Marriage of the czarowitz.--The marriage of Peter and Catherine
publicly solemnized.--Catherine finds her brother.
This unsuccessful campaign of Pruth proved more hurtful to the czar than
ever the battle of Narva was; for after that defeat he had found means
not only to retrieve his losses, but also to wrest Ingria out of the
hands of Charles XII.; but by the treaty of Falksten, in which he
consented to give up to the sultan his forts and harbours on the Palus
Mæotis, he for ever lost his projected superiority in the Black Sea.
He had besides an infinite deal of work on his hands; his new
establishments in Russia were to be perfected, he had to prosecute his
victories over the Swedes, to settle king Augustus firmly on the Polish
throne, and to manage affairs properly with the several powers with whom
he was in alliance; but the fatigues he had undergone having impaired
his health, he was obliged to go to Carlsbad[90] to drink the waters of
that place. While he was there he gave orders for his troops to enter
Pomerania, who blockaded Stralsund, and took five other towns in the
neighbourhood.
Pomerania is the most northern province of Germany, bounded on the east
by Prussia and Poland, on the west by Brandenburg, on the south by
Mecklenburg, and on the north by the Baltic Sea. It has changed masters
almost every century: Gustavus Adolphus got possession of it in his
famous thirty years war, and it was afterwards solemnly ceded to the
crown of Sweden by the treaty of Westphalia: with a reservation of the
little bishopric of Camin, and a few other small towns lying in Upper
Pomerania. The whole of this province properly belongs to the elector of
Brandenburg, in virtue of a family compact made with the dukes of
Pomerania, whose family being extinct in 1637, consequently by the laws
of the empire the house of Brandenburg had an undoubted right to the
succession; but necessity, the first of all laws, occasioned this family
compact to be set aside by the treaty of Osnaburg; after which, almost
the whole of Pomerania fell to the lot of the victorious Swedes.
The czar's intention was to wrest from Sweden all the provinces that
crown was possessed of in Germany; and, in order to accomplish his
design, he found it necessary to enter into a confederacy with the
electors of Hanover and Brandenburg, and the king of Denmark. Peter drew
up the several articles of the treaty he projected with these powers,
and also a complete plan of the necessary operations for rendering him
master of Pomerania.
In the meanwhile he went to Torgau, to be present at the nuptials of his
son the czarowitz Alexis with the princess of Wolfenbuttel (Oct. 23,
1711.), sister to the consort of Charles VI. emperor of Germany;
nuptials which, in the end, proved fatal to his own peace of mind, and
to the lives of the unfortunate pair.
The czarowitz was born of the first marriage of Peter the Great to
Eudocia Lapoukin, to whom he was espoused in 1689: she was at that time
shut up in the monastery of Susdal; their son Alexis Petrowitz, who was
born the 1st of March, 1690, was now in his twenty-second year: this
prince was not then at all known in Europe; a minister, whose memoirs of
the court of Russia have been printed, says in a letter he writes to his
master, dated August 25, 1711, that 'this prince was tall and well made,
resembled his father greatly, was of an excellent disposition, very
pious, had read the Bible five times over, took great delight in the
ancient Greek historians, appeared to have a very quick apprehension and
understanding, was well acquainted with the mathematics, the art of war,
navigation, and hydraulics; that he understood the German language, and
was then learning the French, but that his father would never suffer him
to go through a regular course of study.'
This character is very different from that which the czar himself gives
of his son some time afterwards, in which we shall see with how much
grief he reproaches him with faults directly opposite to those good
qualities, for which this minister seems so much to admire him.
We must leave posterity, therefore, to determine between the testimony
of a stranger, who may have formed too slight a judgment, and the
declaration of a parent, who thought himself under a necessity of
sacrificing the dictates of nature to the good of his people. If the
minister was no better acquainted with the disposition of Alexis than he
seems to have been with his outward form, his evidence will have but
little weight; for he describes this prince as tall and well made,
whereas the memoirs sent me from Petersburg say, that he was neither the
one nor the other.
