Part 16

In a gallant sentence, he refers to the Smolny damsels as Amazons. The Empress rejects this title firmly, informing him that they are not intended to become Amazons at all but honest wives and mothers. It appears, however, that this admirable institution had overlooked the problem of dowries. After twelve years of careful cultivation, the young ladies emerged as paragons of virtue but entirely penniless and homeless. Many of them became governesses. Others still were snared by the officers of the guards whose barracks adjoined the convent. “They watched every term of dismissal,” says Major Masson, “to ensnare the prettiest. It would be more practical to save, out of the immense cost of their education, a sufficient sum to portion them or at least to keep them till they were provided for.” The Empress apparently did not foresee this difficulty. As penniless Princess Fike of Anhalt she had come to Russia and had got a husband without a dowry. The Smolny young ladies might do the same.

6

Although Catherine did not hesitate to follow self-interest in foreign relations, she took an idealistic view of her domestic problems. She turned from Machiavelli to Montesquieu. When she thought of Courland and Poland she pictured herself as a general on horseback; when she thought of Russia she pictured herself as the Little Mother, Matushka. She and Russia were united against the rest of the world.

The Empress wished to make her people happy without making herself unhappy. Russia had despotic, conflicting, chaotic laws. There was a printed code which had been handed down from Czar Alexei Michaelovich, the father of Peter the Great. But chiefly the people were ruled by ukases, of which Catherine’s Manifesto of Silence is a good example. Not always, however, did the Russians obey so promptly as they had done in this particular instance. It was commonly said of the peasants when some order had not been obeyed, “They are waiting for the third ukase.” During the reign of Elisabeth Petrovna, the Senate had discussed the need of codifying the laws but postponements had ensued and nothing had been accomplished. On the threshold of her reign, Catherine was met by this need. It was a task made to her hand.

She took the ancient code of Czar Alexei in one hand and Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws in the other. There seemed to be no way of reconciling the two; so she decided that she had better cleave to Montesquieu altogether. She worked three hours every day for more than three years and produced a thick volume. There was but little original thought in it as most of it had been adapted from her philosopher and guide. It was published under the title “Instruction of Her Imperial Majesty Catherine the Second for the Commission charged with preparing a project of a new code of laws.” It was more briefly known in Russian as the Nakaz.

She worked secretly, showing her book to no one but Panin and Orlov. Count Panin was delighted. The Empress was at last engaged on a plan in which he could whole-heartedly share, that of putting political and social ideals on paper. The Count cried out, while his huge peruke flopped to one side in his excitement, “These are principles which will cast down walls!” The handsome Gregory, lounging with his feet up, thought the literary efforts of his Empress would surely add to her already shining laurels. He wished to take the pages which she read to him and show them around to the whole court. But Matushka forbade him to do this.

In the summer of 1767 the work was at last finished. In December Catherine had sent out a ukase ordering the election of delegates for a legislative commission. During the spring, a time of great floods and freshets in Russia, the elections had taken place. There had been much groaning and protesting from districts afflicted by heavy rains, as the swollen streams made travel difficult and dangerous, but the new Empress ignored all excuses for delay and somehow or other the streams were forded. In early summer, the delegates began to arrive in Moscow, in kibitkas, on horseback, on foot. They represented cities, districts, social classes, religions, races. There were Russian nobles wearing laces, diamonds, and velvets made up in the latest Paris fashion; there were merchants and military men; there were a few peasants in smocks; there were Tartars and Bashkirs. Over a thousand delegates assembled.

Prior to the convention, the Empress sequestered herself in the Kolomenskoe Palace not far from Moscow. Here she gathered around her various thinking persons, as she called them, and asked them to criticize her manuscript. To meet their conflicting objections, she crossed out so much that only half of the Instruction was left. Collecting the remnant of her labors, she sent it to the printer, and then had it read before the legislative convention. As many of the delegates could not read, it was necessary that the Instruction should be read aloud frequently and fully. At first the delegates rose in a body at the first sound of Her Majesty’s words; but the document was read too often and too lengthily. Finally they just remained sitting or milled around according to their custom. Some English visitors who attended the convention called it a riot. Whether the meeting was really as tumultuous as the English Parliament can be on occasion is doubtful. But the Russian delegates wore so many gay, primitive colors, it probably seemed to Anglo-Saxon observers as if they expressed excitement and savagery in every way.

