Catherine the Great

41

Panin, Orlov, and Elizabeth’s Death

AS THE EMPRESS’S HEALTH deteriorated, Catherine considered her own political future. It seemed certain that Elizabeth would make no change in the succession and that Peter would follow his aunt on the throne. Catherine would be alone; her friends and political allies had been stripped away. The chancellor, Bestuzhev, had been disgraced and exiled. General Apraksin, also disgraced, was dead. Hanbury-Williams, the British ambassador, had returned home; now, he too was dead. Her lover, Stanislaus Poniatowski, had departed for Poland and bringing him back would be impossible. With Peter’s incompetence now clear, Catherine could not help pondering what political role she might play in a new reign. It could be as Peter’s wife and adviser, doing what she had done in helping him to manage the affairs of Holstein. But if Peter acted on his determination to marry Elizabeth Vorontsova, Catherine would have no role. If, somehow, Peter were to be replaced in the line of succession and Paul were to come to the throne, she might act as regent until the boy grew up. A more distant possibility of which Catherine sometimes dreamed was that she would play the supreme role herself. Which path would be open to her was unclear, but one thing was certain: whatever happened, she would need allies.

People were coming to her. One, surprisingly, was Ivan Shuvalov, the favorite of the failing Elizabeth, who began courting the grand duchess in a manner that led to suspicion that he would like to play the same role with the future empress that he had with Elizabeth. She was attracting other, less calculating and less obvious, new adherents and, eventually, a significant trio of dissimilar people gathered around her. One was a fastidious, sophisticated diplomat; another a young war hero; and the third, a passionate and impetuous young woman. Coming from different backgrounds, exhibiting different qualities, there was a single constant: all were Russians, a useful thing for an ambitious German woman with no Russian blood.

The eldest of these three was the diplomat, forty-two-year-old Count Nikita Panin. He was Bestuzhev’s protégé and had survived his master’s fall by having been absent from Russia when it occurred. The son of one of Peter the Great’s generals, Panin was born in Danzig in 1718, educated abroad, and had come home to serve in the Guards. At twenty-nine, he had been appointed Russian envoy to Denmark by Bestuzhev. A few years later, he was transferred to Sweden, where, for twelve years, he had served as ambassador. In Stockholm, Panin was recognized as a cultivated, sophisticated, liberal-minded Russian, and, as such, a rarity. Panin had believed in Bestuzhev’s policy of favoring Austria and England and opposing Prussia. When Bestuzhev fell and the Shuvalovs and Vorontsov forged their alliance with France, Panin, still in Stockholm, resisted their demand that he support this new alignment. Out of step, he resigned and, in the summer of 1760, came back to St. Petersburg. Elizabeth, recognizing his ability, shielded him from the Shuvalov-Vorontsov faction and appointed him chamberlain and chief tutor to her beloved Paul, placing him in a politically sheltered post that gave him prestige at court and an avid interest in the succession. Peter, unsurprisingly, was displeased by the choice of Panin. “Let the boy remain for the time being under Panin’s supervision,” he grumbled. “Soon, I shall take steps to provide for a more suitable military training.” Panin, aware of Peter’s hostility, was also, by character and education, a natural ally for Catherine, but the two—grand duchess and tutor—had different ideas about the future. Panin, believing that Peter was unfit to rule and should somehow be removed, wished Paul to be placed on the throne as a boy emperor with Catherine as regent. Catherine pretended to agree with Panin; “I had rather be the mother than the wife of the emperor,” she told him. In reality, she had no desire to be subordinated to her own child; her ambition was to occupy the throne herself. Panin aligned himself with Catherine because she had been close to his patron, Bestuzhev; because she had faithfully maintained this allegiance throughout the former chancellor’s disgrace; and because, in his mind, any arrangement involving her was preferable to seeing Peter on the throne. In addition, he shared her interest in Enlightenment political theory and in the appeal of a government by enlightened monarchy as advocated by Montesquieu. Panin knew that Catherine was discreet and that it was safe to discuss his ideas with her. They had worked out no plan of action–there were too many unknowns—but there was a bond of understanding.

