birthday coincided with the victory of Pultava. When Peter came
swaggering back to Moscow he was met by the announcement of the birth
of a daughter at Kolomenskoe. The great Czar cut short the victory
celebration in the Kremlin in order to post away to see his babe. It
was his eighth child and a girl, but Peter was never blasé.
Elisabeth was a pampered darling. Even as an infant she was a show
child and a prize beauty. Her portrait in the nude, suggesting the
babyhood of Venus, is one of the art treasures of the Petersburg
collection. This much admired work of art may have contributed to that
lack of modesty for which she was celebrated afterward. Her father’s
exotic taste expressed itself in the rich Spanish costumes which
formed her everyday wear, and in the pets such as monkeys and parrots
which he gave her. The child was affectionate but not intellectual.
She liked to sing and dance and amuse herself. The only book she ever
read was the Bible. Her gayety was tempered by a melancholy which
grew on her as she advanced in years. The approach of these attacks
was marked by an excess of piety to which she completely abandoned
herself. She prayed for hours at a time, fasted with enthusiasm, and
made long pilgrimages on foot to the musty shrines of miracle-working
saints. Her religious orgies alternated with periods of abandonment
to frivolity and self-indulgence. She astonished the world by these
apparent contradictions. It seemed paradoxical that she should at one
and the same time be so immoral and so religious. As she reveled in
the follies and gayeties of Butter Week, so she reveled in the rituals
and mummeries of the Greek Church. She was fully as religious as her
brother Alexei, whose orthodoxy had so infuriated Peter the Great that
he put him to the torture.
Elisabeth was, also like Alexei, intensely Russian. Although her mother
had been a foreigner and a Lutheran, and her father had been as much of
a Dutchman as he could make himself, Lisanka was pure Slav. It is true
that she preferred Petersburg to Moscow as a residence, and that she
built the great Winter Palace there in the manner of Versailles and not
of Kolomenskoe. In this respect and in her politics she followed in the
footsteps of her father. But her personal way of life was exceedingly
Russian and somewhat provincial. She loved luxury and show as much as
did Peter himself, but she was at heart a home-keeping body with a
fondness for the folk-ways of her country. Her life among the peasants
had helped to make her so. Among her lovers were no foreigners. Shubin,
Voshinsky, Buturlin, Razumovsky, and Shuvalov--there were only five
in fact though tradition makes them three hundred--were all Russians.
The two Annas were given to German favorites who were inclined to be
ambitious and efficient. Elisabeth’s lovers were an easy-going lot
who did not exploit their position. She, on her side, loved them for
their _beaux yeux_ and not for their ability or distinction. She kept
a sergeant, a hostler, a page, and a chorister in turn. Perhaps the
French Duke who once refused her hand felt more than ever justified in
his decision when he heard that the beautiful daughter of Peter the
Great had consoled herself with such simple and lowly persons.
Elisabeth adored her family. The child who was painted in the nude and
paraded in Spanish finery before an admiring world was her father’s pet
and plaything. For her sake Peter decided to make her mother his legal
wife and to crown her as Empress. The girl was still in her ’teens when
her father and mother died and her sister Anne married and went to a
foreign country. From this time on her nostalgia for these family ties
never left her. Loyalty to them was the mainspring of her life.
Elisabeth’s mother had a German physician whose name was Lestocq. He
was born in Hanover and was one of the many German doctors whom Peter
the Great brought to Russia. From the year 1713 he was attached to
Catherine’s family. Elisabeth therefore inherited him from her mother
and allowed herself to be led by him, which Lestocq was not loth to
do. He liked to pull the strings of political intrigue to gratify his
sense of power. It was he who finally persuaded Elisabeth to dispossess
the Regent and her infant son and seize the crown for herself. The
Grand Duchess was now thirty-two years old. She had no more real desire
to be Empress than her mother had had before her, but Lestocq was an
energetic manager. He induced her at last to act by telling her stories
about the torture and the convent that awaited her at the hands of
Regent Anna. He also offered her sound French money that Versailles was
ready to invest in a Petersburg revolution.
