Catherine the Great

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.