The second of Catherine’s new allies was a hero of the war against Prussia, Gregory Orlov. By 1758, Frederick of Prussia was struggling to defend his kingdom against three large allied powers, Austria, France, and Russia. In August that year, a Russian army of forty-four thousand men under General Fermor crossed the Prussian frontier and, on the twenty-fifth, fought a battle with Frederick and thirty-seven thousand Prussians near the town of Zorndorf. The nine-hour battle was among the bloodiest of the eighteenth century: more than ten thousand men were killed on each side; Frederick admitted losing more than a third of his army. In the ferocity of the combat, he and his men also acquired a new respect for the Russians; one Prussian officer wrote afterward that “the terror which the enemy has inspired in our troops is indescribable.” After the carnage, both sides claimed victory, and in both camps a Te Deum thanksgiving was sung, but for two days neither of the blood-stained, crippled armies could move. Cannon still fired across the battlefield and cavalry skirmished, but Frederick and Fermor had fought each other to a standstill.

Among the Prussian officers captured at Zorndorf was Frederick’s personal adjutant, Count Kurt von Schwerin, a nephew of a Prussian field marshal. When this prisoner was moved to St. Petersburg in March 1760, protocol required that he travel under escort by a Russian officer who would become as much an aide-de-camp as a security guard. The officer assigned this task was Lieutenant Gregory Orlov, who had been at Zorndorf, where he was wounded three times but continued to inspire his men and hold his position. This leadership and courage had made him a hero in the army, and escorting Count Schwerin was a reward for his bravery. When Count Schwerin reached St. Petersburg, Grand Duke Peter, distressed to see an officer close to his own hero, King Frederick, suffer any embarrassment, arranged that Schwerin be treated with the honors and hospitality ordinarily extended to a prominent visiting ally. “If I were emperor you would not be a prisoner of war,” he assured Count Schwerin. A mansion was set aside for the prisoner-guest, and Peter dined there often. In addition, he gave Count Schwerin the freedom of the city; he could come and go as he pleased, always accompanied by his escort officer, Lieutenant Orlov.

At twenty-four, Gregory Orlov, was five years younger than Catherine. He came from a line of professional soldiers for whom bravery was a family tradition. His grandfather had been a common soldier in the Streltsy, the corps of bearded pikemen and musketeers founded by Ivan the Terrible that had revolted against the military reforms imposed by the young tsar Peter the Great. In punishment, Peter had sentenced many of the Streltsy—this Orlov among them—to death. When it came his turn to lay his head on the block in Red Square, the condemned Orlov strode unhesitatingly across a platform covered with gore, and, using his foot to push aside the freshly severed head of a comrade, declared, “I must make room here for myself.” Peter, impressed by this contempt for death, immediately pardoned him, and placed him in one of his new regiments being formed for Russia’s coming war with Sweden. Orlov became an officer. In time, his son rose to be a lieutenant colonel, and then, in turn, begat five warrior sons, Ivan, Gregory, Alexis, Theodore, and Vladimir. All five were officers in the Imperial Guard; all were popular with brother officers and idolized by their soldiers. It was a tightly knit family clan, each brother bound in loyalty to the others. All of the brothers possessed exceptional physical strength, courage, devotion to the army and to Russia. They were drinkers, gamblers, and lovers, equally reckless in war and in tavern brawls; like their grandfather, they were contemptuous of death. Alexis, the third of the five brothers, was the most intelligent. A huge man who had been disfigured by a deep saber cut across the left side of his face, he had earned the nickname Scarface. It was Alexis who one day would accomplish the deed that would secure the throne for Catherine, a deed for which he always accepted full responsibility and for which she gave him her silent, lifelong gratitude.

