degrees of impatience. To Frederick the Great the news was manna in
the wilderness; it made him at last victor in the Seven Years’ War.
To Grand Duke Peter, it was the release of all his dreams; as Czar of
Russia, he could now follow his illusions wherever they led him, even
to the last limits of destruction. To Grand Duchess Catherine, it was
not altogether opportune. Three years before she had been more eager
for Elisabeth’s death than she was when the Empress at last made way
for her. Catherine was at this time pregnant with her third child and
more than ever at odds with the Grand Duke, her husband. Her new lover
was Gregory Orlov, a handsome young captain of artillery.
While Peter celebrated his accession to the throne with the usual
ceremonies, she withdrew herself discreetly from the public gaze. She
draped herself in heavy black and paid her daily homage to the corpse
of the Empress, kneeling for hours beside the sarcophagus. According to
custom the body lay exposed to public view for six weeks. In the fifth
week, with her own hands and without a quiver, she placed a golden
crown on the head of this malodorous object. It was her final act of
obeisance to the Empress who preceded her.
[Illustration]
VIII
ORLOV
In the six weeks which intervened between the death and burial of
Elisabeth Petrovna, the new Czar had offended public opinion in
numberless ways. While the Grand Duchess was diligently observing all
the rituals ordained by the Greek Church for the dead Empress, Peter
III was conducting himself like a boy just let out from school. His
sharp strident tones could be heard down the corridors, conveying
the joyous excitement he was unable to control. He could not kneel
endlessly beside the coffin, as Catherine did, nor even stand, but
paced restlessly about the church talking and grimacing. On the day of
the funeral his grotesque behaviour shocked the people in the street.
He was in a good humor, says Catherine, and allowed himself his little
joke.
As the long procession passed through the Nevsky Prospect, across
the bridge, and into the island fortress of Saint Peter and Saint
Paul, Peter walked immediately behind the coffin. He wore a mourning
robe of state with a long train, the end of which was borne by Count
Sheremetiev. The Czar’s little joke was to stop in his tracks from
time to time and then hasten forward with long strides to overtake
the coffin. The unhappy Count was unable to manage the train of his
master, which flapped wildly in the wind to the great delight of the
Czar who repeated the jest again and again. The procession was finally
so jammed by this trick that a messenger was sent forward to stop the
leaders until they could catch up. The new Czar who amused himself so
well at the funeral of his late aunt, was nearly thirty-five years old.
The public was scandalized and his courtiers blushed for him before
the gossips of Europe. Still they continued to kiss the hand of his
Imperial Highness and to observe all the forms of supreme respect. Like
crows they circled in awe around this feeble image of dignity and awe.
The reign of Peter III lasted altogether six months. His ukases were
a hodge-podge of foolish and reasonable commands. One day he gave an
order that the gentlemen of the court might hunt ravens and other birds
in the streets of Petersburg; also that they might shoot on sight
all dogs found in the vicinity of the palace. Another day he freed
the nobles from compulsory military service. Although the princes
and counts were delighted with this law, they still mistrusted their
capricious emancipator and feared his next measure. Petersburg was
filled with rumors of what it might be. It was reported that Peter III
meant to divorce Catherine and to marry Elisabeth Vorontsov, and that,
to cement this innovation, all the other ladies of the court would be
required to divorce their husbands and take new ones. So jumpy was the
public and so whimsical was their Czar that this nonsense was easily
believed.
Wherever Peter III appeared in public his reputation for capriciousness
grew. When he went to see the guard changed, which he often did, he
would beat the soldiers and even the spectators. Countess Dashkov
tells a story of how his negro servant Narcissus was redeemed by a
ceremony after having had a fight with the scavenger of the regiment.
