienbaum and enliven the place.

She slept that night in the little red brick pavilion known as
Monplaisir. Her bedroom opened upon a terrace lapped by the waves of
the blue Finnish Gulf. It was a doll’s house built by Peter the Great,
whose head almost touched the ceilings, crowded as close down to the
sea as he could crowd it. The Empress Elisabeth loved Monplaisir for
her father’s sake and because she had a kitchen there where she herself
could cook. The big Czar and his tall daughter have left their memories
about this pavilion at Peterhof. But Catherine the Great, who spent the
most dramatic hours of her life there--hours which were to make her the
Empress of Russia--never liked the place. As an old woman she used to
say that she hated the noise its fountains made and that her dog hated
the gurgle of those fountains too. She would never spend any money
in developing and beautifying the premises after they came into her
possession.

On this particular night in June, 1762, the fountains were still,
awaiting the coming of the Czar on the morrow when they would play.
In the pale light, the gilded statues shone on the terraces leading
down to the sea. At six o’clock in the morning a man came stealing
through the park, skirted the main palace, and made his way down to
the pavilion at the water’s edge. He wore the uniform of a Captain in
the Preobrazhensky Regiment and he seemed to know where he was going.
A French window opened into the Empress’s bedroom. He stepped inside.
Catherine was sleeping in a broad silken bed alone. “Matushka, little
Mother, wake up,” he said. “The time has come.” The man was Captain
Alexei Orlov, the brother of Gregory Orlov, Catherine’s lover.

The night before had been a restless one in the city of Petersburg.
The army had been mobilized for the campaign against Denmark and the
General, Prince George of Holstein, was ready to march as soon as
the celebration at Peterhof should release the Emperor to accompany
them. The war was unpopular and the soldiers grumbled. They did not
like their German commander and they did not like their uniforms.
Nevertheless they stood ready to go; it was the Czar’s orders. Late in
the evening the news went round that Captain Passeck had been arrested:
again the Czar’s orders. The report was passed indifferently enough
from person to person until it reached Alexei Orlov. Immediately the
five Orlov brothers were all in action. Captain Passeck was the boon
companion of Alexei and was one of the forty officers who had been
sworn into the conspiracy. Arrest was likely to be followed by torture
and Captain Passeck’s secrets were not secrets which could be told to
the inquisitors of Peter III. So Alexei evidently thought, for he hired
an ordinary carriage from the street, took with him Lieutenant Bibikov,
and drove out to Peterhof. It was midnight when they left the city, and
it was six o’clock when Captain Orlov entered Catherine’s bedroom and
awakened her.

Her festival dress was laid out ready for the day; but she did not put
it on. She donned instead the black mourning gown which she had taken
off the night before. Together with Orlov and her maid she passed out
through the park on foot, for the carriage had been left standing in
the road outside the grounds. They were half an hour in reaching it.
Catherine and her maid seated themselves in the carriage, Bibikov
stood up in the back and Orlov sat on the box with the driver. The
hack horses turned their faces towards Petersburg. They had travelled
their twenty-nine versts that night, and had now to trace the same
distance back again. Nevertheless, urged on by Alexei Orlov, they
covered the distance in less than an hour and a half. The white dust
from the roadway rose in clouds and settled on the black garments of
the Empress, for the carriage was an open _calèche_. About half-way to
the city they met Catherine’s hairdresser on his way to Peterhof to
prepare her for the gala day. The Empress sent him back telling him she
would not need him. About five versts from the city, they met Gregory
Orlov and Prince Bariatinsky. The Empress changed to Gregory’s carriage
because his horses were fresher. Escorted by her lover and Bariatinsky
she drove up to the Ismailov Regiment. It was the regiment of Count
Kyril Razumovsky, who had long been in love with her as a Grand Duchess
and had assisted all her projects in Russia.

An old priest was found to administer the oath of allegiance, while
the whole regiment headed by Razumovsky hastened to swear fealty to
Catherine II of Russia. The Empress got into her hired carriage again
and, preceded by the priest and followed by the regiment, went on to
the Preobrazhensky Regiment. Here the oath of allegiance was again
hastily administered and the augmented procession moved forward to the
Nevsky Prospect. The third regiment, the Semionovsky, suffered a moment
of indecision, but they too were in line by the time the procession
reached the Kazan Cathedral. It was now nine o’clock. Catherine entered
the Cathedral and was met by the priests who blessed her with the
cross. The nobles crowded around the new Empress, competing with the
military to kiss her hand. From the Cathedral the procession went on up
the Nevsky Prospect and turned into the Morskaya, proceeding to the new
Winter Palace.

At ten o’clock, just after the Empress entered the palace, another
hired carriage was seen dashing up to the entrance. A fat man and
a little boy in his night clothes were sitting inside. It was Panin
and the Grand Duke Paul, and this was their first appearance on that
stirring June morning. They had slept late. Count Panin had always been
dilatory, unready. It is said of him that the Empress Elisabeth had
once cast her eye upon him as a likely favorite. She summoned him one
day to wait for her outside the bath; but when she emerged she found
him crumpled on his chair fast asleep. So she decided to employ him
in the diplomatic service. On the morning of Catherine’s accession,
after fourteen years of international diplomacy, Count Panin had not
changed. When he entered the Winter Palace with his charge, the Empress
came to meet them and carried the boy out on the balcony to present
him as her heir. This was the end of Panin’s scheme to make Paul
emperor, Paul’s mother the Regent, and himself Grand Chancellor. He
remained always rather resentful about it and did not fail to hamper
the ambitions of the Orlovs whenever he had a chance. Catherine said of
him, “Count Panin was naturally indolent, and he had the art of making
his indolence pass for calculating prudence.”

The doors of the Winter Palace were thrown wide open and anybody from
the street could enter and kiss the hand of the new Empress. The palace
was a gorgeous new building, only just completed, yet all the common
soldiers were free to tramp through it and take the oath of allegiance
to their Little Mother. It was a master stroke. “The least soldier of
the guards,” Catherine wrote to Poniatovsky, “on seeing me said to
himself: that is the work of my hands.” Other master strokes of the
Empress were the fluent manifestoes which she composed from time to
time during the following days, to be set up and printed in the cellar
beneath the Academy of Science and distributed to a people who could
not read them. In 1762, few of the nobles could read. Fortunately the
manifestoes were carefully preserved in the archives for the enjoyment
of a more literate age.

The first one drafted by her facile hand read thus: “We by the Grace of
God, Catherine II, Empress and Autocrat of all the Russias, etc., etc.,
All true sons of the Russian Fatherland have clearly seen the danger
which threatened the Russian Empire. Namely, the law of our Orthodox
Greek Church has been shaken by the disregard of ecclesiastical
traditions, so that our ancient Orthodox Church in Russia was exposed
to the extreme danger of being obliged to adopt another confession.
Secondly, our glorious Russia, which has been lifted to a high degree
by its conquering weapons, has been placed in complete subjection
to its bitterest enemy by the new peace for which so much blood has
been spilt, while the inner organization of the country, on which the
whole Fatherland depends, lies in ruins. Therefore and because we
are convinced of the danger to our faithful subjects, we have seen
Ourselves obliged with the help of God and his Justice, but especially
in response to the distinct and undissimulated wish of Our faithful
subjects, to ascend the throne as Autocrat of all the Russias,
whereupon all Our faithful subjects have taken the solemn oath of
allegiance to Us.

                                                             CATHERINE.”

During the day the Empress and her counsellors decided that a military
campaign to Peterhof was necessary. The object was to secure the person
of Peter III and obtain his abnegation of the throne. As Brückner
well points out, the so-called army which Catherine II led to Peterhof
was partly a spectacular, romantic parade and partly an exhibition of
political genius.

At ten o’clock in the clear light of the evening of June 28, 1762, the
Colonel of the Guard--Catherine herself--took her place at the head of
her troops. She was mounted on a white horse and wore oak leaves in her
hair. Her uniform was borrowed from a lieutenant in the Life Guards. It
was doubtless chosen because the lieutenant and the Empress happened
to be of a size, but it scarcely clothed her new position and title.
For Catherine had not hesitated to assume the title Colonel of the
Guards, the traditional place of the Czars of Russia which Peter had
resigned to his Uncle George of Holstein. Beside her at the head of the
troops, likewise clad in military uniform, rode the Countess Catherine
Dashkov. During the night she remained beside the Empress, while her
sister, Elisabeth Vorontsov, stuck close to the Emperor. There was deep
jealousy between the sisters.

Catherine II left the following note, written in her own strong free
flowing hand: “Gentlemen and Senators! I go now with the Army to
secure and safeguard the throne, and leave in your care as my highest
representatives with the fullest confidence the Fatherland, the People,
and my Son.

                                                             CATHERINE.”

The Senate solemnly responded in a note which overtook the Empress
at two o’clock in the morning, resting on her way to Peterhof: “His
Highness, the Czarevich, is as well as could be desired. In the house
of Your Imperial Majesty, as well as in the city, all goes well and the
measures you have commanded are being carried out.”

Catherine bestrode her horse and rode onward to Peterhof. She had
lived for this triumphant moment: little Fike riding her pillow in
the dark bedroom at Stettin; Grand Duchess Catherine cantering about
the courtyard in Petersburg while an admiring riding-master kissed
her boot,--these earlier exhibitions had prepared the way for this
spectacular ride at the head of her spectacular army. But it was her
last showy ride. In the future, she would be too busy and perhaps a
shade too serious.


                                   5

Eight hours after Catherine and Alexei Orlov had left Peterhof,
Peter and a gay party drove through the park and halted in front
of Monplaisir. The ladies and gentlemen sprang from the low
_chair-à-bancs_ and strolled about the terrace. No one came to welcome
them. The red pavilion was empty and silent. Peter went through the
rooms searching for Catherine in vain. It is said that he even looked
under the bed. Mystified and vaguely alarmed the party wandered down to
the pier where three small vessels were moored.

Here they received the first news of events in Petersburg. A man
bringing the inevitable fire-works for the Czar’s name-day landed from
a small boat at three o’clock. He told how the Preobrazhensky Regiment
had hailed Catherine as Empress at nine o’clock that morning and how
he had nevertheless just gone about his business of the day, which
was to bring the fire-works to Peterhof. This seemed definite enough.
Catherine had mutinied.

Peter was accompanied by Count Münnich, Prince Trubetsky, Chancellor
Vorontsov, Count Shuvalov, several other nobles and officers, and
about seventeen ladies. His old tutor, Stehlin, tells the story of
this day. Throughout the sunny afternoon the party remained on the
lower terrace. The ladies and gentlemen withdrew a little to the
garden, where they lay stretched out under the open sky through most
of the fine summer day and a part of the fine summer night. Peter and
his advisers lingered near the canal and wrote one ukase after the
other which the Czar signed against the stone balustrade and sent to
Petersburg. He paced up and down the walk beside the canal and took
everybody’s advice in turn. Finally Chancellor Vorontsov volunteered
to go to Petersburg and bring the Empress to her senses. Then Shuvalov
and Trubetsky departed on similar errands. But like the other less
important messengers whom the Czar had already dispatched to the city,
these gentlemen also did not return.

Peter’s fears increased. The Holstein Guards who had been sent over
from Oranienbaum to defend Peterhof against attack reported that there
was no ammunition in the place. Gradually, as the hours passed, a plan
matured by which the whole party would go to Kronstadt in the three
vessels which lay at anchor at the foot of the canal. A messenger was
sent to the island and returned with the report that the way was clear.
It was an error, as Peter learned when he tried to bring his yacht into
the Kronstadt harbor at four o’clock in the morning. None of the three
vessels was allowed to approach the island and the watchman called
back brutally across the water, “There is no Peter III. There is only
Catherine II.”

The Czar’s yacht fell away and took the course toward Oranienbaum. The
Czar himself lay on the deck in a dead faint.

Early the next morning, forerunners from Catherine’s advancing
army began to gallop up to Peterhof. First and foremost on the
scene, at each stage of the developments, was Alexei Orlov. Quiet,
undistinguished, inexorable, he was the Empress’s own man. The Colonel
herself arrived at Peterhof at eleven o’clock. She sent messengers
forward to Oranienbaum, demanding Peter’s abnegation, which the
trembling Czar was by this time in no mood to refuse. General Ismailov
brought back to the Empress the official document in which the Czar
renounced all claims upon the throne.

It was General Ismailov who lured the ex-Emperor into a carriage with
the promise that he would be sent to Holstein with Elisabeth Vorontsov.
As soon as they had passed the gates of Oranienbaum, the Czar was
separated from his favorite and brought as a prisoner to Peterhof. “To
prevent him from being torn to pieces by the soldiers,” says Catherine,
“he was put in the charge of a reliable guard under the command of
Alexei Orlov.” From this time on Peter was at the mercy of his military
guards; he never saw his mistress again. But the ghosts of his father,
Brümmer and Bergholz, and all the tutors and governors who had tortured
his childhood in the name of discipline, now crowded upon him with
unspeakable terrors. Only now they bore the names of Alexei Orlov,
Feodor Bariatinsky, and other Russian officers.


                                   6

Peter was driven up to Peterhof in a closed carriage, with drawn
curtains. He was taken into an empty room, stripped of his uniform,
and left in utter solitude. At the other end of the palace, remote and
invisible, sat the terrible Empress. From her came messengers from time
to time, directing this and commanding that. One of the messengers was
Count Panin, amiable, soft Panin. The Empress apparently wished to
communicate with him through human agents as well as wolves like Alexei
Orlov. But if Peter was a bleating lamb, Panin was a fat old sheep.
His interview with the deposed Czar, in which the prisoner kissed his
hand, alternately pleading and commanding, left a painful wound on a
sensitive personality. Panin afterwards said that he considered it one
of the greatest misfortunes of his life that he was obliged to see
Peter III on this day. The memory haunted him and made him fearful
on behalf of the little boy he was bringing up, Paul Petrovich, who
believed himself to be the son of the martyred Czar.

The Empress allowed the prisoner to choose the place of his
confinement. Peter chose Ropsha, a small estate with a large garden
and a fishing pond not many miles from Peterhof. What the Empress
really intended to do with Peter no one knows or ever knew, probably
she herself least of all. But this is what she said she intended,
though it was many years afterwards that she wrote it. “To go with
Peter to Ropsha, the Empress named Alexei Orlov, Prince Bariatinsky,
and several other officers. They chose a hundred men from the
different regiments of the guard. They had orders to make the life of
the monarch as agreeable as possible and to provide what he wished
for his entertainment. The intention was to send him from there to
Schlüsselburg and, according to circumstances, to allow him after
some time to go with his favorites to Holstein. So little was his
personality regarded as dangerous.”

What actually happened at Ropsha was quite different. Peter’s tragedy
came swiftly. Shut up in a bedroom and not allowed to leave it even
for exercise, his existence was unutterably miserable. After the first
night he complained of the bed and asked to have his own bed brought
from Oranienbaum. Curiously enough, this whim was promptly gratified
by Alexei Orlov who had the great four-poster and all its trappings
brought to Ropsha and set up before nightfall. An English traveller
who saw this bed several years afterwards describes it for us. “It had
a white satin coverlet, and was on a large four-post bedstead, with
curtains of pink and silver brocade, and ornamented at the top with a
plume of red and white feather.” But even his own bed brought little
comfort to the victim. He remained in twilight and solitude, for he was
not permitted to open the green curtains which hung at the windows.
In desperation, he asked for companions, and again his request was
granted. His negro Narcissus, his dog, and his violin were brought,
at the Empress’s command, from Oranienbaum. He begged for Elisabeth
Vorontsov’s presence but this was refused him. Presently he fell ill
with diarrhœa, a disease to which he was always subject in a crisis.
His personal physician was brought to Ropsha.

The leniency of the Empress bears out her statement of her intentions.
Comforted by Narcissus, his dog, and his violin, Peter might live
on at Ropsha indefinitely. But it was a dull life for the guards.
Orlov, Bariatinsky, Passeck and the others were accustomed to all
the excitement of life in Petersburg. Playing cards all day and all
night at Ropsha was monotonous entertainment by comparison. Six days
of it gave them a picture of future weeks, future months, stretching
possibly into years. The revolution, with all its hectic anticipations,
was over, and this was where it had landed them. It was all very well
for the Empress and the others, enjoying life in Petersburg, to be
magnanimous toward the prisoner, to take measures to mitigate his
suffering and prolong his endurance. In the eyes of men like Orlov and
Bariatinsky, Peter was not a man anyway. He was no better than a worm
that lay in their path and asked to be stepped on. They played cards
and drank heavily. Saturday came and at mid-day Peter was invited to
come out of his room and dine with the guards....

In the meantime the Empress, established in the Winter Palace, received
daily messages from the ex-Czar and Alexei Orlov about the progress of
things at Ropsha. Three chief petitions from the prisoner and three
letters from his jailer project for us the scenes of the tragedy which
developed so swiftly and inevitably from the circumstances.

“Madame,” wrote Peter, “I beg Your Majesty to rest assured concerning
me, and to have the goodness to order that the guards be removed from
the second room, in order that I may move about in there; because, as
you know, I always walk about in the room and I shall otherwise get
swollen legs. Then I beg you further to command the officers not to
remain in the same room when I have necessities; that is unendurable
for me. Finally I beseech Your Majesty not to treat me like a great
evil-doer. I am not conscious that I have ever wronged you. While I
commend myself to your magnanimous thoughts, I beg that you will at
least send me with the persons named to Germany. God will certainly
reward you. I am, Your very devoted servant, Peter. P.S. Your Majesty
can rest assured of me that I shall think and do nothing against your
person or your reign.”

The second note is shorter. “Your Majesty: If you do not wish to
destroy utterly a human being who is already unhappy enough, have pity
on me and send me my only consolation, that is Elisabeth Romanovna
[Vorontsov]. In this you will be doing one of the most merciful deeds
of your reign. Also if Your Majesty would but visit me for one instant
my highest wishes would be fulfilled. Your very devoted servant, Peter.”

The two preceding messages were written in French but the third and
last one was written in Russian, the language which Peter hated and
Catherine loved. The drowning man caught even at this straw. “Your
Majesty: I beg you, since I have fulfilled your will in everything, to
allow me to go abroad with those for whom I have already petitioned
Your Majesty. And I hope that your magnanimity will not leave me
without nourishment. Faithful servant, Peter.”

The letters of Alexei Orlov, brought by the same messenger, picture
what was happening meanwhile in the guards’ quarters at Ropsha.

On Tuesday he wrote: “Little Mother, Gracious Empress: Health we all
wish you for countless years. We and the whole command are well as this
letter leaves us, but our monster has grown very sick and has had an
unexpected attack of colic. And I am afraid that in the end he might
die tonight and fear still more again that he might live. The first
fear I have because he chatters pure nonsense, and that does not amuse
us; and the second fear, because he is really dangerous for us all
because he often speaks as if he had his former position.

“According to your orders, I have paid the soldiers for half a year,
also the under-officers with the exception of Potiomkin, because he
serves without salary. Many of the soldiers have spoken with tears of
your Graciousness, they had not deserved so much of you, to be rewarded
in so short a time. I send you herewith a list of the entire command at
present here; but a thousand rubles were lacking, Little Mother, and
I have added them in ducats. There was much laughter here among the
guardsmen on account of the ducats, when they received them from me.
Many asked questions because they had never yet seen any and gave them
back to me because they thought them worth nothing.... Until death,
your devoted slave, Alexei Orlov.”

On Saturday morning, Orlov wrote, “Our Little Mother, Gracious Empress;
I know not what I should do for I tremble before the anger of Your
Majesty, that you do not believe something awful about us, and that we
are not the cause of the death of your rascal and also of Russia and
our law. But now the lackey Maslov sent to serve him has fallen ill and
he himself is so sick that I do not believe he will live until evening,
and he is already quite unconscious; which the whole command knows and
begs God that we become rid of him as soon as possible; and this Maslov
and the officer dispatched can inform Your Majesty in what condition he
now is, if you are pleased to doubt me. This written by Your Faithful
Servant....”

On Saturday evening, a messenger from Ropsha galloped up to the Winter
Palace with the last letter from Alexei. “Little Mother, Merciful
Empress. How shall I explain or describe what has happened? You will
not believe your devoted slave but before God I will speak the truth.
Little Mother! I am ready for death but I myself do not know how the
misfortune happened. We are lost if you have not mercy upon us. Little
Mother, he lives no longer in this world. But no one had thought that,
and how should we have had the thought to lift hand against the Czar?
But Empress, the misfortune has happened. It came to a quarrel at table
between him and Prince Feodor: we could not separate them, and already
he was no more. We cannot ourselves remember what we have done, but
we are all to the last man guilty and deserve death. Have mercy upon
me, if only for my brother’s sake! I have made my confession and there
is nothing to investigate. Pardon me or quickly make an end of me. I
hate the light of day: we have angered you and our souls are hurled to
destruction.”

On Sunday morning the Empress informed the public by an official
statement that Peter III had died of a hemorrhoidal attack and would
be buried in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. There is no record that
she ever tried to give anyone at any time a confidential explanation
of Peter’s death. The letters of Alexei Orlov were put away and never
came to light until after her death. Her silence remained unbroken.
Formerly this woman had worried excessively about what Europe might say
about the birth of her first child and her relations with Saltikov.
Now Europe had nothing less than murder to talk about, and talk ran
high. But Catherine seemed impervious to any curiosity concerning this
foreign gossip. As an old woman, however, she one day suddenly asked
Diderot, “What do they say in Paris of the death of my husband?” When
Diderot was too embarrassed to answer, she turned the conversation by a
jest at his expense.


                                   7

During his brief reign, Peter III had reversed the foreign policies
of his late aunt. The Austrian and French interests had gone into
eclipse, while the Prussian interest had blazed up again. Frederick’s
envoy lived at the elbow of the Czar whispering good advice to a
mental invalid who was unable to profit by it. No sooner was Peter
III out of the way than the Austrian and French envoys came out of
their retirement and began to plead their cause with Catherine II.
They took for granted that Frederick the Great had had his day and
that his enemies, Austria and France, would now have theirs. Had not
the Empress issued a manifesto in which Prussia was referred to as
Russia’s “bitterest enemy”? Had not Field Marshal Saltikov advanced
upon Prussian soil, opening all of a sudden an offensive campaign? For
a moment Frederick the Great trembled in his well-worn boots while the
hopes of France and Austria ran high.

                   [Illustration: CATHERINE THE GREAT

                     _From a painting by Ericsen_]

But the Empress was not occupied with the interests of Prussia, or
Austria, or France. She preferred the interests of Russia, which
happened to be her own. She recalled the hasty General Saltikov from
Prussian territory so adroitly that he scarcely knew he had been
recalled. She assured Austria and France of her good will and
friendship and left them thinking that their temporary estrangement
from Russia during Peter’s reign had been wiped out. Catherine II
wished to have peace with Europe. She had called Frederick the Great
the deadly enemy of Russia on the day of her accession; but a few
days afterwards she confirmed the peace with Prussia which Peter III
had made and which her manifesto had denounced. The Empress made no
attempt to justify this inconsistency. She was a woman of action and
explanations have a way of taking too much time. From her accession
until her death she was one of the busiest monarchs in Europe.

                     [Illustration: GREGORY ORLOV]

She recalled Bestushev and presented him with a great house furnished
with comforts. The old man was nearly seventy now and of no great
service to her. But she owed him much and he was a magnificent monument
because he had once known Peter the Great. She recalled Biron, also
aged with exile, and made him the Grand Duke of Courland. He was
useful to her there because he kept the House of Saxony from getting
a foothold in Courland. Poniatovsky, who had long awaited this day in
Poland, now wrote asking to be summoned to Russia, but she did not
recall him. She discouraged him from writing to her at all, saying, “I
must walk straight ahead; I must not be suspected.” She had long ago
planned with Poniatovsky and Williams that the Count was one day to be
made the King of Poland. She now urged the Count to stop at home in
Poland and abide the course of events.

One of Catherine’s first acts as Empress was to give orders for her
coronation. The ceremony which Peter had postponed until he had at
last died uncrowned was foremost in her thoughts. Four days after
her accession, she ordered the fire-works for her coronation; and
seven days afterwards, the day on which the death of the unfortunate
Peter became known, she announced the date. It was to take place in
September. She gave Prince Trubetsky fifty thousand rubles and sent
him to Moscow to get everything in readiness. He carried with him the
specifications for a great spectacle, and, with the assistance of a
corps of official merry-makers, managed to complete all preparations
within the time arranged for. Promptly on the first day of September,
the Empress left Petersburg with an enormous train. There was evidently
to be no postponement of the date originally set for the ceremony,
no repetition of the succession of postponements which had delayed
the marriage of the Grand Duke and the Grand Duchess under the late
Empress. The new Empress had none of the dilatoriness of Elisabeth; she
had respect for time. In this regard, she remained always only half a
Russian.

Between Petersburg and Moscow, a slight cloud threatening delay rose
above the horizon. It appeared in the direction of the train of Count
Panin and his pupil, the Grand Duke Paul. The Empress received a
message from Panin that his pupil had fallen ill of a fever and might
not be able to enter Moscow on the expected day. Would the Empress
travel more slowly? The Empress halted and waited with impatience.
She was rewarded by a second message saying that the Grand Duke had
another and a worse attack. The Empress no longer wavered; she sent her
ultimatum to Panin. It directed that Panin and his train should travel
forward when the boy’s health permitted; in any case, the Empress would
enter Moscow on the following Friday. On the receipt of this message,
Paul’s health suddenly became better and he was able, under the escort
of Panin, to enter Moscow in the company of his mother.

Catherine’s coronation took place in the Kremlin on Sunday, September
23, 1762. In the early morning the regiments marched through the
towering gates and stationed themselves in front of the four great
cathedrals whose pinnacles rise like glittering golden tulips above the
city. At ten o’clock the Empress appeared on the Red Staircase leading
to the Uspensky Cathedral. Six chamberlains carried her train and Count
Sheremetiev bore the end of it. Six months previously he had carried
the train of the erratic Peter at the funeral of the Empress. This time
his offices were accepted by his sovereign with supreme decorum. The
procession advanced slowly, while the great crowds who had gathered
without the military cordon and occupied the roofs of the houses gazed
in awestruck silence at the ermine-and-silver clad figure of the
Empress, their Little Mother. Only the myriad bells of Moscow spoke and
the cannons thundered their salute.

From cathedral to cathedral, the stately procession advanced. As
Catherine placed the crown upon her own head, the cannons fired a
salute on the Red Square. Surrounded by Prelates and Archimandrites,
she nevertheless chose to give the Holy Communion to herself. As she
had on the night of June 28 unhesitatingly placed herself at the head
of the army as Colonel, she now placed herself with just as much
assurance at the head of the Church of Russia. Now as then, no one
questioned her right to do so.

While the Empress distributed honors in the Granovitaya Palata, the
sacred chamber into which women had been first admitted by Peter the
Great, the whole city of Moscow was turned into one vast festival.
The merry-making was prolonged for weeks. The fountains ran wine,
bread and roast meat were given for the asking, and silver rubles were
thrown to the people. No single tradition of grandeur or graciousness
was overlooked by the new Russian monarch. An allegorical pageant
called the Procession of the Triumphant Minerva brought the coronation
festivities to a close, but by this time winter was so far advanced
that the performers shivered in the flying snow.

The triumphant Minerva was a happy allegory for Catherine. Not so
happy perhaps was the inspiration of the Archimandrite of Troitsky who
welcomed her at the gates of the Cloister with an oration comparing her
to Judith. Afterwards a group of students, wearing gold-embroidered
garments and green wreaths on their flowing locks, sang a cantata
composed in her honor. The unmusical Empress could not distinguish one
note from another but she bore herself graciously throughout. A few
years later, grown more accustomed to power and partly satiated, she
was less tolerant. She would sometimes send a page to the orchestra in
the theater and arbitrarily stop the music.


                                   9

Captain Gregory Orlov became Count Orlov on the day of Catherine’s
coronation. She also named him General-Adjutant and gave him her
portrait set with diamonds which he wore on his breast. Gregory Orlov
sat many times for portraits which may still be seen in Petersburg
showing him to be as handsome as report has made him out. He was
indolent and unaspiring, content to be the escort of her Majesty and to
eschew all influence in public affairs. In the spring of 1763, after
Catherine had been Empress for about a year, a rumor of her marriage
to Gregory Orlov was whispered about. Whence arose this rumor? Had the
slothful Gregory suddenly become ambitious? It was more likely that the
idea came from Alexei, the head of the Orlov clan.