But it was Gregory, the second of the five brothers, who was the hero. He was considered the handsomest of the Orlovs, with “the head of an angel and the body of an athlete.” He feared nothing. One of his conquests followed the Battle of Zorndorf, when, still recovering from wounds, he managed to seduce Princess Helen Kurakina, the mistress of Count Peter Shuvalov, the Grand Master of the Artillery. This trespass on the turf of the mighty Shuvalovs might have imperiled Orlov, but he escaped when Peter Shuvalov suddenly died a natural death. News of this romantic conquest added to his military fame and made Gregory Orlov a conspicuous figure in St. Petersburg. He was introduced to Empress Elizabeth—and eventually he caught the eye of the wife of the heir to the throne.

There are no records describing the circumstances of Catherine and Gregory’s first meeting. An oft-told story is that one day the lonely grand duchess was staring out a palace window when she saw a tall, handsome officer in the uniform of the Guards standing in the courtyard. He happened to look up, their eyes met, and the attraction was immediate. No amorous minuet followed, as had been the case with Catherine and Saltykov and again with Poniatowski. Orlov, despite his military reputation, was far below Catherine in rank and had no position at court. But Gregory was neither timid nor hesitant; his success with Princess Kurakina had given him courage to aspire to even a grand duchess, especially one known to be ardent and lonely. There were precedents for the mingling of social ranks: Peter the Great had married a Livonian peasant and raised her to become Empress Catherine I; the great Peter’s daughter, Empress Elizabeth, had spent many years with, and perhaps had married, a peasant, the amiable Ukrainian chorister Alexis Razumovsky.

In the summer of 1761, Catherine and Gregory Orlov became lovers. The affair was conducted in secrecy; the empress, Peter, and Catherine’s friends were not aware of it, and the couple’s assignations took place in a little house on Vassilevsky Island in the Neva River. In August 1761, Catherine was pregnant.

Orlov was a new kind of man for Catherine, neither a sentimental European sophisticate like Poniatowski nor a drawing room predator like Sergei Saltykov. Catherine loved him as he loved her, with an uncomplicated physical passion. Although Catherine’s first nine years of marriage had been virginal, she was now a mature woman. She had loved two men outside her marriage, and by each of these men she had borne a child. Now a third man had appeared and he, too, would give her a child.

Orlov’s motives were straightforward. Catherine was a powerful, desirable woman, openly and disgracefully neglected and persecuted by her husband, the Prussia-loving grand duke, who was hated by the officers and men of the Russian army. Catherine was exceedingly discreet about their affair, but Gregory kept no secrets from his four brothers, and they all considered that an honor had come to their family. Rumors of this relationship circulated among the men of the Guards regiments; most were impressed and proud.

Catherine had won the support of Nikita Panin, and, with the help of the Orlov brothers, she was winning the sympathy of the Guards. And then she attracted a third, very different, recruit to her cause. This was Princess Catherine Dashkova, who, oddly enough, was the younger, married sister of Elizabeth Vorontsova, Peter’s mistress. Catherine Vorontsova—as Princess Dashkova had been before marrying—was born in 1744, the youngest of three daughters of Count Roman Vorontsov, himself the younger brother of the former chancellor, Michael Vorontsov. Her birth followed soon after the coronation of Empress Elizabeth, and because the Vorontsov family was one of the oldest of the Russian nobility, the infant girl was held over the baptismal font by the new empress herself, while the empress’s nephew, Peter, recently summoned from Holstein to be heir to the Russian throne, became the infant’s godfather. When she was two, Catherine Vorontsova’s mother died. Her father, Count Roman, still a young man, quickly became, in his daughters’s words, “a man of pleasure, not much occupied with the care of his children.” The child was sent to live with her uncle Michael, who arranged a superior education. “We spoke French fluently, learned some Italian, and had a few lessons in Russian,” she wrote in her memoirs. She displayed a precocious intelligence, sometimes staying up all night reading Bayle, Montaigne, Montesquieu, and Voltaire. Catherine met this unusual young person in 1758, when Dashkova was fifteen. The grand duchess, delighted to find a Russian girl who spoke only French and who cherished Enlightenment philosophers, went out of her way to be gracious; the younger woman made Catherine her idol.

