it on. She donned instead the black mourning gown which she had taken
off the night before. Together with Orlov and her maid she passed out
through the park on foot, for the carriage had been left standing in
the road outside the grounds. They were half an hour in reaching it.
Catherine and her maid seated themselves in the carriage, Bibikov
stood up in the back and Orlov sat on the box with the driver. The
hack horses turned their faces towards Petersburg. They had travelled
their twenty-nine versts that night, and had now to trace the same
distance back again. Nevertheless, urged on by Alexei Orlov, they
covered the distance in less than an hour and a half. The white dust
from the roadway rose in clouds and settled on the black garments of
the Empress, for the carriage was an open _calèche_. About half-way to
the city they met Catherine’s hairdresser on his way to Peterhof to
prepare her for the gala day. The Empress sent him back telling him she
would not need him. About five versts from the city, they met Gregory
Orlov and Prince Bariatinsky. The Empress changed to Gregory’s carriage
because his horses were fresher. Escorted by her lover and Bariatinsky
she drove up to the Ismailov Regiment. It was the regiment of Count
Kyril Razumovsky, who had long been in love with her as a Grand Duchess
and had assisted all her projects in Russia.
An old priest was found to administer the oath of allegiance, while
the whole regiment headed by Razumovsky hastened to swear fealty to
Catherine II of Russia. The Empress got into her hired carriage again
and, preceded by the priest and followed by the regiment, went on to
the Preobrazhensky Regiment. Here the oath of allegiance was again
hastily administered and the augmented procession moved forward to the
Nevsky Prospect. The third regiment, the Semionovsky, suffered a moment
of indecision, but they too were in line by the time the procession
reached the Kazan Cathedral. It was now nine o’clock. Catherine entered
the Cathedral and was met by the priests who blessed her with the
cross. The nobles crowded around the new Empress, competing with the
military to kiss her hand. From the Cathedral the procession went on up
the Nevsky Prospect and turned into the Morskaya, proceeding to the new
Winter Palace.
At ten o’clock, just after the Empress entered the palace, another
hired carriage was seen dashing up to the entrance. A fat man and
a little boy in his night clothes were sitting inside. It was Panin
and the Grand Duke Paul, and this was their first appearance on that
stirring June morning. They had slept late. Count Panin had always been
dilatory, unready. It is said of him that the Empress Elisabeth had
once cast her eye upon him as a likely favorite. She summoned him one
day to wait for her outside the bath; but when she emerged she found
him crumpled on his chair fast asleep. So she decided to employ him
in the diplomatic service. On the morning of Catherine’s accession,
after fourteen years of international diplomacy, Count Panin had not
changed. When he entered the Winter Palace with his charge, the Empress
came to meet them and carried the boy out on the balcony to present
him as her heir. This was the end of Panin’s scheme to make Paul
emperor, Paul’s mother the Regent, and himself Grand Chancellor. He
remained always rather resentful about it and did not fail to hamper
the ambitions of the Orlovs whenever he had a chance. Catherine said of
him, “Count Panin was naturally indolent, and he had the art of making
his indolence pass for calculating prudence.”
The doors of the Winter Palace were thrown wide open and anybody from
the street could enter and kiss the hand of the new Empress. The palace
was a gorgeous new building, only just completed, yet all the common
soldiers were free to tramp through it and take the oath of allegiance
to their Little Mother. It was a master stroke. “The least soldier of
the guards,” Catherine wrote to Poniatovsky, “on seeing me said to
himself: that is the work of my hands.” Other master strokes of the
Empress were the fluent manifestoes which she composed from time to
time during the following days, to be set up and printed in the cellar
beneath the Academy of Science and distributed to a people who could
not read them. In 1762, few of the nobles could read. Fortunately the
manifestoes were carefully preserved in the archives for the enjoyment
of a more literate age.
The first one drafted by her facile hand read thus: “We by the Grace of
God, Catherine II, Empress and Autocrat of all the Russias, etc., etc.,
All true sons of the Russian Fatherland have clearly seen the danger
which threatened the Russian Empire. Namely, the law of our Orthodox
Greek Church has been shaken by the disregard of ecclesiastical
traditions, so that our ancient Orthodox Church in Russia was exposed
to the extreme danger of being obliged to adopt another confession.