Count Gregory occupied an equivocal position. He was a parvenu and the
favorite of the Empress. Among the nobles, the Orlovs were not popular.
Among the forty officers who had supported Catherine’s conspiracy,
were many who regarded them with a jealous eye. They had been showered
with honors and riches, though the Empress had done much also for a
number of her supporters. The intimacy between the Empress and Gregory
Orlov aroused distrust. If the favorite were promoted to the position
of a consort, the Orlovs would certainly become powerful. Their
fellow-conspirators were not pleased to be so far outstripped.

There is a legend that about this time the Empress sent Chancellor
Vorontsov to sound out Count Alexei Razumovsky on his alleged marriage
to Empress Elisabeth. According to the story, the ancient Count, fast
falling to decay in his chimney corner, behaved very strangely when
questioned. He produced an old yellow satin-covered document which he
kissed dramatically and then threw into the open fire. Tradition says
this was his certificate of marriage which he sacrificed to prevent
its being used as a precedent by Gregory Orlov in his suit with the
Empress. He destroyed by this act his last chance to go down to
posterity as an honest husband. But he also destroyed whatever hopes
of a precedent the Orlovs may have had. The story was first told by a
descendant of the Razumovsky family and may well be doubted.

Whatever may have happened in Razumovsky’s house, the gossip did not
stop. The Empress, attended by Gregory Orlov, left Moscow for Rostov to
spend the month of May in a cloister. No sooner had she left the city
than old Bestushev produced a petition, suggesting a second marriage
for the Empress on the grounds that the Grand Duke Paul had such
delicate health. When this paper reached Panin, he asked the Empress
outright whether it was issued with her permission or not. The Empress
said not, but Panin did not believe her. The town talk increased, and
little groups began to put their heads together behind closed doors.
Presently a certain groom of the Bed Chamber, Chitrovo, who had been
one of the guards of the late Czar at Ropsha, was arrested and held
for a secret investigation. The young man’s grandfather was enraged.
He met old Bestushev on the street and scolded him. “Mercy on us,
your Highness. What power these Orlovs have, that gentlemen can so
completely disappear!”

Chitrovo was accused of having made threats against the life of Alexei
Orlov. The Empress, watching everything from her hiding-place in the
cloister, saw that matters were growing serious. Messengers galloped
back and forth between Rostov and Moscow, while Catherine directed
the hearing of Chitrovo to the last detail. The least word from his
lips was set down on paper for her. In the end she sent him off to his
own country estate. It was a light sentence, for she did not want to
increase the talk.

She gave peremptory orders that the investigation was to be kept
secret. But it was no longer possible. All Moscow was talking of the
affair, and the Empress knew that Moscow was talking. She decided to
issue a manifesto which she called the “Manifesto of Silence” and which
she ordered to be read aloud in the streets of Moscow. The President
of the Senate summoned the crowds together by the beating of drums and
then read aloud to them these commands of the Empress:

“It is Our Will and Wish, that each and all of Our faithful subjects
shall attend alone to their office and occupation, and shall refrain
from spreading unseemly and bold rumors. But against Our expectations
and to Our great distress and dissatisfaction, we hear that there are
people with wicked thoughts and manners who think not at all of the
common good and peace; but, attacked by singular ideas about things
which do not concern them and of which they can have no real knowledge,
nevertheless they busy themselves with putting these ideas into
other weak heads.... Although such harmful judgments really deserve
punishment, for they damage Our own and the general peace, we shall
not in this case proceed with full strictness; but, with Our inborn
humanity, maternally admonish all those who have been affected by
these restless thoughts to refrain from unnecessary conversation....
If however Our motherly admonition has no effect upon their wicked
hearts and does not lead them back upon the way of the good, then let
every one of these bad people know that we shall proceed with the full
strength of the law....”

With the Manifesto of Silence, the talk stopped. But the project
of marriage with Gregory Orlov also came to an end. When Catherine
returned to Moscow the subject had been forgotten. It was the only
attempt of her reign to acquire a legal consort and to win back the
good name she had lost. Henceforth she was to remain the widow of
Peter III and the mistress of many lovers. In her life-time she made
two valiant attempts to become a respectable married woman but both of
them failed for wholly different reasons. The first time was when she
married the ineffectual Peter. The second time was when she tried to
marry Gregory Orlov and was stopped by public opinion in Russia.




                             [Illustration]




                                   IX

                          CATHERINE THE GREAT


In 1762, Petersburg was still a wooden city. The court itself had only
just removed from the drafty wooden palace on the Nevsky to the great
stone palace on the Neva. The houses were simple or multiple structures
of squared logs of the type still seen in Russian villages. Cellars and
basements were unknown. To the substantial German mind of the Empress,
the superficial grandeur of her capital was an object of secret
derision. “Greifenheim’s house,” in which she had been born, had been
better built. She wrote a verse about the house that Jack built without
any stairway because the stairway had been forgotten.

The composition illustrates what the Empress often said of herself,
and very truly, that she was no poet. But it very well expresses what
she thought of Russian building in her time. She called her doggerel a
_Chanson_.

    “Jean bâtit une maison,
    Qui n’a ni rime ni raison:
    L’hiver on y jèle tout roide,
    L’été ne la rend point froide;
    Il y oublia l’escalier,
    Puis le bâtit en espalier.”

When a fire broke out in the city, it was a glorious spectacle. During
the first winter of her reign, the Empress watched from her window
two hundred and forty wooden houses going up in flames. As the sparks
ascended from the roaring logs against the blackness of the winter
sky, she watched the disaster with mixed feelings, for she yearned
to rebuild that quarter of the city anyhow. Within three years it
was actually rebuilt of brick. Several great fires devastated the
city during the early part of her reign and the Empress restored the
ravaged sections with brick and stucco washed pink and green by Italian
architects. First raised by Peter the Great and developed by Catherine
the Great, Petersburg was and remains for all time a wholly un-Russian
city, a fitting monument to these two rulers who joined Europe and
Russia together.

Though Catherine the Second prided herself on being a Russian she
cherished a private scorn for much that was precious to the Russians.
Her honest opinion of Moscow, set down in her journal, shows this.
“At that time [1750], even more than now, it was in general very
hard for the nobility to leave Moscow, the city which they all so
loved, where laziness and indolence are their chief occupation. They
would gladly spend their whole lives there, driving about in a richly
gilded carriage behind six spans of horses, a symbol of the false
idea of luxury which reigns there and conceals from the eyes of the
masses the slovenliness of the master, the complete disorganization
of his household and his manner of life. It is no rarity to see a
splendidly gowned lady in a wonderful carriage with six lean and
shabbily harnessed horses drive out from a great courtyard heaped with
dirt and trash. Her unkempt lackeys in pretty livery disgrace her by
their boorish behavior. Generally speaking, both men and women grow
soft in this great city: they see and practice only wretchedness,
which leaves the most undoubted genius to perish and decay. Because
they follow their humors and their whims, they evade all laws and
execute them badly. The consequence is that they never learn to
command at all or that they become tyrants.... Besides this there
was never a people who had more objects of fanaticism before their
eyes, such as wonder-working saints at every step; churches, parsons,
cloisters, praying brothers, rascals, thieves, useless servants in
their houses--and such houses! What dirt in those houses, which occupy
whole fields and have mudholes for courtyards. In general every person
of fashion in the city occupies not a house but a small farm.” The
Empress complained that if she sent for a person in Moscow, she had to
wait until the next day for her answer. The Muscovites had time. The
Muscovites were Russians.

Although Catherine was free in her criticism of the Moscow nobles, her
own court at Petersburg was just as extravagant and ostentatious though
possibly more orderly and cleanly withal. Both gentlemen and ladies
wore jewels and diamonds. Gregory Orlov, at the height of his fortunes,
had a suit of clothes which cost a million rubles and which was sewed
all over with diamonds. Orlov’s extravagance was mild compared with
that of his successor, Potiomkin, who was clearly obliged to outshine
the achievements of his predecessor. Historians have estimated what
the Empress spent on the clothes and upkeep of her several favorites
and how much she turned over to them in the form of estates and
other valuable goods and have found the total shocking. In this she
seems to have but continued the tradition of Elisabeth who gave the
Anitchkov Palace to Razumovsky and a handful of national monopolies
to the Shuvalovs. All the nobles about the court had inherited lavish
standards from Peter the Great and the favorites of the Empress could
not possibly be outshone by Sheremetiev and Stroganov who were counts
and rich men by inheritance. Catherine’s favorites were parvenus; they
owed every copeck to her. She always saw to that. The Empress herself
was a parvenu; but the nobles of Moscow were not. In the palaces there
with their miry courtyards dwelt the ancient blood of Russia. While the
Empress criticized their dirt and ostentation, she knew that from the
point of view of Moscow she herself was a parvenu and her favorites
were but creatures of yesterday.


                                   2

Up to the time of Catherine the Second, the Czars of Russia had been
addressed by the European courts as “Your Majesty.” As soon as the
Empress was crowned at Moscow, she notified the sovereigns of Europe
that she expected in the future to be addressed as “Your Imperial
Majesty.” Her request was granted except in France, which had the
consciousness of being the most civilized country in the world and was
bound to regard Russia as a savage interloper. France would gladly
have pushed the big, unwieldy, dirty chaos known as Russia back into
the arms of Asia. The French maintained that “Czar” did not mean the
same as “Emperor” at all. But Catherine said the two titles were
exactly the same, and insisted that “His Most Christian Majesty” of
France should always address her as “Her Imperial Majesty” of Russia.
At last the French minister, Choiseul, agreed. Then he sent official
communications to Russia in which the word “Imperial” did not appear.
Catherine refused to read them or to recognize an envoy who carried
papers addressed merely to “Her Majesty.” Pushed into a corner,
Choiseul finally declared that “Imperial Majesty” was impure French, a
corruption of the sacred language which the French Academy existed to
protect. The argument between Versailles and Petersburg spun itself out
for years.

Like a good and faithful wife, Madame de Choiseul joined in the quarrel
and went about calling the Empress of Russia a “monster.” It was
this lady who provoked from Voltaire his famous words in defense of
Catherine the Great. “I may boast to you that I stand rather in the
good graces of the Empress; I am her knight toward and against all.
I know well that she is reproached for several trifles towards her
husband. Those are family matters in which I do not mix. Moreover it
is also well if one has a wrong to make good. Then it becomes one’s
first interest to make great efforts to win for oneself the respect and
admiration of the public. Certainly her dreadful husband would not have
accomplished one of the things which my Catherine accomplishes every
day.”

Catherine the Second was her own foreign minister. The men whom she
placed at the head of the College of Foreign Affairs were followers
not leaders. When she ascended the throne, she knew more about the
international relations of Europe than she did about the internal
affairs of Russia. She was to learn about Russia after she became its
Empress. In 1762, the alignment of the European nations had been
thrown into high relief by the warlike activities of Frederick the
Great. International problems were perfectly familiar to her. Her
opinion was formed and she was ready to take action. Catherine had
been inspired by Machiavelli’s “Prince,” which she had read during the
Poniatovsky period when she had intrigues for power with Sir Charles
Hanbury Williams for an ally.

In his monumental work on Catherine the Great, Bilbassov devotes a
chapter to a detailed account of the reading of the Grand Duchess
during the years of her virtual imprisonment by the Empress Elisabeth,
and emphasizes the influence which her favorite authors had on her
subsequent career as Empress. Bilbassov found on her table Voltaire,
Montesquieu, Tacitus, Boyle; in short, a collection of free thinkers
who might be expected to form the mind of a future liberal monarch.
Catherine read all of these, but she also read Machiavelli, whose name
is not mentioned by Bilbassov in his carefully prepared chapter on her
reading. In one of her letters to Chevalier Williams, she quotes a
maxim of Machiavelli to the effect that a man is rarely as wicked as he
ought to be. Williams was a little shocked apparently, for he replied,
“What I say is, thank God, the wicked rarely have the courage which
they ought to have to execute their wickedness.” To which Catherine
replied coolly, “So much the better, if le bon Dieu has curtailed the
courage of the wicked for the execution of their wickedness.”

The foreign policy of this Empress was uniformly aggressive. In her
domestic policies, her intentions were at least liberal, but all her
dealings with foreign nations were astute and predatory. The trail
of Machiavelli was over all. She worked for the expansion of Russia
and boasted as an old woman of the number of square miles which
she had added to her territory. Russia was a parvenu and she was a
parvenu; their cause was one. Europe should be astonished, and it was
astonished. It responded by calling her the Semiramis and Messalina
of the North and Catherine the Great. In these high-sounding titles,
she exulted and her personality settled into them as her body settled
comfortably into its ermine robe.


                                   3

When the squire falls heir to wide ancestral acres, his first thought
is for his boundaries and his fences. So it was with Catherine when she
fell heir to Russia. Courland was entrusted to Biron, the decrepit old
Duke ruled by his daughters and devoted to Catherine. Thus the Empress
secured this boundary well and could henceforth dismiss it safely from
her mind. She next considered her own border provinces and found them
too restless for her taste. Little Russia, Livonia, and Finland needed
to be stabilized and she wrote to Viazemsky recommending treatment to
that end. “These provinces, like that of Smolensk, must be induced in
the gentlest manner to Russify themselves, so that they no longer look
around them like wolves in the forest.”

To Poland she gave her own personal attention. Catherine’s name plays
a great rôle in the history of that country as one of the originators
of the historical looting party known as the partition of Poland. Three
monarchs shared the booty: Catherine of Russia, Frederick of Prussia,
and Maria Theresa of Austria. Maria Theresa is the only one of the
three who has never been accused of inventing the idea. Since Catherine
herself exonerated the Austrian Empress in a letter which she wrote to
Grimm in 1770, Maria Theresa’s lack of responsibility for the crime
in Poland seems sufficiently established. “As far as the dear worthy
Lady Prayerful is concerned,” wrote the Russian Empress, “I can say
nothing more than that she suffers from severe attacks of covetousness
and imperiousness. To weep is a sign of repentance, but since she
always holds fast to what she has and quite forgets that not to do a
thing again is the best kind of repentance, there must be something
stubborn in her bosom. I fear it must be the original sin of Adam which
plays this crazy comedy. But what does one ask more from such a woman?
If she is faithful to her husband, she has all the virtues and needs
nothing more.” Maria Theresa’s retaliation was to speak of the Empress
of Russia as “cette femme” and talk about her openly as a loose woman.
Notwithstanding this exchange of personal insults, they coöperated
willingly in the seizure of Polish territory.

The exact part played by Frederick the Great in the partition of Poland
has never been so clearly established. It is an embarrassing episode
for the Prussian historian to explain. To assert, as Schlözer does,
that Frederick only gradually and reluctantly consented is an attempt
to whitewash the hero in a way which makes him slightly unheroic. To
ascribe the initiative to the Russian Empress is to place the great
Frederick in a secondary position which is inconsistent with the
invincible front he has always presented to history. Nevertheless the
actual idea, that is, the execution of the idea seems to have occurred
first of all to Catherine. The expectation of the disaster had long
existed in Poland, which had been forewarned a century before by one of
its Kings, Jan Casimir, who said that one day the thing would happen
just as it actually did happen. The dismemberment of Poland had been
seen as a possibility by all the international politicians of Europe
for more than a century before it became a definite picture in the mind
of Catherine the Second. She alone had the energizing image that leads
to action, and was undoubtedly responsible for the first Partition of
Poland, although Frederick the Great shared the guilt for the second
and third partitions which followed logically on the first.

The steps by which Catherine came to this decision are not difficult
to trace. Soon after her accession to the Russian throne, the King of
Poland lay down to die. After a series of false alarms, he actually
did die in September, 1763. The King of Prussia and the Empress of
Russia, who had been misled so often by false reports, were both upset
by the event when it finally occurred. Frederick sprang up from the
table with the remark, “I hate those people who always do things at
the wrong time.” Catherine also sprang from her chair when the news
came, galvanized for action. She had hoped for it so long. Her long
deferred plans to make Stanislas Poniatovsky King of Poland required
instant attention. She had already instructed her Ambassador, Count
Kayserling, concerning his duties in the present crisis. He had in fact
been selected for the post with this event in view. “I am sending Count
Kayserling without delay as Ambassador to Poland,” she had written to
Poniatovsky, “in order to make you King after the death of August III.
If my Ambassador is not successful in making you King, then I desire
that Adam Czartorisky shall become King.”

Adam Czartorisky was the uncle of Stanislas, a representative of the
same family, and was also devoted to the Empress of Russia. Catherine
was willing to allow Poland a second choice from this family. This
did not mean, however, that she strove any less efficiently and
determinedly to place the handsome Stanislas upon the throne. She told
Kayserling that if he could not manage it for less to spend as much as
a hundred thousand rubles on the election. Nor did she put her faith
in the influence of money alone. Russian regiments were marched into
Poland to camp ominously near the electoral convocation. The Empress
wished, however, to avoid bloodshed. She preferred to enlist the aid
and influence of the Prussian King in order that Poland might feel its
eastern and western neighbors closing in upon its existence like a
gentle but inevitable vise.

Catherine gave presents quite unblushingly. No sooner was the
Polish King dead than couriers with messages and gifts began to
enliven the road from Petersburg to Berlin. Knowing Frederick for a
_Feinschmecker_, Catherine sent him melons from Astrakhan and grapes
from the Crimea. Frederick gallantly replied, “There is a great
distance between watermelons from Astrakhan and the electoral assembly
of the Polish provinces, but you know how to comprehend all in the
sphere of your activity. The same hand which presents watermelons
distributes crowns and preserves the peace in Europe, for which I
and all who are interested in the affairs of Poland shall eternally
bless you.” Catherine’s gifts continued. Russian caviar and sterlet
were followed by Russian furs, black fox and marten. And finally, when
Frederick expressed an interest in the dromedaries so commonly used
by the peasants in Russia, the Empress had two of the best animals to
be found in Ukrainia sent with her compliments to the master of Sans
Souci. As the first watermelons had been heralds of Poniatovsky as
King, the dromedaries were harbingers of the first partition of Poland.

Not wholly unlike the late Czar of Russia, Poniatovsky was made King
against his will. Catherine, the King-maker, forced this unwelcome
distinction upon him. He believed and many others believed with him
that Catherine intended, after making him ruler of Poland, to marry
him and annex his country to her own. The Pforte of Turkey was one of
those who suspected this to be the plan of the Russian Empress and
who accordingly set about to defeat it. He opposed the election of
Stanislas on the ground that he was not married. Poniatovsky’s family,
the Czartoriskys, saw the logic of the Pforte’s objection and urged
the Count, who had certainly reached a marriageable age, to choose a
suitable consort. But Poniatovsky stubbornly refused to take the fatal
step. The utmost that he would consent to do, and this was only after
an emphatic message had arrived from Catherine at Petersburg, was to
sign an undertaking that he would at least never marry any but a Roman
Catholic. This promise quieted the Turkish opposition and the election
was allowed to proceed. It took place by immemorial custom in the
open field by a vote of voices. It was a fine day and there was no
disorder. Poniatovsky wrote in his journal, “The election was perfectly
unanimous and so tranquil that many ladies were out on the electoral
field.” He became, at the age of thirty-two, King Stanislas August of
Poland.

The country had vindicated its cherished republican system and
enthroned an elected King. The courts of Europe hastened to send
acknowledgments and congratulations. The last country to be heard from
was Russia. As soon as Catherine had got her King elected with her
military pickets and her hundred thousand ducats, she lost all interest
in the Polish situation and left the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count
Panin, to send the flowers. “The thing seems incredible,” wrote the
Prussian Ambassador to his master, “nevertheless I assure Your Majesty
that this is so. The notification of Poniatovsky lay unanswered for
six weeks on Panin’s well-known work-table.” This seemed amazing to
Frederick the Great to whom promptness and system were fetiches. To
Catherine such things were conveniences.

That Poniatovsky, a king in spite of himself, never thoroughly enjoyed
his reign is only to be expected. His country was torn by internal
dissensions, political and religious. The new King was a man who
had been bullied all his life, first by his mother and then by his
mistress; in short, a man of charm but no force. There was nothing
within him with which to cope with the turbulent conditions of his
realm. Catherine had a genius for reconciling what seemed to be
opposites; but the Polish King, who had run away from his mother to
his mistress and had then run away from his mistress to his mother
again, could not hold two antagonistic interests in his mind at the
same time. Poland was a cauldron of conflicts: district with district,
status with status, religion with religion. Under Poniatovsky, the old
familiar feuds blazed higher and higher. His health suffered and he
was miserable. After three years of such devastating responsibility,
he wrote to his Ambassador in Russia, “The last orders given by
Prince Repnin [the Russian General] to introduce legislation for the
dissidents [Greek Catholics] is a real thunderbolt for the country and
for me personally. If it is still humanly possible, try to make the
Empress see that the crown which she procured me will become for me a
shirt of Nessus. I shall be burnt alive and my end will be frightful.”

Thus the King wailed on his comfortless throne, a gentle mouse
trembling under three watchful pairs of eyes belonging to three of the
most greedy monarchs of the century. Perhaps it would be more accurate
to say that the three watchful pairs of eyes were trained upon each
other and that they rather overlooked as negligible the victim cowering
at the center of the stage. Maria Theresa, the Austrian widow who never
laid aside her weeds; Frederick the Second, the shabby bachelor who
wore patches on his clothes; and Catherine the Second, the parvenu
sovereign who painted her face--the conjunction of these three arch
aggressors boded no good for Poland, weakened as she was by incessant
domestic tremors. Yet the catastrophe which had been gathering for
years and which was inherent in the circumstances, was precipitated at
last as if by an accident.

In the autumn of 1770, Catherine entertained a distinguished foreign
guest. He was a short man with a stiff pompous carriage and a silent
inexpressive demeanor. He had come to Petersburg rather reluctantly
at the request of his brother who felt that any invitation from the
Empress of Russia should be accepted and exploited. There was no
knowing what might be hidden behind the advances of this woman. The
stiff, silent guest whom she entertained this autumn was Prince Henry
of Prussia, the brother of Frederick the Great. Prince Henry was almost
as unsociable as his brother but he had a sharp eye and sensitive
perceptions. He was ideally qualified to sniff around the wood-pile of
the Russian monarch.

Catherine, who never lost an opportunity of displaying all her riches
before this family, entertained Prince Henry regally. She installed
him and his retinue in a palace facing the Alexander Nevsky monastery,
an edifice so huge and magnificent that it was later converted from
a residence into a school for imperial pages. The modest, unassuming
Henry moved about with considerable discomfort in the rich and colorful
setting which the hospitable Empress provided for him. His appearances
were punctual and meticulous but it was impossible for anyone to look
at him and fancy that he enjoyed the balls and masquerades which were
given for his entertainment. The Russians did not like him and made
fun of his solemnity and coldness. With the Empress, however, he got
on extremely well. Their conversations were carried on at great length
and an intellectual sympathy developed between them which led to a long
and interesting correspondence. Prince Henry’s letters to the Empress
do not contain the over-strained flattery with which his brother,
Frederick the Great, always addressed her. There is evidence in their
letters to show that Prince Henry of Prussia was one of the people of
her own generation who understood this woman perfectly. In her old
age, she turned against him violently, but he cherished no resentment
against her. He respected Catherine sincerely, and was never afraid of
her as the great Frederick always was, not because she was an Empress
but because she was a woman.

Prince Henry stepped sedately through all the gorgeous festivities of
a Russian Christmas and New Year in Petersburg. The Winter Palace had
never been so gay at this season since Catherine had become Empress,
for the visit of the Prussian Prince had provided an excuse to outdo
anything she had ever done before. In January, just about the time when
things began to quiet down a bit, a disturbing rumor came over the
snows from Moscow. It was said that Maria Theresa had sent Austrian
troops across the border to occupy a little piece, a very little piece
of Poland. The Austrian monarch had ready her excuse but the Russian
monarch did not think well of it. Neither of these august ladies ever
gave the other the benefit of the doubt in any situation. Catherine
dropped this casual remark in the presence of Prince Henry: “It seems
that in this Poland, one has only to stoop and help one’s self.” Prince
Henry regarded her words as a significant message for his brother
to whom he reported them, adding, “Although this was only a chance
pleasantry, it is certain that it was not said for nothing and I do not
doubt that it will be very possible for you to profit by this occasion.”

And so began the three famous Partitions of Poland. In the first
partition, Poland lost four thousand square miles and the three
partitioners felt equally well treated. Twenty years later, the second
partition took place in which the Russian Empress profited immensely
more than her partners in the looting. Poland raised up national
heroes, chief of whom was the romantic Kosciuszko, who came to her
defence. But their exploits only served as an excuse for the third
invasion, which reduced Poland to a mere remnant, and finally and
utterly deprived Poniatovsky of his throne.

For a time the ex-King lived in Poland under the protection of Russia
and later he went back to Petersburg where he found asylum until his
death. He outlived by several years the mistress of his youth, who had
first given him a throne and then taken it away again. Poniatovsky
was no hero but he was a good deal of a philosopher; he accepted his
decline and fall without any great gestures of tragedy. He had never
wanted to be King anyhow. His star went down in peaceful obscurity,
while the national hero Kosciuszko impersonated for the world the
tragedy of Poland. Both of them were supported by pensions from the
Russian government. Catherine’s estimate of the ex-King of Poland is
illustrated by a legend which is believed even to this day. The story
goes that she brought his lost throne from Poland and used it for a
water-closet in her apartment at Czarskoe Selo.


                                   4

In the eighteenth century, Russia took her census every twenty years.
It was an autocratic revision carried on in a slipshod way under
military orders. When Catherine ascended the throne it was time for
such a census to be taken. The new Empress was impatient for the
results; she wanted to know how many souls she had and how much of the
earth’s surface she owned, for it was in such personal terms as these
that she pictured her possessions.

Returning from Moscow in June, 1763, just after the fiasco of her plan
to marry Orlov, she turned her attention to the census. The Senate
was preparing to go ahead according to precedent. Although Pastor
Wagner had been a specialist in geography, his pupil the Empress was
nevertheless very vague about Russia. She was obliged to ask the
Senators to tell her how many cities there were in her kingdom and
discovered to her horror that not one of them knew. Without a moment’s
hesitation she took five rubles from her pocket and sent a messenger
post haste to the Academy of Science which had published an atlas of
Russia to be had for this price. The Empress presented the atlas to the
Senate with her compliments.

The discussion of the census proceeded. Catherine learned that it was
customarily taken by military troops and cost almost a million rubles,
and that it invariably sent the peasant population into a panic. They
evaded the lists by hiding in swamps and forests and fleeing across the
border into Poland. The consequence was that trials, investigations,
and punishments followed in the wake of every census in such numbers
that the Senators dreaded to undertake the job at all. Sadly they
shook their bewigged heads and deplored the necessity of causing so
much commotion among the terror-stricken people. They made speeches
one after the other without offering any suggestion as to how these
regrettable consequences could be prevented. The attentive Empress
listened until she was tired and the discussion finally came to a dead
end. Then she asked a few questions.

“Why have such a number of troops and pile up these heavy costs for
the treasury? Is there no other way?” She was told that there was no
other way; it had always been done so. “But this plan seems better to
me,” she persisted. “Publish throughout the Empire that every place
shall send a list of its souls to its chancellery, the chancelleries
to the governments, and the governments to the Senate.” Four Senators
spoke up at once to tell her that it was impossible. The people would
not report themselves voluntarily and a show of military force was
therefore necessary. The Empress pursued her plan. “Offer to all those
who have not yet registered freedom from punishment and order the local
authorities to accept the former evaders upon the present list.” The
elderly Prince Shakovsky sprang to his feet. “That is not justice,” he
shouted. “The guilty shall be handled exactly like the innocent! I have
always carefully reported from my district and no one has been omitted.
But whoever has enjoyed the advantage of omissions will now stand just
where I do!” But one of the younger Senators had got the Empress’s idea
and came to her support so handsomely that the plan was adopted and
carried into execution. Henceforth, the Empress’s method was always
followed, with the result that migrations to Poland and outlawry in the
woods and swamps which once followed every census gradually disappeared
altogether.

