strength and energy enough to carry them all with me; and believe me,
there is no sacrifice which would hinder me.’
‘For God’s sake,’ Catherine interrupted, ‘do not expose yourself to
danger in the hope of resisting evil which seems really inevitable. If
you ruin yourself for my sake, you will only add an everlasting grief to
my unhappy lot.’
‘All that I can tell you is that I will not take a step which could
possibly involve you, or put you in danger. Whatever happens, may it come
upon me, and, if my blind devotion to you leads me to the scaffold, you
shall never be its victim.’
Catherine would have protested, but Princess Dashkov[52] interrupting
her, took her hand, pressed it to her lips, and, saying that she was
afraid to continue the conversation, asked leave to withdraw. Deeply
touched, they remained for some minutes in each other’s arms, then the
princess cautiously went out, leaving Catherine in great agitation.
We must add to this affecting scene that Catherine had all the same
deceived the princess; she had not entrusted her fate to God alone, but
also to Grigory Orlov, with whom she had thought out her plan, and Orlov
was already secretly trying to enlist the co-operation of the officers.
At Christmas the Empress died. Petersburg received the news gloomily; and
Princess Dashkov herself saw the Semyonovsky and Izmailovsky regiments
march sullenly past her house with muffled murmurs.
Peter III., proclaimed Emperor, paid no regard to decorum; the drinking
bouts went on. A few days after Elizabeth’s death he visited the father
of Princess Dashkov, and through her sister announced his displeasure
at not seeing her at court. There was no escaping it; she went. Peter
III., dropping his voice, began telling her that she would end by drawing
upon herself his anger, and might very bitterly repent of it later on,
‘because there may easily come a time when Romanovna’ (that was what he
called his mistress) ‘will be in _that woman’s_ place.’
Princess Dashkov made a show of not understanding, and hurriedly took
her place at Peter III.’s favourite game. In this game (_campis_) each
player has several counters; the player who keeps one till the last
wins the game. Every one put down ten imperials, which, considering
Princess Dashkov’s income at that time, was not a trifling sum for her,
particularly as, when Peter III. lost, he used to take a counter out
of his pocket and lay it on the pool, so that he almost always won. As
soon as the game was over, the Tsar proposed a second; she refused. He
pestered her so much to play that, taking advantage of her ‘position as
spoilt child,’ she told him that she was not rich enough to lose for
certain, that if His Majesty played like other people she would, at any
rate, have a chance of winning. Peter III. responded with his ‘usual
buffooneries,’ and the princess made her bows and withdrew.
As she walked through the suite of rooms filled with courtiers and
persons of various grades, she felt as though she were at a masquerade,
there was no one she could recognise. She could not help laughing when
she saw Prince Trubetskoy, who was seventy, for the first time in his
life dressed up in a military uniform, standing at attention, in high
boots with spurs, all ready, in fact, for the most desperate battle. ‘The
pitiful little old man,’ she adds, ‘pretending to be ill and suffering,
as beggars do, lay in bed while Elizabeth was dying; he felt a little
better when Peter III. was proclaimed, and, learning that everything had
gone off well, he leapt up at once, armed himself from head to foot, and
showed himself like a hero in the Izmailovsky regiment to which he was
attached.’
Apropos of uniforms, the fatal passion for them was handed down from
Peter III. to Paul, from Paul to all his children, to all the generals,
staff and higher officers; Panin, who supervised the education of Paul,
complained that Peter III. was never present at his examinations. The
Holstein princes, his uncles, persuaded Peter to attend one at least;
he was very much pleased, and promoted Panin to be a general in the
infantry. To perceive the full absurdity of this, one must picture the
pale, sickly figure of Panin, who liked to be correctly dressed and
scrupulously groomed, and was rather like a courtier of the days of Louis
XIV. Panin detested Peter III.’s barrack-room tone, he hated uniforms and
all that nonsense. When Melgunov brought him the joyful tidings that he
was a general, Panin would have fled to Switzerland and lived there in
preference to wearing the uniform. News of this reached Peter III.; he
transferred him to the corresponding civilian grade. He never got over
his surprise at Panin. ‘Why,’ he used to say, ‘I always thought Panin was
a sensible man!’