In February 1760, sixteen-year-old Catherine Vorontsova married Prince Michael Dashkov, a tall, popular, and wealthy young officer of the Preobrazhensky Guards. She followed her husband when he was assigned to Moscow, and there she had two children within eleven months. She never forgot the grand duchess in St. Petersburg. In the summer of 1761, she and her family moved back to the capital and her relationship with Catherine resumed.

In the capital, Dashkova’s sister, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth’s lover, Grand Duke Peter, tried to draw her into their circle, but the two sisters differed in almost every way. Elizabeth, whom Peter now had installed in his private apartments and was treating more as a future wife than a mistress, was dowdy, coarse, and ribald. Even so, having decided that she wanted to marry Peter, she pursued her goal with patient, steely determination. She outlasted all of his other diversions, and managed the ménage à quatre with Catherine and Stanislaus. Over the years, Peter found that she suited him so well that he could not give her up.

At court, Dashkova also was different. She cared little for elaborate clothes, refused to wear rouge, talked incessantly, and was regarded as intelligent, outspoken, and arrogant. Along with her political idealism, she was prudish and found her sister’s behavior a painful embarrassment. Whether or not Elizabeth ever became a crowned empress, Catherine Dashkova considered her to be living in vulgar public concubinage. Worse, her sister’s goal was to replace the woman who had become Dashkova’s idol, Grand Duchess Catherine.

Princess Dashkova spent the summer of 1761 living in her father’s dacha on the Gulf of Finland, midway between Peterhof, where the empress was staying, and Oranienbaum, where Peter and Catherine held their summer court. Paul remained in Elizabeth’s household at Peterhof, but the empress now permitted Catherine to drive every Sunday from Oranienbaum to Peterhof to spend the day watching her son play in the palace garden. On the way home, Catherine often stopped her carriage at the Vorontsov dacha and invited the princess to spend the rest of the day with her at Oranienbaum. There, in Catherine’s gardens or in her apartment, the two women talked about books and political theory. Dashkova felt that she had reached a rare intellectual summit. “I may venture to assert there were not two women in the empire except the grand duchess and myself who occupied themselves at all in serious reading,” she wrote in her memoirs. During these long conversations, the princess convinced herself that Catherine was the only possible “savior of the nation,” and that it was essential that she, not Peter, succeed to the throne. Catherine did not encourage the expression of these opinions. She looked on Dashkova as a brilliant, enchanting child, whose adoration was flattering and companionship stimulating, but she realistically saw herself coming to power as Peter’s wife—providing she could maintain her position against Elizabeth Vorontsova. Dashkova, for her part, felt something close to worship for the grand duchess: “She captured my heart and mind and inspired me with enthusiastic devotion. I felt a devoted attachment which knew no competition except the love I bore my husband and children.”

Grand Duke Peter and Elizabeth Vorontsova persisted in trying to lure Princess Dashkova into their circle. Peter, observing her admiration for his wife, warned her, saying, “My child, you would do well to remember that it is much safer to deal with honest blockheads like your sister and me than with those great wits who squeeze the juice out of the orange and then throw away the rind.” Dashkova was not afraid of standing up to Peter. Once at a dinner for eighty at which both Peter and Catherine were present, the grand duke, having drunk too much Burgundy, slurred out that a young officer suspected of being the lover of one of the empress’s relatives should be beheaded for his impertinence. Challenging the grand duke, Dashkova said that this punishment appeared tyrannical, “for even if the crime in question were proved, so frightful a punishment was highly disproportionate to the offence.”

“You are a mere child,” Peter replied, “otherwise you would know that to be sparing of the punishment of death is to encourage insubordination and every kind of disorder.”