Catherine left a memorandum of the worst internal tangles which she
had to undo at the beginning of her reign. The army had been unpaid
for many months. The taxes of the Empire had been mortgaged by the
senate. There was a scarcity of currency; only a million gold rubles
were in circulation in the whole empire. The Empress Elisabeth had
handed over nearly every branch of business and all the mines of the
country to monopolists, chief of whom were the Shuvalovs. At the time
of Catherine’s accession, the peasants who worked in the mines were in
revolt. The Empress regarded these monopolies with great disfavor and
the rebellious peasants with even greater disfavor. Like the German
_Hausfrau_ that she was, she enjoyed the wielding of a new broom and
of giving the country a real spring cleaning. By hook or crook, she
managed to pay the army; she restored the taxing power to the tax
officers; she reformed the currency and introduced paper money into
common use; she abolished at one stroke all monopolies and followed the
example of Peter the Great in encouraging private business enterprise.
Finally, she sent her colonels and her cannons down to the mines where
strikes had broken out during the reign of the late Czar and bombarded
the strikers so thoroughly that they were glad to seek safety in
the mines again. Well satisfied with all these cleanings, she wiped
her hands on her apron and sat down to her silk embroidery. She was
working on a gorgeous robe, with stitches as delicate and perfect as
the Chinese can make them, to be presented to the Archimandrite of the
Troitsky monastery.


                                   5

Catherine took considerable interest in the status of her sex and
questions of morality. She once said that she did not know or
understand women. She wrote to Madame Bjelke, “From my fifteenth to
my thirty-third year, I never really had the opportunity to converse
with women; I only had handmaidens about me. When I wished to speak
with anyone, I had to go into another room where there were only men.
So it is due partly to habit and partly to my taste that has been so
formed that I really understand only how to carry on a conversation
with the latter.” It is true that she had few women friends. The
Princess Dashkov who had ridden beside her on the night of the Peterhof
campaign was never really in her confidence. She was a lay figure. In
old age, the Empress became more and more dependent on the friendship
of Countess Bruce and Countess Protassov. But her intimacies, emotional
and intellectual, of which there were many, were intimacies with men.
She always had a free and jovial way with them.

The Empress initiated some reforms for her sex which foreshadowed
typical aspects of the woman problem--a problem which was not really
born until the next century. From this point of view, very significant
are the steps which she took. Prostitution was a well-developed trade
in the Petersburg of those days. In one quarter of the city girls of
the town were especially numerous, and venereal disease flourished
among them. It was a malady in which the Empress took a vast interest.
Whether she herself had had an unfortunate experience or whether she
merely remembered that Peter the Great had been prematurely carried
off by it, the Empress was horribly afraid of this contagion. A
well-authenticated story has it that each of her lovers was required to
submit to a physical examination by her English physician, Rogerson.
Nor did her interest stop entirely with herself. She built a fine
hospital for the sufferers from this infection, of which Major Masson
says: “One hospital, however, founded by Catherine deserves to be
mentioned as a characteristic establishment. It is destined for
the reception of fifty ladies infected with a certain disease. No
question is asked either as to the name or the quality of those who
present themselves, and they are treated with equal care, respect, and
discretion. This last word is even marked on the linen appointed for
their use.”

Another institution still remaining as a monument to Catherine’s reign
was the great Foundling Hospital which she built on the banks of the
Moscow. Lying against the river, it stands out as one of the most
prominent features of the city next to the Kremlin. Its tradition has
not faded, as it still houses the maternity welfare work of Moscow. The
Empress made it originally a home for foundlings and planned it for the
discouragement of infanticide. Her institution has the name of being
the first of its kind which sprang up in Europe; at any rate, it was
the most famous and served as a model for many which came afterwards.
Not all of Catherine’s subjects were pleased with her innovation. A
citizen named Smolin wrote a letter to express his discontent. He
reproached her for these foundling homes which only served for the
encouragement of immorality. Vice, he said, would show itself more
openly and shamelessly as a result; more and more illegitimate
children would be born. From this it may be seen that the Puritan ideal
of the repression of vice did not lack representation even in Russia in
the eighteenth century.

The Empress’s efforts to educate her sex met with more approval. A
cloister known as the Smolny Convent and founded by Elisabeth Petrovna
was taken over by Catherine and converted into a school for young
ladies. She gave her personal attention to this experiment which was
the pride of her heart. She wrote to Voltaire, “You know, for nothing
escapes you, that five hundred young ladies are being educated in a
house which was formerly designed for three hundred brides of heaven.
These young ladies I confess far surpass our expectations. They make
astonishing progress and every one admits that they are as lovable as
they are knowledgeable. Their conduct is justly regarded as blameless
without having at the same time the strict and stern manner of the
cloister. For the last two winters they have begun to play comedies and
tragedies, and they have done better with them than those who make a
profession of acting.”

Proud as she is of these five hundred faultless damsels, there is one
problem which troubles her. All the French plays including Voltaire’s
own, which she can find for the school turn on the theme of love. What
is to be done about it? She asks Voltaire’s advice. Catherine feels
that her girls’ attention should not be called so early to the subject.
Voltaire agrees and helpfully suggests that as far as his own plays
are concerned the matter can be remedied. Ten lines here and twelve
lines there, to be obligingly selected by the author, can be stricken
out without damage to the composition and all the proprieties will be
satisfied.

In a gallant sentence, he refers to the Smolny damsels as Amazons.
The Empress rejects this title firmly, informing him that they are
not intended to become Amazons at all but honest wives and mothers.
It appears, however, that this admirable institution had overlooked
the problem of dowries. After twelve years of careful cultivation, the
young ladies emerged as paragons of virtue but entirely penniless and
homeless. Many of them became governesses. Others still were snared by
the officers of the guards whose barracks adjoined the convent. “They
watched every term of dismissal,” says Major Masson, “to ensnare the
prettiest. It would be more practical to save, out of the immense cost
of their education, a sufficient sum to portion them or at least to
keep them till they were provided for.” The Empress apparently did not
foresee this difficulty. As penniless Princess Fike of Anhalt she had
come to Russia and had got a husband without a dowry. The Smolny young
ladies might do the same.


                                   6

Although Catherine did not hesitate to follow self-interest in foreign
relations, she took an idealistic view of her domestic problems. She
turned from Machiavelli to Montesquieu. When she thought of Courland
and Poland she pictured herself as a general on horseback; when she
thought of Russia she pictured herself as the Little Mother, Matushka.
She and Russia were united against the rest of the world.

The Empress wished to make her people happy without making herself
unhappy. Russia had despotic, conflicting, chaotic laws. There was a
printed code which had been handed down from Czar Alexei Michaelovich,
the father of Peter the Great. But chiefly the people were ruled by
ukases, of which Catherine’s Manifesto of Silence is a good example.
Not always, however, did the Russians obey so promptly as they had done
in this particular instance. It was commonly said of the peasants when
some order had not been obeyed, “They are waiting for the third ukase.”
During the reign of Elisabeth Petrovna, the Senate had discussed the
need of codifying the laws but postponements had ensued and nothing had
been accomplished. On the threshold of her reign, Catherine was met by
this need. It was a task made to her hand.

She took the ancient code of Czar Alexei in one hand and Montesquieu’s
Spirit of Laws in the other. There seemed to be no way of reconciling
the two; so she decided that she had better cleave to Montesquieu
altogether. She worked three hours every day for more than three years
and produced a thick volume. There was but little original thought in
it as most of it had been adapted from her philosopher and guide. It
was published under the title “Instruction of Her Imperial Majesty
Catherine the Second for the Commission charged with preparing a
project of a new code of laws.” It was more briefly known in Russian as
the Nakaz.

She worked secretly, showing her book to no one but Panin and Orlov.
Count Panin was delighted. The Empress was at last engaged on a plan
in which he could whole-heartedly share, that of putting political and
social ideals on paper. The Count cried out, while his huge peruke
flopped to one side in his excitement, “These are principles which will
cast down walls!” The handsome Gregory, lounging with his feet up,
thought the literary efforts of his Empress would surely add to her
already shining laurels. He wished to take the pages which she read to
him and show them around to the whole court. But Matushka forbade him
to do this.

In the summer of 1767 the work was at last finished. In December
Catherine had sent out a ukase ordering the election of delegates for
a legislative commission. During the spring, a time of great floods
and freshets in Russia, the elections had taken place. There had been
much groaning and protesting from districts afflicted by heavy rains,
as the swollen streams made travel difficult and dangerous, but the new
Empress ignored all excuses for delay and somehow or other the streams
were forded. In early summer, the delegates began to arrive in Moscow,
in kibitkas, on horseback, on foot. They represented cities, districts,
social classes, religions, races. There were Russian nobles wearing
laces, diamonds, and velvets made up in the latest Paris fashion; there
were merchants and military men; there were a few peasants in smocks;
there were Tartars and Bashkirs. Over a thousand delegates assembled.

Prior to the convention, the Empress sequestered herself in the
Kolomenskoe Palace not far from Moscow. Here she gathered around
her various thinking persons, as she called them, and asked them to
criticize her manuscript. To meet their conflicting objections, she
crossed out so much that only half of the Instruction was left.
Collecting the remnant of her labors, she sent it to the printer, and
then had it read before the legislative convention. As many of the
delegates could not read, it was necessary that the Instruction should
be read aloud frequently and fully. At first the delegates rose in a
body at the first sound of Her Majesty’s words; but the document was
read too often and too lengthily. Finally they just remained sitting
or milled around according to their custom. Some English visitors who
attended the convention called it a riot. Whether the meeting was
really as tumultuous as the English Parliament can be on occasion is
doubtful. But the Russian delegates wore so many gay, primitive colors,
it probably seemed to Anglo-Saxon observers as if they expressed
excitement and savagery in every way.

The legislative commission dragged on a year and a half. The first
sessions took place in the Kremlin but shifted to Petersburg when
the Empress returned to her northern residence. The commission like
everything else in Russia accommodated easily to a nomadic life. In
Catherine’s day, the court, which travelled continually back and forth
between Petersburg and Moscow, took their furniture with them, for
furniture was scarce and precious. To give a man _meuble_ from France
was one of the best ways of bribing him. This was one of the lessons
that Catherine had learned from the Empress Elisabeth.

When the Empress set forth for Petersburg in December, 1767, she had
more people and more furniture than usual in her train. One thousand
delegates were swept northward in flying sleighs and were reassembled
in the Winter Palace after the Christmas festivities had been duly
celebrated. In Petersburg as in the Kremlin, the Empress kept herself
modestly in the background. She sat in a box behind a drawn curtain and
left the commission entirely in the hands of a presidium composed of
Viazemsky, Bibikov, and Shuvalov. Her General-Adjutant, Gregory Orlov,
was prominent on the floor and on one occasion spoke up eloquently
in defense of a peasant who had been called “lazy and stubborn” by a
nobleman. The Empress was not officially present. She sent messages
from her box to the presidium but did not appear on the floor. This
made it possible for the convention to draw up formal addresses to
the author of the Instruction and for her to reply in writing to
them. In one of these addresses she was designated for the first time
as “Catherine the Great.” She modestly replied that the title was
one which she had not yet earned. Still the title clung and she was
to enjoy it for many long years as she was not yet forty when the
commission on laws bestowed it upon her.

The Instruction abounds in democratic ideas. It goes so far as to
advocate the gradual abolition of serfdom in Russia by allowing the
serfs to own property and to purchase their own freedom. But the
Russian nobles were not in favor of the reform. Most of the plan was
stricken out by her counsellors before the Instruction ever went to
print and the remainder was eliminated by speeches in the convention.
The Empress abandoned all propaganda for the abolition of serfdom for
the rest of her life and consoled her conscience by abusing the Russian
nobles in her memoirs. “What had I not to suffer from the voice of an
irrational and cruel public opinion when this question was considered
in the legislative commission. The mob of nobles, whose number was
much greater than I had ever supposed because I had judged them too
much by the people who daily surrounded me, began to suspect that these
discussions might bring about an improvement in the position of the
peasants.... I believe that there were not twenty human beings who
reflected on the subject at that time with humanity, really like human
beings!”


                                   7

Catherine’s campaign against smallpox in Russia won great fame for her
in Europe. It must be admitted that her step took courage in those
days. The prevalence of the disease was such that everybody believed
that everybody had to have it. For instance, the court spoke of the
Grand Duke’s uncertain chance of life because he “had not yet had the
smallpox.” The royal family had no more protection than the poorest
peasant. The fiancé of Empress Elisabeth had been carried off by
smallpox on the eve of his marriage and Peter the Second had died in
early youth of the same disease. From the time of Catherine’s arrival
in Russia she was constantly pursued by the fear of the pest and every
time she fell ill she thought it had overtaken her.

She had heard of vaccination in England. Her admiration for English
institutions had been encouraged by her friendship with Sir Charles
Hanbury Williams and the influence of Voltaire. The practical English
had imported vaccination from the Orient, and an English-woman, Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu, had set a brave example by allowing herself and
her son to be inoculated. On the other hand, there were many voices
raised against it. The physicians of the Sorbonne discountenanced
vaccination and disregarded the experience of England with the
practice. Frederick the Great was intensely afraid of it and wrote
to Catherine to urge her strongly not to take the risk. She replied
that she had always feared the smallpox and wished more than anything
else to be freed of her enslavement to this fear. “I am so struck by a
situation so unworthy that I regard it as a weakness not to escape from
it.”

She entered into correspondence with an English surgeon, Dr. Thomas
Dimsdale, who was adventurous enough to accept her invitation to
come to Russia. He had published a work on inoculation and this had
attracted the Empress’s attention; she had always been a great importer
and reader of foreign books. The famous Dr. Dimsdale arrested her
attention, preoccupied as she was at all times with her anxiety about
smallpox.

He arrived at the court of Petersburg in December, 1768. He was
received as all foreign guests were received with social entertainments
which the worthy doctor subsequently described in full in his tracts
on inoculation in Russia. The Empress had been warned against the
experiment and her fears were rife. Although she had sent for Dimsdale
to vaccinate her, she still continued to discuss the matter pro and
con. At last she put an end to her fears by ordering the physician to
vaccinate her secretly one day. The test succeeded capitally. The ghost
of this fear was laid, never to walk again.

The Grand Duke Paul was now vaccinated and Gregory Orlov. On the second
day after the operation, Orlov had gone hunting. This was news to send
to Europe, still trembling at the bare thought of vaccination. The
Empress wrote the story to Voltaire, trusting him to spread it in the
proper quarters. All at once she was ashamed that she had ever been
so timorous as to fear vaccination. After all, every street urchin in
England had as much courage as that! She urged inoculation upon court
circles in Petersburg and the aristocratic Russians suddenly became
very bold. Dr. Dimsdale was kept busy with impatient applicants. “A few
weeks ago,” said Catherine, “nobody would hear of inoculation; but now
nobody can wait to be vaccinated. It has become the fashion.”

The dramatic example of the Empress did not, alas! put an end to
smallpox in Russia. It meant only that the heir-apparent of the throne
was now immune and the dynasty was to this extent assured. It meant
that a few thousand nobles and their families were immune. But the
vast population of Russia was no better off than if the celebrated
Dimsdale had never visited their country. Perhaps the greatest
contribution of his visit had been to diminish superstition among the
least superstitious element of the population. The most superstitious
element, the peasants, had never heard of Dimsdale or vaccination. When
the smallpox came, they still fled to the Virgin, whose wonder-working
portraits hung in every chapel. When the patient was too ill to go and
the family could afford to pay for it, the wonder-working image of Our
Lady would be borrowed from the church and carried to the sufferer’s
bedside. This, however, was rare. Usually the sick one was borne into
the church by the members of the family and laid at the feet of the
Virgin whose pity they implored.

So it was in the city of Moscow in the autumn of 1771. For months the
plague had raged and ravaged the town. The Empress had sent all the
physicians she could commandeer, which meant a great many. Though
she professed to hate physicians, she always kept a large retinue on
call. The stricken city was unusually well taken care of during this
epidemic. Catherine had opened hospitals for the victims of the plague.
All these innovations failed to win the confidence of the terror-shaken
population who had somehow got the idea that the physicians and their
hospitals had brought the pest to Moscow. They fled from the medical
men and gathered at the foot of the icons with their invalids. The
Virgin at the Varvarsky Gate became more popular than the others, and
the terrible pestilence lay massed at her feet day and night. She
became the worst center of contagion in the entire city, distributing
the pest to hundreds of new victims every day.

The physicians were at their wits’ end. They dared not take any radical
steps to prevent the frightened people from doing what they pleased.
The bishop of Moscow, Father Ambrosius, was an enlightened man who
saw that the physicians were helpless. Relying on his authority as a
priest, he resolved to adopt a desperate remedy. He had the Varvarsky
Virgin removed under cover of night and hidden away. When the pilgrims
arrived in the early dawn, Our Lady had vanished. The panacea was gone,
and Death glowered in her vacant niche. Father Ambrosius believed that
the authority of the Church was enough to make these fear-driven
human beings submit. They were his children who had always obeyed. He
thought that, as soon as they knew that the good father had done it,
they would disperse to their homes and the plague spot would be wiped
out. But instead of dispersing, they were suddenly welded into a mob,
a growling, threatening, creeping, blood-thirsty pack. As the menacing
thing began to move, Ambrosius fled from his home into the Kremlin, and
took refuge in the Donskoy Monastery. On down into the cellar he fled,
hiding himself in the darkest corner he could find. The mob came after
him and invaded his sacred retreat. They found him in the darkness and
tore him limb from limb.

When the Empress received a report of the tragedy, she realized that
the population of Moscow was out of hand. The plague raged on. While
the victims multiplied, the hospitals stood empty. Riots were added to
smallpox until it seemed as if the old Muscovite city must soon perish
under its burden of afflictions. The Empress had but one resource
left and that was a military occupation. She sent Gregory Orlov with
a regiment to take charge of the town. Gregory had been vaccinated
by Dimsdale three years before, and the fact that he believed
himself immune gave him extraordinary courage and effectiveness on
this occasion. It must be admitted that Orlov was not distinguished
ordinarily for courage and initiative. His record in putting down the
smallpox in Moscow is exceptional. For once he seemed to take a leaf
from the book of his brother Alexei. He bullied the populace into
complete submission, so that the dying could at least die quietly
undisturbed by mobs and riots. He asked the physicians what they
wanted to have done and dragooned the people into actual obedience.
A certain German doctor is said to have furnished the sanitary ideas
which Gregory Orlov put into execution and which finally helped to wipe
out the plague. Whatever the scientific man may have contributed, the
heroic feat of Gregory Orlov is unquestionable. For once he behaved
like a fearless man and deserved his mistress’s encomiums.

The Empress was almost giddy with delight. She was no longer obliged
to invent reasons for praising her favorite in her correspondence.
She wrote to Prince Henry, “The malady at Moscow has been reduced
to a fifth of what it was, thanks to the care and intelligence of
Count Orlov. He has, besides, understood how to subdue the fanatical
spirit to obedience, not only in the matter of miracles, but he did
not even permit the people to enter the Church to hear mass, because
our churches are small; and, since everybody remained standing, the
pressure that exists could increase the infection. During the service
the people were made to remain outside the churches--an order which
they followed to the letter. Another salutary regulation carried out
despite the bigots, was the prohibition against burying in the churches
and the cemeteries of the city. The Count made his own house into a
hospital, took one of mine for his own use; after which every quarter
of the city provided one.”

The Empress heaped honors upon her hero when he returned to Petersburg
in December. She built a triumphal arch in the park of Czarskoe Selo
with the inscription, “To him who saved Moscow from the plague.” A
medal was struck to commemorate his bravery, on which Orlov’s portrait
and that of Curtius were united. “Russia also has such sons,” read the
inscription.


                                   8

The favorite’s star was to set in glory. When he subdued the Moscow
plague, he had been living with his Empress for a period of ten years.
The end of the cycle had come. What had gone wrong between these two
who had been like married people for so long and who had had three
children together? There are stories of Orlov’s infidelities and
Catherine says that he tired of her. Apparently she sincerely believed
afterwards that Gregory deserted her, although it was only with the
greatest difficulty that she drove the handsome guardsman from her
side. She did not hesitate to employ force when force became necessary.

In the meantime, before and after Moscow, Orlov had played his part in
the Turkish wars though it was by no means as gallant as his Moscow
exploits. The Empress credited him with greater achievements in the
South than others did. In the summer after the smallpox, she sent him
to the Congress of Fokshani as her delegate in the peace negotiations.
Here he swaggered about in a diamond-studded costume and offended the
Turks by his high-handed attitude so that the negotiations came to
nothing. Stories about Orlov’s conduct at this time suggest that he was
a man of idiosyncrasies. After the battle of Tchesme he told Catherine
with a shudder that the water in the harbor was colored red with the
blood of the Turks who had perished. Two years later, his diamonds and
his political indiscretions at Fokshani indicate that phantasy was
growing on him. He was sometimes too timid and sometimes too bold.

Presently he was plunged straight from the clouds to the uttermost
depths by a disconcerting piece of news. The Empress had taken a
new lover in his absence. A young man named Vassilchikov had been
installed in Orlov’s apartments. Taking French leave of his political
and military responsibilities, Gregory Orlov started at once for
Petersburg. Not many versts from the city he was stopped by the most
ironical circumstance conceivable. The Empress had him quarantined
in his own palace at Gatchina. There was smallpox in the South, she
said, and he must not bring it to Petersburg. She had forgotten that
Orlov was immune. She shut him up for four weeks, under military
guards. She also put double locks and military posts at the doors of
the apartment occupied by young Vassilchikov. All the while she wrote
reassuring motherly letters to Orlov and sent him clean socks and
shirts. She showered him with gifts; another palace, a thousand more
serfs, the title of Prince contributed to the weaning process. At last
it was successful. Orlov came to Petersburg and presented himself at
the Empress’s receptions, looking on while his rival performed the
functions which he alone had performed ever since Catherine had become
Empress of Russia. He even overdid his part, making a comrade of
Vassilchikov and going about with him everywhere.

Gregory Orlov was now past forty years of age. Cut adrift at this age,
the exile did not know where to turn. At first he comforted himself
with women of the streets, showing himself in their society in the
vicinity of the Palace. He went abroad and boasted and squandered like
the swashbuckler that he was. He came home again; hung for a short
time in suspense and inaction and then married his first cousin, a
girl of nineteen far gone in tuberculosis. The Senate issued a ukase
commanding them to separate, as first cousins were not allowed to marry
by the Russian Church. The Empress knew exactly what such ukases were
worth; she had herself married a cousin when she came to Russia. As
head of the Church, she issued a dispensation to Gregory Orlov and his
bride and gave them her blessing. They went away to Europe where they
wandered from specialist to specialist, trying to find some one who
could restore the young wife’s health. But steadily she faded. Long
before she died, Orlov had been declared insane.

Horrible stories are told of his last days: that he was constantly
pursued by the apparition of the murdered Peter and that he covered
his face with excrement to shut out the vision. Yet it was not Gregory
who had struck the blow. His brother Alexei had done that, Alexei who
throve on honors and riches and outlived them all even the Empress
herself. But Gregory had always been soft and could not endure his
exile from Catherine. Yet the Empress always said that he had tired of
her.




                             [Illustration]




                                   X

                               POTIOMKIN


The middle-aged Empress grew enormously stout. Some of the clothes
which she wore at fifty and thereabouts are still preserved in the
Kremlin Museum. A skirt of blue velvet, her favorite wear, testifies
to the ungraceful breadth of beam which detracted from her Majesty’s
appearance and afflicted her pride. She had always been eager to look
her best and as she grew older and stouter and more toothless, her
cheeks grew brighter and brighter with rouge. She made up every day
as if for a dress rehearsal. Her _friseur_ came regularly to arrange
her really fine rich crop of hair, and the only time, so far as known,
that he was turned away for more important matters was the day when
the Empress rode up from Peterhof to Petersburg to seize her husband’s
throne. She was proud of her hair, and her hairdressers were persons
of considerable importance in her life. Yet none of them approached in
this respect old Yevreinov who had been her first barber and paternal
adviser when she came to Russia, and who had been banished from court
because of his friendship for her.

She liked to dress well but not to eat well. Her contemporaries say she
had no interest in food, that she employed wretched cooks and set a
poor table. Those who enjoyed the distinction of dining daily with the
Empress had to put up with bad cooking. When the cook burned the food,
the Empress thought it a joke and that was the end of it. She herself
had such an indifferent palate that all the dishes set before her were
pretty much alike. At supper she ate nothing and wine she eschewed
altogether. A decanter of currant-juice, _alcohol-frei_, stood beside
her plate.

But this does not mean that she avoided stimulants entirely: she was
addicted to both coffee and snuff. Catherine’s morning coffee was a
daily feat which has impressed itself on history. Her cook used one
pound of coffee for the five cups which she drank to the last drop.
She was apparently immune to caffeine. “Anybody else would have got
heart disease from this concentrated poison,” says one biographer,
“Catherine however needed it for her health.” It certainly seems true
that the health of those persons who lived to acquire the surname
of “The Great” was apparently in need of some very peculiar things.
The constitution of Catherine the Great might be expected to develop
unique necessities, and it did. Besides one pound of coffee daily,
it needed vast quantities of snuff. Like Frederick the Great, also a
snuff addict, Catherine spilled the brown powder in her pockets and her
clothes reeked of it.

The story goes that her son Paul detested snuff and could not abide
the smell of it. This prejudice is said to have aided the conspiracy
which was formed against his life. But for his hatred of the smell,
the Emperor might have discovered the conspiracy. A certain official
who was talking with him had in his pocket at the moment a paper
which divulged the plans and the names of the conspirators. Paul put
his hand into the man’s pocket on some jesting pretext, but hastily
withdrew his fingers when they encountered loose snuff, which disgusted
him. And so, according to the story, Paul’s fate was sealed and the
conspiracy which was to cost him his life matured in secrecy.

Perhaps it was Catherine’s snuff-taking and coffee-drinking which had
made her palate indifferent to food. Nevertheless she continued to
put on weight in the most distressing way until her tiny feet ached
from carrying her heavy body around. The stout old lady never lost the
dignity of her carriage nor the uprightness of her posture, thanks to
the hangman’s jacket in which she had spent so many years of her youth.
Her bearing was extremely impressive. It was one of the things for
which her aunt, the Empress, and her husband, the Czar, had hated her.
Her blue-gray eyes had a commanding and open gaze. She had a long chin
and a firm jaw. In short, she had the features which are supposed to go
with a commanding personality and which in her Majesty’s case fulfilled
the tradition. Withal her eyes were friendly and smiling and at times
roguish. The person on whom they rested had an impulse to obey.

The Empress loved flattery. Her letters from Grimm, from Voltaire,
from Frederick the Great, are full of it. Best of all she liked to
be praised to her face. Diplomats arriving at the Russian Court were
warned by their well-wishers to indulge the Empress in her whim. It was
said that there was no limit to either the amount or the crudity of
what she could enjoy. This was an exaggeration. She wanted the tributes
to sound convincing, the flowers to seem real. Diderot, for instance,
was not always happy in his efforts, and the Empress could be cynical
if the flatterer allowed her to catch him red-handed.

“I do not like flattery,” she wrote to Prince Viazemsky, “and I expect
none from you.” But the Prince would not have risen to be one of the
chief advisers of her reign if he had taken her instructions too
literally. “Sie hatte die Eitelkeit eines _parvenu_, eines self-made
man,” says Brückner, borrowing from both French and English to express
her quality. The German Princess, whose native language has no word to
express exactly the kind of person that she became as Russian Empress,
was every inch a parvenu, if not literally a self-made man, and she had
the psychology of this type. Certainly she loved flattery, an art in
which the eighteenth century excelled. There were giants in those days;
magnificent egoists who knew how to drink their flattery like gentlemen.

The qualities of this complex Catherine scatter themselves before us
like the pictures in a scrap-book. She was this and she was that, and
in every instance she was also the opposite. Perhaps the simplest way
to organize the variegated picture of her complex personality is to say
at the start that she was a despot, in private relations and in public
life. No temperament more dominating, not even that of Peter the Great,
ever held sway over all the Russias, whose throne, by the way, both of
them obtained by usurpation. Catherine was a successful tyrant because
she knew how to command and also how to yield. She had extraordinary
insight into human nature with not many prejudices to block the view.
In all directions not so blocked, she was extremely clairvoyant. She
was easy on her servants, allowing them to sleep late while she waited
on herself and made her own fire. Petty graft she passed over with a
jest. Laughter she adored. One of her scientific essays discussed the
different ways of laughing. When Voltaire died it was not his wisdom
that she mourned but his gaiety. “Since Voltaire died,” she wrote, “it
seems to me that honor no longer attaches to good humor; it was he who
was the divinity of gaiety. Procure for me an edition, or rather a
complete copy of his works, to renew within me and confirm my natural
love of laughter.” Voltaire once compared her to Saint Catherine, but
she repudiated the title of saint. She prided herself on being a child
of nature, and one of the rowdier children of that careless mother
besides.

