AN EMPRESS AND HER FAVOURITES
When Sophie Augusta Frederica of Anhalt-Zerbst was romping on the
ramparts or in the streets of Stettin with burghers' children for
playmates, he would have been a bold prophet who would have predicted
that one day she would be the most splendid figure among Europe's
sovereigns, "the only great man in Europe," according to Voltaire, "an
angel before whom all men should be silent"; and that, while dazzling
Europe by her statesmanship and learning, she would afford more material
for scandal than any woman, except perhaps Christina of Sweden, who ever
wore a crown.
There is much, it is true, to be said in extenuation of the weakness
that has left such a stain on the memory of Catherine II. of Russia.
Equipped far beyond most women with the beauty and charms that fascinate
men, and craving more than most of her sex the love of man, she was
mated when little more than a child to the most degenerate Prince in all
Europe.
The Grand Duke Peter, heir to the Russian throne, who at sixteen took to
wife the girl-Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, was already an expert in
almost every vice. Imbecile in mind, he found his chief pleasure in the
company of the most degraded. He rarely went to bed sober--in fact, his
bride's first sight of him was when he was drunk, at the age of ten. He
was, too, "a liar and a coward, vicious and violent; pale, sickly, and
uncomely--a crooked soul in a prematurely ravaged body."
Such was the Grand Duke Peter, to whom the high-spirited, beautiful
Princess Sophie (thenceforth to be known as "Catherine") was tied for
life one day in the year 1744--a youth the very sight of whom repelled
her, while his vices filled her with loathing. Add to this revolting
union the fact that she found herself under the despotic rule of the
Empress Elizabeth, who made no concealment of her hatred and jealousy of
the fair young Princess, surrounded her with spies, and treated her as a
rebellious child, to be checked and bullied at every turn--and it is not
difficult to understand the spirit of recklessness and defiance that was
soon roused in Catherine's breast.
There was at the Russian Court no lack of temptation to indulge this
spirit of revolt to the full. The young German beauty, mated to worse
than a clown, soon had her Court of admirers to pour flatteries into her
dainty ears, and she would perhaps have been less than a woman if she
had not eagerly drunk them in. She had no need of anyone to tell her
that she was fair. "I know I am beautiful as the day," she once
exclaimed, as she looked at her mirrored reflection in her first ball
finery at St Petersburg, with a red rose in her glorious hair; and the
mirror told no flattering tale.
See the picture Poniatowski, one of her earliest and most ardent slaves,
paints of the young Grand Duchess. "With her black hair she had a
dazzling whiteness of skin, a vivid colour, large blue eyes prominent
and eloquent, black and long eyebrows, a Greek nose, a mouth that looked
made for kissing, a slight, rather tall figure, a carriage that was
lively, yet full of nobility, a pleasing voice, and a laugh as merry as
the humour through which she could pass with ease from the most playful
and childish amusements to the most fatiguing mathematical
calculations."
With the brain, even in those early years, of a clever man, she was
essentially a woman, with all a woman's passion for the admiration and
love of men; and one cannot wonder, however much one may deplore, that
while her imbecile husband was guzzling with common soldiers, or playing
with his toys and tin cannon in bed, vacuous smiles on his face, his
beautiful bride should find her own pleasures in the homage of a
Soltykoff, a Poniatowski, an Orloff, or any other of the legion of
lovers who in quick succession took her fancy.
The first among her admirers to capture her fancy was Sergius Soltykoff,
her chamberlain, high-born, "beautiful as the day," polished courtier,
supple-tongued wooer, to whom the Grand Duchess gave the heart her
husband spurned. But Soltykoff's reign was short; the fickle Princess,
ever seeking fresh conquests, wearied of him as of all her lovers in
turn, and his place was taken within a year by Stanislas Poniatowski, a
fascinating young Pole, who returned to St Petersburg with a reputation
of gallantry won in almost every Court of Europe.
Poniatowski had not perhaps the physical perfections of his dethroned
predecessor, but he had the well-stored brain that made an even more
potent appeal to Catherine. He could talk "like an angel" on every
subject that appealed to her, from art to philosophy; and he had,
moreover, a magnetic charm of manner which few women could resist.
