PETER III. AND HIS BRIDE.
From 1728 to 1762.
Lineage of Peter III.--Chosen by Elizabeth as Her Successor.--The
Bride Chosen for Peter.--Her Lineage.--The Courtship.--The
Marriage.--Autobiography of Catharine.--Anecdotes of Peter.--His
Neglect of Catharine and His Debaucheries.--Amusements of the Russian
Court.--Military Execution of a Rat.--Accession of Peter III. to the
Throne.--Supremacy of Catharine.--Her Repudiation Threatened.--The
Conspiracy.--Its Successful Accomplishment.
Peter the Third was grandson of Peter the Great. His mother, Anne, the
eldest daughter of Peter and Catharine, married the Duke of Holstein,
who inherited a duchy on the eastern shores of the Baltic containing
some four thousand square miles of territory and about three hundred
thousand inhabitants. Their son and only child, Peter, was born in the
ducal castle at Kiel, the capital of the duchy, in the year 1728. The
blood of Peter the Great of Russia, and of Charles the Twelfth of
Sweden mingled in the veins of the young duke, of which fact he was
exceedingly proud. Soon after the birth of Peter, his mother, Anne,
died. The father of Peter was son of the eldest sister of Charles
XII., and, as such, being the nearest heir, would probably have
succeeded to the throne of Sweden had not the king's sudden death, by
a cannon ball, prevented him from designating his successor. The
widowed father of Peter, thus disappointed in his hopes of obtaining
the crown of Sweden, which his aunt Ulrica, his mother's sister,
successfully grasped, lived in great retirement. The idea had not
occurred to him that the crown of imperial Russia could, by any
chance, descend to his son, and the education of Peter was conducted
to qualify him to preside over his little patrimonial duchy.
When young Peter was fourteen years of age, the Empress Elizabeth, his
maternal aunt, to the surprise and delight of the family, summoned the
young prince to St. Petersburg, intimating her intention to transmit
to him her crown. But Peter was a thoroughly worthless boy. All
ignoble qualities seemed to be combined in his nature without any
redeeming virtues. Elizabeth having thus provided twenty millions of
people with a sovereign, looked about to find for that sovereign a
suitable wife. Upon the banks of the Oder there was a small
_principality_, as it was called, containing some thirteen hundred
square miles, about the size of the State of Rhode Island. Christian
Augustus, the prince of this little domain, had a daughter, Sophia, a
child rather remarkable both for beauty and vivacity. She was one year
younger than Peter, and Elizabeth fixed her choice upon Sophia as the
future spouse of her nephew. Peter was, at this time, with the empress
in Moscow, and Sophia was sent for to spend some time in the Russian
capital before the marriage, that she might become acquainted with the
Russian language and customs.
Both of these children had been educated Protestants, but they were
required to renounce the Lutheran faith and accept that of the Greek
church. Children as they were, they did this, of course, as readily as
they would have changed their dresses. With this change of religion
Sophia received a new name, that of Catharine, and by this name she
was ever afterward called. When these children, to whom the government
of the Russian empire was to be intrusted, first met, Peter was
fifteen years of age and Catharine fourteen. Catharine subsequently
commenced a minute journal, an autobiography of these her youthful
days, which opens vividly to our view the corruptions of the Russian
court. Nothing can be more wearisome than the life there developed. No
thought whatever seemed to be directed by the court to the interests
of the Russian people. They were no more thought of than the jaded
horses who dragged the chariots of the nobles. It is amazing that the
indignation of the millions can have slumbered so long.
Catharine, in her memoirs, naively describes young Peter, when she
first saw him, as "weak, ugly, little and sickly." From the age of ten
he had been addicted to intoxicating drinks. It was the 9th of
February, 1744, when Catharine was taken to Moscow. Peter, or, as he
was then called, the grand duke, was quite delighted to see the pretty
girl who was his destined wife, and began immediately to entertain
Catharine, as she says, "by informing me that he was in love with one
of the maids of honor to the empress, and that he would have been very
glad to have married her, but that he was resigned to marry me
instead, as his aunt wished it."