History has said of Catherine that she was a woman with a masculine
disposition. She had brains, she was ambitious, she kept favorites. All
this is comprised in the statement that she was one of the absolute
monarchs of her time; she followed a trade to which women were not
ordinarily admitted and got herself into it by her own efforts. To
out-Herod Herod was her way of staying there. She said of herself that
she had a masculine disposition and we know that she loved to play the
part of “Monsieur” in her correspondence and in her horseback riding,
and that she named herself Colonel of the Guards. As she grew older
and stouter, the rôle of “Matushka” blotted out that of “Monsieur” and
“Colonel”; but the change to Little Mother betokened no lessening of
the aggressive note in her personality. It was her tendency to dominate
and she could always find a rôle, either masculine or feminine, in
which she could play out her natural disposition.

Catherine’s estimates of her own character are the best that have been
written. It is a great loss to students of human nature that her sketch
of herself, written at the age of fifteen, was destroyed. We should
like to compare it with one which she wrote at the age of sixty-two,
addressed to Sénac de Meilhan, as the adolescent portrait had been
addressed to Count Gyllenborg. Her pen, it seems, moved best when her
thoughts were directed toward some person as if in a conversation _à
deux_.

“I have never believed that I had the creative spirit,” she wrote,
“I have come to know many people in whom I have recognized, without
envy or jealousy, much more genius than I have. It was always easy to
influence me, because in order to do that it was only necessary to have
really better and actually worthier ideas than my own. Then I was as
teachable as a lamb.... I have never tried to force people’s views but
I have also in any particular case held my own opinion. I do not love
strife, because I have always found that in the end each remains of the
same opinion. Besides I have never learned to lift my voice. I have
never been resentful, because providence has given me a position in
which I could not be so toward individuals, and because, in order to be
just, I could not regard the circumstances as equal. In general I love
justice but I am of the opinion that there is no unconditional justice
and that moderation alone corresponds to human weakness.... When old
people preached severity to me, I confessed my weakness to them with
tears in my eyes and it sometimes happened that many of them, also with
tears in their eyes, came over to my opinion. I am by nature cheerful
and open-hearted, but I have lived too long in the world not to know
that there are bitter natures which do not love cheerfulness and that
it is not everybody who can endure candor and truth.”


                                   2

The love relationships of Catherine the Great form the most fascinating
aspect of her life and character. For nearly two hundred years she has
been celebrated as a Northern Semiramis, a Russian Messalina. Myths and
romances in countless numbers have been woven around her personality.
Posterity knows her as a loose woman.

She loved to picture herself in heaven conversing with Confucius and
Cæsar and Alexander the Great. If she could have seen herself as the
theme of all the pornographic stories which float around in Russia
about her to-day, or as the heroine with three hundred lovers who
sparkles so wickedly on so many modern stages, she would, without the
least shadow of a doubt, have been extremely happy and delighted. That
posterity should think of her as a feminine Don Juan would be exactly
to her taste. She thought of herself as a feminine Don Juan; or,
rather, as a feminine Henri le Grand whose life was in so many respects
the inspiration of her own. It was said of the brilliant Henri le Grand
that but for his fatal prowess as a Don Juan he would have succeeded in
driving the Turks out of Europe. Catherine hoped to succeed, though her
hero had failed, in both. She was willing to go down to posterity as a
light woman but she hoped also to be remembered as the monarch who had
driven the Turks out of Europe.

The number of her lovers was after all only thirteen if we count her
husband. They were openly acknowledged and no legitimate consort could
have enjoyed a brighter glow of publicity. The Empress did not indulge
in secret _rendezvous_ or episodic affairs. During the period when she
was breaking away from her ten-years’ union with Orlov, there were
passing episodes, but these were only means to an end. Nothing is more
surprising than the formality with which she surrounded her favorites
or the curious acquiescence and matter-of-factness with which they were
regarded by society in Russia. Most of the romancing and denouncing
came afterwards when Catherine and her twelve lovers had gone the way
of all flesh.

The Empress was, in this aspect of her life as well as others, a woman
of few explanations. But she wrote a sort of apologia for her sex life
and left it as a legacy to history, inserting it in the memoirs which
she wrote for publication. “I was very affectionate,” she said, “and
gifted with an appearance which was very attractive. I pleased at the
first glance, without employing any arts or pains to that end. I was
very sympathetic and possessed rather a masculine than a feminine
temperament. As I have already said, I pleased the men. The first half
of the temptation was there and the second followed the first according
to human nature; for to tempt and be tempted are very close to each
other. And if a strong feeling is added to this, however strongly the
principles of morality may be imbedded in the mind, one goes farther
than one would wish; and, even until now I do not know how that is
to be prevented. In this case, perhaps absence might bring aid; but
there are cases, situations in life, and circumstances which make
absence impossible. How can one in the midst of court life flee away,
remove oneself, turn aside? That would at once attract attention and
cause talk. Yes, if one cannot remove oneself, nothing is harder in my
opinion than not to yield to that which allures. All that is said to
the contrary is hypocrisy and ignorance of the human heart. One does
not hold one’s heart in one’s hand, and it does not obey the commands
of reason.”

This was a sincere effort on the part of a sixty-year-old Empress to
be truthful and candid about her past. Aside from certain obvious
misrepresentations, such as saying that she had an attractive
appearance though she did not believe it herself, she thought that
she was speaking the truth. But one is struck by the extraordinary
weakness of her defense. A woman who has had twelve lovers and has
learned no more from life than to defend herself on moralistic grounds
shows that she has remained unteachable to the last. Her explanation
of her conduct might suitably be given by a girl of fifteen. Catherine
once said of Diderot that in some respects he was a hundred years old
and in others he was no more than ten. It was a wise remark and could
be equally well applied to herself. When she tries to explain the
irregularities of her sex life by saying that temptation has been too
strong for her to resist she speaks as the pupil of Pastor Wagner. It
shows that her conduct was still just as much of a mystery to herself
as it was to anybody else. She had learned however one thing which
Pastor Wagner and the rationalists of the eighteenth century had not
taught her, and that is that the heart does not obey the commands of
reason.

However impulsive the Empress may have been in the initial stage of a
love affair, she was shockingly rational in the way that she developed
it. Like Frederick the Great, she had a terror of venereal disease but
she had a less ascetic method of protecting herself. She required the
hopeful candidate to submit himself to a medical examination at the
hands of Dr. Rogerson, her Scotch physician. He was then put through
a kind of ordeal or apprenticeship by Countess Bruce or Princess
Protassov who were known for their function as “les eprouveuses.” If
these experienced ladies recommended the young man for his office, he
was installed in the elegant apartments prepared for his reception. In
the drawer of his dressing-table he found the generous salary allotted
to the Empress’s Adjutant General, and then began for him a life of the
most appalling regularity.

At ten o’clock every morning, he called on the Empress, and at ten
every evening he escorted her to her private chambers. When she drove
out, he sat beside her, and on all occasions stood ready to offer his
arm. He was dedicated to his duties and lived in complete retirement.
After Gregory Orlov, none of Catherine’s lovers was allowed to make
visits or receive them. No Sultan could have been more arbitrary with
his harem than Catherine with her favorites. She lavished presents and
honors upon them; her extravagance toward them knew no bounds. The
English Ambassador Harris, who had a talent for statistics, estimated
that she spent $190,000,000 in cash on the men she kept. The amount
seems staggering even for our day. Yet it was not enough, with all the
other perquisites added, to prolong the bondage of the victim more
than two or three years on the average. After Gregory Orlov, they all
escaped in one way or another at the end of a period of about this
duration.

Vassilchikov, with whom she carried on the most perfunctory affair she
ever had, describes his life with the Empress thus: “I was nothing more
than a kept woman and was treated as such. I was not allowed to receive
guests or to go out. If I made a request for anyone else, I received no
answer. If I spoke for myself, it was the same. When I wished to have
the order of Saint Anne, I spoke to the Empress about it. The next day
I found a thirty thousand ruble banknote in my pocket. In this way,
they always stopped my mouth and sent me to my room.”

It must be said that Vassilchikov’s courtship was probably the poorest
performance given by any of Catherine’s lovers. The only one of
them who had royal blood in his veins, for he was supposed to be a
descendant of Rurik, he was nevertheless the last and least of all
in the eyes of his mistress. Catherine had installed him in Orlov’s
stead to displace the absent Gregory, and Vassilchikov’s office was
primarily to help her wean the Count. Not that the Empress was aware
that she was pushing Orlov out of his warm nest into a cold hard world.
On the contrary, she had got the idea that Orlov intended to desert
her and she did not mean to be left in the lurch. She also thought
at first that she was in love with Vassilchikov, tall scion of the
Ruriks, and was bitterly disappointed when the affair proved cold. Her
complaints of their relationship were fully as dismal as his and her
disappointment even more pathetic. This appears in a confession which
she wrote for Gregory Potiomkin, who in turn displaced Vassilchikov
and became Gregory Orlov’s first real and genuine successor. It
appears that Potiomkin had heard stories about his predecessors, which
shows that gossip had already begun to exaggerate the number of the
Empress’s lovers. To reassure him, the Empress wrote a brief confession
in which she told him all the facts about her previous relationships.

The Empress’s list begins with Sergei Saltikov and tells how she
accepted him on the advice of Madame Choglokov and how Madame Choglokov
in her turn had been induced to act by the “insistence of Sergei’s
Mama.” This sudden peeping out of Sergei’s mama from behind the scenes
of Catherine’s life makes a vivid impression. The lady was already an
invalid, it seems, who pulled the strings of history, just once and
silently, and died.

The next lover named in Catherine’s confession is the King of Poland.
“He was amiable,” says his mistress, “and was loved from 1755 to 1761.
After he had been away three years, that is since 1758, and because
Prince Gregory Gregorevich, to whom well-meaning people called my
attention, took trouble for me, I changed my way of thinking. He would
have stayed forever if he had not grown tired. I learned this on the
very day of his departure from Czarskoe Selo for the Congress and drew
from it the simple conclusion that with this knowledge I could no
longer have any confidence. The thought tortured me cruelly and led me
to make out of desperation a choice by chance (Vassilchikov). During
this time, yes until this month, I have fretted more than I can say
and never more than when others were satisfied. Every expression of
tenderness caused my tears to flow and I believe that never since I was
born have I wept so much as in this year and a half. In the beginning I
thought I would get used to it, but the longer it lasted the worse it
grew. For the other person began to sulk for three months at a time
and I must confess that I was never more contented than when he was
angry and left me in peace. But his tenderness forced me to weep.”

The confession ends for the time being with Gregory Potiomkin, the
lover to whom it is addressed and of whom she begs forgiveness for
earlier sins. “And now, Sir Hero, can I after this confession hope for
forgiveness of my sins? You will see that it is not fifteen but only
one-third as many. The first, against my will, and the fourth, who was
taken out of desperation, cannot be charged to frivolity. Of the other
three, only believe the truth. God knows that I took them not out of
debauchery, to which I have no tendency. If fate had given me in my
youth a husband whom I could love, I should have remained true to him
forever. The trouble is that my heart would not willingly be one hour
without love.... But I write you that needlessly for accordingly you
will love or will not wish to go away to the army, out of fear that
I could forget you. But really I do not believe that I could be so
foolish. If you would attach me to yourself forever, then show me as
much friendship as love, and beyond everything, love and speak the
truth.”


                                   3

Potiomkin must have understood his lady’s wish and satisfied it in his
way, for Catherine loved him fifteen years. She had loved her first
Gregory ten years before she cast him off; her second Gregory held
first place in her affections for a longer period. She had a degree of
faithfulness with which she has never been credited. Not that Potiomkin
lingered in the terem all this time. As official favorite and public
escort he lasted only two years. He was too restless for captivity and
he could not bear to be stared at, a part which the handsome Orlov had
played to perfection. A curious arrangement was reached between the
wandering favorite and the Empress. Potiomkin went away to Novgorod,
to the Turkish wars, to the Crimea; he was driven hither and thither
across the endless plains of Russia by his craving restless spirit.
The Empress, left alone, something that she could not bear, took one
lover after the other in his place. But always Potiomkin returned and
compelled her to dispose of them. At a word from him, she turned them
out.

According to the legend, Potiomkin became a sort of panderer to his
lady and the gentlemen whom he chose for her survived as long as they
remained in his good graces. What really happened was that the Empress
chose each new lover for herself and certainly with the hope that he
would see her through. But, after a year or two, the unmanageable
Potiomkin would suddenly arrive on the scene and turn the rascal out.
His appearance would be preceded by threatening letters about what he
was going to do. For instance, the big blond Yermalov sat uneasily in
his armchair one day because Potiomkin had written her that he was
coming to Petersburg to send “that white nigger” away. Potiomkin came
and the white nigger went. Catherine turned her attention to dark
lovers and chose two of them, Mamonov and Zubov.

Mamonov proved to be one of her few mistakes. He was a normal man who
fell in love with one of the ladies of the court of his own age and
married her. It was the only time that her Majesty was ever actually
deserted by one of her lovers, unless Saltikov may be said to have
done so, and it was a shattering experience. She chose another dark
man, Plato Zubov, and tried to gain for him the approval of the
absentee Potiomkin. The little black boy, she wrote, was learning fast,
sent his love to Papa, and so on. But Potiomkin wrote back that he was
returning to Petersburg “to have a tooth out,” which had an ominous
play on Zubov’s name, which means “tooth.” The conflict over Zubov’s
removal brought to an end the relation between Catherine and Potiomkin
which had lasted for fifteen years. Potiomkin was not able to send this
rival away.

The lovers who followed Potiomkin were Zavadovsky, Zoritch, Korsakov,
Lanskoy, Yermalov, Mamonov, and finally Zubov. Except for Lanskoy, who
died, and Mamonov, who married, Potiomkin had arbitrarily dismissed all
of them or believed that he had so dismissed them. When he could no
longer do that he realized that his lady had discarded him for good. He
became, as Gregory Orlov had become fifteen years before, an exile from
the warm nest that had sheltered him for so long, and, like Gregory
Orlov, he could not survive his banishment.

Potiomkin had a fascinating personality. He was not likable but he
seized the imagination and captured the attention. Legend has pictured
him as a great Russian brute who drank heavily and swore outrageously.
Doubtlessly he swore, as every Russian swears as naturally as he
breathes. But he was not a drunkard and he was not a brute. He was
a frightened, timid hare, with a certain creative genius which came
through here and there without ever developing very far in any
direction. He could be a real poet on occasion, although he is known
as the author of only one song, and also a real general on occasion,
although he trembled at the sound of guns. The most contradictory
things have been said about him because the most contradictory things
were true about him.

He had the tall, well-built figure which Catherine required of her
lovers but otherwise his appearance was not prepossessing. He had
lost an eye and it is characteristic of Potiomkin’s reticence that
nobody knew when or how the accident had happened. Potiomkin himself
never spoke of it but his feelings on the subject may be imagined
from the fact that when a one-eyed man was sent to him one day with
a message, Potiomkin struck him down. Various stories are told about
the loss of his eye. Alexei Orlov is said to have put it out in a
struggle over a game of billiards. Another story told is that Potiomkin
himself destroyed it because it had a blemish, probably a squint.
It is doubtful whether Catherine herself knew the true cause of the
accident. In writing about Potiomkin, she passed over his handicap
as if it did not exist. And yet she made one indirect reference in
her memoirs. In speaking of the ignorance of the Russian court, she
remarked that even an ordinarily intelligent person at this court was
like a one-eyed man among the blind. Another peculiarity of Potiomkin’s
which she passed over in silence was a nervous jerking of his face, a
kind of facial _tic_ which she had once detested in Count Shuvalov.
One trait, however, she did refer to sometimes in a jesting tone and
that was the way he constantly gnawed his finger-nails. The rest of his
peculiarities she passed over in silence.

Potiomkin was cynical, morose, and silent; a wistful, tortured creature
who was obliged to make people afraid of him in order to conceal his
timidity toward others. They called him “Cyclops” and his imposing
figure did not belie the reference to the one-eyed giant. Perhaps the
original Cyclops also was as sensitive and fearful at the core as was
the awe-inspiring Potiomkin. Legend has made a great deal of the middle
syllable of his name, “tiom,” which means dark, and has served to
accentuate the romantic picture of Potiomkin as a villain and a hero.

Like Razumovsky who had been the favorite and the reputed husband of
Empress Elisabeth, Potiomkin was a Southerner, a Ukrainian. The men
of his family had followed either a military or a cloistered life.
His father was an obscure captain and an uncle, who had risen to the
rank of colonel, retired from the army to enter a monastery. Gregory
Potiomkin reversed his uncle’s course. He first became a monk or almost
became one, having spent several years in preparation travelling from
one monastery to the other. He was well versed in the theology of
the Greek Church and was extremely superstitious. His orthodoxy was
another aspect of her lover which Catherine, who prided herself on
being a free-thinker, did not like to expose. During the first year
that she lived with him, they made a pilgrimage through the old Russian
cloisters together. It happened that Prince Henry of Prussia was due to
pay a visit to Catherine during these months, but she wrote asking him
to postpone his visit until the following year. Usually she liked to
have foreign guests accompany her on her travels, but this time she did
not wish to combine the Protestant prince and the Greek theologian in
one religious pilgrimage.

Up to the age of thirty-five, when he became the favorite of the
Empress, Potiomkin seems to have had no love affairs and no idea of
marriage. He was deeply attached to his sister, whom, with her five
daughters, Catherine kept about the court. With one of his nieces,
Countess Branicky, Potiomkin was especially intimate. After he left
the Empress, this niece accompanied him everywhere. It was as if, like
Catherine, he was morbidly afraid of being left alone, and Sashinka
Branicky was obliged to be always with him. One of the scandals about
General Potiomkin was that, instead of galloping over the battlefield
on a war horse like General Suvarov, he usually appeared driving along
in a kibitka with Sashinka at his side. In this state, nevertheless,
he managed to cover a great deal of ground, for few Russians travelled
farther or more swiftly than did General Potiomkin. And always his
devoted niece was near at hand. How Sashinka found time to marry
and have children, as she did, is hard to explain. It has been said
that her relations with her uncle were not above reproach. If it was
true that a physical intimacy existed, there would have been nothing
shocking in the circumstances to the Russian Empress who had once
contemplated marriage with her Uncle George of Holstein and spoke in
later life almost regretfully of the unfulfilled engagement.

Potiomkin had been one of the original conspirators who had helped to
make Catherine the Empress. He had ridden to Peterhof in her train
on that white night in 1762 when she seized the Czar and imprisoned
him. He had been one of the guardsmen left in charge of the ex-Czar
at Ropsha, and he had been present at Peter’s death. Alexei Orlov’s
letter absolves him from all responsibility for the murder. The worst
that can be said of him in this connection is that with many others,
who were likewise not blamed, he also was present. The Empress did
not forget him during the next ten years, for she furthered his career
by sending him with a letter to General Razumovsky, who employed him
in the Turkish wars. His picture lay dormant in her mind through
all this time until it began to take on an increased vividness by
comparison with the actual presence of a Vassilchikov whose caresses
made her weep. The stories of Potiomkin’s wooing give him credit for an
amount of initiative which he did not have. In Catherine’s confession,
addressed to Potiomkin, she says that she deliberately recalled him to
Petersburg, whereas the current story tells how Potiomkin schemed to be
sent to the Little Mother with a painting and a message and how when he
got there he impetuously wooed her. The second story is the one which
the Empress would have much preferred to have us believe had her own
statements of what took place not weakened its credibility.

“Then came a certain hero,” she wrote. “This hero was, through his
services and his enduring tenderness, so wonderful that as soon as
people heard of his arrival they began to say that he ought to remain
here. They did not know of course that we had summoned him secretly
by a letter, but with the secret intention after his arrival not to
proceed quite blindly but to investigate whether that inclination
existed of which Bruce had spoken and which many had long suspected;
that is, the kind of inclination which I wished that he should have.”

It is not difficult to picture the impulsive Catherine sitting down
to her writing-table one fine morning to pen the letter which brought
Potiomkin to Petersburg as fast as a kibitka could carry him. The image
of the dark, morose man, biting his nails and glowering at the world,
which had slept so long at the bottom of the pool, had at last risen to
the surface and now floated there with a sharp commanding vividness.
Potiomkin’s time had come. The Empress sat down and addressed to the
hero whose image summoned her the letter which was to be the making of
his fortune. He came to Petersburg and for two years he remained in
close attendance on the Empress. He played his part in the Hermitage
gatherings in his own peculiar way. He was a ventriloquist and could
imitate to perfection the voices of various animals. He could reproduce
with uncanny accuracy the voice of Catherine herself uttering some
characteristic remark. This trick hugely delighted the Empress who had
also a gift for mimicry. In return, she would caterwaul a duet with the
Princess Dashkov who, like the Empress, was unable to carry a tune.

                   [Illustration: CATHERINE THE GREAT

                _Painted by Ericsen for Baron Dimsdale_]

Potiomkin was a semi-Tartar in his habits. Slovenly and indolent,
he would lie on his couch for days clad only in a khalat. In the
same informal habit he would visit the Empress, to the horror of the
Europeans and the astonishment even of the Russians. Potiomkin fancied
himself in this informal costume, over and beyond the fact that the
lazy undress suited the inertia of his temperament. The loose khalat
was not unlike the monastic robe which he had once planned to wear and
which now and then, when things went wrong between himself and his
imperial mistress, he thought of putting on again. He was friendly with
all priests, with whom he spent much time, not, it appears, so much in
theological discussion, though he is said to have excelled in this, as
in card-playing and betting. His devotion to the Church is seen in
the way that he could stand motionless and decorous all day while mass
was being said. He was not physically too lazy for this effort although
otherwise so indolent that the formalities of Russian court life were
too arduous for him.

                   [Illustration: CATHERINE THE GREAT

                      _From a painting by Roslin_]

Many vindictive outré portraits of Catherine’s lover have been drawn
for posterity. Most of them were produced by French writers who could
not understand a man who, notwithstanding all the riches that his
mistress placed at his disposal, preferred to live as a Byzantine when
he might have lived as a Parisian. To the sophisticated French who
left most of the written accounts of Russia in the eighteenth century,
Potiomkin was scarcely a Russian; he was almost an Asiatic. The big
one-eyed man who sprawled on a couch all day in a bright dressing-gown,
playing with a handful of unset jewels or listening to Plutarch’s Lives
which some one read aloud, was a strange creature who had deliberately
turned his back on the civilization of Louis XV and France and who
yearned only to revive the ancient glories of Alexander the Great and
Constantinople.

The mere name of Alexander was an inspiration to Catherine and
Potiomkin: it had been the name of Potiomkin’s father and became the
name of Catherine’s grandson. It symbolized the magnificent dream
which united them. Together they would go to Constantinople. One day
Potiomkin burst forth, as he sprawled on his couch and listened to
Plutarch’s Lives, “If anyone should come today and tell me that I
should never go thither, I would shoot myself through the head.” In a
similar mood, though less violent, the satirical Empress threatened, in
case the Swedes bombarded her out of Petersburg, to set up her capital
in Constantinople. If she did not revive the Byzantine Empire, she
hoped that Monsieur Alexander, her grandson, would one day revive it in
her stead. United in their feverish dream, the Empress and her lover
drove in perfect unison toward their common hope. Together they would
one day enter Constantinople. For many years they passionately believed
it; and when they no longer believed it, they died.


                                   4

Potiomkin, a true son of Ukrainia, was a troubadour. He composed a song
to his lady which became a popular lyric. “As soon as I beheld thee, I
thought of thee alone; thy lovely eyes captivated me, yet I trembled to
say I loved. To thee, love subjects every heart, and enchains them with
the same garlands. But, ah heaven, what a torment to love one to whom
I dare not declare it! One who can never be mine. Cruel gods, why have
you given her such charms? Or, why did you exalt her so high? Why did
you destine me to love her and her alone, her whose sacred name will
never pass my lips, whose charming image will never quit my heart.”

Catherine’s churlish lover was not poor in fancy. He could offer
tributes to his lady showing an imagination of no mean order. As he
composed lyrics in her honor, he could also compose pageants and other
exhibitions of great beauty and impressiveness. The famous journey to
the Crimea was a magnificent processional. Potiomkin’s arrangement
of this trip was the work of a poet and a dramatist as well as that
of a politician and a general. It employed all his talents at once.
His contrivance of effects along the way has been misunderstood.
Hence the legend of the “Potiomkin villages,” which according to his
detractors were mere painted façades overlooking the Volga and filled
with peasants and cattle who had travelled on foot many hundreds of
versts in order to complete the picture. That history should have
blamed instead of praising Potiomkin for his artistry shows how little
his mission in life and his share in Catherine’s grandiose schemes have
been understood. Both of them believed that the road to Constantinople
would one day be lined with prosperous villages and that the temporary
settlements thrown up at so much expense along the route would at no
great distance in the future become permanent establishments. No one
was deceived by the demonstration of prosperity, unless perhaps it was
Potiomkin himself, who half-way believed in the spectacular growth of
population induced suddenly by his own imagination aided by Catherine’s
rubles. Prince de Ligne, who accompanied the Empress on her Crimean
journey, tried to correct the story at the outset. “They have already
spread a ridiculous report,” he wrote to France, “that villages of
cardboard have been distributed along our route at intervals of a
hundred leagues, that paintings of vessels and cannons and cavalry
without horses are displayed.” The Prince persisted in his efforts
to send out to Europe a true description of the Crimean journey; but
he fared as all honest and unpicturesque journalists are destined to
fare. People preferred to believe in Potiomkin’s cardboard villages and
in the perfidy of their contriver who employed in their construction
millions of the Empress’s own rubles in order to deceive the Empress.
The story is still told to show to what nefarious depths Potiomkin was
willing to descend. What it really shows is that he was a daring artist
who designed and executed grandiose effects.

The Empress’s whole Crimean trip was a theatrical enterprise with
Potiomkin as author, producer, and actor. It followed soon after the
birth of her two grandsons whom she at first planned to take with her
though she abandoned the idea before the start was made. The purpose
of the journey was ostensibly to inspect the work of General Potiomkin
as administrator in the South. Its actual intention was political,
to reconnoitre the way to the Orient while hostilities between the
Russians and the Turks were in abeyance. No one understood this kind of
political game better than Potiomkin and his mistress. Ostentation was
the breath of their nostrils and for once they had their fill of it.
The Empress and her entourage proceeded down the Dnieper in a fleet of
twenty boats, each of which was named for some tributary of the stream.
Catherine’s own vessel was called the Dnieper and was fitted out with
mirrors and Turkish rugs, while a smooth green carpet covered the deck
like a meadow. Behind the gorgeous Dnieper floated the Bog, the vessel
in which Potiomkin travelled. Beneath a silken canopy, he lounged
among Turkish draperies, while Sashinka Branicky attended him. Behind
Potiomkin’s Bog came the other eighteen vessels filled with ladies and
gentlemen, musicians and dancers, cooks and lackeys, who strolled the
decks and counted the peasants along the shores. The whole social life
of the palace was transported to the Empress’s fleet; receptions and
balls and concerts followed each other as smoothly and uninterruptedly
as the bends of the flowing river followed each other southward. The
fleet had halcyon weather.

Most of the boats proceeded to Cherson, passing successfully the rapids
which the Russian peasants were afraid to navigate. One of the aims
of the trip was to quiet this popular fear by demonstrating a safe
passage. The laurels remain with Potiomkin for the Empress left the
fleet and proceeded by carriage along the last stretch of the journey.
The royal guest who rode in the carriage with her, the son of Maria
Theresa and the future Emperor of Austria, did not fancy perhaps the
idea of threading the Dnieper rapids. It seems unlikely that the
Empress herself avoided the adventure or feared the danger after she
had sailed so blithely and triumphantly into the hazards of inoculation.