Elisabeth’s imagination was no doubt stimulated by recent events in
Austria. In October, 1740, Charles VI died and named his daughter as
his successor. If Maria Theresa had become an Empress why should not
Elisabeth Petrovna? No Pragmatic Sanction was needed in Russia where
two Empresses had already occupied the throne. If Europe was going to
ask questions, Elisabeth could produce her mother’s will which she
herself had signed. The testament read: “If the Grand Duke (Peter
II) should die without heirs, the right to ascend the throne shall
pass after him to the Czarevna with her descendants, after her to
the Czarevna Elisabeth with her descendants, after her to the Grand
Duchess; whereby masculine heirs shall have at all times preference
over feminine. But never at any time shall anyone rule over the Russian
Empire who does not belong to the Greek Church or who wears already
another crown.” The Czarevna Anna had left a son in Kiel, but he was
a Lutheran. The will in question had been declared illegal by Empress
Anna but was now restored to legality by Empress Elisabeth who thought
it best to have a document to justify what she intended to do anyway.
The revolution was not as costly as a modern theatrical revue, with
which the old palace revolutions in Russia had much in common.
Elisabeth Petrovna came to the city for the winter and kept open house
in a little palace on the Field of Mars. While the Regent remained
invisible in the Winter Palace, Elisabeth went abroad early and late
and smiled upon the population. She visited the guards in the barracks,
stood godmother to their children and gambled away her French money to
them. On fine days she sped through the snowy streets of Petersburg,
a shining Snegurotchka, with guardsmen perched on the rear of her
sleigh. The apathetic Regent bestirred herself sufficiently to reprove
Elisabeth for her improprieties. But Elisabeth knew that her mother had
not become Empress by observing the proprieties nor had Peter the Great
much regard for formalities. Her mother’s own daughter, Elisabeth had a
way with soldiers which she now used for political ends. The guardsmen
adored her.
Though Peter the Great had been feared and hated in his lifetime, he
had now been dead long enough to become a popular idol. His youngest
and his favorite daughter had only to stretch out her hand to collect
the interest on his popularity. Elisabeth’s revolution was easy, so
easy that the foreign diplomats were shocked. They reported to their
home offices that a purse of money, a cask of wine, and a handful
of soldiers had done it all. Elisabeth’s revolution was regarded
as an illustration of the political indifference and supineness of
the Russian people; but, as Bilbassov has touchily but convincingly
pointed out, the revolution of 1741 was easy because it fulfilled the
popular wish. The unlovely Annas had had their day and the turn of the
gracious Elisabeth had come. Thirty-two, unmarried, and childless--she
prolonged her beloved dynasty through a kind of political Indian Summer.
On the 5th of December, 1741, Lestocq decided that the time for action
had come. Elisabeth left her palace at midnight, and, accompanied by
Lestocq and Vorontsov, was whirled away in her sleigh to midnight mass.
After the litany, she again entered her sleigh and sped to the barracks
of the Preobrazhensky regiment. While three hundred guardsmen were
silently getting into line, she disappeared into her dressing-room and
arrayed herself as if for a première. Presently she appeared before the
soldiers in full military regalia, a shirt of mail over her shoulders
and a spontoon in her hand. If Peter the Great had fancied himself
a Viking, his daughter fancied herself a Brunnhilde. Russia had had
Empresses before Elisabeth, but she was the first to seize the throne
in masculine attire. She set the fashion for the Empress who came after
her.
[Illustration: PETER THE GREAT AND HIS SON ALEXEI]
In the dense black cold of a December night in Petersburg, the soldiers
took the oath of allegiance under their breaths. Elisabeth in her coat
of mail placed herself at the head of her warriors and marched to the
winter palace, where the sleepy Anna, though scarcely more sleepy than
usual, and the shivering Anthony Ulrich were hustled into their clothes
at the point of the sword. One hopes at least that the von Mengden
sisters bore themselves with spirit during the invasion; nothing of the
kind was to be expected of the feeble Brunswick pair. The Regent and
her household were removed by the guards to the palace on the Field of
Mars which Elisabeth had just abandoned, while Elisabeth remained in
the imperial chambers.
