“Here’s to the flaunting, extravagant queen.”—SHERIDAN.
IN mighty Russia, that land of violent extremes, that land of lavish
wealth and utter poverty,—whose frightful climate conquered the
otherwise invincible Napoleon, and with its keen frosts snapped the
pillars of his throne; where millions tremble before a despot whose
will is fettered by no constitution; whose prisons are the ice realms
of Siberia, whither so many trains of wretched captives have passed
to linger hopelessly in living tombs; whose smouldering fires of
discontent and hatred, fanned by the ardent breath of Nihilism, are
constantly breaking out into rebellion and assassination,—in that
land of splendor and of barbarism, behold St. Petersburg, the city of
the Czars, founded by Peter the Great in 1703, and risen out of the
desolate marshes of Ladoga to be the worthy capital of a great empire.
[Illustration: CATHARINE II. OF RUSSIA.]
St. Petersburg, the city of palaces, with its royal and princely
residences, adorned with Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns surmounted
by massive friezes, entablatures, and sculptures; with its Grecian and
Gothic temples, its great squares, its splendid, spacious streets,
its monuments, its warehouses and docks, its gardens and boulevards,
Cronstadt with its frowning bastions and painted spires, and in the
midst, giving to all an air of space, of freedom, and dignity, the
Neva, thronged by craft of all kinds and sizes, from the tiny
gondola to the man-of-war, and from the mighty merchant ship to the
rude barge laden with timber or with grain,—presents a scene of
opulence and magnificence which makes it difficult to realize that the
foundations of this great metropolis were placed in the quaking bogs of
Lake Ladoga.
Upon the bank of the Neva, midway between the Senate House and
the Admiralty, stands that most famous of the monuments of St.
Petersburg,—the equestrian statue of Peter the Great. A splendid
statue, this, of bronze and of colossal size. Peter, astride a mighty
charger, reins back his steed upon the brink of a precipice, and
stretches forth his sceptre, while he seems to survey with proud
triumph the wonderful growth of the city of which he is the “creator,”
and of which he might exclaim, as did Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, “Is
not this great Petersburg, that I have built by the might of my power,
and for the honor of my majesty!”
Little did Peter think, when he laid aside the sceptre of his empire,
that five women would reign after him in almost direct succession, and
that the last, the greatest of them all, would rear to him this costly
monument upon the borders of the Neva.
Peter I. was succeeded by his wife, Catherine, who governed for two
years, then Peter II., a poor boy of fourteen, who had the privilege of
ruling nominally for a few months, and then Anne, niece of Peter I. was
placed upon the throne.
Anne reigned ten years, or rather her favorites reigned for her, and
in 1740 she ended her insignificant life. Then baby Prince Ivan was
proclaimed Emperor Ivan III. But his mother, Anne of Mecklenburg,
thirsted for imperial power. So Biren, the regent, went to Siberia,
and Anne of Mecklenberg ruled in his stead. It was only for a year,
however, for in 1741 Elizabeth, cousin of Anne, headed the imperial
guards who had revolted, and declared herself Empress Elizabeth the
First.
Elizabeth ruled for twenty years, and commenced by declaring that “she
would never put a subject to death upon any provocation whatever,”—a
principle all very fine in theory, but never put in practice. And since
it so affected her tender heart to take the lives of her dear subjects,
she contented herself by sending them to Siberia, which answered her
purpose quite as well.
“Joanna,” said she to her lady of the bedchamber, who one day
reproached her for the miserable manner in which she educated her
nephew, the grand-duke,—“Joanna, _knowest thou the road to Siberia_?”
Joanna took the hint and henceforth held her peace.
On the 2d of May, 1729, at Stettin, in Prussia, was born Sophia
Augusta Frederica, Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst-Bernburg, who, in 1762,
resigned all these sonorous and illustrious titles to be called
simply—_Catherine II._
In 1747 the Empress Elizabeth married her nephew, the worthless
grand-duke, to this Princess of Anhalt, and at the death of the
empress, in 1761, he became Peter III.
Things went smoothly enough for the first few months, but soon Sophia
Augusta Frederica, Princess of Anhalt, desired to reign alone and
undisputed upon the throne of the Romanoffs, and in that highly moral
and virtuous assembly, the imperial court of St. Petersburg, there were
many who, in the hope of self-aggrandizement, would not scruple to
terminate the mortal career of the Emperor Peter the Third.
There were three separate conspiracies against the life of Peter; and
Catherine, who appeared to do nothing herself, was in reality the mover
of all.