At the end of the journey, the excitement was intense. All the world
had crowded into Cherson to see the Empress and her Prince. A room
for the night cost a thousand rubles and an egg for breakfast cost a
florin. Potiomkin was beside himself with joy. He ordered the gates of
the city to be moved several versts farther out and told the Empress
this had to be because the throng of visitors had decided to remain as
a permanent addition to the population. He believed it himself and the
Empress believed it with him. It was May and their dream was at fever
heat. Looking out over the harbor of Cherson toward Constantinople they
could believe anything.

They believed that the Empress of Russia was going to drive the Turks
out of Europe and the rest of Europe was going to thank her for her
services. In a kibitka they drove to the mouth of the Bog and the
Empress looked across the narrow water at Turkish land beyond and
lusted after it. The next day three new Russian ships were launched in
the harbor. Upon the blue expanse of water they floated down gently
and safely from their staples. A great triumphal arch had been reared,
on which was inscribed, in clear beautiful Greek lettering: “Here lies
the way to Constantinople.” The whole performance was dramatic and
picturesque to the last degree but not exactly diplomatic. The agents
of the French government in Constantinople, whose business it was to
manœuvre there against the designs of Russia, must have thought that
Catherine and Potiomkin were mad. And so they were, a little, but their
madness was a great driving force with which mere rational diplomacy
would have to reckon seriously.

There was method in the madness of the pair. The Empress employed the
same Machiavellian technique in the acquisition of the Crimea that
she had already used in Courland and in Poland. Her predatory art
was chiefly a matter of simple bribery, a method of bargaining in
which no monarch has ever excelled her. The credit, or the blame, for
Russia’s acquisition of the Crimea usually goes to Potiomkin. He was
at least the flawless negotiator of his lady’s bargain. The Khan was
slowly forced into a corner from which he could only escape by running
straight into the arms of the Empress. This was where he found himself
in April, 1783, just five years after Catherine’s visit to Cherson,
while Potiomkin took possession of his peninsula in the name of Russia.
The Khan, fleeing the wrath of the Turks, went to Petersburg to live
on the pension of a hundred thousand rubles which the Little Mother of
all the Russias had generously given him. Catherine had at last won
possession of the ancient land of Tauris where Iphigenia, snatched away
from her father’s house, once lived and reigned as a priestess among
barbarians.

Was it not something like this which had happened to the little Fike
of Stettin when she became Catherine of Russia and the priestess of
a foreign temple? Catherine and Potiomkin restored the ancient name
of Tauris to the peninsula and revived the Greek names of the towns
and seaports, hoping to call back the Greeks who had abandoned their
homes to the Tartars. To Potiomkin himself the Empress gave the title,
Prince of Tauris; and henceforth he swept magnificently through her
correspondence as the Taurian. Every mention of his name was invested
with the glamour of his heroic exploits.


                                   5

When the Empress conquered through diplomacy, she never knew failure.
As an open aggressor, she was not a brilliant success. She avoided
war as long as possible and especially did she avoid war with Western
Europe. The Swedes forced her into a campaign of defence but she much
preferred to measure her troops against the Orientals. With all her
bluster and threats against the French Revolution, she failed to come
forward with actual military support of the intervention which she so
loudly urged and applauded. The Turkish wars were another matter. If
they could have been avoided by any possible exercise of diplomacy
and expenditure of rubles, no matter how great, they would never have
filled so many pages of history. Unfortunately for Catherine’s kind
of pacifism, Constantinople could not be bought. The Empress and
Potiomkin had gone as far in the conquest of the South as Machiavelli
could carry them. They had acquired by high bidding and sharp dealing
Crimea and Georgia, the Tauris and Colchis of the ancient Greeks
redolent with memories of Iphigenia and Medea and the Golden Fleece.

But the Empress had no thought of stopping there. Crimea and
Georgia only fed the flame of her passion for the East. She watched
Constantinople as a cat watches a mouse-hole, with a fascinated
attention which nothing could divert. But France did not want the
Russians in the temple of Sophia and England was fast coming to share
this view. If the Empress had been a little less concentrated and
had watched her mouse-hole a little less confidently she would have
realized earlier than she did the strength of the opposition which
was growing up against her in Western Europe and which was carefully
preparing to defeat her aims. Behind Mustapha and the Turks, whom she
regarded as the enemy, stood a strong wall of diplomacy raised by the
western powers. Catherine’s phantasy overleaped this wall. For her,
beyond Constantinople lay only India. She believed the way was still as
open as it had been for Peter the Great when he dreamed of taking it.

The dream was now hers, as she was now Peter. She conducted her
campaign against the Turks as Peter had conducted his campaign more
than half a century before, and her preparations for war, imitating
his, were in many respects even worse. There were not enough recruits
for the companies; there were not enough tents for the men; the powder
was half dust; all the supplies were either defective or deficient
and graft and autocracy were everywhere. The Russians lost their first
battles, but everybody was gay about it. Voltaire wrote to Catherine:
“I see with joy and surprise that this convulsion has in no way shaken
the composure of that great man whose name is Catherine.” He might have
added that Peter the Great with all his six feet seven could not have
borne the defeat with greater steadfastness and courage.

The Pforte, instigated by the French, declared war against the Russians
in 1768. The following year Gregory Potiomkin joined the army under
General Rumiantsov, whom he afterwards displaced as leader of the
forces against the Turks. After five years of undistinguished service
he was summoned to Petersburg by the Empress and stopped there for two
years idle in her boudoir. From this time onward Gregory Potiomkin was
a changed man. Although he trembled at the sound of guns, he could
fight the enemy at times with the fierceness of a tiger and the cunning
of a serpent. At court he went about like a savage, barefoot, without
breeches, unwashed and uncombed. At the front, these simplicities
gave him a degree of independence beyond the other officers. He could
live for days on onions alone and the ordinary comforts of life meant
nothing to him. It was said that Potiomkin was in most ways a creature
of the eleventh and not the eighteenth century anyway. When he went
forth to war his eleventh century side came uppermost and found there
its congenial expression. He was not unhappy at the front except when
the guns roared, and as long as Sashinka stood by to comfort him he
could endure even that.

The first Turkish War should, according to the general expectation,
have ended with the Congress of Fokshani. The Empress, her foreign
minister in Petersburg, and especially the Russian minister in
Constantinople who happened to be in a Turkish prison awaiting peace
for his release, were all surprised and disappointed at the outcome
of the Congress. They had expected a satisfactory treaty. But Gregory
Orlov, who represented Russia, suddenly departed for Petersburg
while the negotiations were still in the air. A rumor of disaster in
his private affairs had suddenly reached him, and fearing that his
relations with the Empress were threatened he dashed away to reassure
himself. We know how suddenly his journey ended, in arrest and
quarantine at Gatchina. His nerves were never quite the same again,
and no wonder. The shock was extreme, even for a military officer and
a stalwart man. His eccentricities of behaviour increased after this
experience but they did not begin there. Looking back over Orlov’s
previous life it is easy to see that his disorganized state of mind
would have made the peace congress at Fokshani a failure even if all
the other conditions had been favorable.

The Empress was philosophical, as well she might be. She was obliged
again to correspond with the Sultan with cannon balls, as she wrote
to Voltaire. The war dragged on for two years longer, while the
handsome Vassilchikov occupied Orlov’s apartments and made the Empress
weep whenever he grew tender. In July, 1774, came the Peace of
Kutchuk-Kainardi. Potiomkin signed this treaty. He had displaced the
unsuccessful Vassilchikov four months before and was now the Empress’s
envoy to the Turks. She was enchanted with the terms he made. “Ah!
What a good head the man has. He has had a greater share than anyone
in this peace, and this sound head of his is as amusing as the devil.”
She hung her darling with blazing orders and collected honors for him
from foreign sovereigns. Potiomkin loved his decorations and adored
his jewels. There were occasions when he pinned the whole exhibit on
his velvet coat until his chest was panoplied with gold and silver and
diamonds. In the midst hung a portrait of the Empress at which people
gazed intently while talking to him for they dared not gaze at the
black patch which he wore over his eye. This was General Potiomkin on
those rare occasions when he considered a dressing-gown not admissible.

During the Second Turkish War, Catherine wrote to her lover twice
every week. In her letters she showered him with pet names as in
public she hung him with orders. He was her belovedest, her little
love, her gold pheasant, her Papa. So she spurred him on to battle
with the Turks. It was not easy. The Ukrainian either stormed ahead
or collapsed in moods of desperate discouragement. There were days
when he was ready to evacuate the Crimea and to resign his generalship
in favor of Rumiantsov, his detested rival. “You are as impatient
as a five-year-old child,” the Empress chided, “while the business
entrusted to you demands unshakable patience.” The General was subject
to frequent relapses to his five-year-old emotions and in such moods he
was ready to abandon all to the Turks if the Empress’s letters had not
served to restore his aggressiveness. She had urgent need to write him
twice a week. The Prince of Tauris was ready to give up Tauris itself
whenever these pessimistic moods overcame him.

The Empress was distressed by the terrible cost of war. She discovered
that it was even more expensive than diplomacy and bribery. Up to the
unpleasantness with the Turks, she had managed to get her way by means
of money and lively military display. But it seemed that actual warfare
demanded an additional expenditure of treasure. She complained to the
sculptor, Falconet, “To make war three things are necessary: money,
money, money.” Yet she was always able to find the wherewithal to carry
on and keep her three quarrelsome generals, Potiomkin, Suvarov, and
Rumiantsov, active in the field.

She built a fleet and planned to sweep the Black Sea with it. The
Russians, in spite of the efforts of Great Peter, had never become
navigators, a deficiency which obliged her to import her naval officers
from England. The scheme was easily carried out. The English were
employable and adjustable, and all went well until the Empress had
the idea, inspired from Paris by Dr. Benjamin Franklin, of adding the
American naval officer, John Paul Jones, to her forces. The American
hero’s exploits resounded at the moment through Europe while he himself
was sojourning in Paris, rather lonely, very famous, and extremely hard
up. The Empress met his terms, which were sufficiently high, for Jones
was a good bargainer, and the American was soon sailing a Russian ship
on the Black Sea. But luck, it seems, had deserted the little man. He
not only played an undistinguished part in the Turkish wars but left
Russia under the shadow of a personal scandal, invented, his defenders
said, by British officers serving under Catherine who resented the
presence of the colonial in the same navy with themselves. However,
that may be, he earned no honorable mention in Russia and the history
of that country gives no credit to John Paul Jones for helping to win
the Turkish Wars.

In June, 1788, Catherine’s fleet won the battle of Otchakov. The
victory made a great impression on Europe and even Frederick the Great
spoke of it respectfully. Was the Empress really marching toward India?
She believed that she was marching toward Constantinople at least and
that the Prince of Tauris would enter the Turkish city within the year.
But France and Prussia and England thought otherwise. English policy
was well clarified by now and was neatly expressed in a book on Russia
published by an English captain in the year 1790. “The Turks,” he said,
“happily for us, are not a commercial people; we cannot do without
those valuable articles which their soil produces almost spontaneously;
and the Turks, like the easy possessor of a very rich mine, allow us to
enrich ourselves at our pleasure. Three per cent. duty equally on all
exports and imports is, with little exception, their only restriction
to Europeans engaged in their trade. Would the Empress be equally
moderate, if in possession of the fertile region? Believe me, she would
not.”

It appeared that Europe did not wish to be cleansed of the Turks by
Catherine the Great. The easy-going Mussulman with his three per cent.
duty had great advantages over a Christian monarch like the Russian
Empress. The representatives of Protestant Europe in Constantinople
put their heads together and backed up Turkish diplomacy in the south
while the King of Sweden prepared to invade Russia on the north. The
Swedish invader was Gustavus III, the son of the Princess Ulrica whose
gown had once been offered to Princess Fike to make her presentable at
the German court. Ulrica’s son had a curious relationship with Cousin
Catherine of Russia. He paid friendly visits and wrote flattering
letters to her and then made war on her. As soon as the treaty was
signed, he wrote and asked her to forget their differences, “like a
storm that has passed.” The passing storm, however, had shaken the
Empress as she had seldom been shaken. She was not prepared to carry
on war on two fronts and the Swedish invasion had made the Turkish
Wars no longer endurable. “If you wish to roll a stone from my heart,”
she wrote to Potiomkin on the Turkish front, “if you wish to free
me from a heavy nightmare, then send a courier at once to the army
with instructions to begin operations immediately by sea and by land;
otherwise you will drag out this war still longer and that you can wish
just as little as I.”

Potiomkin was unable to make an attack or to conclude a treaty. He
had reached the same state of mind which had rendered Gregory Orlov
incompetent to negotiate terms with the Turks at Fokshani in 1772.
Orlov’s mental inertia on that occasion had caused the first Turkish
War to drag on two years longer. The history of Orlov was repeated
by Potiomkin in 1791. Potiomkin’s relations with the Empress were
threatened in that year as Orlov’s had been threatened in 1772.
Potiomkin felt that it was time for him to go to Petersburg and dismiss
“the little black boy” who seemed to be settling into his place there
with an air of permanence.

As soon as Potiomkin departed from the field, Prince Repnin took
command and brought the second Turkish War to a speedy close. The
treaty of Jassy was signed at the end of 1791. But Potiomkin was
already dead.


                                   6

The myth about Catherine the Great relates that she had three hundred
lovers. The same legend is attached to the Empress Elisabeth and the
mother of Sergei Saltikov. It belongs to the Russian fable.

There is no need to speculate on the number of lovers that Catherine
had; she has herself told us the facts. Besides her husband, there
were twelve. After she became Empress she made no secret of her love
affairs, but rather the contrary. The only place where any vagueness
exists is in the beginning before the birth of Paul. Her German
biographer, Gertrud Kircheisen, as well as Bilbassov, thinks that her
early intimacy with Andrei Chernichev must have gone farther than she
admits in her memoirs. Chernichev was banished from the court on her
account and Catherine’s letters to him, discovered in later years,
suggest that their relations were not merely platonic. But Catherine’s
memoirs are not the only evidence we have concerning her lovers. Her
confession to Potiomkin leaves him out. In this document, which has all
the marks of a genuine confession, she tells Potiomkin that he is the
fifth. The favorites of Catherine as Empress were a public institution
and their number was certainly no secret. After Potiomkin there were
seven.

They were: Zavadovsky, her secretary, who was one of the most
intellectual of her lovers and minister of public instruction under her
grandson, Alexander I; Zoritch, the Serbian, who afterwards founded
a school for boys in the country; Rimsky-Korsakov, a sergeant of the
guards, the most beautiful and the most stupid of them all, who ordered
a library to fit the shelves of his house; Lanskoy, with whom she is
said to have had only platonic relations and who died in her arms;
Yermalov, the “white nigger” whom Potiomkin dismissed from the palace
on a day’s notice; Mamonov, a man of some ability, who married one of
her court ladies and eliminated himself from office; and Plato Zubov,
the young man of twenty-four who became her lover when she was sixty
and lived with her until her death.

Altogether there were thirteen men with whom the Empress made, so to
speak, twelve unhappy marriages. The Russians accepted her arrangements
without much comment; the irregularity of her relationships did not
trouble them. What did scandalize them, however, was the frequency
with which she changed the incumbent of the office. She would dismiss
her Adjutant General one day and install another the next day, and her
fickleness seemed to increase with her years.

There were a few things which all her lovers had in common. They were
tall, well-built men and graced a military uniform to perfection. It
is true that so long as they remained in office as favorites they
were obliged to lead an idle life and forego all active service; only
sedentary occupations were possible for them. But with two or three
exceptions, the men were not intellectual. The Adjutant-General’s main
duty was to wear his clothes well and give his arm to the Empress. He
was an officer on leave. At the age of fifty, the restless woman was
capable of falling in love with a military uniform at first sight, as
she did when she espied Rimsky-Korsakov among the guards at the palace
gates. She was as susceptible to an imposing military figure as any
German _backfisch_ was in the day before the great war abolished the
temptation. The Empress was herself once a German _backfisch_ in a
military garrison where her father, the Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, was
commandant. He was a tall man and a handsome one, rather silent and
stupid presumably but every inch a military officer who graced his
uniform. Old memories of that impressive Prince, her father, sometimes
rose within her, when she beheld her favorite in all the glory of his
uniform and the decorations which she had pinned upon him. No doubt the
stiff old Prince had been rather splendid in his time.

Among the seven successors of Potiomkin, Sasha Lanskoy especially
stands out. He was a young man of taste if not of intellect. In all
the enterprises of the Empress which required artistic judgment
Lanskoy had a contribution to make and made it. He was capable of
enjoying her correspondence with Grimm and of being a real companion
to his mistress. She was fifty-one and Lanskoy was twenty-two when he
became her lover. He was a poor officer of the horse guards. Like all
her favorites, he had nothing and she gave him all. For four years
he flourished under her maternal care, a sensitive youth much liked
and respected by those about the court. Then in June, 1784, he fell
desperately ill. The physician who hastened from the city to attend him
at Czarskoe Selo said that he had angina and would die. This was ten
days before his death occurred. Catherine nursed him day and night,
passionately fighting for his life until at last the young man died in
her arms.

The Empress resolved to remain a widow. She would live without a lover
and comfort herself with her little grandson Alexander. For a whole
year, she moped in solitude, shutting herself up in her chamber and
valiantly trying to endure her loneliness. She strove to fortify her
resolution by poring over a book by a famous German hypochondriac
entitled “Uber die Einsamkeit.” To Zimmermann, the author, she sent
a ring and a portrait of herself, in grateful acknowledgment of his
words on the solitary life. But neither the book nor her correspondence
with Zimmermann was able to keep her always faithful to her vows. Her
struggles to get on without a lover became more and more pathetic until
after a year of sacrifice she installed Yermalov in the apartments of
the favorite.

Her trial of suttee after Lanskoy’s death is often brought forward to
show that Catherine at last experienced love in the true meaning of the
word. But the English Ambassador who wrote after her death that she had
died “a stranger to love” perhaps came nearer to the truth. The woman
who had had twelve lovers never learned to love. Death overtook her
while she was still trying to learn.


                                   7

When Potiomkin came up to Petersburg in the spring to “have a tooth
out,” as he said, meaning thereby to dispossess Zubov, he growled his
usual thunders in advance. But the elderly Empress was infatuated
with her young lover and refused to drive him forth at Potiomkin’s
bidding. It was the first time that Potiomkin had felt himself wholly
powerless in this situation and the disturbance within him was acute.
Since bluster and threats were of no avail, though with all previous
rivals they had sufficed, he fell back upon his prowess as a wooer.
The Prince of Tauris would win his lady back as he had won her fifteen
years before. He would turn poet and troubadour as he had been in
the springtime of their love. At that time Potiomkin had been an
impecunious officer who could only afford to write verses to lay at
his mistress’s feet. Now he was a Prince with princely riches at his
command. The Empress loved gaiety and merry-making on a grand scale.
Potiomkin decided to give her such an entertainment as Petersburg had
never seen, and to stake all on the outcome.

The Prince had built a magnificent palace near the court of his
Empress. He had adorned it with the richest materials of the South.
His oriental furnishings and treasures would have inspired the great
Alexander himself with envy. In a vast room strewn with Persian rugs,
his guests dined from Persian glass and golden dishes of Russian
workmanship. Potiomkin’s cook was a person wholly different from the
botchers whom the Empress employed in her kitchen. His cook was famous
for making the best sterlet soup in Russia, and his master had been
known to send a military officer two thousand versts to fetch him a
tureen of it. In short, the Prince’s table was such a table as had
never before been spread in Russia and probably never since. He used
his military officers to fetch and carry for his cook. They brought
oysters from Riga, melons from Astrakhan, and grapes from the Crimea.
The first oranges ever eaten in Russia were served on Potiomkin’s
table. Even Frederick the Great, who was one of the great epicures of
his age, envied the dinners of the Prince of Tauris.

The festival of the despairing lover surpassed anything he had ever
done before. His resources were strained to the uttermost. He gave a
series of dinners, balls, pageants, arranged around the Empress as
the central figure, whose grandeur astonished the court. His food
and fireworks were an experience for the most blasé of the Russian
nobility. The magnificence of his effects mounted from day to day, as
the strain of his effort also increased. He was fighting for his life.

For the Empress also the strain was frightful. She endured it as long
as she could and then mercifully swung the axe which was to end his
struggles. One morning she sent for her host and thanked him expressly
for his entertainment of the evening before. She referred to it as a
farewell feast and spoke regretfully of his departure for the front
which she assumed was immediately necessary. Potiomkin understood. He
had lost his last throw.

He left for the South in a mood of the blackest depression. He told
his friends that he would never return. As soon as he arrived in camp
at Jassy, he fell ill with a fever. His niece, the faithful Sashinka
Branicky, was with him and nursed him. What the doctors prescribed
Potiomkin would not do; all that they forbade, he instantly demanded.
He insisted on eating like a gourmand. In every way he acted like a
man determined not to live. His last meal was like the repast of a
condemned man on the morning of his execution. He ate a quantity of
salt pork, raw beets, a goose and still another fowl, all of which he
washed down with Crimean wine and Russian _kwass_. He is said to have
died from over-eating while in a fever; but he had really died before
he left Petersburg. He was scarcely a living man when he arrived at
Jassy.

After this orgiastic meal, his bed became intolerable to him. He
demanded to be taken from Jassy to Nikolaev, as he said, for a change
of air. With his niece in the kibitka beside him, the dying man drove
westward. Gradually his strength faded and his raging temperature
subsided. The attendants were obliged to take him from the carriage and
lay him on a rug at the roadside. There beside the dusty chaussée, in
the arms of Sashinka, he expired. He had gone the way of Gregory Orlov,
but had gone more directly. His Little Mother, his Matushka, had killed
her last man.

When the Empress heard of Potiomkin’s death, she fainted three times.
Once upon a time she had written to Potiomkin, “Without thee, I am
without hands.” This proved to be true. With Plato Zubov’s hands,
she could never work the same, for Plato’s hands worked alone for
their master. The last years of Catherine’s reign were years of
disappointment, unwisdom, and failure. Her glory had passed when
Potiomkin died by the roadside. In destroying him, she had struck a
fatal blow at herself.




                             [Illustration]




                                   XI

                    CATHERINE BECOMES A GRANDMOTHER


Over a mantelpiece in the palace of Gatchina hangs a portrait of Paul
I as a boy of ten. It is the only one of his portraits which bears a
resemblance to his mother. Of all the artists who painted him, this one
alone seems to have caught an aspect of the Grand Duke which suggests
the Empress. Fleeting it must have been, for Paul grew up to be
strikingly unlike his maternal parent. He was destined to advertise by
his face and figure to all the world the anonymous paternity which had
produced him.

Catherine was annoyed by Paul’s appearance and disposition, inherited
as they were from his father’s family. It offended her that he should
turn out to be so completely a Saltikov. That her son derived so little
from herself seemed a perversity of fortune. She reflected a great
deal on the subject. “My God,” she burst out in one of her letters to
Grimm, “why do children so often resemble their fathers when it would
be better to resemble their mothers? That is not common sense; dame
Nature is often a blockhead. One day I shall write a dissertation
on that, which I shall dedicate to you.” She did not write the
dissertation for Grimm, although dissertations in general were much in
her line. She dipped into scientific research from time to time with
impressive results. Her contributions to comparative philology have
won recognition from scholars in that field; but her contemplated study
of inheritance of characteristics was never carried out. She never got
beyond posing the question, to which, however, she repeatedly returned
without ever pushing onward to any kind of theory. She bred dogs and
observed that they showed the same tendency as human beings in this
respect. “Witness Sir Tom Anderson,” she said of her favorite hound,
“all his family resembles him. The same spirit, the same taste, the
same figure, the same physiognomy, the same tendency.” She was puzzled
and resentful.

Catherine was estranged from her son Paul from the day of his birth.
Deprived of all opportunity to express her maternal feelings by the
Empress’s theft, she had no actual experience of motherhood. Painful
associations clustered around the infancy of this over-precious child.
Catherine had been deserted by her first lover who openly replaced her
by unworthy rivals. She hated Saltikov, as she afterwards learned not
to hate any of her favorites after their affair had run its course. The
child whom she saw once a week in his fox-fur cradle reminded her of
bitter disillusionment. As he grew older, his querulous disposition,
his under-sized stature, his wizened skin, his baldness, and his
ugly nose all helped to make him seem alien to his mother. He was a
cringing, sickly boy of whom it was difficult to be proud. She had
produced him at such a cost and he represented such an inferior triumph
after all. As human material he was in the same class as Peter the
Third, from which many historians have argued that Paul was Peter’s son
and a genuine descendant of the Romanovs.

Catherine’s second son and her first child by Orlov, Prince Bobrinsky,
also failed to inherit the genius of his mother. He was brought up
under the Empress’s supervision by an Italian tutor, Admiral Ribas, and
as a young man was a ne’er-do-well and a waster. His mother sent him
on a tour through Europe and the gay young Prince of the Beaver-skin
left a trail of debts behind him in city after city. Finally the
exasperated Empress had him arrested and interned in Riga, after which
history knows him no more. He was a spendthrift, like both his parents,
but he had none of the mental and moral handicaps of Grand Duke Paul.
After his public disgrace in Riga, he returned to Russia and led an
unambitious and uneventful life. He married and left descendants in
whom history takes no interest.

The chief part which Bobrinsky played in the drama of his mother’s life
was to heighten the conflict which always existed between Catherine
and her first-born. There was a moment in the Empress’s life when
she thought of marrying Gregory Orlov but was suddenly checked in
her intentions by the enemies of the Orlovs and the opposition of
Panin. Count Panin, who wanted from the first to make Paul emperor,
became suddenly energetic when he suspected that the Empress wished
to legitimatize Bobrinsky. Even after the danger of the marriage had
been averted, this bastard Prince still hovered threateningly in the
background, well cared for by the Empress, his mother, a permanent
object of suspicion to Count Panin and of fear to the Grand Duke Paul.
This boy who trembled for his life could find no reassurance in the
existence of a rival half-brother as long as he kept his health and
his mother’s favor. The young Bobrinsky, like everything else in their
environment, contributed to the estrangement between Catherine and her
heir.

When Catherine became Empress, one of her first concerns was to provide
for the education of the Grand Duke Paul. She selected no less a person
for the post than d’Alembert. But the French scholar declined her
invitation. The Empress would not take no for an answer; she stooped to
conquer. “I know you too well for a good man,” she wrote, “to ascribe
your refusal to vanity. I know that the sole motive of it is the desire
for peace and leisure to cultivate letters and the friendship of
those whom you esteem. But what is there in this objection? Come with
all your friends. I promise both them and you every convenience and
advantage that depends upon me; and perhaps you will find more liberty
and ease here than in your native country. You refused the invitation
of the King of Prussia, notwithstanding your obligations to him. But
that Prince has no son. I admit to you that I have the education of my
son so much at heart, and I think you so necessary to it, that perhaps
I press you with too much earnestness. Excuse my indiscretion for the
sake of its occasion; and be assured that it is my esteem for you that
makes me so urgent.”

This petitioning of d’Alembert brought one of the sharpest humiliations
of her life. D’Alembert steadfastly refused. Privately he uttered a
sarcastic remark which travelled far. In Russia, he said, people died
too easily of colic, it was better to remain in France. The Empress
never forgave him this sly reference to her manifesto concerning
Peter’s untimely end. A decade or more afterwards, when she was
engaged in the invasion of Poland, a group of French professors living
there fell into her hands and were interned at Kiev. D’Alembert,
remembering his old prestige with the Empress, attempted to secure
their release by sending a personal petition to the Russian Empress,
but she turned a deaf ear to his intercession. The distressed scholar
at last appealed to Voltaire who succeeded in getting only a cold reply
from the Empress. She said that the French professors were doing very
well in Russia and would stay there for the present. She implied that
d’Alembert, who had thought that people died too easily of colic in
this barbarous land, might now see for himself how well people could
live there. The professors were being cared for and would remain
interned until the Empress found leisure to release them. Their period
of internment was probably not greatly prolonged by d’Alembert’s appeal.