The legislative commission dragged on a year and a half. The first sessions took place in the Kremlin but shifted to Petersburg when the Empress returned to her northern residence. The commission like everything else in Russia accommodated easily to a nomadic life. In Catherine’s day, the court, which travelled continually back and forth between Petersburg and Moscow, took their furniture with them, for furniture was scarce and precious. To give a man _meuble_ from France was one of the best ways of bribing him. This was one of the lessons that Catherine had learned from the Empress Elisabeth.

When the Empress set forth for Petersburg in December, 1767, she had more people and more furniture than usual in her train. One thousand delegates were swept northward in flying sleighs and were reassembled in the Winter Palace after the Christmas festivities had been duly celebrated. In Petersburg as in the Kremlin, the Empress kept herself modestly in the background. She sat in a box behind a drawn curtain and left the commission entirely in the hands of a presidium composed of Viazemsky, Bibikov, and Shuvalov. Her General-Adjutant, Gregory Orlov, was prominent on the floor and on one occasion spoke up eloquently in defense of a peasant who had been called “lazy and stubborn” by a nobleman. The Empress was not officially present. She sent messages from her box to the presidium but did not appear on the floor. This made it possible for the convention to draw up formal addresses to the author of the Instruction and for her to reply in writing to them. In one of these addresses she was designated for the first time as “Catherine the Great.” She modestly replied that the title was one which she had not yet earned. Still the title clung and she was to enjoy it for many long years as she was not yet forty when the commission on laws bestowed it upon her.

The Instruction abounds in democratic ideas. It goes so far as to advocate the gradual abolition of serfdom in Russia by allowing the serfs to own property and to purchase their own freedom. But the Russian nobles were not in favor of the reform. Most of the plan was stricken out by her counsellors before the Instruction ever went to print and the remainder was eliminated by speeches in the convention. The Empress abandoned all propaganda for the abolition of serfdom for the rest of her life and consoled her conscience by abusing the Russian nobles in her memoirs. “What had I not to suffer from the voice of an irrational and cruel public opinion when this question was considered in the legislative commission. The mob of nobles, whose number was much greater than I had ever supposed because I had judged them too much by the people who daily surrounded me, began to suspect that these discussions might bring about an improvement in the position of the peasants.... I believe that there were not twenty human beings who reflected on the subject at that time with humanity, really like human beings!”

7

Catherine’s campaign against smallpox in Russia won great fame for her in Europe. It must be admitted that her step took courage in those days. The prevalence of the disease was such that everybody believed that everybody had to have it. For instance, the court spoke of the Grand Duke’s uncertain chance of life because he “had not yet had the smallpox.” The royal family had no more protection than the poorest peasant. The fiancé of Empress Elisabeth had been carried off by smallpox on the eve of his marriage and Peter the Second had died in early youth of the same disease. From the time of Catherine’s arrival in Russia she was constantly pursued by the fear of the pest and every time she fell ill she thought it had overtaken her.

She had heard of vaccination in England. Her admiration for English institutions had been encouraged by her friendship with Sir Charles Hanbury Williams and the influence of Voltaire. The practical English had imported vaccination from the Orient, and an English-woman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, had set a brave example by allowing herself and her son to be inoculated. On the other hand, there were many voices raised against it. The physicians of the Sorbonne discountenanced vaccination and disregarded the experience of England with the practice. Frederick the Great was intensely afraid of it and wrote to Catherine to urge her strongly not to take the risk. She replied that she had always feared the smallpox and wished more than anything else to be freed of her enslavement to this fear. “I am so struck by a situation so unworthy that I regard it as a weakness not to escape from it.”

She entered into correspondence with an English surgeon, Dr. Thomas Dimsdale, who was adventurous enough to accept her invitation to come to Russia. He had published a work on inoculation and this had attracted the Empress’s attention; she had always been a great importer and reader of foreign books. The famous Dr. Dimsdale arrested her attention, preoccupied as she was at all times with her anxiety about smallpox.

He arrived at the court of Petersburg in December, 1768. He was received as all foreign guests were received with social entertainments which the worthy doctor subsequently described in full in his tracts on inoculation in Russia. The Empress had been warned against the experiment and her fears were rife. Although she had sent for Dimsdale to vaccinate her, she still continued to discuss the matter pro and con. At last she put an end to her fears by ordering the physician to vaccinate her secretly one day. The test succeeded capitally. The ghost of this fear was laid, never to walk again.