While Peter III. was dressing his courtiers up as heroes, the usual
funeral ceremonies were taking place. The Empress did not leave her
rooms, and only appeared at the requiem service. Peter III., too, only
rarely showed himself, and then always behaved improperly, whispering
with the ladies, laughing with his adjutants, mocking at the clergy,
scolding the officers, and even the common soldiers, over buttons or some
such trifle. ‘The new Emperor,’ the English ambassador, Keith, said to
Prince Golitsyn, ‘is beginning his reign imprudently; if he goes on like
this he will come to be despised by his people and afterwards to be hated
by them.’
Peter III. did everything as though on purpose to arouse this hatred.
One evening, when Princess Dashkov was present, the Tsar was holding
forth, as his habit was, on the subject of his respect for Frederick
II., and suddenly turning to the Secretary of State, Volkov, who had
been Chief Secretary of the Privy Council under Elizabeth, he asked him
whether he remembered how they used to laugh over the perpetual failure
of the secret instructions sent to the army in the field. Volkov, who
together with Peter, then Grand Duke, had communicated to the Prussian
King all the army orders, and so stultified them, was so taken aback by
Peter III.’s words that he almost fainted. But the Tsar went on, jocosely
describing how in time of war they had betrayed to the enemy the country
in which he was heir to the throne.
At the conclusion of the peace with the Prussian King, in which he
shamefully yielded everything that had been won by Russian blood, there
was no end to the delight and rejoicing. There was festivity after
festivity. Among others Peter III. gave a great dinner, to which all the
ambassadors and members of the three first grades were invited. After
dinner the Tsar proposed three toasts, which were drunk to the firing
of cannon—to the health of the Imperial Family, to the health of the
Prussian King, to the permanence of the peace that had been concluded.
When the Empress drank the toast to the Imperial Family, Peter III. sent
his adjutant, Gudovitch, who was standing by his chair, to ask her why
she did not stand up. Catherine answered that since the Imperial Family
consisted only of her husband, her son, and herself, she had not supposed
that it would be His Majesty’s pleasure that she should stand up. When
Gudovitch repeated her answer, the Tsar bade him go back and tell the
Empress that she was ‘a fool,’ and ought to know that his uncles, the
Holstein princes, belonged to the Imperial Family too. This was not
enough; afraid that Gudovitch would soften his rudeness, he repeated
what he had said across the table, so that the greater number of the
guests heard it. For the first minute the Empress could not refrain
from shedding tears, but, anxious to end the scandal as quickly as
possible, she turned to the _kammerherr_, Strogonov, who was standing
behind her chair, and begged him to begin some conversation. Strogonov,
who was himself deeply shocked, began babbling something with a show of
liveliness. As he went out of the palace, he received the command to go
to his country estate, and not to leave it without permission.
This incident was exceedingly prejudicial to Peter III. Every one pitied
the unfortunate woman, who had been grossly insulted by a drunken boor.
Princess Dashkov was naturally bound to take advantage of this state of
public feeling. She became a desperate conspirator, persuading, sounding,
enlisting sympathisers, and at the same time she went to balls and danced
to avoid arousing suspicion. Prince Dashkov, insulted by Peter III., made
him some answer on parade. The princess, afraid of the consequences,
succeeded in procuring him a commission to Constantinople, and gave him
the advice to ‘make haste slowly’ with it. Having sent him off, she
surrounded herself with officers who put the fullest confidence in their
eighteen-year-old leader.
There were other people about Peter III. who were dissatisfied, but owing
to their age and position took no part in the conspiracy; they were glad
to take advantage of a change, but the risk of losing their heads on the
scaffold was too much for a Razumovsky or a Panin. The real conspirators
were Princess Dashkov with her officers, and Orlov with his adherents.
Of Razumovsky Princess Dashkov says: ‘He loves his country as much as the
apathetic man can love anything. Sunk in the bog of wealth, surrounded
by marks of respect, well received at the new court, and liked by the
officers, he has dropped into indifference and grown sluggish.’
Panin was a statesman and looked further ahead than the rest; his aim was
to proclaim Paul Tsar and Catherine Regent. So doing he hoped to curtail
the power of the Autocracy. Moreover, he thought to attain his object by
legal means through the Senate.