When the Empress’s efforts to import higher education for her son
shattered on this embarrassing passage between herself and the French
encyclopædist, she gave up all further attempts to improve on Panin’s
pedagogy. Her opinion of the lazy Count as an educator was not high
but it was probably as high as he deserved. Nevertheless she left him
in possession of the field. “At that time,” she commented, “everybody
believed that if Panin did not educate him, the Grand Duke would be
lost.” Panin remained in exclusive charge as governor until Paul’s
marriage took place. He continued his watchfulness even after that from
his post as head of the College of Foreign Affairs until Prince Orlov
died in 1783. For twenty years, Panin’s chief interest in life had been
to watch and circumvent this man whom he regarded as the dangerous
enemy of his Grand Duke. Panin had failed to save the Czar when he
had piteously kissed his hand and pleaded and he could never forgive
himself for that failure. He felt to blame for Peter’s death and was
therefore obliged to hate, suspect, and persecute Gregory Orlov. After
Orlov’s death he no longer had an incentive to live. The sensitive
old man soon followed his arch-enemy into the grave. The Empress was
bereaved at the same time of two of her oldest and nearest friends.


                                   2

Compelled to leave Paul’s education alone, she waited impatiently for
the time to marry him. She resolved to be less hasty than the Empress
Elisabeth, who had married her nephew at sixteen against the doctor’s
advice. Catherine waited until her son had reached the age of eighteen
before she sought a wife for him. Relations between the mother and son
improved considerably during Paul’s eighteenth summer. They spent the
warm season together in Czarskoe Selo and the Empress for the first
time made a companion of her son. A new sympathy grew up between them;
the long estrangement seemed to be over at last. It is easy to account
for Catherine’s new interest in Paul. Presumably she had been told that
it would be safe to go ahead and marry him. The young man found himself
taken to his mother’s bosom with unexpected warmth. Those who looked on
thought this was the beginning of a friendliness at last between the
mother and son, but the happy condition was not destined to last long.
For once their interests coincided. Paul wanted a wife and his mother
wanted him to marry. In all other situations of life which preceded and
followed this halcyon interlude the two were ever in conflict.

The Empress surveyed with a critical eye the German supply of
Princesses. Some not too powerful Prince’s daughter after her own image
was the object of her search. At last she selected a mother with three
daughters and invited all three sisters to Russia that the Grand Duke
might choose among them. In the old days when the Russian Czarevich
wished to marry a Russian princess, it was customary for the eligible
damsels to seat themselves in two long rows in the Kremlin palace while
the young heir passed between them, looking to right and left, until
he chose his bride. This ancient custom was in the Empress’s thoughts
when she invited the Landgravine of Hessen-Darmstadt to bring her three
daughters to Petersburg.

Catherine was proud to be able to write to Prince Henry of Prussia,
who had also planned to visit her, that his visit would have to
be postponed because his apartments would be needed for the young
Princesses and their mother. “I may say to you in confidence, with
the indiscretion that is natural to ladies, that these apartments are
destined this summer for Madame the Landgravine of Hessen-Darmstadt.”
If Prince Henry then so far betrayed her confidence as to inform his
royal brother, Frederick the Great, that the Empress of Russia was
about to marry her son and heir, the indiscretion of the Empress would
be justified. That the King of Prussia had no son was a fact she liked
to dwell upon. She was always in one way or another the rival of the
Prussian monarch and in becoming a parent she had outstripped him.
Paul was about to continue the Romanov dynasty as his mother had done
before him, while the childless old King of Potsdam, aging in solitude,
could point to no such happy line of succession. Like the late Russian
Empress, he was obliged to make the best of a nephew as an heir.

The Landgravine of Hessen-Darmstadt came to Petersburg with her
three daughters and went away again with two of them. The betrothal
and marriage were rather hasty and not particularly gay. The new
Grand Duchess, re-baptized as Natalie Alexeievna, was not a vivid
personality and her short life in Russia left no legends. It was an
unhappy marriage from the beginning and lasted but three years, at the
end of which Natalie died in childbirth. Just what happened to the
young wife during these years is a story that no one has told. Paul’s
complaints of Natalie show that he must have behaved very badly toward
her. While this marriage lasted, his disposition took on a fixed habit
of depression. Scarcely twenty years old, he succumbed to pessimistic
moods from which he looked to his wife in vain to extract him. As
Natalie had not the gift of lighting up his “papillons noirs,” his
favorite name for them, he settled more and more stubbornly in the
black depths of miserable self-pity. Frequently he wept.

No doubt his mother had her moments of anxiety because the marriage did
not produce a grandchild at once. In the third year, however, the Grand
Duchess became pregnant; the hopes of the Empress were at last to be
realized. Catherine made preparations for the lying-in to take place
in Petersburg, where Czars might be born although they might not be
crowned. In the springtime of 1776, she expected the son of her son.
The fatal outcome of Natalie’s lying-in was described by the Empress in
one of her most characteristic letters. The swiftness and vividness of
her narrative reflect the sure movement of her spirit. In this letter
we see her moving through a crisis as she moved through every crisis of
a life that was so extraordinarily rich in danger and risks. It mirrors
that acceptance of facts which enabled her to pass through murder at
Peterhof and to emerge almost unscathed by comparison with temperaments
like Orlov and Panin. In Catherine’s make-up was some of that tough
fibre which enabled Alexei, the head of the Orlov clan, to profit by
his crimes while others far less guilty than himself did morbid penance
on his behalf.

“On the 10th of April,” wrote Catherine to Grimm, “at four o’clock in
the morning, my son came to find me because his wife perceived the
pains of confinement. I leaped out of bed and ran to her. I found her
much tormented but nothing beyond the ordinary. Time and patience would
end the affair. A mid-wife and a skilful surgeon aided her.... Monday
passed in waiting and in a similar condition, very disturbing....
The doctors’ conference produced no new expedients or assuagement.
On Tuesday they demanded my physician and an old _accoucheur_ to
renew their consultation.... They decided to save the mother, as the
infant was probably dead; instruments were employed; a combination
of unfortunate circumstances, occasioned by malformation and divers
accidents, made all that human science could do on Wednesday useless.
On Thursday the Grand Duchess received the sacrament. Prince Henry
suggested his physician; he was admitted but he agreed with his
confrères. On Thursday the Princess gave up the ghost at five o’clock
in the evening. Today she has been cut open in the presence of thirteen
physicians and surgeons who found that it was a unique and irremediable
case....

“Twenty-four hours before the death of the Grand Duchess, I sent to ask
Prince Henry, for my own relief, to take charge of the Grand Duke. He
came and has not left him since. He endures his profound chagrin with
composure but today he has taken a fever. Since the death of his wife,
I have picked him up and brought him here [Czarskoe Selo].

“Imagine me, who am tearful by temperament; I have seen someone die
without shedding a tear. I said to myself: If you cry, the others will
sob; if you sob, the others will swoon; and everybody will lose their
heads and be at their wits’ end; all of which will be irresponsible....”

While the widowed Grand Duke still lay in ruins, his mother set about
finding a new wife for him. She has been reproached for her unseemly
haste in the matter. Brückner says critically that even while Natalie
was dying, the Empress’s thoughts were occupied with a second marriage
for her son. Of this there is not the least doubt. Three years of
marriage had ended in a still-birth; much time had been lost already
and the business-like Empress saw no reason for losing any more. She
had maternal and imperial interests at stake, and match-making was a
chore like any other, something to be done with as little delay as
possible. It was apparent that the Grand Duke, who had gone to pieces
in the crisis and who developed a fever afterwards, was unable to do
anything on his own behalf. He had no more initiative to bring to the
making of a second marriage than he had brought to the first. He would
have to be inducted into matrimony once again.

Catherine took counsel with Prince Henry of Prussia, who happened
to be in Petersburg at this dismal time. The death of Natalie made
it impossible for the Empress to entertain her guest with the
same elaborate festivities with which his former sojourn had been
celebrated. Prince Henry protested that he was not at all bored, which
the apologetic hostess refused to believe. But the melancholy and
oppressed younger brother of Frederick the Great was more at home in
the midst of tragedy and misfortune than in the gaiety and abandon of
a Russian masquerade. In a court that mourned for the dead Natalie,
he was at ease. He had a contribution to make. A second wife for Paul
was to be brought from Germany and the Prince was asked to arrange the
match. It seems that he approved of the Empress’s choice.

One reason that Catherine was already occupied with the thought of
marrying her son while his wife lay dying was that she had long
wished she had chosen another Princess instead. Three years before,
when making her first survey of the field, she had considered the
Princess Sophie von Württemberg and had passed her over because she
was too young. Time had remedied this difficulty but had substituted
another. Sophie had recently become engaged and was shortly to be
married to the hereditary Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt. This young man
was well known in Russia and disliked by the Empress. He was a brother
of Paul’s first wife and had come to Russia to make his career there
in Catherine’s army. But after a couple of years she sent him home
to his father. “God help him,” she wrote; “he is better off there
than in Moscow.” This annoying young man had then engaged himself to
Sophie of Württemberg and the betrothal presented a serious obstacle to
Catherine’s plans. There was nothing for the Empress to do but to buy
him off. Apparently he was able to drive a pretty sharp bargain for he
received, as a compensation for his disappointment, a pension for life.
“On condition,” the Empress wrote peevishly, “that I shall never see or
hear from him again.”

This delicate matter was arranged through the agency of Prince Henry,
on whom Catherine at this time leaned heavily. She trusted all the
details to the solemn silent Prussian. She even consented that her
son should leave home under Henry’s tutelage to court his bride in a
foreign land. So far as the Grand Duke was concerned, the opportunity
to visit Prussia gave him the greatest thrill of his courtship and
furnished a strong incentive to marriage. He was already in love with
Prussia and the Prussian King in imitation of the ex-Czar, Peter III.

Accompanied by Prince Henry, he was allowed to make a pilgrimage to
the land of his ideals and to sue in person for the hand of his bride.
Whatever Sophie’s feelings may have been when she first saw this ugly
little man, she dutifully accepted him and made no fuss about it. The
Princess was a tall blonde girl, in stature not unlike the late Empress
Elisabeth, but German and _spiessbürgerlich_ to her finger-tips. She
was and remained all her days an incurable Philistine.

As soon as Paul returned from Germany, the Empress began to expedite
the marriage. “The Princess is yet to come,” she wrote to Grimm, “and
we shall have her here within ten days. As soon as we have her, we
shall proceed with her conversion. To convince her, it ought to take
about fifteen days I think. I do not know how long will be necessary to
teach her to read intelligibly and correctly the confession of faith
in Russian. But the faster this can be hurried through, the better
it will be. To accelerate all that, M. Pastukov has gone to Memel to
teach her the alphabet and the confession en route; conviction will
follow afterwards. You see by this we are foresighted and cautious and
this conversion and confession of faith travels by post. Eight days
from this act, I fix the wedding. If you wish to dance at it, you will
have to hasten.” The tall Princess Sophie was converted according to
Catherine’s schedule and became the Grand Duchess Marie Feodorovna.

Within five months after the death of his first wife, Paul was married
again. His second wife was a healthy, phlegmatic woman. He was almost
happy. “Wherever _my wife_ goes,” he wrote to Prince Henry, “she has
the gift of spreading gaiety and ease, and she has the art not only of
dissipating my black moods but of giving me back again the disposition
I had almost lost during the last three unhappy years.”

Paul’s second marriage was probably the best marriage that could
possibly have been made for him. The fair tall wife called up pleasant
memories of the devoted nurse who had run to the fox-fur cradle
every time the baby in it cried. Marie Feodorovna was complacent and
domestic; she loved her flower garden and she loved the proprieties.
Paul lived many pious uneventful years with her and the Philistine pair
often sat in judgment on the life of the Empress. Nowhere in Europe was
the light woman on the Russian throne so severely condemned as she was
by her son and his virtuous wife. Marie Feodorovna was like the heroine
of a Gartenlaube story and a long and stormy life in Russia never
succeeded in making her anything else. She was a sentimental German to
the last.

Catherine gave them the village of Pavlovsk for a residence. Here
Paul built a little palace and Marie laid out her flower garden.
After the death of Prince Orlov, Catherine purchased Gatchina for
them. It was a place of evil memories for Paul, the scene of Orlov’s
final insanity and death. The ghost of Peter the Third had walked
there and had carried off to judgment the guilty soul of Gregory
Orlov. These uncanny memories meant nothing to the Empress but they
had an unhealthy influence on her son. He shut himself up in Gatchina
away from all the world and expressed himself in the development of
the place. To this day it reflects his personality as Czarskoe Selo
reflects the personality of his mother. In Gatchina he played with his
military passions and his mysticism. He tried to make himself as much
as possible like Peter III, whose ghost walked with him through the
endless corridors.


                                   3

Catherine was forty-eight when her first grandson was born. She called
him Alexander, as she said, a “pompous name.” In 1777, her ambitious
imagination ranged over the southern part of her dominions wherever
Alexander the Great had passed and where he first met the Scythians.
Catherine was just then entering upon her great dream of empire, the
dream which dominated the rest of her life. She needed children and
children’s children to carry on the vast work she had planned. The
dutiful Marie responded by producing two sons within a short space of
time. Alexander was followed by Constantine, for the Empress loved
resounding names. Catherine’s joy in these infants was unbounded. She
had borne five children but had never nursed one of them. At last her
time had come. She took possession of the little new-born creatures and
sent the mother back to Pavlovsk, childless. She re-enacted to the last
detail the crime of Empress Elisabeth against herself.

In a lyrical letter to Grimm, she announced the birth of her first
grandson. But when she spoke of Alexander’s future her rapturous tone
fell to a pensive strain. “Aber, mein Gott, was wird aus dem Jungen
werden?” She fell back as she rarely did into her native German. “I
console myself with Boyle and the father of Tristram Shandy, who was
of the opinion that a name is an influence that matters.... Do you
think his examples from the family prove anything? His choice of them
embarrasses sometimes. His examples only show, to speak the gospel
according to the venerable Pastor Wagner, that it is the _naturel_
which counts. But where to find that! Is it at the bottom of the pack
of a good constitution?... It is a pity that fairies have gone out of
fashion; they would give an infant all that one wished. I should have
made them beautiful presents and I should have whispered in their ears:
Mesdames, _naturel_, just a little bit of _naturel_ and experience will
then do all the rest.”

The interests of a grandmother did not distract her attention from
the events of the fast spinning world. As its happenings sped past,
like a flying factory belt, she invariably registered the passage of
episodes which concerned her. Even the christening of Alexander did not
obscure the defeat of General Burgoyne in America. “Monsieur Alexander
was baptized the day before yesterday,” she wrote, “and everyone is
doing well, except the English, who hang their heads to their stomachs
since the deplorable adventure of General Burgoyne. He should gnaw his
fingers after the fashion of Prince Potiomkin; that sets the blood in
circulation. If that of the Parliament of Great Britain remains calm
now I call them plodding nags....” She was scornful of George III who
was evidently going to allow the American colonies to slip through his
fingers. His grandchildren might lose America at the same time that her
own might enter Constantinople. That is, they would if _naturel_ led
them in that direction. Her magnificent dreams for Alexander alternated
with an uncertain mood which usually brought on an attack of the German
language. “Aber, mein Gott, was wird aus dem Jungen werden?”

Having appropriated her two grandsons in this unceremonious fashion,
Catherine’s cupidity seemed for the time satisfied. Marie Feodorovna
came up to the Petersburg palace at regular intervals and bore her
children there. It turned out that granddaughters were not wanted in
Catherine’s nursery and the young mother was allowed to take her girl
babies back to Pavlovsk and educate them herself. Catherine thought the
little Princesses beautiful and charming but she was content to give
them lovely Greek names and send them home with Mama. Alexander and
Constantine, however, were ardently studied, ardently educated and
ardently sewed for.

The Empress designed a garment for Alexander of which she was extremely
proud. She boasted that the King of Sweden and the Prince of Prussia
had heard of it and had borrowed the pattern for their own little boys.
The picture which she drew and sent abroad vindicated her boast of
its simplicity. “Nowhere,” she explains, “is there any ligature, and
the child scarcely knows that he is being dressed. The arms and legs
go into the garment at the same time and lo! all is finished. It is
a stroke of genius on my part, this habit.” Her letters were filled
with the sayings and doings of her darling. She gave a catalogue of
his achievements at the age of four. He could write, spell, draw,
use a spade, shoulder arms, and mount a horse; he could make twenty
playthings out of one and ask endless questions. The other day he had
asked whether there were human beings in the moon and whether he had
been born in the moon or on the earth. “I do not know,” said Grandmamma
fervently, “but there is a kind of profundity which springs up in the
head of this little monkey.”

In the shadow of this wonderful brother, Constantine was obliged to
make such headway as he could. There was less than eighteen months’
difference in age between the two boys and in many respects they
were treated like twins. They had two low chairs exactly alike in
Grandmamma’s boudoir and the model garment of her invention was always
made up in pairs. In their education, however, certain distinctions
were observed. Alexander, the future Czar, was brought up on the
English plan as far as possible. This, to the Empress, meant fresh air
and liberal ideals and she saw to it that Alexander was nourished on
these things from his earliest infancy. Constantine showed from the
beginning a strong repugnance to fresh air. The unregenerate infant
annoyed his grandmother greatly by “burying his nose in the linen and
shutting out the air.” She gave him a Greek nurse and surrounded him
with Greek attendants in order that he should begin life speaking this
language only. Constantine was brought up to be King of Greece, where a
salubrious climate would enable him to hold his head up and breathe the
fresh air like a man. This younger brother of Alexander was destined
never to be King of Greece or King of anything, least of all himself.
The intensity of his secondary part deprived him of all aggressiveness
in infancy, saddled him with an irascible temper, and cast him for an
utterly passive rôle in life.

Alexander idolized his grandmother while Constantine hated her. “Do you
know,” Constantine said to the Swedish Prince when he met him in the
palace of his grandmother, “that you are in the house of the greatest
whore in Europe?”

Catherine had been obliged by circumstances to refrain from interfering
in the education of her own son. Her attempt to import D’Alembert from
France had failed and she had allowed matters to proceed as they had
started under the guidance of Panin. But she was not satisfied with the
results and hoped to do much better for her two grandsons. She wrote
an extensive Instruction for the guidance of their teachers, producing
this time a far more original piece of work than her famous message to
the commission on a code of laws. It contained common sense and insight
only occasionally darkened by the author’s well-known prejudices. She
counselled those in charge of young children to avoid scolding them
and to cultivate a gentle attitude in order that they should learn not
to fear people. The spirit of Babet Cardel, the spirit of common sense,
expressed itself repeatedly in Catherine’s pedagogy. Her prejudice
appeared in a flat prohibition against the arts for which she herself
had no understanding. “The Grand Dukes are to be taught neither poetry
or music; because it would occupy too much of their time to attain
excellence in either....”

Whatever latent talent the two boys may have had in the creative arts
was never encouraged to express itself. Grandmother’s repressions were
too strong. Alexander might have learned to sing like a bird if he had
had another Babet Cardel to teach him and if his devoted but jealous
grandmother had not cut him off from every opportunity to learn. She
succeeded in transmitting her own tone-deafness to him in an aggravated
form.

Alexander was as his name indicated destined for a military career;
Catherine pictured him as the conqueror of Constantinople at least.
But she loathed the idea of what she called Prussian corporalism. The
imitation battles of Peter the Third and her son Paul, their drilling
and dragooning, their manœuvring and parading struck her as unwarlike.
She preferred the looser methods of her Russian generals, Suvarov,
Rumiantsov, Potiomkin. Her grandson was to be a conqueror of the
Russian school. In any case, however, he must operate with big guns
and tolerate the noise they made. A worry had grown up in her mind
around this matter of big guns. General Potiomkin, leader of her forces
against the Turks, had a terrible handicap. When the sound of firing
came to him in his encampment behind the lines, he trembled in his
Russian boots. The Empress knew this well; indeed far too many people
knew it well and the idiosyncrasy ill became the chief of the Russian
army. If Potiomkin failed to take Constantinople, it would probably
be due to this mysterious weakness of his. Mysterious it was, for
Potiomkin was really no coward.

If Constantinople held out against Potiomkin, the conquest would remain
for Alexander. It was imperative that the young Grand Duke should have
no fear of guns. His grandmother decided to prevent the possibility of
such a disaster by habituating the child in early life to the sound.
She had him systematically exposed to the noise of cannon in the hope
that the early experience would inoculate him against this unmanly fear
as vaccination had made him immune from the terror of smallpox. Her
experiment with the cannon did not work as well as her experiment with
vaccination. The boy, it is true, grew up without fear of the noise of
guns firing; but that was partly because his deafness prevented him
from hearing them. Alexander the First was merely hard of hearing.
The explanation usually given is that his disability was acquired
from being forced by his grandmother to listen to gun practice in his
childhood.

Another feature in Catherine’s pedagogy which throws a light on her
character concerns the subject of sex and reproduction. She was as
rigid with her grandsons as she had been with the young ladies at
Smolny. She thought it was better not to call their attention to such
things too early. Just as the Smolny pupils had produced Voltaire’s
plays with the passages about love cut out, so her grandsons were
expected to study science and omit the subject of reproduction. Their
tutors were instructed to keep them in strict ignorance about all
that related to the relation of the sexes. “Her great modesty in this
respect,” says Masson, “appears strikingly contrasted with other parts
of her character.... The celebrated Pallas was giving the Princes
a short course of botany in their garden near Pavlovsk; but the
explanation of Linnæus’s system of the sexes gave them the first ideas
of those of human nature and led them to put a number of very amusing
questions with great naïveté. This alarmed their governors; Pallas was
requested to avoid entering into further particulars; and the course of
botany was even broken off.”

The Empress, who was devoted to science, who loved the study of comets
and philology, who strove industriously to wipe out superstition with
knowledge, went so far as to interrupt a course of botany for prudish
reasons. The modesty for which she was so often admired but which
would be more accurately called prudery was doubtless present in her
make-up. Her efforts to preserve the innocence of her grandsons did
not have the happy result which she hoped for. As she had been eager
to have grandchildren, she was also eager to have great-grandchildren.
Her hopes were destined to disappointment. She married both of her
grandsons at an early age but neither of them had descendants. Their
marriages were not happy and remained childless. The outcome was not
according to their grandmother’s scheme. Not for this did she bring
them up in ignorance of sex and sacrifice the course in botany to
preserve their innocence. Their sterility was a bitter disappointment
to her. Paul’s youngest son, the only one she had left to be educated
by his mother, carried on the dynasty that she had founded. From the
Empress’s own point of view, Nicholas, who was brought up by her
Philistine daughter-in-law, was a greater success in life than his
two elder brothers whom she had so carefully reared. Perhaps she had
worked too hard on the training of her precious young. A more casual
upbringing might have produced happier results for her own purposes,
which included first of all the production of progeny.


                                   4

While the Empress was educating Paul’s children at the court, Paul was
living in strict retirement at Pavlovsk and Gatchina. He complained
bitterly of his exclusion from active life. “You tax me with my
hypochondria and black moods,” he wrote to Prince Henry. “It may
be so.... But the inaction to which I am condemned makes the part
excusable.” Two years after his second marriage, which had lifted his
spirits temporarily, he was again writing to Prince Henry, “Permit me
to write you often, my heart has need to unburden itself, especially in
the sad life that I lead.” After abruptly closing his letter, he adds,
“My tears prevent me from continuing.”

Paul was not yet twenty-five years of age when he was writing in
this despondent strain. He was already the victim of pessimism and
melancholy, any intensification of which might lead him beyond the
bounds of mental health. Brückner says that Paul was eccentric in his
behavior, his moods, and his ideas from the very cradle. In middle age
he was called insane. Paul’s wife, Marie Feodorovna, considered him
so. “There is no one,” she wrote, “who does not every day remark the
disorder of his faculties.” For years before the Empress died, it was
reported throughout Europe that her son was mad.

Here was an extraordinary coincidence. If Paul was not the son of Peter
the Third as had been whispered at the time of Paul’s birth, whence
came the similarity in their morbid tendencies? The unfortunate Grand
Duke seemed to be following in the footsteps of the late Czar. Peter
certainly had a severe mental twist with passionate preferences and
prejudices which the Grand Duke imitated. In his sequestered life at
Gatchina he cultivated the personal habits and tastes of the murdered
Peter. He professed, for instance, the same partiality for Frederick
the Great and accomplished what Peter had longed for but had never
attained: he saw the Prussian idol in the flesh. When Paul and his
wife made the grand tour of Europe in 1781, they visited Frederick
in Berlin. It was a memorable meeting for several reasons. Frederick
the Great for the first time in many years had a new suit made--new
throughout. It was a great concession from the Potsdam recluse and
miser, an eloquent testimonial of respect for the painted lady of
Petersburg who was, incidentally, not so friendly toward Prussia as she
once had been. The King’s new clothes were the talk of Berlin.

As a topic of conversation, they were only superseded by the Hamlet
story. A special production of Hamlet had been announced in the Grand
Duke’s honor but the director of the theatre withdrew the piece at the
last moment as inappropriate for the occasion. The public was agog
with curiosity and the sensitive self-pitying Paul became the focus
of an over-wrought and over-acted romance of public sympathy. For
several days Paul’s picture of his own tragedy hung before the German
public; Berlin saw him as a Russian Hamlet whose father had been a
martyr partly for his love of Prussia. All this was extremely bad for
the melancholy Grand Duke, for whom any picturesque enhancement of his
misfortunes added an element of danger to that already inherent in
his habitual brooding. The comparison with Hamlet was grateful to him
for every reason, but most of all for the reason that Hamlet was his
father’s own son. If the public identified Paul with Hamlet, it meant
that they accepted him as the son of Peter the Third. This aspect of
the drama represented something that Paul was obliged to believe. To
doubt it meant for him unendurable suffering, to be escaped at every
cost.

As a baby in the cradle, Paul was a sensitive creature, starting and
trembling at every sound. He was devotedly nursed by the Empress
Elisabeth and oppressed by her hysteria. After her death he was
dependent on Panin, a man who dreamed dreams and made no effort to
realize them. Panin’s tutelage was not a course in courage and Paul’s
situation especially required it. He was constantly in fear of being
poisoned, in fear of being found out for a bastard, in fear of losing
his claim to the throne of the Romanovs. His relations with his
mother were always unsympathetic and after his second marriage they
became unfriendly. Paul had no interest in politics and ascribed his
indifference to the selfishness of the Empress who jealously excluded
him from any participation in affairs of state. But he was far too shy
and impractical by temperament to engage in politics in any form; to
organize, to compromise, to adjust means to ends were not within his
capacity.

He was, on the other hand, profoundly attracted by the mystical
movements of his age. By this method he became connected with the
protestant religions of Europe, an alliance which was not consistent
with his future position as head of the Greek Church. It will be
remembered that Peter the Third could never wholly abandon the religion
of his native Holstein and remained to the end hostile to Russian
orthodoxy. Paul developed the same tendency to ally himself with
strange and rebellious faiths. He became a Freemason, a Martinist,
and a Knight of Malta. The Eighteenth Century was prolific in mystic
cults at the same time that it took its place in history as the age
of enlightenment. As Catherine the Great was identified with all the
movements for enlightenment, her son was identified with all the forms
of obscurantism which flourished side by side with the new rationalism.
Catherine was displeased with Paul’s alliance with black magic and
prided herself on being free from any leanings toward superstition.
When she was a very old woman, her latent credulity burst out; but
her lapse at the eleventh hour need not deprive her of her position
as one of the shining leaders of the age of reason. Paul always
belonged in the other camp, the camp of the credulous, by virtue of his
temperament. He might have found a kind of peace there if destiny had
not called him to play an active part in life.

After he became Czar his morbid ideas waxed and led him into many
grotesque and extreme acts. Like Hamlet, he thought his first duty
was to avenge his father. Although Peter had been dead for more than
thirty years, he had the grave opened, the corpse exposed to public
view, and an impressive funeral acted out. The Czar had been buried in
the Alexander Nevsky monastery, while all the other Czars of Russia
after Peter the Great had been buried in the Fortress of Saint Peter
and Saint Paul. An elaborate funeral procession transported the dead
Peter from his old to his new resting-place. As the sarcophagus was
borne along the Nevsky Prospect, Alexei Orlov followed immediately
after as chief mourner. This was the crown of Paul’s revenge, to expose
the murderer to the condemnation of the world.

Gregory Orlov was dead but fortunately for Paul’s mad drama his brother
remained to play the sinister rôle which Paul had invented for him.
What the aged Orlov thought of as he trudged along behind the corpse
of the man he had struck down thirty-four years ago is matter for
speculation. From what we know of Alexei’s character, he was probably
not occupied with remorseful thoughts. Perhaps he was thinking of the
strong fish-soup with which he was going to revive his weak old legs
when the Czar’s fine funeral was over. Perhaps he was thinking that
Paul was as mad as Peter had been, and wondering at the coincidence.