It was at a military parade. An officer suggested jokingly, “Let
Narcissus pass three times under the banners of the regiment.” Peter,
intensely serious, was delighted with the idea; he insisted that the
points of the banners should draw blood from the negro’s head, which
caused Narcissus to set up a loud yell to the immense amusement of
the officers and the solemn satisfaction of the Emperor. His beloved
Narcissus had been cleansed by a ritual. Numerous stories of his
behaviour survive as sufficient evidence that his mind had wholly lost
its unity and integrity. Bilbassov says of his condition, “a man of
sound sense and clear memory can not understand the conceited blindness
in which the Duke of Holstein, who had become Emperor of Russia, lived.
The frequent drunkenness of Peter III does not explain it.... It must
be traced back to the unfortunate coincidence between the personal
qualities of Peter III and the unlimited power which became his by
inheritance.... He had lost the power to think straight.”
The pathos of his condition was that it inspired in his environment
so much hatred and so little sympathy. As a rule, only the women, to
whom he turned with childish appeal, took pity on him. Even Catherine,
his wife, who has gone down in history as his greatest enemy, wrote
tolerantly of him in her memoirs, “He did not have a bad heart; but a
weak man usually has not.” And Elisabeth Vorontsov, his mistress, was
loyal to him all through the final crash of his fortunes with which his
brief reign came to an end. Her behavior in that crisis shows that her
attitude toward Peter all along had had something in it besides the
mere ambition which was supposed to have guided her. But Peter had no
friend among the men. He was afraid of men and therefore he challenged
and insulted them on every occasion. From the period of his early
fights with his tutors, it could be foreseen that Peter’s greatest
safety in the future would consist in keeping as far as possible
away from his own sex. It would be an ominous day for him if he were
ever cut off wholly from the mercy of women and cast entirely on the
protection of men.
2
The political acts of Peter III were of a kind which no Czar of Russia
could have perpetrated and survived. He prattled about his devotion and
allegiance to the King of Prussia with an openness which embarrassed
even the Prussian representative. One of his first steps as Czar
was to make peace with Prussia. Not satisfied with a mere cessation
of hostilities, he signed a treaty of eternal peace with Prussia in
April, 1762. It was celebrated with great pomp and ceremony, during
which the Czar brought forth his famous toast to the “3 times 3.” On
being questioned he said that the trio whom he had in mind consisted
of himself, Peter III, George III of England, and Frederick III of
Prussia. When it was pointed out to him that Frederick was only the
II’d, it did not disturb him in the least nor interfere with the
elaborate design of fireworks which he ordered to burn upon the sky
above the Neva this historic alliance: “3 × 3.” It was a union over
which Elisabeth Petrovna, now sleeping in the Fortress of Saint Peter
and Saint Paul, and Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, now sleeping in
Westminster Abbey, had once waged a long and bitter controversy. Peter
had suddenly brought it to pass, like a mischievous child. But it was
too much like a harlequinade. What Europe wanted to know was, how long
would it last? Peter was playing with big destinies.
His domestic policies were as ill-inspired as his foreign policies. The
whole of Russian politics revolved around the two pillars: the army and
the church. During his seventeen years as Grand Duke in Russia Peter
had never made friends with either. Soon after his accession he issued
an order confiscating the possessions of the church and allowing the
priests an income from the state. This of course was never executed as
the six months of his reign were not long enough to accomplish such
a revolution. It sufficed however to solidify the antagonism of the
people toward a Lutheran Czar who had no respect for icons and priestly
robes and who read the German Bible. They believed he wished to change
their creed.
Peter’s tactlessness with the army was no less damaging than with the
church. He made his uncle, Prince George of Holstein, generalissimo
of the Russian army. This was a double error, in that he placed a
foreigner in command and resigned to him a place which as Czar he
should have filled himself. He took away the long, loose Russian coats
of the soldiers and put them into tight German uniforms. His next step
was to mobilize the army for a campaign against Denmark. He was Czar
of all the Russias yet a few square miles of Holstein territory in
the possession of Denmark occupied all his attention and filled all
his military dreams. “He had a passionate love,” says Catherine, “for
the little corner of the earth where he was born. He was constantly
preoccupied with it. He had left the land of his birth at the age of
twelve or thirteen years; his phantasy grew heated whenever he spoke of
it, and because no one in his environment, beginning with myself, had
ever been in this wonderful land according to his accounts, he told us
daily stories about it which put us to sleep but which we were supposed
to believe. He grew angry when he saw that we did not believe him.”