All this was far from being approved by Princess Dashkov. Moreover,
the dissatisfaction and murmuring among the soldiers were growing. The
disgraceful peace, on the one hand, and the insane war with Denmark
which with no serious object Peter III. wanted to wage over Holstein,
exasperated men’s minds. This war became an insane obsession with him;
even Frederick II. tried by letter to persuade him to defer it.
It is said that the young conspiratress used peculiarly eloquent weapons
to induce stubborn Panin to co-operate with her party. Panin was so
attracted by her intelligence, her energy, and, above all, her beauty,
that, old as he was, he fell passionately in love with her. Princess
Dashkov rejected his love with mirth, but finding no other means of
persuading him she made up her mind to bribe him with herself. After this
Panin was in her hands. It is only just to say that in two passages of
her memoirs she denies this rumour with indignation.[53]
Although the conspirators could reckon on Razumovsky and Panin, and,
what was more, on the Archbishop of Novgorod, and although a number of
officers adhered to the conspiracy, they had no definite plan of action.
Though at one in a common object, they could not agree on the steps to be
taken; Princess Dashkov, devoured by burning energy, was angry with their
deliberateness, did not know what to do, and at last went off to her
summer villa at Krasny Kabak. This summer villa was the first possession
she had entirely of her own: she at once set to work rebuilding, digging
ditches, laying out gardens. ‘In spite,’ she said, ‘of the affection I
had for that first bit of ground which was my own, I did not want to give
it my name, as I wished to dedicate it to the name of the saint on whose
day success crowns our great enterprise.’ ‘Make haste and give a name to
my villa,’ she writes to the Empress, when laid up with a fever, which
she had caught through riding up to her waist in a bog. Catherine could
make nothing of it, and thought that her friend was delirious.
But it was Peter III. who was really delirious; while Princess Dashkov
was planting acacias and clearing paths, he was moving rapidly on his
downward path; one folly succeeded another, one unseemly vulgarity was
followed by another twice as unseemly. Keith’s prophecy was coming true:
public feeling was passing from contempt into hatred.
The Austrian persecution of the Greek Church in Serbia had driven many
Serbs to appeal to the Empress Elizabeth, begging her to assign them
lands in the south of Russia. In addition to lands, Elizabeth ordered
a considerable sum of money to be given them for the expenses of their
moving and resettlement. One of their agents, Horvat, a wily, intriguing
fellow, took possession of the lands and money and, instead of carrying
out the conditions on which the land was given, began to dispose of the
emigrants as though they were his serfs. The Serbs presented a complaint,
Elizabeth ordered an enquiry, but before it was over she died. Horvat,
hearing of her death, went to Petersburg and began by giving two thousand
gold pieces to each of the three persons who were in closest relations
with Peter III.—L. Naryshkin, who was something in the way of a court
buffoon, General Melgunov, and the Prosecutor-General Glyebov. The two
latter went to the Tsar and told him straight out of the bribe. Peter
III. was much pleased at their openness, he praised them for it, and
added that if they would give him half he would go himself to the Senate
and command them to decide the case in favour of Horvat. They divided the
spoils, the Tsar kept his word, and for two thousand gold pieces lost
hundreds of thousands of new settlers; seeing that their comrades had
been cheated by the Government, those who had not yet started did not
venture to move.
When the case was over, Peter III. heard that Naryshkin had concealed
his bribe, and, to punish him for this lack of friendly confidence, took
the whole sum from him. And for a long time afterwards he used to tease
Naryshkin by asking him what he was doing with Horvat’s gold pieces.
