Part 13

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]

She recalled Bestushev and presented him with a great house furnished with comforts. The old man was nearly seventy now and of no great service to her. But she owed him much and he was a magnificent monument because he had once known Peter the Great. She recalled Biron, also aged with exile, and made him the Grand Duke of Courland. He was useful to her there because he kept the House of Saxony from getting a foothold in Courland. Poniatovsky, who had long awaited this day in Poland, now wrote asking to be summoned to Russia, but she did not recall him. She discouraged him from writing to her at all, saying, “I must walk straight ahead; I must not be suspected.” She had long ago planned with Poniatovsky and Williams that the Count was one day to be made the King of Poland. She now urged the Count to stop at home in Poland and abide the course of events.

One of Catherine’s first acts as Empress was to give orders for her coronation. The ceremony which Peter had postponed until he had at last died uncrowned was foremost in her thoughts. Four days after her accession, she ordered the fire-works for her coronation; and seven days afterwards, the day on which the death of the unfortunate Peter became known, she announced the date. It was to take place in September. She gave Prince Trubetsky fifty thousand rubles and sent him to Moscow to get everything in readiness. He carried with him the specifications for a great spectacle, and, with the assistance of a corps of official merry-makers, managed to complete all preparations within the time arranged for. Promptly on the first day of September, the Empress left Petersburg with an enormous train. There was evidently to be no postponement of the date originally set for the ceremony, no repetition of the succession of postponements which had delayed the marriage of the Grand Duke and the Grand Duchess under the late Empress. The new Empress had none of the dilatoriness of Elisabeth; she had respect for time. In this regard, she remained always only half a Russian.