Secondly, our glorious Russia, which has been lifted to a high degree
by its conquering weapons, has been placed in complete subjection
to its bitterest enemy by the new peace for which so much blood has
been spilt, while the inner organization of the country, on which the
whole Fatherland depends, lies in ruins. Therefore and because we
are convinced of the danger to our faithful subjects, we have seen
Ourselves obliged with the help of God and his Justice, but especially
in response to the distinct and undissimulated wish of Our faithful
subjects, to ascend the throne as Autocrat of all the Russias,
whereupon all Our faithful subjects have taken the solemn oath of
allegiance to Us.
CATHERINE.”
During the day the Empress and her counsellors decided that a military
campaign to Peterhof was necessary. The object was to secure the person
of Peter III and obtain his abnegation of the throne. As Brückner
well points out, the so-called army which Catherine II led to Peterhof
was partly a spectacular, romantic parade and partly an exhibition of
political genius.
At ten o’clock in the clear light of the evening of June 28, 1762, the
Colonel of the Guard--Catherine herself--took her place at the head of
her troops. She was mounted on a white horse and wore oak leaves in her
hair. Her uniform was borrowed from a lieutenant in the Life Guards. It
was doubtless chosen because the lieutenant and the Empress happened
to be of a size, but it scarcely clothed her new position and title.
For Catherine had not hesitated to assume the title Colonel of the
Guards, the traditional place of the Czars of Russia which Peter had
resigned to his Uncle George of Holstein. Beside her at the head of the
troops, likewise clad in military uniform, rode the Countess Catherine
Dashkov. During the night she remained beside the Empress, while her
sister, Elisabeth Vorontsov, stuck close to the Emperor. There was deep
jealousy between the sisters.
Catherine II left the following note, written in her own strong free
flowing hand: “Gentlemen and Senators! I go now with the Army to
secure and safeguard the throne, and leave in your care as my highest
representatives with the fullest confidence the Fatherland, the People,
and my Son.
CATHERINE.”
The Senate solemnly responded in a note which overtook the Empress
at two o’clock in the morning, resting on her way to Peterhof: “His
Highness, the Czarevich, is as well as could be desired. In the house
of Your Imperial Majesty, as well as in the city, all goes well and the
measures you have commanded are being carried out.”
Catherine bestrode her horse and rode onward to Peterhof. She had
lived for this triumphant moment: little Fike riding her pillow in
the dark bedroom at Stettin; Grand Duchess Catherine cantering about
the courtyard in Petersburg while an admiring riding-master kissed
her boot,--these earlier exhibitions had prepared the way for this
spectacular ride at the head of her spectacular army. But it was her
last showy ride. In the future, she would be too busy and perhaps a
shade too serious.
5
Eight hours after Catherine and Alexei Orlov had left Peterhof,
Peter and a gay party drove through the park and halted in front
of Monplaisir. The ladies and gentlemen sprang from the low
_chair-à-bancs_ and strolled about the terrace. No one came to welcome
them. The red pavilion was empty and silent. Peter went through the
rooms searching for Catherine in vain. It is said that he even looked
under the bed. Mystified and vaguely alarmed the party wandered down to
the pier where three small vessels were moored.
Here they received the first news of events in Petersburg. A man
bringing the inevitable fire-works for the Czar’s name-day landed from
a small boat at three o’clock. He told how the Preobrazhensky Regiment
had hailed Catherine as Empress at nine o’clock that morning and how
he had nevertheless just gone about his business of the day, which
was to bring the fire-works to Peterhof. This seemed definite enough.
Catherine had mutinied.
Peter was accompanied by Count Münnich, Prince Trubetsky, Chancellor
Vorontsov, Count Shuvalov, several other nobles and officers, and
about seventeen ladies. His old tutor, Stehlin, tells the story of
this day. Throughout the sunny afternoon the party remained on the
lower terrace. The ladies and gentlemen withdrew a little to the
garden, where they lay stretched out under the open sky through most
of the fine summer day and a part of the fine summer night. Peter and
his advisers lingered near the canal and wrote one ukase after the
other which the Czar signed against the stone balustrade and sent to
Petersburg. He paced up and down the walk beside the canal and took
everybody’s advice in turn. Finally Chancellor Vorontsov volunteered
to go to Petersburg and bring the Empress to her senses. Then Shuvalov
and Trubetsky departed on similar errands. But like the other less
important messengers whom the Czar had already dispatched to the city,
these gentlemen also did not return.