Such a lover was, indeed, after her heart, for he brought romance and
adventure to his wooing; and whether he found his way to her boudoir
disguised as a ladies' tailor or as one of the Grand Duke's musicians,
or made open love to her under the very nose of her courtiers, he played
his rôle of lover to admiration. Once Peter, in jealous mood, threatened
to run his rival through with his sword, and, in his rage, "went into
his wife's bedroom and pulled her out of bed without leaving her time to
dress." An hour later his anger had changed to an amused complaisance,
and he was supping with the culprits, and with boisterous laughter was
drinking their healths.
When at last a political storm drove Poniatowski from Russia, Catherine,
who never forgot a banished lover, secured for him the crown of Poland.
Thus the favourites come and go, each supreme for a time, each
inevitably packed off to give place to a successor. With Poniatowski
away in Poland, Catherine cast her eyes round her Court to find a third
favourite, and her choice was soon made, for of all her army of admirers
there was one who fully satisfied her ideal of handsome manhood.
Of the five Orloff brothers, each a Goliath in stature and a Hercules in
strength, the handsomest was Gregory, "the giant with the face of an
angel." Towering head and shoulders over most of his fellow-courtiers,
with knotted muscles which could fell an ox or crush a horse-shoe with
the closing of a hand, Gregory Orloff was reputed the bravest man in
Russia, as he was the idol of his soldiers. He was also a notorious
gambler and drinker and the hero of countless love adventures.
No greater contrast could be possible than between this dare-devil son
of Anak and the cultured, almost feminine Poniatowski; but Catherine
loved, above all things, variety, and here it was in startling
abundance. Nor was her new lover any the less desirable because he was
some years younger than herself, or that his grandfather had been a
common soldier in the army of Peter the Great.
And Gregory Orloff proved himself as bold in wooing as he was brave in
war. For him there was no stealing up back stairs, no masquerading in
disguises. He was the elect favourite of the future Empress of Russia,
and all the world should know it. He was inseparable from his mistress,
and paid his court to her under the eyes of her husband; while
Catherine, thus emboldened, made as little concealment of her
partiality.
But troublous days were coming to break the idyll of their love. The
Empress Elizabeth, as was inevitable, at last drank herself to death,
and her nephew Peter, now a besotted imbecile of thirty-four, put on the
Imperial robes, and was free to indulge his madness without restraint.
The first use he made of his freedom was to subject his wife to every
insult and humiliation his debased brain could suggest. He flaunted his
amours and vices before her, taunted her in public with her own
indiscretions, and shouted in his cups that he would divorce her.
Not content with these outrages on his Empress, he lost no opportunity
of disgusting his subjects and driving his soldiers to the verge of
mutiny. Such an intolerable state of things could only have one issue.
The Emperor was undoubtedly mad; the Emperor must go.
Over the _coup d'état_ which followed we must pass hurriedly--the
conspiracy of Catherine and the Orloffs, the eager response of the army
which flocked to the Empress, "kissing me, embracing my hands, my feet,
my dress, and calling me their saviour"; the marching of the insurgent
troops to Oranienbaum, with Catherine, astride on horseback, at their
head; and Peter's craven submission, when he crawled on his knees to his
wife, with whimpering and tears, begging her to allow him to keep "his
mistress, his dog, his negro, and his violin."
The Emperor was safe behind barred doors at Mopsa; Catherine was now
Empress in fact as well as name. Three weeks later Peter was dead; was
he done to death by Catherine's orders? To this day none can say with
certainty. The story of this tragedy as told by Castèra makes gruesome
reading.
One day Alexis Orloff and Teplof appeared at Mopsa to announce to the
deposed sovereign his approaching deliverance and to ask a dinner of
him. Glasses and brandy were ordered, and while Teplof was amusing the
Tsar, Orloff filled the glasses, adding poison to one of them.
"The Tsar, suspecting no harm, took the poison and swallowed it. He was
soon seized with agonising pains. He screamed aloud for milk, but the
two monsters again presented poison to him and forced him to take it.
When the Tsar's valet bravely interposed he was hurled from the room. In
the midst of the tumult there entered Prince Baratinski, who commanded
the Guard. Orloff, who had already thrown down the Tsar, pressed upon
his chest with his own knees, holding him fast at the same time by the
throat. Baratinski and Teplof then passed a table-napkin with a sliding
knot round his neck, and the murderers accomplished the work of death by
strangling him."