The grand duke had the faculty of making himself excessively
disagreeable to every one around him, and the affianced _haters_ were
in a constant quarrel. Peter could develop nothing but stupid
malignity. Catharine could wield the weapons of keen and cutting
sarcasm, which Peter felt as the mule feels the lash. Catharine's
mother had accompanied her to Moscow, but the bridal wardrobe, for a
princess, was extremely limited.
"I had arrived," she writes, "in Russia very badly provided for. If I
had three or four dresses in the world, it was the very outside, and
this at a court where people changed their dress three times a day. A
dozen chemises constituted the whole of my linen, and I had to use my
mother's sheets."
Soon after Catharine's arrival, the grand duke was taken with the
small-pox, and his natural ugliness was rendered still more revolting
by the disfigurement it caused. On the 10th of February, 1745, when
Catharine had been one year at Moscow, the grand duke celebrated his
seventeenth birthday. In her journal Catharine writes that Peter
seldom saw her, and was always glad of any excuse by which he could
avoid paying her any attention. Though Catharine cared as little for
him, still, with girlish ambition, she was eager to marry him, as she
very frankly records, in consideration of the crown which he would
place upon her brow, and her womanly nature was stung by his neglect.
"I fully perceived," she writes, "his want of interest, and how little
I was cared for. My self-esteem and vanity grieved in silence; but I
was too proud to complain. I should have thought myself degraded had
any one shown me a friendship which I could have taken for pity.
Nevertheless I shed tears when alone, then quietly dried them up, and
went to romp with my maids.
"I labored, however," writes Catharine, "to gain the affection of
every one. Great or small I neglected no one, but laid it down to
myself as a rule to believe that I stood in need of every one, and so
to act, in consequence, as to obtain the good will of all, and I
succeeded in doing so."
The 21st of August of this year was fixed for the nuptial day.
Catharine looked forward to it with extreme repugnance. Peter was
revolting in his aspect, disgusting in manners, a drunkard, and
licentious to such a degree that he took no pains to conceal his
amours. But the crown of Russia was in the eyes of Catharine so
glittering a prize, though then she had not entered her sixteenth
year, that she was willing to purchase it even at the price of
marrying Peter, the only price at which it could be obtained. She was
fully persuaded that Peter, with a feeble constitution and wallowing
in debauchery, could not live long, and that, at his death, she would
be undisputed empress.
"As the day of our nuptials approached," she writes, "I became more
and more melancholy. My heart predicted but little happiness; ambition
alone sustained me. In my inmost soul there was something which led me
never to doubt, for a single moment, that sooner or later I should
become sovereign empress of Russia in my own right."
The marriage was celebrated with much pomp; but a more cold and
heartless union was perhaps never solemnized. Catharine very
distinctly intimates that her husband, who was as low in his tastes
and companionship as he was degraded in his vices, left her at the
altar, to return to his more congenial harem.
"My beloved spouse," she writes, "did not trouble himself in the
slightest degree about me; but was constantly with his valets, playing
at soldiers, exercising them in his room, or changing his uniform
twenty times a day. I yawned and grew weary, having no one to speak
to."
Again she writes, "A fortnight after our marriage he confessed to me
that he was in love with Mademoiselle Carr, maid of honor to her
imperial majesty. He said that there was no comparison between that
lady and me. Surely, said I to myself, it would be impossible for me
not to be wretched with such a man as this were I to give way to
sentiments of tenderness thus requited. I might die of jealousy
without benefit to any one. I endeavored to master my feelings so as
not to be jealous of the man who did not love me. I was naturally
well-disposed, but I should have required a husband who had common
sense, which this one had not."
For amusement, the grand duke played cruelly with dogs in his room,
pretending to train them, whipping them from corner to corner. When
tired of this he would scrape execrably on a violin. He had many
little puppet soldiers, whom, hour after hour, he would marshal on the
floor in mimic war. He would dress his own servants and the maids of
Catharine in masks, and set them dancing, while he would dance with
them, playing at the same time on the fiddle.