The Grand Duke Paul was now vaccinated and Gregory Orlov. On the second day after the operation, Orlov had gone hunting. This was news to send to Europe, still trembling at the bare thought of vaccination. The Empress wrote the story to Voltaire, trusting him to spread it in the proper quarters. All at once she was ashamed that she had ever been so timorous as to fear vaccination. After all, every street urchin in England had as much courage as that! She urged inoculation upon court circles in Petersburg and the aristocratic Russians suddenly became very bold. Dr. Dimsdale was kept busy with impatient applicants. “A few weeks ago,” said Catherine, “nobody would hear of inoculation; but now nobody can wait to be vaccinated. It has become the fashion.”

The dramatic example of the Empress did not, alas! put an end to smallpox in Russia. It meant only that the heir-apparent of the throne was now immune and the dynasty was to this extent assured. It meant that a few thousand nobles and their families were immune. But the vast population of Russia was no better off than if the celebrated Dimsdale had never visited their country. Perhaps the greatest contribution of his visit had been to diminish superstition among the least superstitious element of the population. The most superstitious element, the peasants, had never heard of Dimsdale or vaccination. When the smallpox came, they still fled to the Virgin, whose wonder-working portraits hung in every chapel. When the patient was too ill to go and the family could afford to pay for it, the wonder-working image of Our Lady would be borrowed from the church and carried to the sufferer’s bedside. This, however, was rare. Usually the sick one was borne into the church by the members of the family and laid at the feet of the Virgin whose pity they implored.

So it was in the city of Moscow in the autumn of 1771. For months the plague had raged and ravaged the town. The Empress had sent all the physicians she could commandeer, which meant a great many. Though she professed to hate physicians, she always kept a large retinue on call. The stricken city was unusually well taken care of during this epidemic. Catherine had opened hospitals for the victims of the plague. All these innovations failed to win the confidence of the terror-shaken population who had somehow got the idea that the physicians and their hospitals had brought the pest to Moscow. They fled from the medical men and gathered at the foot of the icons with their invalids. The Virgin at the Varvarsky Gate became more popular than the others, and the terrible pestilence lay massed at her feet day and night. She became the worst center of contagion in the entire city, distributing the pest to hundreds of new victims every day.

The physicians were at their wits’ end. They dared not take any radical steps to prevent the frightened people from doing what they pleased. The bishop of Moscow, Father Ambrosius, was an enlightened man who saw that the physicians were helpless. Relying on his authority as a priest, he resolved to adopt a desperate remedy. He had the Varvarsky Virgin removed under cover of night and hidden away. When the pilgrims arrived in the early dawn, Our Lady had vanished. The panacea was gone, and Death glowered in her vacant niche. Father Ambrosius believed that the authority of the Church was enough to make these fear-driven human beings submit. They were his children who had always obeyed. He thought that, as soon as they knew that the good father had done it, they would disperse to their homes and the plague spot would be wiped out. But instead of dispersing, they were suddenly welded into a mob, a growling, threatening, creeping, blood-thirsty pack. As the menacing thing began to move, Ambrosius fled from his home into the Kremlin, and took refuge in the Donskoy Monastery. On down into the cellar he fled, hiding himself in the darkest corner he could find. The mob came after him and invaded his sacred retreat. They found him in the darkness and tore him limb from limb.

When the Empress received a report of the tragedy, she realized that the population of Moscow was out of hand. The plague raged on. While the victims multiplied, the hospitals stood empty. Riots were added to smallpox until it seemed as if the old Muscovite city must soon perish under its burden of afflictions. The Empress had but one resource left and that was a military occupation. She sent Gregory Orlov with a regiment to take charge of the town. Gregory had been vaccinated by Dimsdale three years before, and the fact that he believed himself immune gave him extraordinary courage and effectiveness on this occasion. It must be admitted that Orlov was not distinguished ordinarily for courage and initiative. His record in putting down the smallpox in Moscow is exceptional. For once he seemed to take a leaf from the book of his brother Alexei. He bullied the populace into complete submission, so that the dying could at least die quietly undisturbed by mobs and riots. He asked the physicians what they wanted to have done and dragooned the people into actual obedience. A certain German doctor is said to have furnished the sanitary ideas which Gregory Orlov put into execution and which finally helped to wipe out the plague. Whatever the scientific man may have contributed, the heroic feat of Gregory Orlov is unquestionable. For once he behaved like a fearless man and deserved his mistress’s encomiums.