Such is the story as it has come down to us, and as it was believed in
Russia at the time. That Gregory Orloff was innocent of a crime in which
his own brother played a leading part is as little to be credited as
that Catherine herself was in ignorance of the design on her husband's
life. But, however this may be, we are told that when the news of her
husband's death was brought to the Empress at a banquet, she was to all
appearance overcome with horror and grief. She left the table with
streaming eyes and spent the next few days in unapproachable solitude
in her rooms.
Thus at last Catherine was free both from the tyranny of Elizabeth and
from the brutality of her bestial husband. She was sole sovereign of all
the Russias, at liberty to indulge any caprice that entered her
versatile brain. That her subjects, almost to a man, regarded her with
horror as her husband's murderer, that this detestation was shared by
the army that had put her on the throne, and by the nobles who had been
her slaves, troubled her little. She was mistress of her fate, and
strong enough (as indeed she proved) to hold, with a firm grasp, the
sceptre she had won.
High as Gregory Orloff had stood in her favour before she came to her
crown, his position was now more splendid and secure. She showered her
favours on him with prodigal hand. Lands and jewels and gold were
squandered on her "First Favourite"--the official designation she
invented for him; and he wore on his broad chest her miniature in a
blazing oval of diamonds, the crowning mark of her approval. And to his
brothers she was almost equally generous, for in a few years of her
ascendancy the Orloffs were enriched by vast estates on which forty-five
thousand serfs toiled, by palaces, and by gold to the amount of
seventeen million roubles. Such it was to be in the good books of
Catherine II., Empress of Russia.
With riches and power, Gregory's ambition grew until he dreamt of
sitting on the throne itself by Catherine's side; and in her foolish
infatuation even this prize might have been his, had not wiser counsels
come to her rescue. "The Empress," said Panine to her, "can do what she
likes; but Madame Orloff can never be Empress of Russia." And thus
Gregory's greatest ambition was happily nipped in the bud.
The man who had played his cards with such skill and discretion in the
early days of his love-making had now, his head swollen by pride and
power, grown reckless. If he could not be Emperor in name, he would at
least wield the sceptre. The woman to whom he owed all was, he thought,
but a puppet in his hands, as ready to do his bidding as any of his
minions. But through all her dallying Catherine's smiles masked an iron
will. In heart she was a woman; in brain and will-power, a man. And
Orloff, like many another favourite, was to learn the lesson to his
cost.
The time came when she could no longer tolerate his airs and
assumptions. There was only one Empress, but lovers were plentiful, and
she already had an eye on his successor. And thus it was that one day
the swollen Orloff was sent on a diplomatic mission to arrange peace
between Russia and Turkey. When she bade him good-bye she called him her
"angel of peace," but she knew that it was her angel's farewell to his
paradise.
How the Ambassador, instead of making peace, stirred up the embers of
war into fresh flame is a matter of history. But he was not long left to
work such mad mischief. While he was swaggering at a Jassy fête, in a
costume ablaze with diamonds worth a million roubles, news came to him
of a good-looking young lieutenant who was not only installed in his
place by Catherine's side, but was actually occupying his own
apartments. Within an hour he was racing back to St Petersburg, resting
neither night nor day until he had covered the thousand leagues that
separated him from the capital.
Before, however, his sweating horses could enter it, he was stopped by
Catherine's emissaries and ordered to repair to the Imperial Palace at
Gatshina. And then he realised that his sun had indeed come to its
setting. His honours were soon stripped from him, and although he was
allowed to keep his lands, his gold and jewels, the spoils of Cupid, the
diamond-framed miniature, was taken away to adorn the breast of his
successor, the lieutenant.
Under this cloud of disfavour Orloff conducted himself with such
resignation--none knew better than he how futile it was to fight--that
Catherine, before many months had passed, not only recalled him to
Court, but secured for him a Princedom of the Holy Empire. "As for
Prince Gregory," she said amiably, "he is free to go or stay, to hunt,
to drink, or to gamble. I intend to live according to my own pleasure,
and in entire independence."
After a tragically brief wedded life with a beautiful girl-cousin, who
died of consumption, Orloff returned to St Petersburg to spend the last
few months of his life, "broken-hearted and mad." And to his last hour
his clouded brain was tortured with visions of the "avenging shade of
the murdered Peter."