"With rare perseverance," writes Catharine, "the grand duke trained a
pack of dogs, and with heavy blows of his whip, and cries like those
of the huntsmen, made them fly from one end to the other of his two
rooms, which were all he had. Such of the dogs as became tired, or got
out of rank, were severely punished, which made them howl still more.
On one occasion, hearing one of these animals howl piteously and for a
long time, I opened the door of my bed-room, where I was seated, and
which adjoined the apartment in which this scene was enacted, and saw
him holding this dog by the collar, suspended in the air, while a boy,
who was in his service, a Kalmuck by birth, held the animal by the
tail. It was a poor little King Charles spaniel, and the duke was
beating him with all his might with the heavy handle of a whip. I
interceded for the poor beast; but this only made him redouble his
blows. Unable to bear so cruel a scene, I returned to my room with
tears in my eyes. In general, tears and cries, instead of moving the
duke to pity, put him in a passion. Pity was a feeling that was
painful and even insupportable in his mind."
At one time there was a little hunchback girl in the court, upon whom
the duke fixed his vagrant desires, and she became his unconcealed
favorite. The duke was ever in the habit of talking freely with
Catharine about his paramours and praising their excellent qualities.
"Madame Vladisma said to me," writes Catharine, "that every one was
disgusted to see this little hunchback preferred to me. 'It can not be
helped,' I said, as the tears started to my eyes. I went to bed;
scarcely was I asleep, when the grand duke also came to bed. As he was
tipsy and knew not what he was doing, he spoke to me for the purpose
of expatiating on the eminent qualities of his favorite. To check his
garrulity I pretended to be fast asleep. He spoke still louder in
order to wake me; but finding that I slept, he gave me two or three
rather hard blows in the side with his fist, and dropped asleep
himself. I wept long and bitterly that night, as well on account of
the matter itself and the blows he had given me, as on that of my
general situation, which was, in all respects, as disagreeable as it
was wearisome."
One of the ridiculous and disgraceful amusements of the vulgar men and
women collected in the court of Elizabeth, was what was called
masquerade balls, in which all the men were required to dress as
women, and all the women as men, and yet no masks were worn.
"The men," Catharine writes, "wore large whaleboned petticoats, with
women's gowns, and the head-dresses worn on court days, while the
women appeared in the court costume of men. The men did not like these
reversals of their sex, and the greater part of them were in the worst
possible humor on these occasions, because they felt themselves to be
hideous in such disguises. The women looked like scrubby little boys,
while the more aged among them had thick short legs which were any
thing but ornamental. The only woman who looked really well, and
completely a man, was the empress herself. As she was very tall and
somewhat powerful, male attire suited her wonderfully well. She had
the handsomest leg I have ever seen with any man, and her foot was
admirably proportioned. She danced to perfection, and every thing she
did had a special grace, equally so whether she dressed as a man or a
woman."
Enervating and degrading pleasure and ambitious or revengeful wars,
engrossed the whole attention of the Russian court during the reign of
Elizabeth. The welfare of the people was not even thought of. The
following anecdote, illustrative of the character of Peter III., is
worthy of record in the words of Catharine:
"One day, when I went into the apartments of his imperial highness, I
beheld a great rat which he had hung, with all the paraphernalia of an
execution. I asked what all this meant. He told me that this rat had
committed a great crime, which, according to the laws of war, deserved
capital punishment. It had climbed the ramparts of a fortress of
card-board, which he had on a table in his cabinet, and had eaten two
sentinels, made of pith, who were on duty in the bastions. His setter
had caught the criminal, he had been tried by martial law and
immediately hung; and, as I saw, was to remain three days exposed as
a public example. In justification of the rat," continues Catharine,
"it may at least be said, that he was hung without having been
questioned or heard in his own defense."