[Illustration: IVAN THE TERRIBLE AND HIS SON IVAN
_From a painting by Repin_]
The baby Ivan, asleep in his cradle, was awakened by a tall shining
figure in a coat of mail. Elisabeth kissed him and cried over him. The
childless woman found it hard to let him go when the soldiers carried
him away.
5
Almost the first act of the new Empress was to select her successor.
Her choice was hastily made and precipitately executed. The indolent
woman, who usually had to be prodded into action by her advisers,
showed great energy and decision in this matter. She dispatched a
messenger secretly to Kiel and brought her nephew, Karl Peter Ulrich,
to Petersburg. She told her intentions to nobody until she had the boy
safe in her keeping. He was inducted into the Greek Church, proclaimed
heir to the throne with summary haste. The determined Empress worked
the priests over-time to bring this about. To make the step irrevocable
and cut off all possibility of retreat for the boy, she liquidated
his well-founded claim to the Swedish throne. She made it a condition
of the Russian-Swedish treaty that the former guardian of her nephew,
Adolph Friedrich of Holstein, should be nominated in her nephew’s place
as heir-apparent of the Swedish crown. By these measures, Karl Peter
Ulrich was cut off from his Swedish expectations and became Grand Duke
Peter Feodorovich, a good Romanov name that was supposed to wipe out
the taint of his Lutheran past.
Elisabeth had proclaimed her nephew heir without consulting the Privy
Council or the Senate. She did not even ask advice of the nobles who
had led her party and supported her revolution. The gentlemen thus
overlooked were irritated and everybody was mystified by her driving
haste. The diplomats were obliged to find reasons for her behavior,
and there were many near at hand. Her sister’s son was her competitor
for the throne and if his claims were backed by France and Sweden they
might prove dangerous. As Grand Duke of Russia he was in the hands of
his aunt. It was also seriously suggested that the pious Empress wished
to bring another soul into the Greek Church and that she wished to find
a good excuse for not marrying.
Her devotion to the dead Anushka was a real factor, but there
was something more. Her behavior was a good deal like that of a
pathological kidnapper. She cried over little Ivan in his cradle
but she had let him go. Peter was never to escape. In her several
kidnappings, for this was only the first, she always maintained an
appearance of reasonableness. The considerations of state which she
invented to justify her abduction of her nephew and her nephew’s heir
were merely convenient excuses for the satisfaction of her desire for
children.
In spite of Elisabeth’s much heralded reputation as a voluptuary, it is
impossible to find any authentic traces of her children. Her mother’s
illegitimate offspring and those of Catherine the Great are a matter
of common knowledge. But no tradition remains to account for those
of Elisabeth. Did she actually have no children or did she dispose
of them so completely that not even a rumor of their existence came
through? It seems hardly consistent with her character as we know it
that she should have been so sensitive to public opinion as to have
drowned them. In any case she had all the symptoms of a woman who had
been disappointed in maternity. Romantic and sentimental about all
family ties, she had mourned her lost lover for twenty-five years and
cherished a feeling of widowhood. When the Grand Duke was confirmed in
the palace chapel, Elisabeth threw herself upon the ground and burst
into a flood of tears.
6
Three years after the Empress had adopted Peter, she sent an envoy
to Kiel to find out something about the lad. The results of the
investigation were not what any modern child-placing agency would call
encouraging.
His mother died three months after his birth. The boy’s father, a
cruel, sickly little man, neglected his son as he had neglected his
wife. He died early, leaving Peter fully orphaned at the age of ten.
The lad was brought up by a Swedish governor named Brümmer who achieved
such bad results that he was accused of having intentionally destroyed
the boy’s character. The Russians, Bestushev and Panin, believed
that Brümmer, after discovering that Peter was to be the heir to the
Russian throne and not the Swedish, took pains to corrupt his mind
and disposition. “But I have always doubted this abomination,” says
Catherine, “my opinion is that the unsuccessful education of Peter III
is to be traced to a combination of unfortunate circumstances.”