Peter was spending a few days at his country palace of Oranienbaum,
from whence he was to proceed to the palace of Peterhof, where the
conspirators intended to seize and carry him off.
But all these fine plans were overthrown by a soldier of the guard,
who innocently asked his captain on what day they were to take up arms
against the emperor. The terrified captain, who knew nothing of the
conspiracy, gave notice to his superiors. Then all is terror in the
ranks of the conspirators; and the Princess Dashkoff, when she learns
of the discovery of the plot, hastily gives intelligence to her party.
The Empress Catherine sleeps at Peterhof, where she has gone to meet
her husband. At two o’clock in the morning a soldier stands at her
bedside. It is Alexis Orloff. “Your Majesty,” he says, “has not a
moment to lose; rise and follow me!”
The empress and her maid dress in haste. Orloff conducts them to the
garden gate, where a carriage is in waiting. The empress and her maid
are placed in it. Alexis seizes the reins, and they are off at a gallop.
Before they have gone far the carriage breaks, and Catherine is
compelled to continue her journey on foot. When they have walked about
a mile, they meet a peasant driving a country cart. Immediately Alexis
Orloff seizes the horses, places the empress in the cart, and drives at
full speed toward the capital.
The Emperor Peter III. sleeps quietly in his palace at Oranienbaum,
while his wife, Catherine II., drives madly along the road from
Peterhof to Petersburg, to place upon her head the imperial diadem of
Russia.
At seven in the morning Catherine reached St. Petersburg. She
immediately presented herself to the soldiers, assuring them that
the Czar, her husband, intended to put her to death that very night,
and that they were her only protection. This lie was believed at the
moment, and the men swore to die in her defence.
The Orloffs raised a cry of “Long live the Empress Catherine!” and the
soldiers echoed the shout. Their officers encouraged them, and when
Villebois, general of artillery, ventured to remonstrate, Catherine
turned upon him haughtily, told him she wanted no advice of his, but to
know what he intended to do. The general, confounded at her assumed air
of command, could only stammer, “To obey your Majesty!” and immediately
delivered the arsenals and magazines of the city into her hands.
Thus in two hours did Catherine find herself upon the throne, with an
army at her command, and the capital at her feet.
Meanwhile Peter III., totally unconscious of the usurpation of his
unfaithful spouse, ordered his carriage, and set out for Peterhof,
where he was informed of the revolt. This news threw him into such
horror and confusion, that for a time he lost the use of his faculties.
He could resolve on nothing, and his imbecility was like that of a
terrified child.
Finally, however, he sat down and wrote a submissive letter to
Catherine, acknowledging his errors, and proposing to share the
sovereign authority with her. To this letter Catherine gave no reply,
except to send Count Panin to the Czar, who persuaded him to sign a
declaration that he was not fit to reign, and that he voluntarily
abdicated the throne. Having done this, the poor, weak prince was
carried off and locked up in the palace of Ropscha. “It was necessary
that some apparent reason should be given for such extraordinary
proceedings, and a short manifesto was accordingly set forth,
proclaiming the accession of Catherine, without any mention of the
unhappy emperor, but alleging as her only motives for assuming the
government her tender regard for the welfare of the people, and above
all for the holy and orthodox Greek religion, which she feared was
exposed to total ruin; and this notable document of state villany thus
concludes: ‘For these causes, etc., we, putting our trust in Almighty
God and in his divine justice, have ascended the imperial throne of all
the Russias, and have received a solemn oath of fidelity from all our
faithful subjects.’ Dated June 28, 1762.
“Thus, by a revolution which never could have occurred under any other
government than that of Russia, which few could account for and no
one seemed to comprehend,—which was accomplished in the course of a
single day, without injury to individuals, and without tumultuous
violence,—did a young woman, a foreigner, and a stranger to the
imperial blood, spring into the throne of the Czars.”
Catherine II., having thus established herself upon the throne, began
to consider how she could best retain her newly acquired power. The
first obstacle which presented itself to her mind was the Czar, Peter
III. She had him under lock and key at Ropscha, it is true, but
then he had his friends and his faithful Holstein guards, who had
seen his downfall with grief and indignation. So Peter III. must be
made an end of, and those most accomplished of villains, Orloff and
Baratinsky, were sent to Ropscha to make an end of him, which deed they
performed very satisfactorily both to themselves and to the empress, by
strangling him in his dining apartment with a napkin.