It is not surprising that a woman, young, beautiful and vivacious,
living in a court where corruption was all around her, where an
unmarried empress was rendering herself notorious by her gallantries,
stung to the quick by the utter neglect of her husband, insulted by
the presence of his mistresses, and disgusted by his unmitigated
boobyism, should have sought solace in the friendship of others. And
it is not strange that such friendships should have ripened into love,
and that one thus tempted should have fallen. Catharine in her memoirs
does not deny her fall, though she can not refrain from allowing an
occasional word to drop from her pen, evidently intended in
extenuation. Much which is called virtue consists in the absence of
temptation.
Catharine's first son, Paul, was born on the 20th of September, 1753.
He was unquestionably the son of Count Sottikoff, a nobleman alike
distinguished for the graces of his person and of his mind. Through a
thousand perils and cunning intrigues, Catharine and the count
prosecuted their amour. Woe was, as usual, to both of them the result.
The empress gives a very touching account of her sufferings, in both
body and mind, on the occasion of the birth of her child.
"As for me," she writes, "I did nothing but weep and moan in my bed. I
neither could or would see anybody, I felt so miserable. I buried
myself in my bed, where I did nothing but grieve. When the forty days
of my confinement were over, the empress came a second time into my
chamber. My child was brought into my room; it was the first time I
had seen him since his birth."
One day Peter brought into his wife's room, for her amusement, a
letter which he had just received from one of his mistresses, Madame
Teploff. Showing the letter to Catharine, he said,
"Only think! she writes me a letter of four whole pages, and expects
that I should read it, and, what is more, answer it also; I, who have
to go to parade, then dine, then attend the rehearsal of an opera, and
the ballet which the cadets will dance at. I will tell her plainly
that I have not time, and, if she is vexed, I will quarrel with her
till next winter."
"That will certainly be the shortest way," Catharine coolly replied.
"These traits," she very truly adds in her narrative, "are
characteristic, and they will not therefore be out of place."
Such was the man and such the woman who succeeded to the throne of
Russia upon the death of the Empress Elizabeth. She had hardly emitted
her last breath, ere the courtiers, impatiently awaiting the event,
rushed to the apartments of the grand duke to congratulate him upon
his accession to the crown. He immediately mounted on horseback and
traversed the streets of St. Petersburg, scattering money among the
crowd. The soldiers gathered around him exclaiming, "Take care of us
and we will take care of you," Though the grand duke had been very
unpopular there was no outburst of opposition. The only claim Peter
III. had to the confidence of the nation was the fact that he was
grandson of Peter the Great. Conspiracies were, however, immediately
set on foot to eject him from the throne and give Catharine his seat.
Catharine had a high reputation for talent, and being very
affectionate in her disposition and cordial in her manners, had troops
of friends. Indeed, it is not strange that public sentiment should not
only have extenuated her faults, but should almost have applauded
them. Forgetting the commandments of God, and only remembering that
her brutal husband richly merited retaliation, the public almost
applauded the spirit with which she conducted her intrigues. The same
sentiment pervaded England when the miserable George IV. goaded his
wife to frenzy, and led her, in uncontrollable exasperation, to pay
him back in his own coin.
Fortunately for the imbecile Peter, he had enough sense to appreciate
the abilities of Catharine; and a sort of maudlin idea of justice, if
it were not, perhaps, utter stupidity, dissuaded him from resenting
her freedom in the choice of favorites. Upon commencing his reign, he
yielded himself to the guidance of her imperial mind, hoping to obtain
some dignity by the renown which her measures might reflect upon him.
Catharine advised him very wisely. She caused seventeen thousand
exiles to be recalled from Siberia, and abolished the odious secret
court of chancery--that court of political inquisition which, for
years, had kept all Russia trembling.
