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.

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.