His mother-in-law, Catherine, was not present at his nuptials; for
though she was already looked upon as czarina, yet she had not been
publicly acknowledged as such: and moreover, as she had only the title
of highness given her at the czar's court, her rank was not sufficiently
settled to admit of her signing the contract, or to appear at the
ceremony in a station befitting the consort of Peter the Great. She
therefore remained at Thorn in Polish Prussia. Soon after the nuptials
were celebrated, the czar sent the new-married couple away to
Wolfenbuttel (Jan. 9, 1712), and brought back the czarina to Petersburg
with that dispatch and privacy which he observed in all his journies.
Feb. 19, 1712.] Having now disposed of his son, he publicly solemnized
his own nuptials with Catherine, which had been declared in private
before. This ceremony was performed with as much magnificence as could
be expected in a city but yet in its infancy, and from a revenue
exhausted by the late destructive war against the Turks, and that which
he was still engaged in against the king of Sweden. The czar gave orders
for, and assisted himself in, all the preparations for the ceremony,
according to the usual custom; and Catherine was now publicly declared
czarina, in reward for having saved her husband and his whole army.
The acclamations with which this declaration was received at Petersburg
were sincere: the applauses which subjects confer on the actions of a
despotic sovereign are generally suspected; but on this occasion they
were confirmed by the united voice of all the thinking part of Europe,
who beheld with pleasure, on the one hand, the heir of a vast monarchy
with no other glory than that of his birth, married to a petty princess;
and, on the other hand, a powerful conqueror, and a law-giver, publicly
sharing his bed and his throne with a stranger and a captive, who had
nothing to recommend her but her merit: and this approbation became more
general as the minds of men grew more enlightened by that sound
philosophy, which has made so great a progress in our understandings
within these last forty years: a philosophy, equally sublime and
discerning, which teaches us to pay only the exterior respect to
greatness and authority, while we reserve our esteem and veneration for
shining talents and meritorious services.
And here I think myself under an obligation to relate what I have met
touching this marriage in the dispatches of count Bassewitz, aulic
counsellor at Vienna, and long time minister from Holstein at the court
of Russia; a person of great merit, and whose memory is still held in
the highest esteem in Germany. In some of his letters he speaks thus:
'The czarina had not only been the main instrument of procuring the czar
that reputation which he enjoyed, but was likewise essentially necessary
in the preservation of his life. This prince was unhappily subject to
violent convulsion fits, which were thought to be the effects of poison
which had been given him while he was young. Catherine alone had found
the secret of alleviating his sufferings by an unwearied assiduity and
attention to whatever she thought would please him, and made it the
whole study of her life to preserve a health so valuable to the kingdom
and to herself, insomuch, that the czar finding he could not live
without her, made her the companion of his throne and bed.' I here only
repeat the express words of the writer himself.
Fortune, which has furnished us with many extraordinary scenes in this
part of the world, and who had raised Catherine from the lowest abyss of
misery and distress to the pinnacle of human grandeur, wrought another
extraordinary incident in her favour some few years after her marriage
with the czar, and which I find thus related in a curious manuscript of
a person who was at that time in the czar's service, and who speaks of
it as a thing to which he was eye-witness.
An envoy from king Augustus to the court of Peter the Great, being on
his return home through Courland, and having put up at an inn by the
way, heard the voice of a person who seemed in great distress, and whom
the people of the house were treating in that insulting manner which is
but too common on such occasions: the stranger, with a tone of
resentment, made answer, that they would not dare to use him thus, if he
could but once get to the speech of the czar, at whose court he had
perhaps more powerful protectors than they imagined.
The envoy, upon hearing this, had a curiosity to ask the man some
questions, and, from certain answers he let fall, and a close
examination of his face, he thought he found in him some resemblance of
the empress Catherine; and, when he came to Dresden, he could not
forbear writing to one of his friends at Petersburg concerning it. This
letter, by accident, came to the czar's hands, who immediately sent an
order to prince Repnin, then governor of Riga, to endeavour to find out
the person mentioned in the letter. Prince Repnin immediately dispatched
a messenger to Mittau, in Courland, who, on inquiry, found out the man,
and learned that his name was Charles Scavronsky; that he was the son of
a Lithuanian gentleman, who had been killed in the wars of Poland, and
had left two children then in the cradle, a boy and a girl, who had
neither of them received any other education than that which simple
nature gives to those who are abandoned by the world. Scavronsky, who
had been parted from his sister while they were both infants, knew
nothing further of her than that she had been taken prisoner in
Marienburg, in the year 1704, and supposed her to be still in the
household of prince Menzikoff, where he imagined she might have made
some little fortune.