For a time, Russia resounded with the praises of the new sovereign,
and when Peter III. entered the senate and read an act permitting the
nobility to bear arms, or not, at their own discretion, and to visit
foreign countries whenever they pleased, a privilege which they had
not enjoyed before, the gratitude of the nobles was unbounded. It
should, however, be recorded that this edict proved to be but a dead
letter. It was expected that the nobles, as a matter of courtesy,
should always ask permission to leave, and this request was frequently
not granted. The secret tribunal, to which we have referred, exposed
persons of all ranks and both sexes to be arrested upon the slightest
suspicion. The accused was exposed to the most horrible tortures to
compel a confession. When every bone was broken and every joint
dislocated, and his body was mangled by the crushing wheel, if he
still had endurance to persist in his denial, the accuser was, in his
turn, placed upon the wheel, and every nerve of agony was tortured to
force a recantation of the charge.
Though Peter III. promulgated the wise edicts which were placed in his
hands, he had become so thoroughly imbruted by his dissolute life that
he made no attempt to tear himself away from his mistresses and his
drunken orgies.
Peter III. was quite infatuated in his admiration of Frederic of
Prussia. One of his first acts upon attaining the reins of government
was to dispatch an order forbidding the Russian armies any longer to
coöperate with Austria against Prussia. This command was speedily
followed by another, directing the Russian generals to hold themselves
and their troops obedient to the instructions of Frederic, and to
coöperate in every way with him to repel their former allies, the
Austrians. It was the caprice of a drunken semi-idiot which thus
rescued Frederic the Great from disgrace and utter ruin. The Emperor
of Prussia had sufficient sagacity to foresee that Peter III. would
not long maintain his seat upon the throne. He accordingly directed
his minister at St. Petersburg, while continuing to live in great
intimacy with the tzar, to pay the most deferential attention to the
empress.
There was no end to the caprices of Peter the drunkard. At one time he
would leave the whole administration of affairs in the hands of
Catharine, and again he would treat her in the most contemptuous and
insulting manner. In one of the pompous ceremonials of the court, when
the empress, adorned with all the marks of imperial dignity, shared
the throne with Peter, the tzar called one of his mistresses to the
conspicuous seat he occupied with the empress, and made her sit down
by his side. Catharine immediately rose and retired. At a public
festival that same evening, Peter, half drunk, publicly and loudly
launched at her an epithet the grossest which could be addressed to a
woman. Catharine was so shocked that she burst into tears. The
sympathy of the spectators was deeply excited in her behalf, and their
indignation roused against the tzar.
While Peter III. was developing his true character of brute and
buffoon, gathering around him the lowest profligates, and reveling in
the most debasing and vulgar vices, Catharine, though guilty and
unhappy, was holding her court with dignity and affability, which
charmed all who approached her. She paid profound respect to the
external observances of religion, daily performing her devotions in
the churches, accosting the poor with benignity, treating the clergy
with marked respect, and winning all hearts by her kindness and
sympathy.
One of the mistresses of Peter III., the Countess Vorontzof, had
gained such a boundless influence over her paramour, that she had
extorted from him the promise that he would repudiate Catharine, marry
her, and crown her as empress. Elated by this promise, she had the
imprudence to boast of it. Her father and several of the courtiers
whose fortunes her favor would secure, were busy in paving her way to
the throne. The numerous friends of Catharine were excited, and were
equally active in thwarting the plans of the tzar. Peter took no pains
to conceal his intentions, and gloried in proclaiming the illegitimacy
of Paul, the son of the empress. Loathsome as his own life was, he
seemed to think that his denunciations of Catharine, whose purity he
had insulted and whose heart he had crushed, would secure for him the
moral support of his subjects and of Europe. But he was mistaken. The
sinning Catharine was an angel of purity compared with the beastly
Peter.
It was necessary for Peter to move with caution, for Catharine had
ability, energy, innumerable friends, and was one of the last women in
the world quietly to submit to be plunged into a dungeon, and then to
be led to the scaffold, and by such a man as her despicable spouse.
