Waliszewski, a vivid historical writer who has covered nearly the whole period of the dynasty, calls the Empress Elizabeth “the last of the Romanoffs.” If every rumour of those gossipy days were admitted, few genealogical trees of the Russian aristocracy would hold good. There have not been wanting historians who have claimed that Catherine the Great was a natural daughter of Frederick the Great; and a grave writer has said of Catherine’s son, Paul, that the only ground for regarding him as the son of Peter III is his resemblance to that monarch. We may assume that Peter, who now peacefully ascended the throne and continued the dynasty, was the grandson of Peter the Great, the son of his daughter Anne.
It is, however, true that the moral physiognomy of the Romanoffs changes with Peter III, and it is not clear how a German father and a few years of early life in Germany could so thoroughly Teutonise his blood. We must, of course, not forget that most of what we read about him was written by his wife or by other enemies. Mr. Bain refuses to believe that he was brutal to Catherine, as she says. At his accession he paid her heavy debts and settled upon her the large domains of the late Empress. His unfaithfulness to her was at least balanced by her own vagaries. She, a German, took the throne from him, and she was bound to make a dark case against him in order to justify her usurpation. They were, at all events, as ill-assorted a pair as ever mounted a throne, and every informed person in Europe wondered what would be the issue, and was prepared for another revolution.
We have seen a little about their earlier years. Elizabeth drew them in their childhood from Germany, changed their religion, and appointed tutors to prepare them for the throne. Catherine prepared very diligently, but Peter went in a precisely opposite direction. While Catherine steeped herself in the Russian spirit, he remained German, looked with contempt upon Russian ways, and surrounded himself with foreigners. He had the vices, without the good qualities, of the Romanoffs. He drank heavily, was boorish to those about him, and lived loosely. Catherine tells a story which is a cameo of life at the court, if so sordid a sketch may be compared with a work of art. Empress Elizabeth’s private room, in which the little suppers of the later part of her reign were held, was separated only by a door from one of Peter’s rooms. The noise he heard in it at nights piqued him, and he bored holes in the door, and found Elizabeth, lightly dressed, carousing with her lover and a few intimate courtiers. He called Catherine, who (she says) refused to peep, and then he called a bunch of ladies of their court to come and enjoy the spectacle. Catherine pictures him keeping dogs in their bedroom and coming to bed, very drunk, in the early morning to kick and pummel her.
There can be little doubt that the young prince was coarse, violent, and drunken; and Catherine hated his insipid, pock-marked face and boorish ways. Long before the death of Elizabeth she took a lover, Sergius Saltykoff, a handsome young fellow of Peter’s suite. Bestuzheff sent Sergius on a mission abroad, but his place was soon taken by a handsome young Pole, Count Poniatovski. In the meantime, Catherine had given birth to her son Paul, and the genuineness of the claim of the later Tsars to be considered Romanoffs hangs upon the very slender thread of Catherine’s morals. Saltykoff was at the time generally regarded as the father. The boy, however, grew up to resemble Peter, morally and physically, so closely that historians now generally consider him a son of Peter. It looks as if Catherine, to save her position with Elizabeth, who pressed for an heir, reluctantly consented to provide one. Legend has it that the court deliberately instructed her to have a child by her lover if she could not be reconciled to her husband. Catherine tells us that, when the child was born, Elizabeth sent her a present of fifty thousand dollars, and that Peter got the draft cancelled.
It is sometimes said that Poniatovski, who is described as being put in Catherine’s way by political schemers, was detected by Peter and fled to escape a whipping. The legend really runs that he was held up by Peter’s servants, as he left the palace, and brought before Peter. He was a youth of twenty-two, of no courage, and he expected a whipping, but Peter laughed at his fright. Peter’s mistress at the time, and until his death, was Elizabeth Vorontsoff, niece of a great noble of the court; a very plain and insignificant little woman whom Catherine disdained to notice. The prince felt that he could now force Catherine to be courteous to his mistress, and it is said that he arranged suppers for the quartet. The Empress, however, heard of the liaison, and Poniatovski had to go. Catherine had a second child, Anna, in 1758, who is believed to be the daughter of the Pole. The court was by this time, we saw, thoroughly demoralised, as all knew that the Empress herself caroused at night, and Catherine cast aside all pretence of propriety. At the time of the Empress’s death her lover was Gregory Orloff, a very dashing young officer: a young man of superb and colossal frame, of features that fascinated women and of the time-honoured habits of dissipation.