Peter’s fears increased. The Holstein Guards who had been sent over
from Oranienbaum to defend Peterhof against attack reported that there
was no ammunition in the place. Gradually, as the hours passed, a plan
matured by which the whole party would go to Kronstadt in the three
vessels which lay at anchor at the foot of the canal. A messenger was
sent to the island and returned with the report that the way was clear.
It was an error, as Peter learned when he tried to bring his yacht into
the Kronstadt harbor at four o’clock in the morning. None of the three
vessels was allowed to approach the island and the watchman called
back brutally across the water, “There is no Peter III. There is only
Catherine II.”
The Czar’s yacht fell away and took the course toward Oranienbaum. The
Czar himself lay on the deck in a dead faint.
Early the next morning, forerunners from Catherine’s advancing
army began to gallop up to Peterhof. First and foremost on the
scene, at each stage of the developments, was Alexei Orlov. Quiet,
undistinguished, inexorable, he was the Empress’s own man. The Colonel
herself arrived at Peterhof at eleven o’clock. She sent messengers
forward to Oranienbaum, demanding Peter’s abnegation, which the
trembling Czar was by this time in no mood to refuse. General Ismailov
brought back to the Empress the official document in which the Czar
renounced all claims upon the throne.
It was General Ismailov who lured the ex-Emperor into a carriage with
the promise that he would be sent to Holstein with Elisabeth Vorontsov.
As soon as they had passed the gates of Oranienbaum, the Czar was
separated from his favorite and brought as a prisoner to Peterhof. “To
prevent him from being torn to pieces by the soldiers,” says Catherine,
“he was put in the charge of a reliable guard under the command of
Alexei Orlov.” From this time on Peter was at the mercy of his military
guards; he never saw his mistress again. But the ghosts of his father,
Brümmer and Bergholz, and all the tutors and governors who had tortured
his childhood in the name of discipline, now crowded upon him with
unspeakable terrors. Only now they bore the names of Alexei Orlov,
Feodor Bariatinsky, and other Russian officers.
6
Peter was driven up to Peterhof in a closed carriage, with drawn
curtains. He was taken into an empty room, stripped of his uniform,
and left in utter solitude. At the other end of the palace, remote and
invisible, sat the terrible Empress. From her came messengers from time
to time, directing this and commanding that. One of the messengers was
Count Panin, amiable, soft Panin. The Empress apparently wished to
communicate with him through human agents as well as wolves like Alexei
Orlov. But if Peter was a bleating lamb, Panin was a fat old sheep.
His interview with the deposed Czar, in which the prisoner kissed his
hand, alternately pleading and commanding, left a painful wound on a
sensitive personality. Panin afterwards said that he considered it one
of the greatest misfortunes of his life that he was obliged to see
Peter III on this day. The memory haunted him and made him fearful
on behalf of the little boy he was bringing up, Paul Petrovich, who
believed himself to be the son of the martyred Czar.
The Empress allowed the prisoner to choose the place of his
confinement. Peter chose Ropsha, a small estate with a large garden
and a fishing pond not many miles from Peterhof. What the Empress
really intended to do with Peter no one knows or ever knew, probably
she herself least of all. But this is what she said she intended,
though it was many years afterwards that she wrote it. “To go with
Peter to Ropsha, the Empress named Alexei Orlov, Prince Bariatinsky,
and several other officers. They chose a hundred men from the
different regiments of the guard. They had orders to make the life of
the monarch as agreeable as possible and to provide what he wished
for his entertainment. The intention was to send him from there to
Schlüsselburg and, according to circumstances, to allow him after
some time to go with his favorites to Holstein. So little was his
personality regarded as dangerous.”
What actually happened at Ropsha was quite different. Peter’s tragedy
came swiftly. Shut up in a bedroom and not allowed to leave it even
for exercise, his existence was unutterably miserable. After the first
night he complained of the bed and asked to have his own bed brought
from Oranienbaum. Curiously enough, this whim was promptly gratified
by Alexei Orlov who had the great four-poster and all its trappings
brought to Ropsha and set up before nightfall. An English traveller
who saw this bed several years afterwards describes it for us. “It had
a white satin coverlet, and was on a large four-post bedstead, with
curtains of pink and silver brocade, and ornamented at the top with a
plume of red and white feather.” But even his own bed brought little
comfort to the victim. He remained in twilight and solitude, for he was
not permitted to open the green curtains which hung at the windows.