“But, sir,” Dashkova fired back, “almost all who have the honor of sitting in your presence have lived only during a reign in which such a punishment has never yet been heard of.”

“As to that,” declared the grand duke, “it is the very cause of the present want of discipline and order. But, take my word for it, you are a mere child and know nothing about the matter.”

The Holsteiners at the table were silent, but Dashkova persisted. “I am very ready to acknowledge, sir, that I am unable to comprehend your reasoning, but one thing of which I am very sensible is that your august aunt still lives and sits on the throne.” All eyes immediately turned, first to the young woman, then to the heir to the throne. But Peter did not answer, and ultimately ended the confrontation by sticking his tongue out at his adversary.

The episode won Dashkova much praise. Grand Duchess Catherine was delighted and congratulated her; the story spread and “gained me a high degree of notoriety,” wrote Dashkova. Every episode of this kind increased the contempt the princess felt for the heir to the throne: “I saw how little my country had to hope from the grand duke, sunk as he was in the most degrading ignorance and swayed by no better principle than a vulgar pride in being the creature of the King of Prussia, whom he called, ‘the king my master.’ ”

Princess Dashkova was happy to grant Peter’s definition of himself as a blockhead, because she believed that only a blockhead would prefer the company of her sister to that of the dazzling grand duchess. Scandalized that Peter was promising to displace Catherine and marry her sister, the young princess resolved to protect her heroine. One service she could perform was to report every shard of news and gossip that could affect the grand duchess. Catherine did not encourage Dashkova to play this role, although it was useful to have an adherent so close to the talk of the grand duke and Vorontsova. On the other hand, Catherine was careful what she said to her young admirer. Just as Dashkova was a possible source of information, she was also, potentially, a source of leaks. For this reason, Catherine was also careful to compartmentalize her relationships with those who supported her. At the beginning, each of the three primary figures knew little about the others, and each of them knew a different Catherine. Panin knew the levelheaded, sophisticated politician; Orlov, the warm-blooded woman; Dashkova, the philosopher and admirer of the Enlightenment. Eventually, Princess Dashkova came to regard Panin as the kind of Europeanized Russian whom she admired. But Dashkova was completely unaware of Orlov’s importance in Catherine’s life. She would have been horrified to learn that her idol was submitting to the caresses of a rough, uneducated soldier.

As Elizabeth’s physical decline continued, the general anxiety about Peter becoming emperor grew stronger. The longer the war continued, the more flagrantly Peter manifested his hatred and scorn for Russia and his sympathy for Prussia. Certain that his failing aunt would be unable to summon the strength to strip him of his inheritance, he began speaking openly about the changes he would make once he was emperor. He would terminate the war against Prussia. After making peace, he would switch sides and join Frederick against Russia’s present allies, Austria and France. Eventually, he meant to use Russia’s strength on behalf of Holstein. This meant war with Denmark to reconquer the territory that Denmark had taken from his duchy in 1721. He began to say openly that he intended to divorce Catherine and marry Elizabeth Vorontsova.

Peter was already doing everything possible to assist Frederick. To keep the king informed of the empress’s secret war councils, he passed along whatever he could learn of the plans of the Russian high command. This information went to the new English ambassador in St. Petersburg, Sir Robert Keith, who, in forwarding his own diplomatic reports to London, included Peter’s information. Keith then sent his couriers by way of Berlin, where his colleague the British ambassador to Prussia made a copy for Frederick before sending the packet along to Whitehall. By this means, the king of Prussia often learned of operations planned by the Russian high command before Russian field commanders were told.

Peter made little effort to keep his betrayal of the empress, the army, the nation, and the nation’s allies a secret. The French and Austrian ambassadors complained to the chancellor, but they made no impression because Michael Vorontsov, along with everyone else in the capital, believed that the empress’s precarious health soon must fail, and that Grand Duke Peter’s first act on taking the throne would be to end the war, recall his armies, and sign a peace with Frederick. In the interim, Vorontsov had no intention of jeopardizing his own future by informing Elizabeth of her nephew’s treachery. In the army, however, the contempt and loathing for the heir to the throne rose to the point that even Sir Robert Keith declared, “He must be mad to behave this way.”