The news of his death was announced to the empress as she was on the
point of holding her court, but, as the proper precautions had not
been taken, she did not choose to make it public, and went on with
her audience with every appearance of cheerfulness and tranquillity.
On the following day, while dining in public, the death of the Czar
was formally announced; and immediately she rose from the table, all
bathed in tears, and retired to her apartment, where for several days
she feigned the greatest grief. She afterward published a manifesto,
in which she announced to her subjects “that it had pleased Almighty
God to remove the late Emperor Peter the Third from this world, by a
violent attack of a malady to which he had heretofore been subject, and
desiring them to consider it as an especial act of Providence working
in her favor.” None were stupid enough to believe this monstrous
lie, and none were bold enough to contradict it, and this was answer
sufficient for the Empress Catherine II.
But “what a sight for the nation itself, a calm spectator of these
events! On one side, the grandson of Peter I. dethroned and put
to death; on the other, the grandson of the Czar Ivan languishing
in fetters; while a Princess of Anhalt usurps the throne of their
ancestors, clearing her way to it by a regicide.”
As a sovereign, Catherine displayed marked ability. She effected
several useful reforms, established important institutions, encouraged
national intercourse, founded schools and hospitals, and erected
arsenals and manufactories.
During her lifetime she published a list of two hundred and forty-five
cities which she had founded in her dominions. This sounds very grand;
but we may look as vainly for her cities as for those of Babylonian
Semiramis. In some instances she merely indicated the spot where she
intended a city should be erected; in others, she gave the name of a
city to some hamlet or village.
When she made her famous voyage down the Dnieper, in 1787, Joseph II.
accompanied her to lay the foundations of a city to be called, after
her name, _Ekaterinaslof_, and which, in her imagination, already
rivalled St. Petersburg. The empress laid the first stone with great
pomp, and the emperor laid the second. On returning from the ceremony,
Joseph remarked, in his dry, epigrammatic manner: “The empress and I
have this day achieved a great work; she has laid the _first_ stone of
a great city, and I have laid the _last_.” His speech was prophetic.
The city never proceeded farther, nor was it thought of again.
Catherine had one overmastering passion,—ambition; and since the
basis of her character was selfishness, her ambition began and ended
with herself. She was shrewd in principle, astute in judgment, hard
in character, and hopelessly corrupt in morals. But “she knew how to
make herself looked up to, if not with respect and liking, at least
with deference; and Frederick the Great, Louis XV., Maria Theresa,
and George III., each in their turn, learned to regard her acts with
attention.”
The principal fame of Catherine rests on her celebrated code of laws,
and on her title of _legislatrix_ of her dominions.
“If,” said Frederick of Prussia, “several women as sovereigns have
obtained a deserved celebrity,—Semiramis for her conquests, Elizabeth
of England for her political sagacity, Maria Theresa for her
astonishing firmness of character,—to Catherine alone may be given the
title of a female law-giver.”
But how much of this was fulsome flattery and how much honest praise,
it is not very difficult to discern, considering the gross nature of
Catherine, and the cunning diplomacy of Frederick.
Catherine is said to have doubled the resources and revenues of her
empire. Undoubtedly she increased the resources by the extension of
her commerce; and by her conquests over the Turks, which threw open
the trade and navigation of the Mediterranean, she added greatly to
the power of Russia; but she exhausted her resources much faster than
she could create them, and she wasted her revenues more quickly than
she could replenish them. She doubled and trebled the taxes of her
oppressed people, and the legal pillage of her tyrannical officers
drove whole provinces to desperation.
“Kings and queens,” she wrote in her letter to Queen Marie Antoinette,
“ought to proceed in their career undisturbed by the cries of the
people, as the moon pursues her course unimpeded by the howling of the
dogs.” A fine sentiment truly, and one which she took good care should
not grow dull for want of use during her lifetime.
To find some parallel for the criminal profusion of Catherine, a
profusion which exceeds all calculation, we must go back to the days of
Caligula and Heliogabalus.
Her favorites were countless: her lavishness towards them almost
incredible. Upon them she squandered a sum equal to $100,000,000.
She bestowed estates equal in extent to provinces; and by a word, by a
stroke of her pen, she, who called her people her children, and, by her
royal clemency, had substituted the word _subject_ for _slave_, gave
away thousands, tens of thousands, of serfs, poor wretches transferred
like cattle from one proprietor to another. “She gave diamonds by
handfuls, and made gold and silver as common as pebbles. Yet when we
read over the names and qualifications of those who were her confidants
and ministers, or of those who were particularly distinguished by her
munificence, it is like looking over the peerage of Pandemonium”; for
where but in the court of Russia, with a female Louis XV. in the person
of Catherine II. upon the imperial throne, could such an assemblage
of fiends and savages, ruffians and reptiles, demons and cormorants,
have been congregated together to fatten on the blood and tears of an
oppressed people?