If we are to understand the character of Catherine, we must endeavour to regard these irregularities with her eyes. It is sheer nonsense to seek to put her on a moral level with Elizabeth or any other aristocratic Russian dame who mingled amours with prayers, and equally venerated monks and lovers. Catherine had not the least inner respect for the Russian Church, or any branch of the Christian Church, and its ideals. For political reasons she conformed outwardly, but it is difficult to find that she had more than a vague and not very serious deism. She read and corresponded with the French “philosophers,” and in her letters to them (when she became her own mistress) she ridiculed the “mummeries” of the priests. “I congratulate myself that I am one of the imbeciles who believe in God,” is the extent of her profession of faith. She did not respect the authority and ideals of the Church, and so she regarded herself as free. These irregularities need not in themselves be considered inconsistent with her title of “the Great.”
Liberal writers express some surprise that her lovers were never more than handsome and sensual blockheads. We shall see that Orloff, little intelligence as he had, could work for her, but that she probably never weighed. She was a woman of high intelligence and self-confidence. She chose ministers to do work and lovers only for enjoyment. There is no psychological mystery in such an attitude.
When Peter ascended the throne he surprised all by his policy of conciliation. He issued an amnesty, and from all the frozen recesses of the Empire came the victims—the sobered Lestocq, old Marshal Münnich, Julia Mengden and her sister, the Birens, and so on—of the earlier revolutions. Then he set himself to conciliate his subjects. Peter the Great had forced education and public service upon the reluctant nobles: Peter the Little removed the compulsion, flatteringly observing that it was no longer necessary. Peter the Great had created a secret police which had ruled the aristocracy by terror and corruption: Peter III abolished it. Peter the Great had put crushing taxes upon peasants and dissenters: Peter III relieved them, and, caring nothing about Russian orthodoxy, favoured the industrious dissenters. He abolished the corporal punishment of officers; he confiscated the wealth of the clergy and the monks, making them an annual allowance; he bade the monks educate themselves, and forbade them to take young novices.
But these reforms angered one very powerful class—the clergy and the monks—and Peter went on to alienate the army. He despised everything Russian. Elizabeth had given him the palace (built by Menshikoff) of Oranienbaum, about twenty-seven miles from St. Petersburg, and there he had established a few companies of Holstein soldiers, the nucleus or model of his future army. He fancied himself a soldier, and spent his time there as Peter had spent his at Preobrajenshote. After his accession he announced that the army was to be Germanised. New uniforms were provided. Old regiments were threatened with extinction. What was worse, he made peace with Frederick of Prussia, who might now have been utterly crushed, and held up that monarch to Russia as a model king and soldier.
To Catherine he was at first, as I said, generous, but serious rumours got about that he intended to send her into a convent and marry his Vorontsoff. At a public and important banquet he is said to have insulted her, calling across the table that she was “a fool.” In short, he put together an admirable collection of combustible material, and he was surprised when the flame of revolution burst forth.
How it was arranged is not very clear, as Catherine afterwards claimed the entire merit, yet a dozen others claimed the merit—and the reward. As far as one can judge, Catherine was nervous and did little. Gregory Orloff and his brothers had not so clear a vision of the possibilities, in case of failure, and they worked zealously. Catherine’s little friend. Princess Dashkoff, a very romantic young lady who read Voltaire and Diderot and had great ideas, claims that she did more than anybody; she clearly helped to buy or convert supporters. The French agents found money, the soldiers were secretly canvassed, and the growing discontent with the Emperor was carefully nourished. A statesman, Panin, was more or less won: some say at the cost of the virtue of Princess Dashkoff. Catherine herself had, about this time (April, 1762), a third child, who was quite acknowledged to be the son of Orloff.