In desperation, he asked for companions, and again his request was
granted. His negro Narcissus, his dog, and his violin were brought,
at the Empress’s command, from Oranienbaum. He begged for Elisabeth
Vorontsov’s presence but this was refused him. Presently he fell ill
with diarrhœa, a disease to which he was always subject in a crisis.
His personal physician was brought to Ropsha.
The leniency of the Empress bears out her statement of her intentions.
Comforted by Narcissus, his dog, and his violin, Peter might live
on at Ropsha indefinitely. But it was a dull life for the guards.
Orlov, Bariatinsky, Passeck and the others were accustomed to all
the excitement of life in Petersburg. Playing cards all day and all
night at Ropsha was monotonous entertainment by comparison. Six days
of it gave them a picture of future weeks, future months, stretching
possibly into years. The revolution, with all its hectic anticipations,
was over, and this was where it had landed them. It was all very well
for the Empress and the others, enjoying life in Petersburg, to be
magnanimous toward the prisoner, to take measures to mitigate his
suffering and prolong his endurance. In the eyes of men like Orlov and
Bariatinsky, Peter was not a man anyway. He was no better than a worm
that lay in their path and asked to be stepped on. They played cards
and drank heavily. Saturday came and at mid-day Peter was invited to
come out of his room and dine with the guards....
In the meantime the Empress, established in the Winter Palace, received
daily messages from the ex-Czar and Alexei Orlov about the progress of
things at Ropsha. Three chief petitions from the prisoner and three
letters from his jailer project for us the scenes of the tragedy which
developed so swiftly and inevitably from the circumstances.
“Madame,” wrote Peter, “I beg Your Majesty to rest assured concerning
me, and to have the goodness to order that the guards be removed from
the second room, in order that I may move about in there; because, as
you know, I always walk about in the room and I shall otherwise get
swollen legs. Then I beg you further to command the officers not to
remain in the same room when I have necessities; that is unendurable
for me. Finally I beseech Your Majesty not to treat me like a great
evil-doer. I am not conscious that I have ever wronged you. While I
commend myself to your magnanimous thoughts, I beg that you will at
least send me with the persons named to Germany. God will certainly
reward you. I am, Your very devoted servant, Peter. P.S. Your Majesty
can rest assured of me that I shall think and do nothing against your
person or your reign.”
The second note is shorter. “Your Majesty: If you do not wish to
destroy utterly a human being who is already unhappy enough, have pity
on me and send me my only consolation, that is Elisabeth Romanovna
[Vorontsov]. In this you will be doing one of the most merciful deeds
of your reign. Also if Your Majesty would but visit me for one instant
my highest wishes would be fulfilled. Your very devoted servant, Peter.”
The two preceding messages were written in French but the third and
last one was written in Russian, the language which Peter hated and
Catherine loved. The drowning man caught even at this straw. “Your
Majesty: I beg you, since I have fulfilled your will in everything, to
allow me to go abroad with those for whom I have already petitioned
Your Majesty. And I hope that your magnanimity will not leave me
without nourishment. Faithful servant, Peter.”
The letters of Alexei Orlov, brought by the same messenger, picture
what was happening meanwhile in the guards’ quarters at Ropsha.
On Tuesday he wrote: “Little Mother, Gracious Empress: Health we all
wish you for countless years. We and the whole command are well as this
letter leaves us, but our monster has grown very sick and has had an
unexpected attack of colic. And I am afraid that in the end he might
die tonight and fear still more again that he might live. The first
fear I have because he chatters pure nonsense, and that does not amuse
us; and the second fear, because he is really dangerous for us all
because he often speaks as if he had his former position.
“According to your orders, I have paid the soldiers for half a year,
also the under-officers with the exception of Potiomkin, because he
serves without salary. Many of the soldiers have spoken with tears of
your Graciousness, they had not deserved so much of you, to be rewarded
in so short a time. I send you herewith a list of the entire command at
present here; but a thousand rubles were lacking, Little Mother, and
I have added them in ducats. There was much laughter here among the
guardsmen on account of the ducats, when they received them from me.