This had been his attitude as Grand Duke; as Czar of Russia he behaved
as if he had just come into his own as the ruler of Holstein and seemed
to forget entirely his vast Russian domain.
His indifference to being crowned was a part of his satisfaction with
the rôle of mere Duke. It was immemorial custom to crown the Czars of
Russia in Moscow, in the Kremlin, with all the colorful pageantry of
the Church and Army arrayed against that rich Byzantine background.
Peter neglected to make any preparations for this ceremony. His model
in all things, Frederick the Great, had never been crowned; nor had
Frederick’s father before him. As a matter of fact, both of these
Prussians, father and son, were too penurious to spend money on
coronation spectacles. But the Czar did not question their reasons;
the precedent was sufficient. When Frederick heard that Peter was
dilatory about his coronation ceremony, he was alarmed and wrote to the
young Czar urging him to proceed at once to Moscow and crown himself
there. He reminded Peter III that Ivanushka was still living in the
Schlüsselburg fortress and that he represented a possible rival to the
throne. The Czar was impervious to this good advice. He replied that
the crowns were not ready. The months passed and the campaign against
Denmark was his only interest. But even this he postponed from time
to time. Almost ready to march, he nevertheless decided to delay a
few weeks in order to celebrate his name-day, June 29, with the usual
garden party gayeties at Peterhof.
3
During the six months of Peter III’s reign, Catherine lived in strict
retirement. When obliged to appear in public, she wore heavy black
draperies edged with costly ermine which served a double purpose: they
showed her respect for the late Empress whom she genuinely mourned and
they concealed her pregnancy. In April the new Winter Palace of stone
overlooking the Neva, which had been built by Elisabeth, was completed.
The Imperial family moved out of the old wooden palace on the Nevsky
Prospect, of whose drafts and other discomforts the Grand Duchess had
often and bitterly complained. Here Catherine was assigned rooms at
the opposite end of the palace from the Czar, where on April 11th she
bore a son. He was called Alexei Gregorevich Bobrinsky. His last name
was taken from the beaver skin in which the new-born babe was wrapped.
Bobrinsky went through life as Alexei, son of Gregory. With this child,
Catherine abandoned finally the pretense that he was the son of Peter.
Her eldest son, Paul Petrovich, remained as the sole representative of
this fiction.
Catherine concealed the birth of her second son and brought him up in a
school for cadets. Her position was too insecure to allow her to keep
Orlov’s child with her. As with the other two, she was again deprived
of any maternal satisfaction in the care of him. Ten days after her
confinement, on her thirty-third birthday, she appeared in public to
receive the customary congratulations. She carried off the occasion
as if nothing had happened. Little Bobrinsky’s birth had not caused a
ripple on the surface of things. Presumably the Czar did not even know
of his existence. Catherine subsequently bore two daughters to Orlov
who were spirited away even more completely than little “beaver-skin”
had been. They were brought up under fictitious names at court and
properly married in the course of time. The legends do not tell us
whether their lives developed happily or otherwise.
Four months after his accession, Peter III called his wife a “fool”
in public; it was at the great dinner of state given to celebrate the
peace with Prussia. To Peter’s foggy mind this doubtless seemed only
a casual insult, as was the case when he made Count Buturlin into a
life-long enemy by calling him a “son of a bitch” at a dinner party.
The Czar sat at the head of the table and proposed a toast to the
Imperial family. As the pokals clattered down upon the board, Peter
observed Catherine sitting in her place. He sent the adjutant who stood
behind his chair to inquire why she had not risen and the adjutant
returned with the reply that she herself belonged to the Imperial
family. The silly inconsequential Czar leaned forward in his place and
shouted down the table, in the presence of the assembled Russian nobles
and foreign diplomats, “dura” which means “fool.” It is the epithet
which one _izvostchik_ bawls out to another in a street argument. The
Empress’s eyes filled with tears and she turned to Count Stroganov
who stood behind her chair and begged him to say something amusing to
keep her from crying. It was for Catherine the last straw. Two months
from that date the reign of Peter III came to an end and the reign of
Catherine II began.
