Part 12

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.

Her festival dress was laid out ready for the day; but she did not put 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.