Peter III. was by no means a match for Catharine. About twelve miles
from St. Petersburg, on the southern shore of the Bay of Cronstadt,
and nearly opposite the renowned fortresses of Cronstadt which command
the approaches to St. Petersburg, was the imperial summer palace of
Peterhof, which for some time had been the favorite residence of
Catharine. A few miles further down the bay, which runs east and west,
was the palace of Oranienbaum, in the decoration of which many
succeeding monarchs had lavished large sums. This was Peter's
favorite resort, and its halls ever echoed with the carousings of the
prince and his boon companions. Every year, on the 8th of July, there
is a grand festival at Peterhof in honor of Peter and Paul, the patron
saints of the imperial house. This was the time fixed upon by
Catharine and her friends for the accomplishment of their plans. The
tzar, on the evening of the 8th of July, was at Oranienbaum,
surrounded by a bevy of the most beautiful females of his court.
Catharine was at Peterhof. It was a warm summer's night, and the queen
lodged in a small _cottage orné_ called Montplaisir, which was
situated in the garden. They had not intended to carry their plot into
execution that night, but an alarm precipitated their action. At two
o'clock in the morning Catharine was awoke from a sound sleep, by some
one of her friends entering her room, exclaiming,
"Your majesty has not a moment to lose. Rise and follow me!"
Catharine, alarmed, called her confidential attendant, dressed
hurriedly in disguise, and entered a carriage which was waiting for
her at the garden gate. The horses were goaded to their utmost speed
on the road to St. Petersburg, and so inconsiderately that soon one of
them fell in utter exhaustion. They were still at some distance from
the city, and the energetic empress alighted and pressed forward on
foot. Soon they chanced to meet a peasant, driving a light cart. Count
Orloff, who was a reputed lover of Catharine, and was guiding in this
movement, seized the horse, placed the empress in the cart, and drove
on. These delays had occupied so much time that it was seven o'clock
in the morning before they reached St. Petersburg. The empress, with
her companions, immediately proceeded to the barracks, where most of
the soldiers were quartered, and whose officers had been gained over,
and threw herself upon their protection.
"Danger," she said to the soldiers, "has compelled me to fly to you
for help. The tzar had intended to put me to death, together with my
son. I had no other means of escaping death than by flight. I throw
myself into your arms!"
Such an appeal from a woman, beautiful, beloved and imploring
protection from the murderous hands of one who was hated and despised,
inspired every bosom with indignation and with enthusiasm in her
behalf. With one impulse they took an oath to die, if necessary, in
her defense; and cries of "Long live the empress" filled the air. In
two hours Catharine found herself at the head of several thousand
veteran soldiers. She was also in possession of the arsenals; and the
great mass of the population of St. Petersburg were clamorously
advocating her cause.
Accompanied by a numerous and brilliant suite, the empress then
repaired to the metropolitan church, where the archbishop and a great
number of ecclesiastics, whose coöperation had been secured, received
her, and the venerable archbishop, a man of imposing character and
appearance, dressed in his sacerdotal robes, led her to the altar, and
placing the imperial crown upon her head, proclaimed her sovereign of
all the Russias, with the title of Catharine the Second. A _Te Deum_
was then chanted, and the shouts of the multitude proclaimed the
cordiality with which the populace accepted the revolution. The
empress then repaired to the imperial palace, which was thrown open to
all the people, and which, for hours, was thronged with the masses,
who fell upon their knees before her, taking their oath of allegiance.
The friends of Catharine were, in the meantime, everywhere busy in
putting the city in a state of defense, and in posting cannon to sweep
the streets should Peter attempt resistance. The tzar seemed to be
left without a friend. No one even took the trouble to inform him of
what was transpiring. Troops in the vicinity were marched into the
city, and before the end of the day, Catharine found herself at the
head of fifteen thousand men; the most formidable defenses were
arranged, strict order prevailed, and not a drop of blood had been
shed. The manifesto of the empress, which had been secretly printed,
was distributed throughout the city, and a day appointed when the
foreign embassadors would be received by Catharine. The revolution
seemed already accomplished without a struggle and almost without an
effort.