The conspiracy which the Grand Duchess had made during her intimacy
with Poniatovsky and Williams had been more elaborate than the one in
which she now engaged. In those days, three years before the Empress
died, Catherine had had plenty of money--English money--at her command.
She says herself that on the day of Elisabeth Petrovna’s death she was
literally bankrupt; she had not sufficient credit to order herself a
new dress for Christmas. “On this day,” she adds, naïvely regretting
that she had not ordered it, “the Empress died, something which I had
not been able to foresee.” Ten years afterward she still regretted the
dress she had foregone.
In the year 1762, as Czarina, she found herself in the possession
of an income. This time it was Russian money not English money at
her disposal, and she had acquired other Russian resources as well.
Formerly, Catherine’s confederates had been foreigners; this time there
was no suspicion of foreign influence in her friendships. The five
brothers Orlov were the center and the focus of her plans and there
were enough of them to do most of the underground work needed in the
barracks. Alexei, the eldest, was a tough-minded person who had some of
Catherine’s own strength. Gregory, the second brother and her lover,
famous for his good looks, was softer and more sensitive. There still
remained Ivan, Feodor, and Vladimir, who moved under Alexei’s orders.
It was a typical Russian brotherhood with Alexei as leader. The Orlovs
all lived in the barracks where they quietly suborned the guards with
gossip and money. Count Kyril Razumovsky, Lieutenant-Colonel of the
Ismailov Regiment, had long been subservient to Catherine’s charm. He
gave her no trouble and his military position was useful to her. One
woman, the Countess Catherine Dashkov, who played a showy though rather
a dummy rôle in the preparations and their execution, must be included
among the inner circle of conspirators. They were all Russians of
ancient Russian lineage, except Catherine herself, who liked to forget
that she had German blood in her veins.
The Countess Dashkov occupies a prominent place in the history of
Catherine’s revolution. Her memoirs were published as early as 1840
and were the first authoritative account to be circulated in Europe.
In the stories which multiplied around her name during the nineteenth
century she figures as an Amazon and a leader only second to Catherine
the Great. She was actually not very important. Her age precluded
that, for she was only nineteen when Catherine deposed Peter and
ascended the throne. The Countess had a strategic value due to the
fact that she was the sister of Elisabeth Vorontsov, Peter’s mistress.
Her allegiance to Catherine’s party divided the Vorontsov family as
Catherine wished to divide it. She was a possible source of information
concerning the other camp but she was also a possible channel for
leakage in the opposite direction. For this reason, Catherine tells us,
she was not fully initiated in the secret plans of the Empress and the
wholly devoted Orlovs. The Empress had a rendezvous with her Dashkov
at which we may assume the nineteen-year-old Countess told all she
knew without being told much in return. Catherine once wrote to her,
to reassure her anxiety about a rendezvous, “As for your reputation,
it is better established than that of the whole calendar of saints.”
The scorn is a bit transparent. Peter III, with all his stupidity, put
the case clearly enough when he said to Countess Dashkov, “My child,
you would do well to recollect that it is much safer to deal with
honest blockheads like your sister and myself than with great wits,
who squeeze the juice out of the orange and then throw away the rind.”
Catherine was not quite so egoistic as Peter made her out. She did not
throw away the rind; she preserved it carefully. The Countess Dashkov
enjoyed the patronage and protection of the great Empress all her life.