The resemblance between the fate of Catherine’s husband and her son was
carried out to the end. As Emperor, Paul’s morbid suspicions increased
and his reprisals against those whom he suspected aroused fear and
hatred on every hand. His dread of persecution called forth actual
persecution where none had formerly existed. Soon a conspiracy began
to take shape among his enemies, headed by the Zubov brothers, Plato
and Valerian. The last chapter of Peter’s history was repeated. After
a brief reign of only four years, Paul was murdered one night by a
band of conspirators who said that he was a dangerous lunatic and had
to be put out of the way. There is every reason to suppose that his
son and successor, Alexander the First, was aware of the conspiracy
against his father’s life, and more definitely aware than Catherine
had been when Peter had been assassinated at Ropsha. One of the things
which Alexander had learned from his extraordinary grandmother was to
overlook a murder which could not be prevented and make the best of the
consequences. In both cases the consequences entitled them to ascend
the throne over the dead body of their predecessors.


                                   5

Catherine the Great loved to write. She rose at six o’clock every
morning and occupied herself with literary work during the three
hours or so which intervened before her Russian servants began to
rub their sleepy eyes. She had Spartan methods of awakening herself.
First she washed her face and ears with ice; then she drank five cups
of the strongest coffee ever brewed. She sat down beside her candle
with her pen and wrote in a large free flowing hand, instructions,
correspondence, memoirs, fables, histories, comedies. Her output was
voluminous. She did not wait to finish one piece before she began
another, and the first remained forever unfinished. Everything she
wrote is a fragment. She wrote her memoirs in the 70’s, and then
wrote them all over again in the 90’s. She set down a fragment
of autobiography for Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, another for
Poniatovsky, and another for Potiomkin. She was not meticulous as to
the kind of paper and such things, as may be seen from her notes in
the Russian archives which are scribbled literally on scraps of paper,
anything which came to hand. Her mind shook itself out loosely in the
track of a swiftly moving pen.

Whatever she wrote was closely related to the affairs of the day. It
was addressed to some particular person or based on some concrete
experience. The evolution of her literary expression can be roughly
traced like this: during her thirties, she wrote on political subjects
and matters of state; during her forties, she wrote her memoirs and
corresponded with Voltaire and Grimm; during her fifties, she wrote
allegories, chronicles, and comedies; and in her sixties, she turned to
reminiscences again, producing the version of her life which she wanted
posterity to read. She grew less and less abstract as the years went by.

After the birth of her two grandsons, the Empress had an outburst of
imaginative writing. For several years she addressed all her writings
to the little Grand Dukes. “The Legend of the Czarevich Chlor” was
written for Alexander when he was five years old. Her Russian history,
which fills two volumes, pictures a primitive age with appropriate
simplicity. She moralizes scarcely at all, for the lives of the Knazia
Veliki do not point the right kind of moral.

Catherine’s little histories are a narrative of constant wars between
the Russians and the Greeks; swift and vivid sketches of nomadic
princes and large families of brothers warring against each other for
a heritage. The story of Princess Olga who went to Constantinople and
was there baptized is told enthusiastically and at length. Olga tried
to convert her son but he would not be converted because he said the
other men would not like it. She had to wait until her grandson, whom
she reared, grew to manhood before she could make her influence felt.
It was her grandson who Christianized Russia.

This legend was very popular with Catherine and her grandson Alexander.
With her globes, the Empress showed the little boy how the hordes of
the Genghis Khan had passed across the lands of Russia and where the
Scythians had met the Greeks. These lessons made her intimacy with
little Alexander the happiest of her life. She collected her writings
into a so-called Library for the Grand Dukes. To be sure, the projected
Library was never completed; nor was the history of Russia brought
down beyond the thirteenth century. So far as her Russian history was
concerned, it was a pity that the author left only a fragment. She had
a gift for lively compact narrative and the reader feels a distinct
disappointment when the story breaks off suddenly before the arrival of
the Tartars.

Her faithfulness to history is easy to explain. The artist had found
a new love. She had suddenly discovered comedy. The Empress had taken
to writing plays in the manner of Molière. An anecdote often told to
show the affection existing between Alexander and his grandmother tells
how the boy, at the age of eight, gave a performance of a five-act
comedy composed by Catherine. In the deeper layers of her memory the
works of Molière had been lying long unnoticed. Suddenly the latent
memories so long bedded there in forgetfulness and silence began to
germinate. At about the same age which Monsieur Alexander had now
grown to be, Catherine had once fed upon the plays of Molière because
her governess, Babet Cardel, had known them all by heart. As she sat
teaching her eight-year-old grandson, the tastes and interests of
that age in her own life began to stir and assert themselves within
her. Catherine was not content as Babet had been to give her pupil
ready-made comedies however masterly. She preferred to compose comedies
herself for Alexander. Promptly she fell to work and swiftly were her
plays completed. This time there were no fragments; the brevity of the
product was exactly suited to her temperament. She wrote seven pieces
in one year, and then abandoned the field altogether, perhaps because
the Turkish Wars became too engrossing.

Her comedies all deal with one subject in the same manner. They are
satires on the sentimental and superstitious traits of human nature.
Her titles show how faithfully she adhered to her theme. The Charlatan,
The Dupe, The Siberian Shaman, Family Discord Through False Suspicions,
No Good Without Evil were the most popular. Their plots and characters
show that the author is something of a psychologist and a good deal of
a satirist. It is noticeable that the weaknesses which she especially
satirizes are characteristic of the behavior of her son Paul.

At the time when Catherine wrote her comedies there was no longer any
pretense of sympathy between the mother and son. The disintegration of
Paul’s character had progressed so far that he had withdrawn himself
from all the world except those whom his mother called charlatans and
shamans. The Empress identified her son with all superstitious folk
and castigated the whole tribe in her comedies. She rarely mentioned
Paul directly in her memoirs and her correspondence. In the intimate
family history which fills her letters to Grimm, his name never
occurs. Her hatred found an outlet in her satirical comedies. Here
she indirectly exposed his notorious weaknesses and held them up to
ridicule. She despised his character as she despised his looks. Paul
resembled the Calmuck type in physique and countenance. Short of
stature and snub-nosed as he was, his mother could not look at him
without being reminded of the Saltikov side of his heredity. Anyone who
reads through her literary works will be struck by the number of times
the Empress refers to the ghastly ugliness of the Calmuck type. She
could not get away from it.

The comedies of Catherine the Great were regarded as a great
contribution to the campaign against obscurantism. She stepped
forth as the Saint George of enlightenment striking down the dragon
of superstition. Her satire was leveled against the Martinists,
the Freemasons, and the Alchemists; she battered at all groups and
organizations that had a secret understanding and talked mysteriously
about the problems of life and death. Fortunately for her interest,
which had no great tolerance for abstractions, a flesh-and-blood
antagonist was raised up to stimulate and increase her energies. The
famous Cagliostro decided to make a visit to Petersburg, believing that
Catherine the Great would favor his cult. But he had reckoned without
his Empress. Catherine was never tired of abusing him, both during
and after his sojourn in Russia. When he was imprisoned in France in
connection with the affair of the diamond necklace, she exulted in
the most unbecoming manner. Some of her strongest and least lady-like
language was poured out on the head of the talented magician, whom, by
the way, she had never even seen. To Grimm, she wrote, “I have read
the memoir of Cagliostro which you have sent me and if I had not been
already persuaded that he was a French charlatan, his memoir would have
convinced me. He is a rogue and blackguard and he ought to be hanged.”

She was so greatly interested in this man that it must have cost her
a great effort to deny him an audience during his stay in Russia. “M.
Cagliostro,” she wrote, “arrived here at a very favorable moment for
him, at a time when many lodges of Freemasons, infatuated with the
principles of Swedenborg, desired with all their power to see spirits.
They therefore ran to Cagliostro who said that he was in possession of
all the secrets of Doctor Falk, intimate friend of Duke Richelieu, who
had once sacrificed to him in the very midst of Vienna a black goat....
M. Cagliostro then produced his marvellous secrets of healing. He
pretended to draw quick-silver from a gouty foot and was caught in the
act of pouring a teaspoonful of mercury into the water into which he
was going to put the gouty member....

“Later on, racked by debts, he took refuge in the cellar of Monsieur
Yelagin ... where he drank all the wine, champagne, and English beer
that he could get.... Monsieur Yelagin, annoyed by his brother rat in
the cellar and by the thought of all the wine, and beer ... gave him an
old _invalide_ to accompany him as far as Milan. This is the history
of Cagliostro in which there is nothing exceptionally marvellous. I
have never seen him near or far,--nor have I had any temptation to do
so, for I do not love charlatans. I assure you that Rogerson thinks of
Cagliostro as much or less than Noah’s Ark. Prince Orlov, contrary to
his custom, has not made much of Cagliostro. He makes fun of him as of
those who from mere curiosity run to see him, and he has contributed
but little to change into wine the water of the shameless partisans of
this poor devil. But since the more stupid and ignorant the charlatans
are the more impression they create in the great cities, it is to be
supposed that Cagliostro will be in his element in Paris....”

From the vehemence of the Empress’s condemnation, one suspects that she
did not state a fact when she declared that she had no temptation to
see him. And she was far from having finished with the subject. Two of
her comedies, The Liar and The Dupe, were based on Cagliostro’s visit,
and The Siberian Shaman was inspired, though not avowedly, by the same
theme. Several of her plays were a great success when produced in
Petersburg, and The Liar and The Dupe took in more than twenty thousand
roubles. The public was titivated by the Empress’s satire and intrigued
by the timeliness of her literary attack on the most notorious
character in Europe.

No one asked the Grand Duke Paul and his consort, the Gartenlaube lady
of Pavlovsk, what they thought of the Empress’s dramatic efforts. No
one asked Paul and Marie about anything. The Empress overlooked them
completely. Whenever she referred to her successor, the reference was
to her grandson. “Monsieur Alexander will finish this and that,” she
would write. “Not in my time, but in that of Monsieur Alexander.” She
tried to forget the existence of the Grand Duke Paul.




                             [Illustration]




                                  XII

                             SHE GROWS OLD


Up to the death of Potiomkin, the Empress had been associated with old
friends, who had shared with her the experiences of 1762. Orlov and
Potiomkin had both stood over the warm body of Peter, stabbed to death
by Alexei and Bariatinsky. Although neither of them had lifted a hand
against the Czar, they shared with her the memory of a crime which had
to be made good. This was not such a bad thing, said Voltaire, since
it made the Empress one of the best monarchs of the century. To redeem
herself in the eyes of Europe, she was obliged to accomplish miracles.
In a lesser degree the same obligation rested on Orlov and Potiomkin.
Although they were both selfish and extravagant, they were good
patriots and did their utmost for the glory of Russia. A mysterious
force sustained Gregory Orlov, a very ordinary man, through a very
remarkable career. Potiomkin, a man of greater ability than Orlov,
was correspondingly more effective and more distinguished. The moody
Ukrainian must have been surprised to find himself regarded as a great
General and a great statesman and to realize that at times he actually
was all that he was supposed to be.

For nearly thirty years, the Empress had had the companionship of these
two men. After the death of Potiomkin, she was for the first time
alone. All at once she became uncertain, inadequate, unsuccessful,
and the inglorious years of her reign began. Her claim to the
title of Catherine the Great would have been stronger had she died
with Potiomkin. The last decade of her life diminished that claim
considerably, which has often been construed as showing the strength of
Potiomkin’s influence and the importance of his ideas. But Potiomkin
was merely the staff on which she leaned and which she had broken
without foreseeing the consequences to herself.

Young Plato Zubov had no realization of the crime at Ropsha. His
conscience was virgin and his youth made him irresponsible and selfish.
He was a man without a past, he had nothing to make good. Fortune had
suddenly rained treasure upon him out of a clear sky and he accepted
her bounty like a child who forgets to say “thank you.” He was
arrogant, arbitrary, and grasping, and he became ruthless after his
triumph over the redoubtable Potiomkin. The death of his rival left him
invincible and he knew it.

Zubov was not simply youthful; he was youth. The two brothers, Plato
and Valerian, were just emerging from the adolescent period which the
Empress’s grandsons, Alexander and Constantine, were just entering.
The difference in age and maturity between the two pairs of brothers
was not great. The Empress was in love with Alexander but she adopted
Plato Zubov instead and began casting about for a wife for Alexander
who had reached the age at which she had come to Russia to be married.
“Monsieur Alexander,” she had spoken of from infancy as if he were a
man and Zubov she now referred to always as “the child.” At the age of
sixty, the Empress had no eyes for anything but youth. Her lovers had
been growing younger and younger until all the world expected her to
end her life in the arms of a boy. So consistently had she lowered the
age of consent, this seemed the only logical outcome.

It was assumed by those about the court that only striplings need
apply for the post of favorite. There was a moment when it seemed as
if the seventeen-year-old son of Princess Dashkov might seriously
compete. His mother, who had ridden beside the Empress as a sister
Amazon on the night of the Peterhof campaign, says in her memoirs
that the young Prince had been advised by Gregory Orlov to become a
suitor. The Princess was shocked when she heard her son thus tempted by
Catherine’s ex-favorite. “As soon as he was gone,”--she tactfully sent
young Dashkov on an impromptu errand,--“I expressed my astonishment to
Prince Orlov that he could speak in such a manner to a young man not
seventeen years of age, and compromise the honor and dignity of her
Majesty in such a manner. As to favorites, I bade him recollect that I
neither knew nor acknowledged such persons, and that this was a subject
which I would not suffer to be renewed in my presence, much less in the
presence of my son, whom I had brought up with sentiments of the utmost
veneration for the Empress as his sovereign and godmother, never, as I
trusted, to know any other.”

The Princess nevertheless set off at once for Petersburg, where she
soon was sure to be dangerously exposed to the charms of the aged siren
on the Russian throne. As soon as the Dashkovs arrived, the mother’s
fears increased. “The absurd rumors that my son would be the favorite
began to be renewed.” One day the nephew of Prince Potiomkin called
at her house and asked to speak with the young Prince, who was out.
“All that you are doing me the honor to say,” the Princess burst forth
vehemently, although the messenger had said no more than that Prince
Potiomkin wished to see her son, “could never be meant for my ears.
Perhaps it might be your commission to speak with Prince Dashkov. As
for myself, whilst I love the Empress and dare not oppose her will, I
have too much self-respect and self-esteem to take part in any affair
of such a nature. And if what you are pleased to intimate should ever
occur, the only use I shall make of my son’s influence will be to
obtain leave of absence for some years and a passport to visit foreign
countries.”

There is no evidence except his mother’s memoirs that the Empress ever
really considered young Dashkov. Soon after his arrival in Petersburg,
he was ordered away to his regiment, a fate which never overtook
young men whom the Empress wished to see about her. The hopes of his
mother collapsed. The Prince went away under a cloud of failure,
like a student who had tried for college entrance and failed in his
examinations. Within a few weeks he met a peasant girl and married her
during a pause of his regiment. The rest of his story relates how his
mother never recognized his wife, how he lived apart from her, and how
he died early. He had never been a happy prince.

Young Dashkov’s tragedy throws a light on the Empress’s passion for
young men. There were mothers in Russia who were willing to offer up
their sons and profit by an unsuitable love-relationship which could
be glossed over as romantic. There were older men like Orlov who were
ready to advise a fine young soldier to try his fortunes with the
Empress. All of these counsellors expected to receive in some form,
whether in passports and funds for foreign travel or otherwise, wages
for their services. For the lucky young man it meant riches, honors,
titles, consideration. The Empress’s generosity was notorious--and she
could not possibly live long. But a long and princely future awaited
the youthful lover who survived her.

Plato Zubov was a choice after her own heart. The “child” was not
as tall as he might have been but he was dark like her first lover,
Saltikov, who had looked “like a fly in the milk-pan” and who had wooed
her at first so ardently. Plato was not diffident. He had taken pains
to put himself in the Empress’s way. His uncle, one of Catherine’s
field-marshals, had been induced to make him commander of the horse
guards at Czarskoe Selo and the young officer lost no opportunity of
placing himself in the foreground whenever the Empress passed. Zubov
had been on the ground for some time before Mamonov’s infidelity was
discovered. The dismissal of Mamonov was followed instantaneously by
the election of Zubov. The Empress spent only one night alone. The
next day Plato Zubov was promoted to the post of General-Adjutant and
appeared at the Empress’s right hand at dinner, as handsome a military
figure as had ever adorned the place. There was truculence in the set
of the young man’s head, though his dark eyes wore that dreamy look
which his predecessors all the way back to Prince Christian August of
Anhalt-Zerbst had always worn.

There is a tradition, not well established, that her relationship with
Zubov was Platonic. If this was true, the aging Empress took good
care that it should not be known. She hated growing old and resisted
to the last the infirmities of her advancing years. She detested
glasses though she was obliged to use them. This was not, she told her
secretary, due to any ordinary process of physical decay but “because
she had worn her eyes out in the service of the state.” The loss of
her teeth did not worry her nearly so much, because the infirmity was
so universal and so irremediable. In spite of powder, wigs, and beauty
spots, the teeth of the eighteenth century lady were at the mercy of
her years, and the Empress with her millions of rubles was no better
off than any peasant grandmother of her realm.

Worst of all, she lost the use of her legs. They became so swollen that
she could not move about on them, and was obliged to sit in a wheeled
chair while she took her airing in the colonnade of her Czarskoe Selo
palace. To reach her beloved English garden which lay directly below,
she built of stone and sod an inclined way down which her chair could
be gently propelled until it reached the grove of live oaks. Those
members of the nobility whose invitations she accepted built similar
approaches to their palaces in order that the Empress need climb no
stairs. Leaning on the arm of her beplumed, beribboned and bestarred
escort, the handsome Plato, she would toil slowly up the incline while
her host stood bowing to await her successful arrival. In this fashion
Catherine the Great made her last public appearances, tottering before
the eyes of all beholders like a child learning to take its first steps.

In spite of her physical handicaps, she persisted in acting as if they
did not exist and her prowess was amazing. Her love of society remained
as strong as ever and she was always the gayest in any company. Her
infirmities were greater than those which had imprisoned Frederick the
Great in his armchair during his last years, and had shut him off from
the world. But unlike the Prussian King, whom she derided as being as
“old as Herod,” she never fell into the mental rigidity which comes
from loss of contact with the world. Her reactionary acts, which were
plentiful enough in the last decade of her reign, were due to something
other than the hardening of the social arteries which sometimes sets in
with the advent of old age.

She took to card-playing more assiduously than ever, and her passion
for conversation grew rather less than in the old days when she would
talk with Grimm and Diderot for seven hours at a stretch. The change
may have been due to the fact that she no longer had men like Grimm and
Diderot about her to tempt her to these conversational orgies. Madame
Vigée Lebrun was in Petersburg during the last years of the Empress,
but Catherine never spent seven hours at a time conversing with any
woman. Even after sixty, she was not reduced to that. Her energy
sufficed to the very last to defend her dominant likes and dislikes.
She had suffered great physical losses. The use of her legs, all of her
teeth, and half of her eyesight were gone, yet the vigor and virility
of her personality remained unimpaired. On the arm of a handsome
young lover, she would brazen it out to the end. She wore him like a
decoration.

There is no doubt that Catherine was afraid of Zubov; that is, afraid
of losing him, and that she spoiled him dreadfully. She spoiled all
the Zubov brothers, Plato, Valerian, and Nicholas. It was a repetition
of her situation with the Orlov brothers, only the Zubov family was
more grasping. Gregory Orlov had stumbled into his good luck, so to
speak, but Plato Zubov had worked for his; besides he was younger and
times had changed. He lost no opportunity to garner the rewards of his
enterprise for himself and his brothers. In a short time, they had
acquired all the honors and riches for which the Orlovs had waited ten
years and Potiomkin and his protégés fifteen. Needless to say, the
Zubovs were extremely unpopular. Nicholas was married and was rather
less prominent about the court than Plato and Valerian, who were the
center of its social and political life. They enjoyed the constant
society of the Empress.

From the point of view of the elder nobility, Plato and Valerian were
upstarts. The ministers and foreign diplomats, who had not achieved at
a single bound, were obliged to stand hat in hand as these youngsters
passed. Catherine’s favorites had always been parvenus and the nobles
had grown accustomed to bare their heads to General-Adjutants who had
no ancestry. But the Zubovs were not merely unknown; they were reckless
youths without experience or any other measure of the power which was
theirs. There was not even a Potiomkin to trim their claws, since the
Prince of Tauris had been laid away in an anonymous southern grave
because Plato Zubov would not allow the Empress to build a worthy tomb
for him. No survivor of the Empress’s own generation had any influence
with her.

The character of the Little Hermitage, in which Catherine had always
received her intimates, had changed. In the days when Gregory Orlov
had strutted about like an apple-cheeked Adonis with his illiterate
conversation, the Hermitage had all been more or less of an age and
had frolicked like children together. Later, when Gregory Potiomkin had
gloomed in a corner while the Empress played cards with tear-marks on
her cheeks or had performed his ventriloquist tricks until her sides
ached with laughter, there had still been a kind of harmony among them.
But the group now threatened to break into two parts along a line of
social cleavage which separated the old from the young. As the Empress
had grown older, the most prominent men in the Hermitage had grown
younger. The two Zubovs and her grandsons now occupied the foreground
while all the middle-aged and elderly cavaliers were relegated to the
background. Only Leo Narishkin was as old as herself, Leo who had once
meowed like a cat to call her forth to a rendezvous with Poniatovsky
and whom she had whipped with nettles on the one occasion in all his
life when his allegiance had wandered. Narishkin had no influence with
her. He was her oldest friend in Russia, now grown as fat as she and
caring no longer to play blind-man’s-buff which had once been their
favorite game. She played cards with him and quarreled with him and
lampooned him in verse. When the evening was over, the Empress got upon
her feet with difficulty, and leaning on the arm of her dark-eyed Plato
retired to her bed chamber adjoining. The Princess Alexandrina, who
was now fourteen and a member of the Hermitage, was a witness of this
unconventional exit of her grandmother.

Gradually the Empress’s environment began to feel that the lioness was
growing weaker. They no longer feared her claws as formerly. When they
saw her looking anxiously to the arrogant Plato for approval, their
courage to criticize awoke. Her dependence gave her away. For the
first time in her reign rumors of disrespect and ridicule were heard.
Long ago when she had thought of marrying Gregory Orlov, the gossips in
Moscow had put their heads together and whispered. But they had stopped
suddenly enough when the Empress had sent out with a roll of drums
her famous Manifesto of Silence. The tongues of Moscow had ceased to
wag when Little Mother spoke on that occasion. Nowadays she loosed no
thunders and the gossips began to sense their freedom.

Her severest critics, as usual, were found in the French colony. These
foreigners indulged themselves in vulgar jests at the expense of the
Russian Empress and her court and went so far as to set down their
Rabelaisian efforts on paper. At a Twelfth Night party they lampooned
the Little Hermitage with a freedom which one might suppose to be
Russian if one did not know that the composers of the document were
Parisian. One by one they satirized the courtiers, beginning with Zubov.

“Zubov has never rendered any service to the state and is no longer
of service to the Empress, since the Sapphics, Branicky and Protassov
execute the functions of his office. Let a few emetics be given him, to
make him bring up what he has swallowed.

“Prince Bariatinsky, Marshal of the Court, shall be appointed Jack
Ketch. A more gentle mode of putting to death than that by the knout
is to be introduced; and he shall have the office of smothering and
strangling in secret those that are to be dispatched, whether it be an
emperor or his son; it is expected, however, that he do not let them
cry out, as he did about thirty years ago.

“Marshal Suvarov shall have a patent for dealing as a butcher in human
flesh; and the army shall be allowed to feed on it in Poland, where
nothing but carcasses are left.

“A committee of _uchiteli_ shall be appointed to examine whether Prince
Yussupov be able to read; if he can, he shall be appointed prompter to
the theatres, of which he is now manager.

“Madame von Lieven, governess to the Princesses, shall retain her
place, though she has somewhat the air of an Amazon; but she shall be
enjoined not to let beasts only have permission to speak at the table
of the young Princess, unless they speak with sense as they did in
Æsop’s days.

“Prince Repnin, having opened the door one day when Prince Potiomkin
called for a glass of water that he might himself repeat this important
order to the lackeys, shall receive a patent for the place of first
valet de chambre to the favourites; a post which to him will be worth
that of field-marshal. However, the crown of laurel which covered his
gray hair shall be taken from him, because he suffered a buffoon to
tread on him without saying a word; and because the gift of a small
house appeared suited to him, and to console him for the insult.

“M. Zavadovsky, director and plunderer of the bank, shall be sent into
Siberia to catch sables, to replenish her Majesty’s stock of furs,
which it will not be in her power to keep up by any other means. She is
already unable to furnish her family with them, and Zavadovsky is well
known to be a better huntsman than financier.”

Such vulgar ridicule had long been rife in Paris. Since the Empress had
welcomed French émigrés to Petersburg, it could now be heard in Russia.


                                   2

Like Peter the Great, Catherine had always hated the French. She envied
them their art and culture and resented the French attitude toward
the Russians as barbarians. She had adopted Peter’s political policy
which placed France always on the side of the enemy. There had always
been misunderstanding and coolness between the courts of Versailles
and Petersburg, and when the daughter of the detested Maria Theresa
became the Queen of France it did not help to make their relations
more friendly. If Catherine had any fellow-feeling, as she might very
well have had, for Marie Antoinette’s ill-judged extravagance, she
never expressed it before the revolution. Long ago, she had taken her
cue toward French royalty from Voltaire and the Encyclopædists and for
thirty years she had tacitly adhered to it. The outbreak of the French
Revolution suddenly changed all that and made her overnight into a
rabid protagonist of the French king. It was the greatest inconsistency
of her life, a betrayal of her position as the most liberal monarch of
her century.

The Empress had fought pretenders and rebels within her own kingdom.
As a usurper herself, she was especially suspicious of conspiracy and
rebellion, but she had been cool and wary in dealing with the cases
which arose. The Churchman, Arsenii of Rostov, had felt her heavy hand
when he tried to defend the lands of the Church against confiscation
and had found himself put down from bishop to simple monk and banished
to a cloister in a lonely forest. This was at the very beginning of her
reign. Soon afterwards came the conspiracy of Mirovich and the death
of Ivan VI, the Emperor whom Elizabeth had deposed twenty-three years
before and who had gone straight from his cradle to prison. Ivanushka,
for he was always remembered as a baby and spoken of as if he were
one, had grown into a tall, stammering, red-haired man who occupied as
a nameless prisoner a cell in the Schlüsselburg fortress. The effort
of young Mirovich to rescue him resulted in the death of Ivan and the
execution of the conspirator. Although the removal of Ivanushka was
convenient for the Empress, or, as she called it providential, she
could not have planned it, for Mirovich was a fantastic and quixotic
individual who could not carry out the schemes of others.

For almost ten years afterwards, the Empress encountered no further
alarms until the smallpox riots broke out in Moscow. While her
attention was fixed on these, Pugachev’s rebellion began to roll up
in the East and to take on the aspect of a civil war. Pugachev was
a genuine revolutionist, an agitator, a leader of the masses. He
was, after Stenka Rasin, the second great socialist hero of Russian
history and his rebellion, however complicated by other elements, was
essentially a social uprising. The condition of the peasants had not
improved under Catherine’s régime although there had been a definite
hope among the serfs that the liberal Empress was going to do something
for them. The Cossack rebel, Pugachev, came along at just the right
time to garner the resentment which grew out of these disappointed
hopes. He said that he came to give satisfaction to the injured people.
They brought the wild man with his blue-black beard to Moscow in a cage
and executed him there.

Pugachev had gone the way of Peter the Third and Ivanushka and the
Empress was left in undisputed possession of the throne. She had
at last put her house in order, for no other insurrection of any
consequence broke out during her reign. She could now pursue her
operations against the Turks uninterrupted by domestic disturbances.
Her Russians, the patient “dark” people, were quiescent. After
Pugachev’s blue-black head had fallen and his blood had stained the
January snow of the Red Square, no other leader appeared to arouse the
people against their Empress.