In pursuance of the mighty plans which she had formed, Catherine
kept two objects steadily in view: first, to extend her dominions on
the west by seizing Poland; and secondly, to drive the Turks from
Constantinople.
She began with Poland, marched an army into that country, forced upon
the Poles a king of her own choice, dictated laws at the point of the
bayonet, intimidated the weak by threats, and massacred and exiled all
who resisted.
The Poles could not endure this usurpation of their country. They rose
against the Russians, and from 1765, when Catherine first invaded the
country, till its final seizure in 1795, Poland presented a scene of
horror, calamity, and crime.
The Poles besought the aid of the Turks, and thus began the first
Turkish war declared in 1768. Fierce and bloody was this war, and
in 1774 the Turks were compelled to sue for peace, acceding to the
humiliating conditions which Catherine haughtily demanded, that
the Ottoman Porte should recognize the independence of the Crimea,
and yield to Russia the free navigation of the Black Sea and the
Archipelago.
In 1774 also, the empress-queen disgraced Gregory Orloff and raised to
the post of favorite and chief minister, Potemkin, afterward Prince
Potemkin, of infamous renown, who for more than twenty years held the
highest honors of the empire. He was neither a great statesman nor
a great general, but he was certainly an extraordinary man. He had
all the petulance, audacity, and wilfulness of a spoiled boy, yet he
possessed a genius fit to conceive and execute great designs. “His
character displayed a singular union of barbarism and grandeur, and of
the most inconsistent and apparently incompatible qualities. He was
at once the most indolent and the most active man in the world; the
most luxurious, and the most indefatigable; no dangers appalled and no
difficulties repulsed him; yet the slightest caprice, a mere fit of
temper, would cause him to abandon projects of vital importance. At one
time he talked of making himself king of Poland; at another of turning
monk or bishop. He began everything, completed nothing, disordered the
finances, disorganized the army, depopulated the country. He lived with
the magnificence of a sovereign prince. At one moment he would make an
aide-de-camp ride two or three hundred miles to bring him a melon or
a pineapple; at another he would be found devouring a raw carrot or
cucumber in his own antechamber.
“He scarcely ever opened a book, yet he learned everything, and forgot
nothing; his wonderful quickness in appropriating the knowledge of
others served him instead of study. Altogether his great qualities and
his defects precisely fitted him to obtain the ascendency over such a
mind as that of Catherine; she grew tired of others, but his caprices,
his magnificence, and his gigantic plans, continually interested and
occupied her.” Under his administration all things did not go on well,
we may be sure but all _went on_, and the empress was content.
The second Turkish war having ended in 1783 with the annexation of the
Crimea and Kuban, under the classic names of Taurida and the Caucasus,
Potemkin persuaded Catherine to go and admire herself in her new
dominions, a thing which she was only too ready to do.
So on the 18th of January, 1787, the imperial _cortège_ set out from
St. Petersburg. There were fourteen carriages upon sledges for the
empress and her court, and one hundred and sixty for the attendants
and baggage. Five hundred and sixty relays of horses waited them at
every post, and the luxurious carriages flew over the frozen plains at
the rate of a hundred miles a day. Wherever they stopped, a temporary
palace was erected for the empress, fitted with every luxury, and
arranged, as much as possible, like her palace at St. Petersburg. When
they arrived at Khief, the empress embarked on the Dnieper, and with a
fleet of fifty galleys sailed down the river to Cherson.
Here money, provisions, and troops had been conveyed from every part
of the empire. The Borysthenes was covered with magnificent galleys; a
hundred and fifty thousand soldiers were newly equipped; deserts were
peopled for the occasion, and palaces reared for the empress queen in
the midst of trackless wilds.
The king of Poland came to do her homage, and the Emperor Joseph
was content to mingle among the herd of her courtiers and swell the
splendor of her state.
Catherine herself scattered diamonds and honors with her usual
liberality. “In her travelling-carriage she had a large, green sack,
full of gold coins, and her courtiers were kept busy throwing handfuls
out of the window to the people, who lay grovelling on the earth as
her carriage passed by.”
After six months spent in this sort of travelling, the empress returned
to St. Petersburg.