If the Guards and the army in general had these feelings, the Orlovs particularly hated the man who was passing information to the enemy. In Gregory Orlov, this intense feeling burned even brighter. If Peter were compelled to abdicate, what would become of the grand duchess? Like Peter, she had been born a German, but she had lived in Russia for eighteen years, she was an Orthodox believer, she was the mother of the younger heir, and her absolute allegiance was to Russia. Orlov delivered this message wherever he went and his brothers did the same. Their hatred of Peter, their popularity in the army, and their willingness to act on Catherine’s behalf were to bring her to the throne.

Elizabeth was determined to defeat Prussia and Frederick. She had entered the war to honor her treaty with Austria, and she meant to see it through. The end of the war was coming; Frederick no longer led the most effective army in Europe, and both the Austrians and the Russians had become veterans. As Frederick’s manpower dwindled, the odds against him lengthened. Proof of this came at the Battle of Kunersdorf, on August 25, 1759, where, fifty miles east of Berlin, fifty thousand Prussians supported by three hundred cannon attacked seventy-nine thousand Russians dug into a strong defensive position. Frederick’s infantry hurled itself against the firmly anchored, well-defended Russian positions. By nightfall, when the fighting ended, Kunersdorf had become Frederick’s worst defeat in the Seven Years’ War; in the aftermath, Prussian soldiers simply flung away their muskets and ran. Although the Russian army suffered sixteen thousand dead and wounded, it inflicted eighteen thousand casualties on the Prussians. The king himself had two horses killed under him, and a bullet was deflected by a gold snuffbox he carried in his coat. That night, he wrote to a close friend in Berlin, “Of an army of forty-eight thousand, I do not have three thousand left. All flee and I am no longer master of my men. Berlin must look to its own safety. This is a terrible mishap and I shall not survive it. I have no more reserves and, to tell the truth, I believe all is lost.” In the morning, eighteen thousand men straggled back to join the king, but the forty-seven-year-old monarch remained in despair. And in pain. “What is wrong with me,” he wrote to his brother, Prince Henry, “is rheumatism in my feet, one of my knees and my left hand. I have also been in the grip of an almost continual fever for eight days.”

In St. Petersburg, Elizabeth rejoiced in the good news and endured the bad. On January 1, 1760, four months after Kunersdorf, she told the Austrian ambassador, “I intend to continue the war and to remain faithful to my allies even if I have to sell half my diamonds and dresses.” The commander of her army in Germany, General Peter Saltykov, repaid her dedication. In the summer of 1760, the Russian army crossed the Oder. Cossack cavalry rode into Berlin and occupied Frederick’s capital for three days.

As her pregnancy advanced, Catherine secluded herself. Her excuse—that it mortified her to see her husband publicly according almost royal honors to his mistress—was a convenience to help her protect her real situation. Now, while the grand duke was talking of repudiating her, there was no chance that he would pretend that this new child was his. Determined not to give him any justification for setting her aside, Catherine concealed her pregnancy, wearing wide hooped skirts, spending her days in an armchair in her room, receiving no one.

Catherine’s secret was better kept than Elizabeth’s. The empress had commanded that news of her condition be hidden from the grand duke and grand duchess. She attempted to conceal the physical ravages of illness: the deathly pale face, the overweight body, the swollen legs. These were hidden beneath rouge and silver gowns. Elizabeth sensed that Peter was waiting impatiently for her death, but she was too exhausted to break her word and carry out her real wish: to transfer the succession to Paul. She had energy and focus enough only to drag herselfy from her bed to a sofa or an armchair. Ivan Shuvalov, her recent favorite, was no longer able to comfort her; she seemed at peace only when Alexis Razumovsky, her former lover and perhaps her husband, was sitting by her bed, soothing her with soft Ukrainian lullabies. As the days passed, Elizabeth lost interest in Russia’s future and took less and less interest in her surroundings. She knew what was coming.

