Catherine II of Russia

“ A prisoner in the palace, she could do nothing without permission. If she wept for the death of her father, the Empress sent her word that she had grieved enough. “That her father was not a king, that she should mourn him longer than a week.” If she evinced a friendship for any of her maids of honour, she might be sure the lady would be dismissed. If she became attached to a faithful servant, still more certain was it that that servant would be turned away.
Her relations with the Grand Duke were monstrous, degrading. He made her the confidante of his amorous intrigues. ”

“ His introduction to Catherine II. of Russia took place at St Petersburg in 1773, when he was in the suite of Wilhelmine of Hesse-Darmstadt on the occasion of her marriage to the czarevitch Paul. He became minister of Saxe-Gotha at the court of France in 1776, but in 1777 he again left Paris on a visit to St Petersburg, where he remained for nearly a year in daily intercourse with Catherine. He acted as Paris agent for the empress in the purchase of works of art, and executed many confidential commissions for her. ”

“ He had been in the service of the Empress, when she was princess, on her estate at Zarskoe-Selo, whence he had been removed to Oranienbaum. He was fond of predictions, and, among others, his prediction relative to the Empress had been fulfilled. He had prophesied that she would ascend the throne. He told me, and repeated it as often as I was willing to listen to him, that I should become the Sovereign Empress of Russia; that I should see sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons; and that I should die at the advanced age of more than fourscore years. ”

“ Then Russia became strengthened in her tyranny, as America had in her independence. Catherine offered to her Admiral places which would have more than satisfied the rapacity of a courtier, honors which would have overwhelmed the ambitious, estates which would have consoled a deposed king for the loss of his dominions; but it was the deck of his ship, it was the sea with its combats and its tempests, it was the boundless immensity of ocean for which yearned the heart of our adventurous and poetic seaman. ”

“ I showed no leaning to any side, nor meddled with anything; always maintained a serene air, treated every one with great attention, affability, and politeness, and, as I was naturally very gay, I saw with pleasure that from day to day I advanced in the general esteem, and was looked upon as an interesting child, and one by no means wanting in mind. I showed great respect for my mother, a boundless obedience for the Empress, and the most profound deference for the Grand Duke; and I sought with the most anxious care to gain the affection of the public. ”

“ But the supreme misfortune of the last Empress of Russia, a misfortune for which she was not responsible, was the fact of her having been married to a being who was too weak to lead her, too selfish to understand her, too cruelly inclined to sympathize with her; who at the same time did not acquire sufficient authority over her to inspire her with respect for his individuality as a man and for his position as a Sovereign. Had she been the wife of Alexander III., it is likely that she would have turned out entirely another woman from the one which she ultimately became ”

“ In a low voice he turned the conversation to the subject of the dull life we led, and said, that notwithstanding all this, people contrived to prejudice us in the mind of the Empress; that a few days before, her Imperial Majesty had said at table that I was overwhelmed with debt; that every thing I did bore the stamp of folly; that for all that I thought myself very clever—an opinion, however, in which no one else shared, for nobody was deceived in me, my stupidity being patent to all; and therefore that it was less necessary to mind what the Grand Duke did than what I did. ”

“ This unfortunate man, however, only reigned six months, having been dethroned and put to death by order of his wife, who became Empress of Russia under the title of Catherine II. However unjustifiable the means may have been by which Catherine became possessed of the throne, and in mere justice to her we must remember that she had been brutally treated by her husband, and was in hourly expectation of being immured for life in a dungeon by his orders, she exercised her power to the advantage of the country. ”

“ The evening before, she went to sleep at the Kremlin. We stayed at the Sloboda, in the wooden palace, and received orders to go to mass at the cathedral. At nine o’clock in the morning we started from the wooden palace in the state carriage, our servants walking on foot. We traversed the whole of Moscow, step by step—the distance through the city being as much as seven verstes—and we alighted at the cathedral. A few moments after the Empress arrived with her retinue, wearing the small crown on her head, and the imperial mantle, borne as usual by her chamberlains. ”

“ The most noteworthy matters of her reign were the conquest of the Crimea and the dismemberment of Poland. It was in the year 1783 that Catherine effected the subjugation of the Crimea. The possession of this peninsula gave Russia dominion on the Black Sea, which once virtually secured by Peter the Great had been again lost through his misfortunes. Catherine greatly extended the limits of her dominion on the west at the expense of Poland, the partition of which state she planned in connection with Frederick the Great of Prussia and Maria Theresa of Austria. ”

“ The party opposed to Bestoujeff were in favour of France, her protégée Sweden, and the king of Prussia. The Marquis de la Chétardie was the soul of this party; the courtiers from Holstein its prominent personages. They had gained over Lestocq, one of the principal actors in the revolution which had placed Elizabeth on the throne of Russia. He had a large share in her confidence. He had been her surgeon since the death of the Empress Catherine I, to whose household he had also been attached, and had rendered essential services to both mother and daughter. ”

“ It was quite easy for Patiomkin to humbug Catherine as to the condition of Russia by conducting her through sham cities run up for the occasion by scenic artists; but in the little world of European court intrigue and dynastic diplomacy which was the only world she knew she was more than a match for him and for all the rest of her contemporaries. In such intrigue and diplomacy, however, there was no romance, no scientific political interest, nothing that a sane mind can now retain even if it can be persuaded to waste time in reading it up. ”

“ After this, I entered into a rather long conversation with him, so much so even, that he appeared anxious to leave, in order not to keep the Empress waiting for the commencement of the fireworks. I then dismissed him. He took his departure, and I again drew aside the curtain. My company, from laughing so heartily, was beginning to feel hungry and thirsty. “Very well,” I said, “you shall have something to eat and drink; it is only fair that while you are kind enough to give me your company, you should not die of hunger or thirst.” ”