Here is another charming anecdote of Peter III. One day the Tsar returned
home with Razumovsky after parade, much pleased with the Izmailovsky
regiment; suddenly he heard a noise a little way off; his favourite negro
was fighting with the fencing-master. At first Peter III. was delighted
with the spectacle, but all at once he pulled a solemn face and said:
‘Narcisse exists no longer for us.’ Razumovsky, who could make nothing
of it, asked what had so suddenly distressed His Majesty. ‘Why, don’t
you see,’ he cried, ‘that I cannot keep a man about me who has fought
with a fencing-master? he is disgraced, disgraced for ever.’ Razumovsky,
pretending to enter into these deep considerations, observed that the
negro’s honour might be restored by passing him under the flag of the
regiment. This idea delighted Peter III.; he at once called the negro,
bade him pass under the flag, and, feeling this was not quite sufficient,
ordered that he should be scratched with the lance of the flag that he
might wash out his offence with his own blood. The poor negro almost died
of fright, the generals and the officers could hardly restrain their
indignation and laughter. Only Peter III. performed the whole ritual of
the negro’s purification with perfect solemnity throughout.
And this buffoon was Tsar!... But not for long!
On the evening of the 27th of June Grigory Orlov came to Princess Dashkov
to tell her that Captain Passek, one of the most desperate conspirators,
was arrested. Orlov found Panin with her; to lose time, to procrastinate,
was now impossible. Only the lymphatic, slow, and cautious Panin
counselled waiting till the morrow, and first finding out how and why
Passek was arrested. This did not please Orlov or her. The former said
that he would go to find out about Passek. Princess Dashkov asked Panin
to leave her, pretending that she was excessively tired. As soon as Panin
had driven off, she threw on a man’s grey overcoat and set off on foot to
see Roslavlev, one of the conspirators.
Not far from home she met a man on horseback galloping full speed.
Although she had never seen Orlov’s brothers, she guessed that it was
one of them; when she reached him, she called his name. He pulled up the
horse, and she made herself known to him. ‘I was coming to you,’ he said.
‘Passek has been seized as a political criminal. There are four sentries
at the doors and two at the window. My brother has gone to Panin, and I
have been to Roslavlev.’
‘Is Roslavlev much alarmed?’
‘He is indeed.’
‘Send word to our men, Roslavlev, Lasunsky, Tchertkov, and Bredihin to
gather at once to the Izmailovsky regiment, and to make ready to receive
the Empress. Then say that I advise your brother or you to ride as fast
as you can to Peterhof for the Empress; tell her that I have a carriage
ready, tell her that I beseech her not to delay, but to drive full speed
to Petersburg.’
On the previous evening Princess Dashkov, who had heard from Passek of
the great discontent of the soldiers, and was afraid that something might
happen, had by way of precaution written to the wife of Catherine’s
_kammerdiener_, Shkurin, telling her to send a carriage with four
post-horses to her husband at Peterhof, and to bid him await her in
his yard. Panin laughed at this unnecessary fuss, supposing that the
_coup d’état_ was not so imminent; events proved how necessary Princess
Dashkov’s precautions were.
On parting from Orlov, she returned home. In the evening a tailor was to
have brought her a man’s dress, but did not bring it, and she was not
free enough dressed as a woman. To avoid rousing suspicion, she dismissed
her maid and went to bed; but half an hour had not passed before she
heard a knock at the outer door. It was the youngest Orlov, who had been
sent by his elder brothers to ask her whether it was not too soon to
disturb the Empress; Princess Dashkov was beside herself, and showered
reproaches upon him and all his brothers: ‘As though it were a question,’
she said, ‘of disturbing the Empress; better bring her unconscious,
fainting, to Petersburg than expose her to imprisonment or to sharing
the scaffold with us. Tell your brothers that some one must go this very
minute to Peterhof.’
The young man agreed with her.
Then followed agonising hours of solitude and suspense; she trembled for
her Catherine, and pictured her pale, worn out, in prison, going to be
beheaded, and all ‘through our fault.’ Exhausted and feverish, she waited
for news from Peterhof. At four o’clock it came: the Empress had gone to
Petersburg.
How Alexey Orlov went in the night to the pavilion to where Catherine
was calmly asleep; how, though, like Princess Dashkov, she did not know
the younger Orlov by sight, she instantly determined to set off in the
carriage that was waiting for her at Shkurin’s; how Orlov sat on the
box-seat as coachman, and knocked the horses up by his driving, so that
the Empress was obliged to walk with her maid; how they afterwards met an
empty cart; how Orlov hired it, and brought Catherine to Petersburg in
democratic style—all that is well known.