The last blunder of Peter was that, after making an ignominious peace with Prussia, he wanted to make war upon the Danes for his little principality of Holstein. On June 24th he went, with Elizabeth, to Oranienbaum, and ordered Catherine, whom he refused to regard as a serious danger, to the palace of Peterhof. The Emperor’s name-day feast fell on July 10th, and he sent word that he would spend it with Catherine at Peterhof. He arrived there on July 9th, to find that Catherine had fled, with one of the Orloffs, in the early morning; and before many hours he learned that the capital was taking the oath of allegiance to her.
On the previous evening one of the chief conspirators, Captain Passek, had been arrested, and Gregory Orloff had been kept under observation by an agent carousing and playing cards with him all night. Princess Dashkoff says that she ran about, stirring the conspirators, and saved the situation. At all events Alexis Orloff rushed into Catherine’s bedroom, at Peterhof, at five in the morning, and urged her to come to St. Petersburg and begin the revolt at once. They arrived at the barracks of the most reliable regiment at seven, and roused the soldiers. There were soon a copious supply of brandy and shouts of “Long Live the Empress.” Catherine went to the Winter Palace, and courtiers stumbled over each other in their eagerness to offer allegiance. Catherine maliciously says that Princess Dashkoff was one of the last to arrive. The soldiers cast off their new German uniforms, and begged to be led against those accursed Holsteiners of Peter’s; and Catherine—she and the little, snub-nosed Dashkoff dressed as officers—led twenty thousand men to Oranienbaum.
Peter had sent for his Holstein guards and loudly protested that he would fight. As the news from the capital trickled in, however, he changed his mind and took boat to Kronstadt. It is said that when the sentinel, in the dark, challenged him, and was told that he was the Emperor, the man said: “Go away; there is no Emperor.” He returned, shaking with fear, to Oranienbaum, and offered to share his throne with Catherine. She contemptuously refused that dangerous half-measure. Peter, weeping like a child, and begging that they would not separate him from Elizabeth, abdicated, and was sent into the country about twenty miles away. Elizabeth Vorontsoff was sent to Moscow.
What precisely happened to Peter III is one of the many dark mysteries of the romance of the Romanoffs. Five days later Catherine coldly announced that the late Emperor had died of a colic which had sent a fatal flow of blood to his brain. There is a rumour that he was poisoned. There is another rumour, which is generally accepted, that Alexis Orloff, who conducted him to Ropcha, strangled him; and there is no evidence whether Catherine was or was not (as is generally believed) a party to the murder.
There were the usual sunny days for all who had assisted in the revolution. In three months nearly half a million dollars in money, and great gifts of land and serfs, were showered upon the new court. Many of the courtiers, however, did not long enjoy favour. In 1763, when Catherine had gone to Moscow for her coronation, a certain Feodor Hitrovo was arrested for treason. For some time there had been rumours of plots to put Ivan V, the son of Anne and Anthony whom Elizabeth had displaced, back upon the throne. Peter III had brought the poor youth, now almost an idiot, to St. Petersburg, and Catherine had confined him in the fortress of Schlüsselburg. The latest rumour in the capital was that Catherine was to wed Orloff, and that the jealous courtiers were determined to prevent her or to kill Orloff. Whether there was a plot or no, it is clear that the promotion of the Orloffs had caused grave murmurs. Princess Dashkoff, Panin, Captain Passek, and other conspirators of 1762, were, to their mighty indignation, arrested on suspicion of treason. They were released, but their term of favour was from that moment clouded.
Another of the blots on Catherine’s reign, or one of those dark tragedies into which the historian cannot penetrate, occurred in the following year. The unfortunate Prince Ivan was killed in prison. An officer of the garrison named Mirovitch plotted to release him, and it is said that his guardians, who had orders to despatch him in case of a dangerous effort to free him, carried out that instruction. Mirovitch was executed, but it was remarked that there was no inquiry, and there was not the customary punishment of the relatives of the executed criminal. It seems, however, absurd to suppose that Mirovitch was hired to give the opportunity of killing Ivan. History, again, gives Catherine a not very cheerful verdict of “not proven.”