The Empress was almost giddy with delight. She was no longer obliged to invent reasons for praising her favorite in her correspondence. She wrote to Prince Henry, “The malady at Moscow has been reduced to a fifth of what it was, thanks to the care and intelligence of Count Orlov. He has, besides, understood how to subdue the fanatical spirit to obedience, not only in the matter of miracles, but he did not even permit the people to enter the Church to hear mass, because our churches are small; and, since everybody remained standing, the pressure that exists could increase the infection. During the service the people were made to remain outside the churches--an order which they followed to the letter. Another salutary regulation carried out despite the bigots, was the prohibition against burying in the churches and the cemeteries of the city. The Count made his own house into a hospital, took one of mine for his own use; after which every quarter of the city provided one.”

The Empress heaped honors upon her hero when he returned to Petersburg in December. She built a triumphal arch in the park of Czarskoe Selo with the inscription, “To him who saved Moscow from the plague.” A medal was struck to commemorate his bravery, on which Orlov’s portrait and that of Curtius were united. “Russia also has such sons,” read the inscription.

8

The favorite’s star was to set in glory. When he subdued the Moscow plague, he had been living with his Empress for a period of ten years. The end of the cycle had come. What had gone wrong between these two who had been like married people for so long and who had had three children together? There are stories of Orlov’s infidelities and Catherine says that he tired of her. Apparently she sincerely believed afterwards that Gregory deserted her, although it was only with the greatest difficulty that she drove the handsome guardsman from her side. She did not hesitate to employ force when force became necessary.

In the meantime, before and after Moscow, Orlov had played his part in the Turkish wars though it was by no means as gallant as his Moscow exploits. The Empress credited him with greater achievements in the South than others did. In the summer after the smallpox, she sent him to the Congress of Fokshani as her delegate in the peace negotiations. Here he swaggered about in a diamond-studded costume and offended the Turks by his high-handed attitude so that the negotiations came to nothing. Stories about Orlov’s conduct at this time suggest that he was a man of idiosyncrasies. After the battle of Tchesme he told Catherine with a shudder that the water in the harbor was colored red with the blood of the Turks who had perished. Two years later, his diamonds and his political indiscretions at Fokshani indicate that phantasy was growing on him. He was sometimes too timid and sometimes too bold.

Presently he was plunged straight from the clouds to the uttermost depths by a disconcerting piece of news. The Empress had taken a new lover in his absence. A young man named Vassilchikov had been installed in Orlov’s apartments. Taking French leave of his political and military responsibilities, Gregory Orlov started at once for Petersburg. Not many versts from the city he was stopped by the most ironical circumstance conceivable. The Empress had him quarantined in his own palace at Gatchina. There was smallpox in the South, she said, and he must not bring it to Petersburg. She had forgotten that Orlov was immune. She shut him up for four weeks, under military guards. She also put double locks and military posts at the doors of the apartment occupied by young Vassilchikov. All the while she wrote reassuring motherly letters to Orlov and sent him clean socks and shirts. She showered him with gifts; another palace, a thousand more serfs, the title of Prince contributed to the weaning process. At last it was successful. Orlov came to Petersburg and presented himself at the Empress’s receptions, looking on while his rival performed the functions which he alone had performed ever since Catherine had become Empress of Russia. He even overdid his part, making a comrade of Vassilchikov and going about with him everywhere.

Gregory Orlov was now past forty years of age. Cut adrift at this age, the exile did not know where to turn. At first he comforted himself with women of the streets, showing himself in their society in the vicinity of the Palace. He went abroad and boasted and squandered like the swashbuckler that he was. He came home again; hung for a short time in suspense and inaction and then married his first cousin, a girl of nineteen far gone in tuberculosis. The Senate issued a ukase commanding them to separate, as first cousins were not allowed to marry by the Russian Church. The Empress knew exactly what such ukases were worth; she had herself married a cousin when she came to Russia. As head of the Church, she issued a dispensation to Gregory Orlov and his bride and gave them her blessing. They went away to Europe where they wandered from specialist to specialist, trying to find some one who could restore the young wife’s health. But steadily she faded. Long before she died, Orlov had been declared insane.

Horrible stories are told of his last days: that he was constantly pursued by the apparition of the murdered Peter and that he covered his face with excrement to shut out the vision. Yet it was not Gregory who had struck the blow. His brother Alexei had done that, Alexei who throve on honors and riches and outlived them all even the Empress herself. But Gregory had always been soft and could not endure his exile from Catherine. Yet the Empress always said that he had tired of her.

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POTIOMKIN