The boy’s endowment was poor; there had been stupid Romanovs before
him. Many excuses have been suggested for his inability to learn. He
was taught Russian and Swedish alternately because he had pretensions
to both crowns, and as a result he learned neither. But many children
learn two languages whether alternately or simultaneously. Another
excuse for his shortcomings relates that the Rector of the Kiel Grammar
School who undertook to teach him Latin employed such tactless methods
that Peter learned only to hate all study. When he arrived in Moscow
at the age of fourteen he knew nothing at all. The Empress, whose
standards were certainly not very high, was much disturbed by his
ignorance and hastened to give him a tutor.
Stehlin was a forerunner of the best modern teachers of the
feeble-minded. He used concrete materials as much as possible,
borrowing from the art gallery coins and medals, picture books, globes
and models. As the Grand Duke was literally unable to sit still,
Stehlin walked up and down the room with him. For three years the
patient man kept it up, although his unconventional teaching was often
ridiculed. The scholars thought him a jester instead of a teacher.
Nevertheless Stehlin seems to have been the only one in the Grand
Duke’s environment who made any attempt to handle the boy intelligently
and sympathetically. Peter learned little or nothing, it is true, but
he remained on friendly terms with his preceptor. The mischief had been
done long before Stehlin had a chance at him. Spoiled by his nurses,
Peter had been handed over at seven to brutal Holstein officers who
subjected him to a military régime. At fourteen he was passionately
fond of military drill but had no more endurance than a baby. To play
with toy soldiers was his idea of manœuvres.
Brümmer, his Swedish governor, was a hard-boiled cavalry officer.
Stehlin said of Brümmer that he might be fit to train horses but he
was not fit to educate a human being. In order to harden his pupil, he
tortured him. His favorite punishments were to deprive the boy of his
meals, to beat him with a riding-whip, to make him kneel with naked
skin upon dry peas. The victim responded as might be expected. He was
timid and antagonistic, cowardly and boastful. He only made friends
with the meanest of the servants, those whom he was allowed to strike,
and he tortured his pet animals. By the time he was brought to Russia
to become its future Czar he was an institution case.
Life had been made too hard for Peter. His instinct of survival had
been undermined. He frequently fell ill and with every attack it was
thought that he was going to die. The grandson of Great Peter, that
miracle of human energy, had no energy at all. He was just a stupid
little boy who was destined never to grow up.
[Illustration]
IV
SHE GOES TO RUSSIA
The Princess Johanna Elisabeth of Anhalt-Zerbst wrote with gilt ink
and many flourishes. Like King Frederick and every other educated
person in the Germany of her times she carried on her correspondence
in French. Her style was as ornate as her penmanship, for she never
lacked the courage of her enthusiasms. As a finished letter-writer
she lost no opportunity to display her art. When the news came that
Elisabeth Petrovna had ascended the Russian throne, she at once wrote
to congratulate the new Empress who might have been her sister-in-law.
It was an exciting moment when the reply came back, penned by the
hand of the glorious autocrat herself. Direct communication had been
established between the obscure Stettin family and the imperial court
of Petersburg. The enterprising Princess walked on air.
Luck favored her. She had in her possession a precious relic which the
Empress wanted, a portrait of Elisabeth’s dead sister Anne. It had been
painted many years before by Axel von Mardefeld, the Prussian minister
to Russia. Mardefeld was a seasoned diplomat who had survived twenty
years of service at the Russian court and expected to survive many
more. He spared no pains to ingratiate himself with the new Empress.
The portrait which he had painted of the dead Anushka gave him his
opportunity. He knew that this work of art, which had strayed out of
Russia, was now in the hands of a trustworthy person, the Princess of
Anhalt-Zerbst. Elisabeth was as eager to secure the return of this
family relic as her father would have been to import a priceless
Italian Venus. At the suggestion of Mardefeld, she wrote to her “dear
niece,” the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, and begged for the return of the
picture promising to reward the sender at the earliest opportunity.
The Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst was naturally delighted to do a favor for
the Empress of Russia. The portrait was sent at once: soon a messenger
came posting back to Berlin bearing a return gift from the Empress. It
was a miniature of Elisabeth set in diamonds worth eighteen thousand
rubles. The Princess did not allow the grass to grow under her feet.