When the news of the French Revolution reached Russia, Potiomkin and
the Empress were marching toward Constantinople. For fifteen years the
peasants of Russia had been submissive and the Empress had not been
aware of the restlessness in France. The French uprising astonished and
alarmed her profoundly and filled Potiomkin with a paralyzing terror.
They had all the reactions that might be expected of parvenus under the
circumstances. The outraged Empress gave vent to her indignation in the
language of a fish-wife. She did not admit her awful fears. She boasted
loudly to Count Ségur, the French envoy who favored the republic,
“Je suis aristocrate, c’est mon métier.” Of all her court, only Leo
Narishkin could remember her as an awkward country girl who arrived in
Russia without even a bridal chest, and Leo would have been the last
to remind her of her humble origin. He had not forgotten the sting of
nettles applied by the Empress when she was a young and vigorous Grand
Duchess.

Catherine followed the fortunes of the French royal family hour by
hour with intense sympathy. She was at Peterhof when she heard of
their flight from Paris and she was still rejoicing over it when she
heard that they had been arrested and taken back. Something similar
had happened to Peter thirty years before in the Peterhof palace, but
Catherine had called herself at that time a revolutionist and had been
in the opponents’ camp. This time she railed loudly and violently
against the regicides of France. She shuddered to think of what might
happen to Catherine the Great if another Pugachev should presently
appear. After the death of Louis and Marie Antoinette, she said that
her only hope for France was that a Cæsar or a Genghis Khan might
rise up and overwhelm them. She supported the idea of intervention
with enthusiasm but beyond her eloquent encouragement she gave no
actual aid; all Europe echoed with her tirades and abuse. Her virile
language over-topped that of any other monarch. She could denounce
the friends of the republic as no one else and praise the old régime
with matchless fervor. Her old friend, Prince Henry of Prussia, came
in for the most extreme abuse because he would not join the hue and
cry against the Jacobins; and Edmund Burke, who denounced the French
Revolutionists although he had favored the American rebels, was heaped
with undiscriminating praise.

The Empress’s whole attitude toward the French Revolution was one of
bluster and ineffectiveness. Even her own camp found it ineffectual
and inconsistent. She invited the émigrés to Petersburg, for which
the republican side naturally detested her. Her reputation declined
with her contemporaries who felt that this emotional defence was
something less than might have been expected from Catherine the Great
of former days. Formerly, she had understood the art of pulling the
strings in silence and had known how to accomplish her will without
threats. She had negotiated the partition of Poland and established the
policy of armed neutrality with statesmanlike effectiveness. Now she
had degenerated into vituperation and inaction. Not only the Russian
court but all the courts of Europe began to feel that the lioness of
Petersburg was growing old.


                                   3

Catherine had married her two grandsons young, much too young
their governors thought. It was now time, she considered, to marry
Alexandrina, her granddaughter, although the Princess was but fourteen.
The Empress had been scarcely older than this when she received a
proposal of marriage and accepted it, although her father had feared
to send so young a daughter to Russia. Catherine remembered that young
girl with a great deal of affection and sympathy. “Tell me truly,”
she once burst out in a letter to Grimm, “wouldn’t it be charming if
an Empress could remain all her life long only fifteen years old?” It
remained always the most vivid year of her life, the year in which she
had told her dear Papa good-bye and had set out to seek her fortunes in
Russia. And now the charming young Alexandrina had reached that ideal
age. Her grandmother had already selected a husband for her.

To say that the Empress had selected a husband for her is to put it too
mildly. Catherine had once said of herself with absolute truth that
whenever she wanted a thing she was obliged to want it most terribly.
She now wanted to marry her granddaughter to the grandson of Ulrica,
the sister of Frederick the Great. A few days after Catherine’s
betrothal in Petersburg, Frederick had married his sister Ulrica to
the Crown Prince of Sweden. Ulrica’s marriage had had one advantage
which Catherine’s had lacked; the Queen of Sweden had not been obliged
to abandon the religion of her fathers and revert to a pagan church.
Ulrica had remained a devout Lutheran all her life.

Her son, Gustav the Third of Sweden, was a man of fashion, an exiled
Parisian obliged to live in Stockholm. Gustav was a fop in his habits
and a weathercock in his politics. The skeleton in his closet was that
his son and heir was not his son. Gustav was an unhappy, complaining
man, devoted to his mother yet at odds with her. He was finally
assassinated when his son, Gustav the Fourth, was only sixteen. It was
this son, said to be a bastard, whom Catherine the Great chose to be
the husband of her granddaughter Alexandrina. Her heart was set on the
marriage.

Gustav the Fourth was seventeen when he came to the Russian court
at the Empress’s invitation as a suitor for the hand of the Russian
Princess. He was a serious young man who had reverted to the piety of
his grandmother Ulrica. The young King was accompanied by his uncle,
the Duke of Sudermania, an inexplicable man who concealed his hand
so well during the ensuing drama that his part in the development of
events remains forever hidden. He was, like his nephew, an ardent
Protestant; but he was also a Freemason and a Martinist, a believer
in all the mystical cults of the eighteenth century which the Empress
disliked and her son embraced. Sudermania could not have been as
indifferent to his nephew’s actions as his outward demeanor indicated.
But it is doubtful whether he had any real responsibility for the
fiasco of the Empress’s plans. Gustav’s course was so consistent with
his character that no other explanation than native bent seems to be
necessary.

Catherine’s entertainment of her Swedish guests was regal past all
precedent. The court flowered in a succession of balls and festivities
the like of which had not been seen since the first visit of Prince
Henry to Russia. Gustav was impeccable as to form. The late King of
Sweden, his putative father, had been the glass of fashion and the
son, in spite of his ingrowing piety, bore the mark of Paris. The
Grand Dukes, Alexander and Constantine, seemed uncouth by comparison
with this solemn young man whose manners were so meticulously perfect.
Gustav was an assiduous reader of the Bible, to which he was accustomed
to turn for counsel whenever he found himself in any difficulty. If
the Empress had had the advantage of modern psychology, she would have
known her Swedish Prince at once for a repressed youth and an elusive
bridegroom. But not having this advantage, she pressed onward to the
goal on which she had set her heart and plunged headlong and unprepared
into the greatest failure of her life. As she said, she was more than
half in love with the young man herself.

The marriage contract was all but signed. Only one point of difference
remained to be settled, the future religion of the Princess. Catherine
had stipulated that the girl should be allowed to keep her faith, and
should be permitted to have her Russian confessor and her Russian
chapel in the Swedish palace. The young King demurred. On the surface,
all went well. Zubov and Markov, who drew up the contract for the
Empress, presented an amiable exterior and the Swedish Prince appeared
non-committal.

It is at this point that Zubov is said to have advised the Empress
badly. He is supposed to have induced her to stand out for impossible
terms and to be responsible for the bad diplomacy she exhibited on
this occasion. It is extremely unlikely that this was true. Zubov
was as little responsible for the Empress’s attitude as Sudermania
was accountable for the King’s. In the crisis which developed
before the eyes of all the court, the actual contestants were the
seventeen-year-old King and the sixty-seven-year-old Empress. It was a
life and death contest. They had joined battle over an issue supremely
precious to both of them and neither could endure to lose.

The Empress was extremely romantic about the whole business. She
commanded the young couple to kiss each other in her presence and
made airy remarks about wishing to capture the handsome bridegroom
for herself. In fancy she re-lived her own betrothal, hoping in
Alexandrina’s marriage to redeem all the undesirable features of her
own. Her granddaughter should have not merely half a dozen chemises but
every luxury that a bride could wish and above all she should be saved
the ordeal of changing her religion. No doubt Alexandrina would just
as soon have changed her creed as not, but Catherine could not picture
this indifference. She had forgotten for the time being that she and
her fifteen-year-old granddaughter were not one.

On the evening when the marriage contract was to be signed, the
Empress shone like a sun on her throne. She had assembled for the
occasion the whole grand world of Petersburg. Church and State
surrounded her in full regalia. The bishops stood at attention, in
their embroidered robes covered with pearl and smaragd, while military
messengers in bright velvet breeches flashed back and forth and
Princesses in wide satin skirts curtsied before the smiling Grandmother
on her throne. Thousands of candles shone upon the scene. The hall had
been prepared for the bedazzlement of Europe, for the Empress in her
imagination faced not merely the eyes of her own courtiers but the eyes
of all the courts of Europe. Whatever happened here was not intended to
happen privately.

Slowly there crept into the atmosphere of the room a suggestion of
suspense. At moments conversation ceased and the company looked around
expectantly. But a glance at the imperturbable figure in the purple
mantle and the smiling, confident eyes beneath the diamond crown was
sufficient to reassure the company and to restore the atmosphere of
ease. The Princess Alexandrina had appeared but Gustav of Sweden for
some unaccountable reason still remained invisible. The Russian court
had been accustomed to mysterious delays under the Empress Elisabeth,
but Catherine’s régime had taught them to expect more promptness and
dispatch. But even the Empress Elisabeth expected a bridegroom to be
prompt. The time dragged slowly along until at last the tall English
clocks showed ten. Still the Empress betrayed no anxiety as she faced
the question now apparent in all eyes.

At last Zubov appeared and whispered something in her ear. With
difficulty she rose, took his arm, and passed through the room to her
own chamber. As the door closed behind her, she fell to the floor
unconscious. It is said that she had fainted but it is more probable
that she succumbed to a slight stroke of paralysis. Zubov had brought
the ultimatum of the King. Gustav would not sign the marriage contract
as long as it contained the clause which permitted Alexandrina to
retain the Russian religion.

The Empress would not admit herself defeated. To be beaten by a
seventeen-year-old boy was unthinkable. She needed a little time to
bring the youth around and to overcome a stubbornness which she had
underestimated. She arranged a ball and commanded Alexandrina, who
had cried until her eyes were red, to don her finery and go on as if
nothing had happened. “Why do you weep?” she wrote on a scrap of paper.
“What is put off is not lost. Wash your eyes with ice and your ears
too, and take Bestushev’s drops. Nothing is lost. It is I who was ill
yesterday. You are vexed about the delay. That is all.”

Alexandrina obeyed her grandmother. The King also attended the ball.
But the two young things no longer met as formerly; the King was
punctilious and the Princess was self-conscious, and even Grandmamma
was not so gay and airy as she had been. She insisted on keeping the
recalcitrant young man two weeks longer and refused to consider the
negotiations closed even after he had departed for Stockholm with his
uncle. Her hopes died hard and when they were dead she kept the corpse
about, unable to inter it.

To the Empress, the shock of defeat was dreadful. She was accustomed
to success, and failure of any kind was unendurable. Almost
apologetically she wrote to her son Paul: “The fact is the King
pretended that Alexandrina had promised him to change her religion and
take the sacrament in the Lutheran way, and that she had given him her
hand on it.... She told me with the candor and naïveté natural to her
how he had told her that on the coronation day she would have to take
the sacrament with him, and that she had replied, ‘Certainly, if I can,
and if Grandmamma consents.’ And after that he spoke to her about it
again, and she always referred him to me. I asked her if she had given
her hand to the King by way of promise on this point. At that she cried
with a sort of instinctive fright, ‘Never in my life.’”

The Princess Alexandrina wilted like the proverbial jilted maiden of
the village. After her grandmother’s death she was married by her
father to a Prince of Austria, where after a brief unhappy married
life she died in childbirth. She was always morbid, spiritless, and
complaining. The instinctive fright of which her grandmother spoke
never left her. All of the Empress’s family were lacking in normal
aggressiveness. Her lovers, her son, her grandchildren whom she brought
up were all in some degree afflicted by the same instinctive fear which
the Princess Alexandrina showed. Catherine the Great, like others of
her kind, did not succeed in imparting greatness to her descendants.


                                   4

After the Swedish King’s departure, the Empress’s health grew worse.
There were days when her poor swollen legs would not support her at
all and she suffered tortures with them. The summer at Czarskoe Selo,
where she was always at her best and happiest, did not help her. When
she walked to the little audience chamber where she received her
ministers, she no longer leaned on Plato Zubov alone but required an
attendant on the other side as well. She took the air in her wheeled
chair along the blue-walled arcade as far as the agate pavilion and
then back again, not an easy journey for a woman, who had she not been
herself, would have been bed-ridden. In the month of August she saw
a shooting star and said that it foretold her death. She had grown
suddenly and darkly superstitious.

Returning to Petersburg in the autumn, she put herself in the hands
of a notorious quack named Lambro-Cazzioni. Her doctors were more
astonished than offended. The Empress who had searched Europe for
scientific physicians, who had brought men like Rogerson, Weikard, and
Dimsdale to Russia, and who had introduced vaccination by offering
herself as a subject, had suddenly gone back to shamanism. She closed
her doors on all the reputable doctors and admitted the magician only.
Lambro-Cazzioni was a lesser kind of Cagliostro, the charlatan whom
she had satirized in her comedies and abused in her correspondence, a
breeder of the kind of superstition which she and other enlightened
spirits of her age had lived to exterminate. Pathetically she submitted
to all the drastic remedies that her healer recommended. A daily
foot-bath of ice-cold sea-water was a part of his régime and he went
himself daily to fetch the water for the patient’s use. At first, the
Empress seemed to improve. She appeared at the little Hermitage again
and joined in the gaiety, laughing until her sides ached.

On the morning of November the sixth, she rose as usual at six o’clock,
drank her customary five cups of coffee, and set forth cheerfully on
the routine of the day. She saw her lover and her secretaries, and
gave her usual orders. Then she asked to be left alone for a moment
and retired to her dressing-room. The attendants in the antechamber
waited more than the usual length of time for their summons, but it
never came. When her private secretary finally entered the apartment,
he found her lying unconscious before the door of her water closet.
She had had a stroke of paralysis. They dragged the mattress from the
bed and laid the dying woman upon it, for she was too heavy to be
lifted. This gasping animal, which had once been the Empress, lay on
her mattress and struggled with death while the hands of the clock went
around three times. The following evening she died.

After Peter the Great, the Romanovs had all been buried in the fortress
of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Catherine had deviated from this custom
when she ordered the body of the late Czar, Peter the Third, to be
laid in the Alexander Nevsky monastery at the opposite end of the
city. Although it seems strangely out of keeping with her ambitious
temperament, she herself did not wish to be buried beside Peter the
Great. Four years before her death, she wrote these instructions
concerning her burial place: “In case I should die in Czarskoe Selo,
lay my body in the churchyard of Sofia. If in the city of Petersburg,
in the cathedral or the burial church of the Nevsky Cloister. If in
Pella, bring me along the waterways to the Nevsky Cloister. If in
Moscow, bring me to the Donskoy Cloister or to the town churchyard
near by. If in Peterhof, to the Sergei Cloister. If in some other
place, to a churchyard near by.

“The coffin shall be borne by horse guards only and no one else. My
body shall be clothed in a white dress, with a golden crown on the
head on which my name shall be written. Mourning shall be worn for six
months but not longer; a little is best. After the first six weeks,
the people’s amusements shall be opened. After the burial, betrothals,
weddings, and music shall be allowed.

“My library with all my manuscripts and all my papers, I bequeath to my
dear grandson, Alexander Pavlovich; likewise my jewels; and I bless him
from my heart and from my soul. A copy of this shall be put away in a
safe place to insure its fulfilment, so that sooner or later shame and
disgrace shall overtake those who do not carry out my will.

“It is my intention to place Constantine on the throne of the Greek
Oriental Empire. For the welfare of the Russian and Greek Empires, I
recommend that the Princes of Württemberg be removed from the counsels
of these empires which should have as little to do with them as
possible; also that the two half-Germans shall be removed.”

The Empress was buried in the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul
beneath a white marble slab like that which covers all the Czars of
Russia who followed Peter the Great. Beside her lies the body of Peter
the Third, brought there by her son a short time after her burial.

She had prepared an inscription for her gravestone and this is what she
wished to have it say:

  Here lies

  CATHERINE THE SECOND

  born in Stettin on April 21 / May 2, 1729.

  In the year 1744 she went to Russia to marry Peter III. At the age of
  fourteen, she made the threefold resolution, to please her consort,
  Elisabeth, and the Nation.

  She neglected nothing in order to succeed in this.

  Eighteen years of boredom and solitude caused her to read many books.

  When she ascended the throne of Russia, she wished to do good and
  tried to bring happiness, freedom and prosperity to her subjects.

  She forgave easily and hated no one.

  She was good-natured, easy-going; was of a cheerful temperament,
  republican sentiments, and a kind heart.

  She had friends.

  Work came easy to her; she loved sociability and the arts.

The instructions of the Empress were not followed; her wishes, not
obeyed. The cold white slab which covers her conveys no word of her
last message to posterity.




                                 INDEX


    Adadurov, 141

    Adolph Friedrich of Holstein, 53

    d’Alembert, 269

    Alexander, Grand Duke, later Alexander I, 259, 279, 284-285, 294

    Alexandrina, Princess, 208, 315-321

    Alexei Michaelovich, 40, 212

    Alexei Petrovich, 38, 48

    Anna Ivanovna, Empress of Russia, 45, 47, 96

    Anna Leopoldovna, 45, 46, 102, 164

    Anna Petrovna, 13, 45

    Anthony Ulrich of Brunswick, 45, 52

    Apraxin, General, 141-146

    Arsenii of Rostov, 311

    August the Strong, 132


    Babet, nickname of Elisabeth Cardel, 24

    Bariatinsky, Prince Feodor, 167, 173, 174, 175, 309

    Bergholz, 173

    Bestushev, 55, 73, 90, 104, 135, 141, 181

    Bibikov, 166, 215

    Bilbassov, 51, 142, 143, 155, 194, 259

    Bjelke, Madame, 208

    Bobrinsky, Alexei Gregorevich, 159, 268

    Bolhagen, 23

    Branicky, Countess, 242, 248, 264

    Brockdorf, Herr, 126, 129

    Bruce, Countess, 208, 234

    Brückner, 170, 228, 275

    Brümmer, 57, 62, 64, 173

    Burgoyne, General, 281


    Cagliostro, 296

    Cardel, Elisabeth, 24-26, 28, 34, 284

    Casimir, Jan, 197

    Catherine I, 41, 44, 45, 46, 49

    Catherine the Great,
      Baptised Sophie Auguste Friedrike, (Fike), Princess of Zerbst, 11
      Birth, 10
      Education, 22
      Childhood, 32
      Meeting with Frederick the Great, 67
      Journey to Russia, 66-71
      Arrival in Russia, 71
      Conversion to Greek faith, 80-83
      Enters the Greek Church, 84-88
      Sophie Auguste Friedrike becomes Catherine Alexeievna, 85
      Marriage, 96-100
      Relation to Saltikov, 118
      Gives birth to an heir, 120
      Relations with Peter III, 126, 130
      Birth of Grand Duchess Anna, 137
      Complicity in the Apraxin affair, 141-146
      Birth of Bobrinsky, 159
      Manifesto of 1762, 169
      Revolution of 1762, 161-180
      Coronation, 183-184
      Foreign Policy, 180, 193, 251
      Manifesto of Silence, 187
      Partition of Poland, 195-204
      Census of Russia, 204-206
      Reign, 207
      Reforms affecting women, 208-211
      Foundling Hospital, 209
      Domestic Policy, 211-216
      Instruction for a Code of Laws, 212
      Attitude toward serfdom, 215
      Campaign against smallpox, 216-222
      Crimean journey, 248-249
      Acquisition of Crimea, 250-251
      The French Revolution, 251, 311-315
      Pugachev’s Rebellion, 312
      Turkish Wars, 251-259
      Favorites, 231-237, 259-262
      Relation with Poniatovsky, 133-139
      Attempted marriage with Orlov, 184-188
      Relation with Potiomkin, 237
      Relation with Zubov, 301-308
      Birth of Grandsons, 279
      Education of Grandsons, 281-287
      Writings, 292-299
      Comedies, 295
      Failure of the Swedish Marriage, 315-321
      Death, 323-325

    Charles XII of Sweden, 8

    Chernichev, Andrei, 259

    Chetardie, 91

    Chitrovo, 186

    Choglokov, Maria, 104, 118, 236

    Choiseul, 193

    Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, 4-6, 21, 29, 69, 76-79,
        88, 112

    Constantine, Grand Duke, 280, 282

    Courland, 21, 195

    Crimean journey, 248-249

    Czarskoe Selo, 101, 221, 271, 305

    Czartorisky, Adam, 198


    Dashkov, Countess Catherine, 154, 162, 170, 208, 244

    Dashkov, Prince, 302, 303

    Diderot, 180, 233, 306

    Dimsdale, Dr. Thomas, 217, 322


    Elisabeth Petrovna, Empress of Russia,
      Birth, 47
      Revolution of 1741, 49-55
      Relations with Princess of Zerbst, 58, 88-89, 150
      Appearance, 75
      Death, 151-152

    Eudoxia, First Wife of Peter the Great, 41


    Fike, nickname of Sophie Auguste Friedrike, later Catherine the
        Great, 11

    de Fraigne, Marquis, 147

    Frederick the Great, 14, 29, 60, 65, 67, 78, 81, 93, 128, 132, 148,
        196-204, 217, 226, 272

    Frederick William I, 3, 32

    Friedrich August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, 11, 147

    Fokshani, Congress of, 222, 254


    Gatchina, 223, 279

    George of Holstein, 63, 157, 165, 170, 242

    Godunov, Boris, 38

    Granovitaya Palata, 184

    Grimm, 227, 266, 274, 293, 306

    Gustav III of Sweden, 257, 316

    Gustav IV of Sweden, 316

    Gyllenborg, Count, 23


    Hedwig Sophie, Provost of Quedlinburg, 15

    Henri le Grand, 84, 231

    Henry, Prince of Prussia, 14, 202, 203, 241, 272, 275-277, 314

    Hermitage, The Little, 307

    Homburg, 12


    Ivan the Terrible, 38

    Ivan VI, Ivanushka, 45, 46, 53, 158, 164, 312


    Johann Ludwig, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, 5

    Johanna Elisabeth, Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, 58

    Johanna Elisabeth, Princess of Holstein-Gottorp, 6-9, 20, 65, 70,
        75, 89, 147-151

    Jones, John Paul, 256-257


    Karl Peter Ulrich, Duke of Holstein, later Grand Duke Peter
        Feodorovich, later Peter III, 9, 13, 53

    Kayserling, Count, 197

    Khayn, Fräulein, Lady in Waiting to the Princess of Zerbst, 18

    Kiev, 86

    Kolmogory, 103

    Kolomenskoe Palace, 47, 213

    Kosciuszko, 204

    Krasnoe Selo, 102

    Kremlin, 40, 158, 183, 220, 225

    Kruse, Madame, 99, 108, 113

    Kutchuk-Kainardi, Peace of, 254


    Lanskoy, 239, 260, 261

    LeBrun, Madame Vigée, 306

    Lestocq, 49, 52, 61, 89, 92, 114

    von Lieven, Madame, 310

    de Ligne, Prince, 247

    Luther, Martin, 4, 14, 29


    Machiavelli, 194

    Mamonov, 238, 239, 260

    Mardefeld, 58, 81, 93

    Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, 49, 120, 196, 201, 203

    Marie Feodorovna, Grand Duchess, 278-279, 281

    Masson, Major, 43, 209, 211, 286

    von Mengden, Julie, 46, 102

    Menshikov, 38, 41

    Mirovich, 312

    Molière, 34, 294

    Monplaisir, 164, 171

    Montesquieu, 211

    Morals in Russia, 41-44

    Moscow, 190, 219


    Narishkin, Leo, 308, 313

    Natalie Alexeievna, Grand Duchess, 273

    Natalie Narishkin, 40

    Nicholas, Grand Duke, later Nicholas I, 287


    Oranienbaum, 110, 138, 173

    Orlov, Alexei, 165, 166, 173, 175-179, 186, 224, 291

    Orlov, Gregory, 152, 161, 167, 184, 191, 213, 215, 217, 220-224,
        239, 300

    Otchakov, 275


    Panin, Nikita, 55, 163, 168, 174, 182, 186, 212, 268, 270-271

    Partition of Poland, 195-204

    Passeck, 166, 175

    Paul I,
      Birth, 118-120
      Appearance, 122, 266, 296
      Infancy, 124
      Health, 182
      Baptised Peter Feodorovich, 130
      First Marriage, 271-273
      Second Marriage, 276-279
      Melancholia, 287-292
      Journey through Europe, 288-289
      Mysticism, 290
      Conspiracy against his life, 226
      Death, 292

    Pavlovsk, 279, 281

    Peter Feodorovich, Grand Duke of Russia, 53

    Peter II, 47

    Peter III,
      Birth, 8
      Baptised Karl Peter Ulrich, Duke of Holstein, 9
      Education, 55-57
      Karl Peter Ulrich, Duke of Holstein becomes Peter Feodorovich,
        Grand Duke of Russia, 53
      Marriage, 98
      Relations with Catherine the Great, 94, 126, 130, 153, 160
      _Folie militaire_, 127, 130
      Government of Holstein, 131
      Accession, 153
      Reign, 156-159, 180
      Deposition, 171-179
      Death, 178, 179

    Peter the Great, 3, 8, 38, 39, 44, 47, 81, 190, 207, 252

    Petersburg, 189

    Poniatovsky Stanislas, King of Poland, 128, 133-139, 181, 197-204,
        236

    Potiomkin, Gregory, Prince of Tauris, 191, 235, 237-258, 262-265,
        300

    Potiomkin Villages, 247

    Prascovia Feodorovna, 103

    Prascovia Nikitichna Vladislav, 113

    von Prinzen, Baroness, 66

    Protassov, Countess, 208, 234

    Pugachev, 312


    Razumovsky, Alexei, 89, 116, 126, 185

    Razumovsky, Kyril, 126, 162, 167

    Reformation, The, 15, 29

    Religion in Russia, 42, 87

    Repnin, Prince, 258, 310

    Ribas, Admiral, 268

    Rimsky-Korsakov, 260

    Rogerson, 209, 234, 322

    Romanov, House of, 38

    Ropsha, 174

    Rumiantsov, General, 253, 256

    Rurik, House of, 38


    Saltikov, Sergei, 117-119, 121, 124, 179, 236

    Schlözer, 196

    Seven Years War, 93, 141

    Sheremetiev, Count, 153, 183, 192

    Shuvalov, Alexander, 142

    Shuvalov, Ivan Ivanovich, 117, 119, 135, 150

    Smolny, 210

    Sophie Alexeievna, 40

    Sophie Auguste Friedrike, later Catherine the Great, 11

    Sophie Christina, Canoness of Gandersheim, 5, 15, 17

    Stehlin, 56, 61, 128, 172

    Stenka Rasin, 312

    Stettin, 3, 20

    Streltsi, The, 40

    Stroganov, Count, 161, 192

    Suvarov, General, 242, 256, 310

    Sylvester, the Monk, 38, 39


    Tchesme, Battle of, 222

    Terem, 43, 46

    Todorsky, Simon, 82, 84

    Treaty of Westminster, 134

    Troitsky Monastery, 86, 91, 184

    Trubetsky, Prince, 172, 182

    Turkish Wars, 251-259


    Ulrica, Princess of Prussia, later Queen of Sweden, 60, 97, 258, 316

    Uspensky Cathedral, 183


    Vassilchikov, 223, 235, 254

    Viazemsky, 215, 228

    Voltaire, 193, 194, 210, 216, 218, 229, 253, 270, 293, 300

    Vorontsov, Elisabeth, 138, 146, 154, 155, 162, 170


    Wagner, Pastor, 12, 24, 26, 30-31, 66, 82, 87

    Williams, Sir Charles Hanbury, 133, 139-140, 181, 194


    Yermalov, 238, 260, 262


    Zavadovsky, 259, 310

    Zoritch, 260

    Zubov, Plato, 239, 260, 265, 291, 301, 304, 305, 306, 307, 318

    Zubov, Valerian, 291, 301



                          Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious punctuation errors have been silently corrected.

Page 71: “couriers had remained” changed to “courtiers had remained”

Page 79: “nicht Griechisch werden!’” changed to “nicht Greichisch
werden!’”

Page 127: “his preocupation had grown” changed to “his preoccupation
had grown”

Page 174: “from there to Schlüsselberg” changed to “from there to
Schlüsselburg”

Page 220: “distinguished ordinarily for courage and intiative.” changed
to “distinguished ordinarily for courage and initiative.”

Page 266: “One day I shall write a dessertation” changed to “One day I
shall write a dissertation”

Page 312: “in the Schüsselburg fortress” changed to “in the
Schlüsselburg fortress”

The spelling of Prince Troubetsky has been standardized to Prince
Trubetsky.

In the original, chapter IV has no section 3. Chapter VII has no
section 8.



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