As a refuge from the cares of state, Louis XIV. had built his Trianon,
and Frederick the Great his Sans-Souci, and Catherine II., oppressed
like them, reared the splendid palace of the Hermitage, within whose
portals she laid aside the imperial diadem of all the Russias, and
became a patron of literature and the fine arts.
Beneath a great portal, supported by colossal granite giants, is the
entrance to this Hermitage, over whose steps have often passed those
discarded favorites of the empress-queen, smothering under forced
smiles and honeyed words their inward rage and indignation; for when
Catherine wearied of her favorites she sent them an order to travel.
“I am tired of him,” she would say; “his ignorance makes me blush. He
can speak nothing but Russian. He must travel in France and England to
learn other languages.” The courtier who received this intelligence was
not long in preparing his travelling-carriage.
At the Hermitage, Catherine surrounded herself with men of letters.
Here were Lomonozof, the poet; Sumorokof, the dramatic author;
Kheraskof, the writer of tragedies; Sherebetoff, the historian; and
Pallas, the naturalist.
She especially affected the friendship of French writers. She
entertained Diderot with royal magnificence, and purchased his library;
she gave the education of her grandsons, Alexander and Constantine,
to the care of the republican Laharpe; and she kept up a constant
correspondence with Voltaire. Catherine, herself, had no real love for
the arts; but she patronized them all as subservient to her glory and
her power.
“Thus she not only had no taste for music, but she was destitute
of ear to distinguish one tune from another, as she often frankly
acknowledged; but nothing less would serve her than an Italian _corps
d’opera_ attached to her domestic establishment. She had no taste for
painting, yet she purchased at a high price some beautiful collections,
and in the gallery of her palace of the Hermitage hung some magnificent
specimens of the Italian and Flemish schools, purchased in France and
Italy.”
Fifteen miles from the capital of Russia is the beautiful palace of
Czars-Koe-Selo, the Versailles of St. Petersburg. Catherine II. was
very fond of this place, and spent enormous sums on its embellishment.
Originally every ornament and statue upon the façade of the palace,
which is no less than twelve hundred feet in length, was heavily plated
with gold. After a few years the gilding wore off, and the contractors
engaged to repair it offered the empress nearly half a million of
dollars for the fragments which remained. But the extravagant Catherine
answered them scornfully:—
“I am not in the habit, gentlemen,” she said, “of selling my old
clothes.”
The main avenue leading to this palace of Czars-Koe-Selo is ornamented
with several Chinese statues. One morning as the empress was taking
her usual promenade along the avenue, she thought she detected a faint
smile upon the face of one of the heathen images. She observed it more
closely. Surely it was no fancy! the eyes returned her gaze, and that,
too, with an expression remarkably human.
Catherine II. was not a woman to be afraid of anything. Accordingly,
she walked straight towards the statue, determined to solve the
mystery. She _was_ startled for a moment, however, when all the
figures leaped from their pedestals, and, hats in hand, begged her to
pardon the little surprise with which they tried to enliven her morning
walk; for her favorite Potemkin and three other courtiers had, in jest,
exactly copied the dress and attitude of the Chinese figures.
When Prince Bismarck was Prussian ambassador at the court of Alexander
II., he was one day standing with the Czar at a window of the Peterhof
Palace, when he observed a sentinel in the centre of the lawn with
apparently nothing whatever to guard. Out of curiosity he inquired
of the Czar why the man was stationed there. Alexander turned to an
aide-de-camp.
“Count ——,” said he, “why is that soldier stationed there?”
“I do not know, your Imperial Majesty.”
The Czar frowned. “Send me the officer in command,” he said.
The officer appeared. “Prince —— why is a sentinel stationed on that
lawn?”
“I do not know, your Majesty.”
“Not know?” cried the Czar in surprise; “request then the general
commanding the troops at Peterhof to present himself immediately.”
The general appeared. “General,” said the Czar, “why is that soldier
stationed in yonder isolated place?”
“I beg leave to inform your Majesty that it is in accordance with an
ancient custom,” replied the general evasively.
“What was the origin of the custom?” inquired Bismarck.
“I—I do not at present recollect,” stammered the officer.
“Investigate, and report the result,” said Alexander.
So the investigation began, and after three days and nights of
incessant labor, it was ascertained that some _eighty years before_,
Catherine II., looking out one spring morning from the windows of this
palace of Peterhof, observed in the centre of this lawn, the first
May-flower of the season, lifting its delicate head above the lately
frozen soil.
She ordered a soldier to stand there to prevent its being plucked.