Many asked questions because they had never yet seen any and gave them
back to me because they thought them worth nothing.... Until death,
your devoted slave, Alexei Orlov.”
On Saturday morning, Orlov wrote, “Our Little Mother, Gracious Empress;
I know not what I should do for I tremble before the anger of Your
Majesty, that you do not believe something awful about us, and that we
are not the cause of the death of your rascal and also of Russia and
our law. But now the lackey Maslov sent to serve him has fallen ill and
he himself is so sick that I do not believe he will live until evening,
and he is already quite unconscious; which the whole command knows and
begs God that we become rid of him as soon as possible; and this Maslov
and the officer dispatched can inform Your Majesty in what condition he
now is, if you are pleased to doubt me. This written by Your Faithful
Servant....”
On Saturday evening, a messenger from Ropsha galloped up to the Winter
Palace with the last letter from Alexei. “Little Mother, Merciful
Empress. How shall I explain or describe what has happened? You will
not believe your devoted slave but before God I will speak the truth.
Little Mother! I am ready for death but I myself do not know how the
misfortune happened. We are lost if you have not mercy upon us. Little
Mother, he lives no longer in this world. But no one had thought that,
and how should we have had the thought to lift hand against the Czar?
But Empress, the misfortune has happened. It came to a quarrel at table
between him and Prince Feodor: we could not separate them, and already
he was no more. We cannot ourselves remember what we have done, but
we are all to the last man guilty and deserve death. Have mercy upon
me, if only for my brother’s sake! I have made my confession and there
is nothing to investigate. Pardon me or quickly make an end of me. I
hate the light of day: we have angered you and our souls are hurled to
destruction.”
On Sunday morning the Empress informed the public by an official
statement that Peter III had died of a hemorrhoidal attack and would
be buried in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. There is no record that
she ever tried to give anyone at any time a confidential explanation
of Peter’s death. The letters of Alexei Orlov were put away and never
came to light until after her death. Her silence remained unbroken.
Formerly this woman had worried excessively about what Europe might say
about the birth of her first child and her relations with Saltikov.
Now Europe had nothing less than murder to talk about, and talk ran
high. But Catherine seemed impervious to any curiosity concerning this
foreign gossip. As an old woman, however, she one day suddenly asked
Diderot, “What do they say in Paris of the death of my husband?” When
Diderot was too embarrassed to answer, she turned the conversation by a
jest at his expense.
7
During his brief reign, Peter III had reversed the foreign policies
of his late aunt. The Austrian and French interests had gone into
eclipse, while the Prussian interest had blazed up again. Frederick’s
envoy lived at the elbow of the Czar whispering good advice to a
mental invalid who was unable to profit by it. No sooner was Peter
III out of the way than the Austrian and French envoys came out of
their retirement and began to plead their cause with Catherine II.
They took for granted that Frederick the Great had had his day and
that his enemies, Austria and France, would now have theirs. Had not
the Empress issued a manifesto in which Prussia was referred to as
Russia’s “bitterest enemy”? Had not Field Marshal Saltikov advanced
upon Prussian soil, opening all of a sudden an offensive campaign? For
a moment Frederick the Great trembled in his well-worn boots while the
hopes of France and Austria ran high.
[Illustration: CATHERINE THE GREAT
_From a painting by Ericsen_]
But the Empress was not occupied with the interests of Prussia, or
Austria, or France. She preferred the interests of Russia, which
happened to be her own. She recalled the hasty General Saltikov from
Prussian territory so adroitly that he scarcely knew he had been
recalled. She assured Austria and France of her good will and
friendship and left them thinking that their temporary estrangement
from Russia during Peter’s reign had been wiped out. Catherine II
wished to have peace with Europe. She had called Frederick the Great
the deadly enemy of Russia on the day of her accession; but a few
days afterwards she confirmed the peace with Prussia which Peter III
had made and which her manifesto had denounced. The Empress made no
attempt to justify this inconsistency. She was a woman of action and
explanations have a way of taking too much time. From her accession
until her death she was one of the busiest monarchs in Europe.
[Illustration: GREGORY ORLOV]