Another confederate of the Empress in her conspiracy was Nikita
Ivanovich Panin, the governor of her son. Panin had lived fourteen
years in Stockholm as Russian Ambassador. There he had imbibed the
concepts of liberalism and had formed a vague picture of Russia
as a constitutional monarchy. Panin’s critics say that he did not
sufficiently realize the political differences between a compact
little country like Sweden, with its one blood and one faith, and the
vast empire of Russia with its conglomerate races and cultures and
religions. To his delight, Panin found, on his return to Russia when
he was recalled to educate the infant Paul, that the Grand Duchess
Catherine had also imbibed the new ideas from her diligent reading of
French authors. Panin took hope for the future of his country when a
liberal Empress would be in a position of power. This powerful position
he pictured in a special way. Like other observers about the court,
he perceived the tragic impossibilities of Peter as Czar and imagined
that in some way he would have to be supplanted. Panin’s solution of
the future, however, was to elevate Paul as actual emperor and Paul’s
mother as Regent. He wished to establish a régime like that which
Elisabeth Petrovna had overturned, that of Ivanushka and his surly
mother, Anna Leopoldovna. Panin prepared elaborate schemes to this end,
some of which he put on paper. The Grand Duchess, prior to 1762, read
his plans with interest. After 1762, she declared that she had never
really agreed to them.
4
On the night of the 27th of June, 1762, the Imperial family was
more than usually divided, although the morrow was to usher in the
celebration of the Emperor’s name-day. Peter Feodorovich slept at
Oranienbaum; Catherine Alexeievna slept at Peterhof; and the little
Grand Duke slept in the Summer Palace at Petersburg in the care of
Nikita Panin. It was planned that the Czar and his retinue would drive
over the next morning from Oranienbaum to Peterhof where the usual
name-day celebration would take place. Catherine, unattended except by
a maid, waited at Peterhof for her husband and his gay party to come
over from Oranienbaum and enliven the place.
She slept that night in the little red brick pavilion known as
Monplaisir. Her bedroom opened upon a terrace lapped by the waves of
the blue Finnish Gulf. It was a doll’s house built by Peter the Great,
whose head almost touched the ceilings, crowded as close down to the
sea as he could crowd it. The Empress Elisabeth loved Monplaisir for
her father’s sake and because she had a kitchen there where she herself
could cook. The big Czar and his tall daughter have left their memories
about this pavilion at Peterhof. But Catherine the Great, who spent the
most dramatic hours of her life there--hours which were to make her the
Empress of Russia--never liked the place. As an old woman she used to
say that she hated the noise its fountains made and that her dog hated
the gurgle of those fountains too. She would never spend any money
in developing and beautifying the premises after they came into her
possession.
On this particular night in June, 1762, the fountains were still,
awaiting the coming of the Czar on the morrow when they would play.
In the pale light, the gilded statues shone on the terraces leading
down to the sea. At six o’clock in the morning a man came stealing
through the park, skirted the main palace, and made his way down to
the pavilion at the water’s edge. He wore the uniform of a Captain in
the Preobrazhensky Regiment and he seemed to know where he was going.
A French window opened into the Empress’s bedroom. He stepped inside.
Catherine was sleeping in a broad silken bed alone. “Matushka, little
Mother, wake up,” he said. “The time has come.” The man was Captain
Alexei Orlov, the brother of Gregory Orlov, Catherine’s lover.
The night before had been a restless one in the city of Petersburg.
The army had been mobilized for the campaign against Denmark and the
General, Prince George of Holstein, was ready to march as soon as
the celebration at Peterhof should release the Emperor to accompany
them. The war was unpopular and the soldiers grumbled. They did not
like their German commander and they did not like their uniforms.
Nevertheless they stood ready to go; it was the Czar’s orders. Late in
the evening the news went round that Captain Passeck had been arrested:
again the Czar’s orders. The report was passed indifferently enough
from person to person until it reached Alexei Orlov. Immediately the
five Orlov brothers were all in action. Captain Passeck was the boon
companion of Alexei and was one of the forty officers who had been
sworn into the conspiracy. Arrest was likely to be followed by torture
and Captain Passeck’s secrets were not secrets which could be told to
the inquisitors of Peter III. So Alexei evidently thought, for he hired
an ordinary carriage from the street, took with him Lieutenant Bibikov,
and drove out to Peterhof. It was midnight when they left the city, and
it was six o’clock when Captain Orlov entered Catherine’s bedroom and
awakened her.