She had her daughter’s portrait painted by Pesne, and the following
spring Uncle August of Holstein made a journey to Petersburg to bear
this offering to the Empress. Stehlin thought the workmanship was
poor; he said the elderly artist had lost his skill. But Elisabeth was
no connoisseur as Peter the Great had been. It was the portrait of a
pleasant-looking, well-grown young woman. Her Imperial Highness did not
ask for more; her feelings could supply the rest.
In the meantime Petersburg buzzed with speculation concerning the Grand
Duke’s marriage. The diplomats had been taken by surprise when the
Empress had produced her nephew as her heir, and they were resolved to
be more alert in the matter of his marriage. Gossip spoke of several
Princesses, not all of whom were real. The French Princess who figured
in the rumors absolutely did not exist. In Saxony, however, there
lived a real Princess who was sponsored by a strong party headed
by Bestushev the Vice-Chancellor. The Princess Marianna was the
daughter of August the Strong who, having more than a hundred children
altogether, did not consider them as precious as if he had been the
father of only five or six. He was willing to send Marianna to Russia.
Besides, as King of Poland he had strong political reasons for wanting
an alliance with that country. He would be delighted to marry his
daughter to the Grand Duke.
Frederick of Prussia wished at all costs to prevent this alliance.
It was a trying situation for him. He had two marriageable sisters
with either of whom he might have filled the breach. But as a brother
Frederick was too chivalrous. He belonged to one of those families
whose members hate each other cordially yet cling inseparably together
against all the rest of the world. The idea of sending Ulrica or
Amelia to Russia filled their brother’s soul with consternation. “In
order to destroy the Saxon’s project,” he wrote to Mardefeld, “propose
a Princess from some old ducal house of Germany. With regard to my
sisters, you know my opinion. I shall send neither of them to Russia. I
wonder that the Empress does not hold to her choice of the Princess of
Zerbst, since she is of the Holstein family that the Empress loves so
much. Besides there are still two Princesses in Hessen-Darmstadt, one
of whom is twenty and the other eighteen years of age.” Commenting on
his conflict at this crisis, Frederick afterwards wrote, “Nothing was
more contrary to the welfare of the state than to permit this alliance;
nothing was more unnatural than to send the Princess Ulrica there.
Woe to those politicians who sacrifice even their own blood to their
interests and ambition.” Thus Frederick agonized while the Russian
Empress kept her counsel. It appears that she never wanted Ulrica for
the Grand Duke, having destined her for another rôle, the rôle that she
later came to fill as Queen of Sweden.
The Empress’s choice was made. Her hesitation sprang from other causes.
An obstacle had to be removed; it was the near relationship existing
between the Grand Duke Peter and the Princess Fike of Zerbst. The point
was referred to the Archbishop of Novgorod and the Synod, the facts of
the relationship being given and the young lady’s name withheld--such
was Elisabeth’s passion for secrecy. The Synod reported that the Church
had no objection to the marriage; that the couple were cousins did
not count since they were related on the maternal side only. Their
relationship was therefore merely “the shadow of a relationship.”
Still the impatient Empress hesitated. A second obstacle deterred her.
This time it was a question for physicians not clergymen to settle.
Lestocq was a physician and Lestocq had serious reservations regarding
the immediate marriage of the Grand Duke. Stehlin says that Lestocq
advised the Empress to wait at least another year while other memoirs
say that the Hanover physician told the Empress to postpone the boy’s
marriage until he was twenty-one. It was plain to all observers that
the boy was under-sized and under-developed for his age. The English
ambassador said of him, “He looks very puny and he is not taller
at fourteen than the generality of children, not remarkably small,
are at ten.” The worst of it was that he did not improve in his new
environment.
The Grand Duke’s vitality was low. Whenever anything went wrong, he
fell ill and he recovered but slowly. The morbid relation between
himself and his governor Brümmer continued unabated under the auspices
of his adoring but ignorant aunt. Scenes of violence took place which
made the amiable Stehlin’s hair stand on end but which he concealed
from the easy-going Empress. His pupil was terrorized and browbeaten
by the Prussian officer and the foolish boy had no other idea of
self-defense than to fight back with blustering impotent rage. He went
so far as to threaten Brümmer with his dagger. Undoubtedly the weak boy
could be irritating.