Prince Repnin, agreeable to the particular orders he had received from
the czar, caused Scavronsky to be seized, and conducted to Riga, under
pretence of some crime laid to his charge; and, to give a better colour
to the matter, at his arrival there, a sham information was drawn up
against him, and he was soon after sent from thence to Petersburg, under
a strong guard, with orders to treat him well upon the road.
When he came to that capital, he was carried to the house of an officer
of the emperor's palace, named Shepleff, who, having been previously
instructed in the part he was to play, drew several circumstances from
the young man in relation to his condition; and, after some time, told
him, that although the information, which had been sent up from Riga
against him, was of a very serious nature, yet he would have justice
done him; but that it would be necessary to present a petition to his
majesty for that purpose; that one should accordingly be drawn up in his
name, and that he (Shepleff) would find means that he should deliver it
into the czar's own hands.
The next day the czar came to dine with Shepleff, at his own house, who
presented Scavronsky to him; when his majesty, after asking him
abundance of questions was convinced, by the natural answers he gave,
that he was really the czarina's brother; they had both lived in
Livonia, when young, and the czar found every thing that Scavronsky said
to him, in relation to his family affairs, tally exactly with what his
wife had told him concerning her brother, and the misfortunes which had
befallen her and her brother in the earlier part of their lives.
The czar, now satisfied of the truth, proposed the next day to the
empress to go and dine with him at Shepleff's; and, when dinner was
over, he gave orders that the man, whom he had examined the day before,
should be brought in again. Accordingly he was introduced, dressed in
the same clothes he had wore while on his journey to Riga; the czar not
being willing that he should appear in any other garb than what his
unhappy circumstances had accustomed him to.
He interrogated him again, in the presence of his wife; and the MS.
adds, that, at the end, he turned about to the empress, and said these
very words:--'This man is your brother; come hither, Charles, and kiss
the hand of the empress, and embrace your sister.'
The author of this narrative adds further, that the empress fainted away
with surprise; and that, when she came to herself again, the czar said,
'There is nothing in this but what is very natural. This gentlemen is my
brother in-law; if he has merit, we will make something of him; if he
has not, we must leave him as he is.'
I am of opinion, that this speech shews as much greatness as simplicity,
and a greatness not very common. My author says, that Scavronsky
remained a considerable time at Shepleff's house; that the czar assigned
him a handsome pension, but that he led a very retired life. He carries
his relation of this adventure no farther, as he made use of it only to
disclose the secret of Catherine's brother: but we know, from other
authorities, that this gentleman was afterwards created a count; that he
married a young lady of quality, by whom he had two daughters, who were
married to two of the principal noblemen in Russia. I leave to those,
who may be better informed of the particulars, to distinguish what is
fact in this relation, from what may have been added; and shall only
say, that the author does not seem to have told this story out of a
fondness for entertaining his readers with the marvellous, since his
papers were not intended to be published. He is writing freely to a
friend, about a thing of which he says he was an eye-witness. He may
have been mistaken in some circumstances, but the fact itself has all
the appearance of truth; for if this gentleman had known that his sister
was raised to so great dignity and power, he would not certainly have
remained so many years without having made himself known to her. And
this discovery, however extraordinary it may seem, is certainly not more
so than the exaltation of Catherine herself; and both the one and the
other are striking proofs of the force of destiny, and may teach us to
be cautious how we treat as fabulous several events of antiquity, which
perhaps are less contradictory to the common order of things, than the
adventures of this empress.
The rejoicings made by the czar Peter for his own marriage, and that of
his son, were not of the nature of those transient amusements which
exhaust the public treasure, and are presently lost in oblivion. He
completed his grand foundry for cannon, and finished the admiralty
buildings. The highways were repaired, several ships built, and others
put upon the stocks; new canals were dug, and the finishing hand put to
the grand warehouses, and other public buildings, and the trade of
Petersburg began to assume a flourishing face. He issued an ordinance
for removing the senate from Moscow to Petersburg, which was executed in
the month of April, 1712. By this step he made his new city the capital
of the empire, and early he employed a number of Swedish prisoners in
beautifying this city, whose foundation had been laid upon their defeat.