The order was inscribed upon the books; and thus for eighty years,
in summer and in winter, in sunshine and in storm, a sentinel had
stood upon that spot, no one apparently, until the time of Bismarck,
caring to question the reason of his so doing! Such was, and is, the
absolutism of the government of the Czars!
Catherine had long resolved that one of her granddaughters should be
queen of Sweden.
Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, was already affianced to a princess
of Mecklenburg; but with Catherine to will was to do, so she contrived
to have this marriage broken off, and brought the young king to St.
Petersburg, where she thought her own consummate address and the charms
of the intended bride would accomplish the rest.
For once, however, Catherine, the crafty, deceived herself.
Proposals of marriage were speedily made, the treaty drawn up, the day
of betrothment fixed, and a splendid fête prepared.
The appointed time arrived. The empress, surrounded by her court, sat
in the audience chamber of the Winter Palace.
Alexandrina, adorned in bridal pomp, stood at the side of her imperial
grandmother; all was in readiness, but the royal bridegroom came not.
They waited—there was a depressing silence—the bride turned pale, the
empress turned red, the courtiers looked at one another ominously.
A very different scene, however, was being enacted in the apartments of
the king of Sweden.
The Chancellor Markoff had brought the articles of marriage to him for
his signature. As a mere matter of form, he read them over rapidly; but
the young king, who listened, became aware that certain articles were
inserted which had not been previously agreed upon.
It was a law of Sweden that the queen of the country must profess
the faith of the nation, and exchange the Greek for the Lutheran
church; but the haughty and imperious Catherine had decided that _her_
imperial granddaughter should be made an exception to this law, and had
introduced into the marriage treaty a clause to that effect.
The king refused to sign the contract.
The chancellor was thunderstruck. A mere boy to resist the will of the
empress; it was preposterous!
He flattered, he entreated, he implored; but all in vain.
Gustavus was immovable; and enraged at the attempt to deceive him, he
flung the papers away.
“No,” he cried furiously, “I will not have it! I will not sign!” and he
shut himself up in his own apartment.
Here was an unexpected _contretemps_. Who would dare to relate this
pleasing news to the empress-queen, surrounded by her expectant court?
For some time no one could be prevailed upon to do it, but finally
her favorite, Zuboff, approached Catherine and whispered to her. The
blood rushed to her face and, attempting to rise, she staggered. But
she controlled herself with a mighty effort, and dismissing her court
under the pretence that the king of Sweden was suddenly indisposed,
retired to her cabinet.
The poor Princess Alexandrina was conducted to her apartment, where she
fainted away. In her tender heart, a sad and crushing sorrow mingled
with mortification and wounded pride; but Catherine the imperial,
Catherine the imperious,—what were her sensations?
“Braved on her throne, insulted in her court, overreached in her
policy, she could only sustain herself by the hope of vengeance. Pride
and state etiquette forbade any expression of temper, but the effect
on her frame was perhaps more than fatal. The king of Sweden took his
departure a few days afterward, and Catherine, who from that instant
meditated his destruction, was preparing all the resources of her great
empire for war,—war on every side,—when the death stroke came, and she
fell, like a sorceress, suffocated among her own poisons.”
Upon the 9th of November, 1796, she was found by her attendants
stretched upon the floor of her apartment, struck by apoplexy. All
attempts to reanimate her were in vain; and on the following day,
without having had one moment granted her to think, to prepare, or to
repent, this terrible and depraved old woman was hurried out of the
world, with all her sins upon her head.
Such was the end of her whom the Prince de Ligne had pompously styled
“_Catherine la Grande_.”
Though her political crimes and private sins were such as to consign
her to universal execration, she seems to have possessed all the graces
of an accomplished Frenchwoman.
In her personal deportment, and in the circle of her court, she was
kind, easy, and good-humored. Her serenity of temper and composure of
manner were remarkable; and the contrast between the simplicity of her
deportment in private and the grandeur of her situation rendered her
exceedingly fascinating.
She possessed so many accomplishments, was so elegant and dignified,
and performed with such majesty and decorum all the external functions
of royalty, that none approached her without respect and admiration;
but her selfishness and her depravity spoiled all, and made her what we
have seen her.
Among all the famous queens of history, there is not one, save
Catherine de’ Medici, whose career is so utterly devoid of noble acts,
so entirely dictated by “selfishness, lust, and sordid greed,” as that
of Catherine II., removed by the grace of God on the 10th of November,
1796, from being longer empress of all the Russias, and from the world
which she had done so much to pollute.