“ Catherine had already rewarded their treason by gifts, honours and places, but as Paul I, at his accession to the throne, opened a new field for favours, those vile insects rushed first upon it, and scarcely had a few days of the new Emperor's reign elapsed when they had already secured villages and whole towns, to indemnify themselves for the losses they pretended to have sustained by their zeal and attachment to Russia. Our release, the kindness and generosity which the Emperor had shown to Kosciuszko and Potocki, excited not only their envy, but also their apprehensions. ”

“ Soltikoff, she said, dared not come near me, because of the restraint and constant presence of the Schouvaloffs, both husband and wife. She did, in fact, succeed in getting Madame Vladislava to listen to reason, and condescend so far as to mitigate a little the state of perpetual annoyance and restraint which gave rise to this hypochondria which I found it impossible to control. All I wanted was the merest trifle—only a few moments of conversation. At last she succeeded. After this tedious journey of twenty-nine days, we reached St. Petersburg and the Summer Palace. ”

“ Common-sense must have shown the leaders of the revolt that they would never be safe while Peter lived, and they had insults to avenge.
The mere fact that Catherine II., a small German princess without hereditary claim to the throne, ruled Russia from 1762 to 1796 amid the loyalty of the great mass of the people, and the respect and admiration of her neighbours, is sufficient proof of the force of her character. Her title to be considered a great reforming ruler is by no means equally clear. ”

“ I said, “the manner in which I am treated, and that you, in order to secure for the Grand Duke a rendezvous with my maids of honour, encourage him to prevent my going to the theatre, where I might, perhaps, have the pleasure of seeing her Imperial Majesty; and besides this, I will beg of her to send me back to my mother, because I am weary of, and disgusted with, the part I play here: left alone and deserted in my room, hated by the Grand Duke, and not liked by the Empress, I want to be at rest, and a burden to no one ”

“ If she could, she would have abolished ignorance and cruelty in the land, not because she was a philanthropist, but because she loved civilization. It was her intellect, not her heart, that made Catherine a reformer. When she severely punished and forever disgraced a lady of high rank for cruelty to her serfs,—forty of whom had been tortured to death,—it was because she had the educated instincts of a European, not an Asiatic, and she had also the intelligence to realize that no state could be made sound which rested upon a foundation of human misery. ”

“ The extraordinary influence she subsequently exercised when, from having been the mistress she became the wife of the czar, and ultimately the empress Catherine, developing, throughout the various turns of her fortune, a genius worthy of consort with that of Peter himself, opens a page in history not less wonderful than instructive. The marriage of the sovereign with a subject was common in Russia ”

“ This rendered Madame Tchoglokoff furious against her husband. She returned home and abused him. He fell upon his knees and begged her pardon, and made use of all his influence over her to soothe her anger. The brood of children which they had also helped to patch up their difference; but their reconciliation was never sincere. Disunited in love, they remained connected by interest. The wife pardoned her husband; she went to the Empress, and told her that she had forgiven everything, and wished to remain with him for the sake of her children. ”

“ Madame Vladislava showed me, as a curiosity, this lady’s petticoats. They were lined behind with leather, as she was unable to retain her water—an infirmity which had afflicted her ever since her first accouchement. All her petticoats were impregnated with the smell, and I sent them back in all haste to the owner. In this fire the Empress lost all that had been brought to Moscow of her immense wardrobe. ”

“ In the month of July, the Empress celebrated, at Moscow, the peace with Sweden. On this occasion, a Court was formed for me, as an affianced Grand Duchess of Russia; and, immediately after the celebration, the Empress sent us off for Kiev. She set out herself some days later. We made short stages—my mother and I, the Countess Roumianzoff, and one of the ladies of my mother’s suite in one carriage; the Grand Duke, Brummer, Berkholz, and Decken in another. One afternoon, the Grand Duke, tired of being with his pedagogues, wished to join my mother and me. ”

“ During this winter was celebrated the marriage of Count Lestocq with Mademoiselle Mengden, Maid of Honour to the Empress. Her Majesty and the whole court assisted at it, and she paid the newly-married couple the honour of visiting them at their own house. One would have said that they enjoyed the highest favour, but in a couple of months afterwards fortune turned. One evening, while looking on at those engaged at play in the apartments of the Empress, I saw the Count, and advanced to speak to him. “Do not come near me,” he said in a low tone, “I am a suspected man.” ”

“ The Empress Anne died, leaving the crown, as we have just said, to a child only a few months old, under the Regency of her lover Biren. The Duke of Courland was all-powerful. Despising everything Russian, he wished to civilize us with the lash. In the hope of strengthening himself, he destroyed with a cold-blooded cruelty hundreds of men, and drove into exile more than twenty thousand. Marshal Munich got tired of this; he was a German as well as Biren, and besides a good soldier. One day, the Princess of Brunswick, the mother of the little Emperor, complained to him of the arrogance of Biren. ”

“ On our return to Catherinthal, Madame Tchoglokoff had the satisfaction of finding there her husband, who had returned from his mission to Vienna. Many of the court equipages had already taken the road for Riga, whither the Empress intended to go. But on her return from Roguervick she suddenly changed her mind. Many people tormented their brains, in vain, to discover the cause of this change. ”

“ When the Empress Elizabeth ascended the throne of Russia, she sent the Chamberlain Korf into Holstein to demand her nephew. In consequence, the Prince Administrator immediately sent him off, accompanied by the Grand Marshal Brummer, the Chamberlain Berkholz, and the Chamberlain Decken, nephew of the former. The Empress received the Prince with great joy, and soon after his arrival set out for Moscow to be crowned. She had determined to declare him her heir ”