These early threats or suspicions of revolt were attributed by Catherine to the traditional discontent and ambition of courtiers who were ever ready to create a new throne for their own profit. But she saw clearly enough the miserable condition of the country at large, and she opened her reign with a determination to apply the remedy prescribed by the liberal and humane principles of her French teachers. There must be education, and in 1764 she issued an instruction to the authorities who were to take up that work. Her own ideas were necessarily vague and unscientific, and she soon found herself confronted by the traditional difficulties: a massive and general ignorance so dense that it did not want education, a shortage of funds, and a corrupt and listless body of officials. A number of technical and normal schools—in all about 200 schools—were founded, and at St. Petersburg Catherine established a large and admirable school for girls, but her vague general scheme came to naught. Russia lingered on in the darkness of the Middle Ages.
The reform of law and justice was the next great need. Catherine eagerly devoured the writings of such reformers as Montesquieu and Beccaria, and in 1767 she issued an instruction which was so liberal that it was not permitted to appear in French. It abounds in humane reflections which illustrate the soundness of her attitude as a ruler in her earlier years. “The laws must see that the serfs are not left to themselves in their old age and illness,” she said; and “The people are not created for us, but we for the people.” She laid it down, vaguely, that “the rich must not oppress the poor,” and “every man must have food and clothing according to his condition.” There were even echoes of the new French words, liberty and equality. The torture of witnesses was described as a barbaric practice. Sentence of death must be imposed only in the case of political offenders.
Little came of her large scheme of reform. A Legislative Assembly, drawn from all ranks of the people, met in 1767 to give definite shape to her ideals, but its two hundred sittings ended in futile disagreement. No one wished to better the condition of the serfs at the expense of the landowners, and Catherine partly undid with one hand what she did for them with the other. The serfs of the ecclesiastical estates, which she secularised, were set on the way to freedom, and Catherine theoretically wanted to see the end of a virtual slavery which was inconsistent with her philosophy. But she herself gave enormous estates, with tens of thousands of serfs, to her favourites, and she knew that human beings who were transferred like cattle were treated like cattle. In her reign the Countess Daria Saltykoff had to be imprisoned for barbarously causing the death of a hundred and thirty-eight of her serfs. They were still bought and sold as blacks were in America, and their proprietors could for slight causes send them to Siberia. The great mass of the Russian people lived in this state of degradation.
Catherine II
Catherine’s strong will nearly always failed before an internal problem of this kind. The nobles triumphed, and Russia remained in darkness and chains. In her later years, when her early benevolent despotism had given place to a fierce hatred of democracy, she persuaded herself that her people were better off than most of the peoples of Europe. She clung, however, to other parts of her programme of reform. Few were knouted, and no other torture was permitted in her reign; and she boasted that she never signed a sentence of death. Men were, nevertheless, put to death, as we shall see; and it was commonly said that the secret police were merely replaced by her mysterious official, Tchechkoffski, who suavely invited suspected folk to his house. It was believed that the chair on which his visitor sat sank below the floor, leaving only the man’s face invisible to the servants in the room below who applied torture to his limbs.
While Catherine pursued these and other designs of reform, which we will consider later, her prodigality toward her favourites caused much murmuring, and to this grievance she added the costly burden of war. It is clear that in her early years she trusted to remain at peace, and had no thought of the enlargement of the country. But the greed of Frederick the Great now turned upon the decaying kingdom of Poland, and, to obtain his large share, he had to invite the participation of Russia in the plunder. Catherine, we saw, had hated Frederick, her husband’s idol. It is said that amongst her husband’s papers she found a letter in which Frederick spoke flatteringly of her, and she began to turn to him. She did, at all events, change her attitude, and share with him in the historic crime which is known as the partition of Poland. She joined Frederick in imposing upon the Poles her old lover, Poniatovski, and her armies went to the support of his rule against the rebellion which followed.
France and Austria were now opposed to Russia and Prussia, and France resorted to the familiar stratagem of inciting Turkey to attack Russia. Catherine, whose energy was now fully roused, spurred her generals to meet the Turks. They took the Crimea and a large part of the Slav dominions of the Turk, but Austria now threatened to oppose the southward expansion of Russia and suggested that compensation should be sought in Poland. The first partition took place in 1771, and Catherine secured “White Russia,” with a population of 1,600,000 souls. Turkey, in turn, was forced to surrender the Crimea, pay a large indemnity, and open the Dardanelles to Russian ships and the Ottoman Empire to Russian trade.
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