The soldiers of the Izmailovsky regiment received Catherine with
enthusiasm; they were told that Peter III. had tried that night to kill
her and her son. With shouts and uproar the soldiers escorted her from
the barracks to the Winter Palace, proclaiming her the reigning Empress
as they passed through the streets; they met with no hindrance of any
kind. The people flocked in crowds to the Palace, the leading noblemen
gathered together in the Cathedral, and the Archbishop, surrounded by
clergy, awaited the new sovereign with holy water.
When, after terrific efforts, Princess Dashkov succeeded in reaching
Catherine, they rushed into each other’s arms, and could only say: ‘Well,
thank God, thank God!’ Then Catherine told her how they had driven from
Peterhof, then they fell to embracing each other again. ‘I do not know,’
writes Princess Dashkov, ‘whether a mortal has ever been happier than I
was at that minute!’
‘And,’ she adds, ‘when I think by what extraordinarily small means this
revolution was effected, with no thought-out plan, by men who were not
agreed among themselves, who had different aims in view, and were not in
the least alike either in breeding or character, it is clear to me that
the finger of Providence was in it.’
The revolution, of course, was essential, but if the finger of Providence
was so directly concerned in it, then the divine hands were far from
being clean on that day.
After they had kissed each other to their hearts’ content, Princess
Dashkov noticed that the Empress was wearing the Catherine and not the
Andrew ribbon; she ran at once to Panin, took off his ribbon, put it on
the Empress, and put the Catherine ribbon and star in her pocket.
The Empress expressed a desire to put herself at the head of the troops
and to march to Peterhof. At the same time she ordered the princess
to accompany her. The Empress took a uniform from Captain Talyzin,
Princess Dashkov one from Sergeant Pushkin. Both uniforms were of the old
Preobrazhensky pattern. As soon as the Empress had arrived in Petersburg,
the soldiers had, of their own initiative, cast off their new uniforms
and put on their old ones.
While Princess Dashkov was changing her dress, Catherine was presiding
over an Extraordinary Council, consisting of the highest dignitaries
and senators who happened to be on the spot. The sentinels stationed
at the doors admitted to it a young officer with a bold carriage and
reckless air. No one but the Empress recognised him as Princess Dashkov;
she went up to Catherine and said that the guard was very inefficient,
that they would perhaps admit Peter III. himself if he should suddenly
appear (how little even she knew the buffoon!); the guard was immediately
strengthened; meanwhile, the Empress, who was dictating a manifesto to
Tyeplov, broke off to tell the members of the Council who this young
officer was who had come up _sans façon_, and begun whispering to her.
All the senators stood up to greet her. ‘I blushed to my ears at this
honour,’ says the charming sergeant, ‘and indeed I was rather embarrassed
by it.
‘Then, after taking the necessary measures to ensure the tranquillity of
the capital, we mounted our horses, and on the road to Peterhof reviewed
ten thousand men, who cheered the Empress with enthusiasm.’
At Krasny Kabak the insurrectionary army halted: the men, who had been
on their legs for twelve hours, needed a rest. Catherine and Princess
Dashkov, who had not slept at all the last few nights, were much
exhausted. The princess took an overcoat from Colonel Kar, spread it
over the solitary sofa in the little room they had taken at the inn, and
stationed sentries; then she and Catherine stretched themselves on the
sofa, not taking off their uniforms, but firmly resolved to get a little
sleep; they could not sleep, however, but spent the whole time talking,
making plans, and entirely forgetting the danger they were in.
There is no denying that there is something extraordinarily fascinating
in this daring exploit of two women, who changed the destinies of
an empire, in this revolution wrought by a handsome, clever woman,
surrounded by young men in love with her, and with the leading figure
among them a beauty of eighteen on horseback in the Preobrazhensky
regiment, with a sabre in her hand.
The unlucky Peter was meanwhile driving from Oranienbaum to Peterhof,
and from Peterhof to Oranienbaum, unable to think what to do or to
decide upon anything. He looked for Catherine through all the rooms of
the pavilion, behind doors and cupboards, as though she were playing
‘hide-and-seek’ with him, and, not without complacency, repeated to
‘Romanovna’: ‘There, you see I was right; I was sure she would do
something; I always said that woman was capable of anything.’