Her agony paralyzed Europe. All eyes were on the sickroom, where the outcome of the war hung on the struggle of a woman fighting for life. The allies’ dearest hope near the end of 1761 was that the empress’s doctors might manage to prolong her life for another six—and, if possible, twelve—months, by which time they hoped that Frederick would be beyond recovery. In private, Frederick himself admitted that he was near the end. The prize for which Russia had struggled for five years was within reach. If only Grand Duke Peter could be held back from his inheritance for a few more months, his enthusiasm for the Prussian king and all of his plans would be meaningless. It was not to be.

By the middle of December 1761, everyone knew that the empress would die soon. When Peter bluntly declared to Princess Dashkova that her sister, Elizabeth Vorontsova, would soon be his wife, Dashkova decided that something must be done to prevent this. On the night of December 20, although she was shivering with fever, she got out of bed, wrapped herself in furs, and had herself driven to the palace. Entering by a little back door, she had one of the grand duchess’s servants take her to her mistress. Catherine was in bed. Before the princess could say a word, the grand duchess said, “Before you tell me a thing, come into my bed and warm yourself.” In her memoirs, Dashkova described their conversation. She told Catherine that when the empress had only a few days, perhaps a few hours, to live, she could not endure the uncertainty involving Catherine’s future. “Have you formed any plan, or taken any precautions to ensure your safety?” the princess asked. Catherine was touched—and alarmed. She pressed her hand to Dashkova’s heart, and said, “I am grateful to you, but I declare to you that I have formed no sort of plan and can attempt nothing. I can only meet with courage whatever happens.”

To Dashkova, this passivity was unacceptable. “If you can do nothing, Madame, your friends must act for you!” she declared. “I have enough courage and enthusiasm to arouse them all. Give me orders! Direct me!”

For Catherine, this loyalty went too far. It was premature, precipitous. At this stage, Orlov could muster a few men of the Guards, but, without preparation, not enough. And this overwrought, irresponsible young woman might expose and endanger them all before they were ready. “In the name of heaven, princess,” Catherine said calmly, “do not think of placing yourself in danger. Were you on my account to suffer misfortunes, that would subject me to everlasting regret.” Catherine was still soothing her impetuous visitor when Dashkova interrupted her, kissed her hand, and assured her that she would no longer increase the risk by prolonging the interview. The two women embraced, and Dashkova rose and left as suddenly as she had come. In her excitement, she had not noticed that Catherine was six months pregnant.

Two days later, on December 23, Empress Elizabeth had a massive stroke. The doctors gathered around her bed agreed that this time there would be no recovery. Peter and Catherine were summoned and found Ivan Shuvalov and the two Razumovsky brothers standing beside the bed, staring down at the pale face on the pillow. To the end the empress remained lucid. She showed no sign of wishing to alter the succession. She asked Peter to promise to look after little Paul. Peter, keenly aware that the aunt who had made him her heir could also unmake him with a single word, promised. She also charged him to protect Alexis Razumovsky and Ivan Shuvalov. She had no message for Catherine, who remained at her bedside. Outside the bedroom, the antechamber and corridors were crowded. Father Theodore Dubyansky, the empress’s confessor, arrived, and the heavy scent of incense mingled with the smell of medicine as the priest prepared to administer the last rites. As the hours passed, the empress sent for the chancellor, Michael Vorontsov. He replied that he was too ill to come; it was not illness but fear of offending the heir that kept him away.

On Christmas morning, Elizabeth asked Father Dubyansky to read the Orthodox Prayer for the Dying. When he finished, she asked him to read it again. She blessed everyone in the room and, according to Orthodox custom, asked each person in the room for forgiveness. On Christmas Day, December 25, 1761, near four o’clock in the afternoon, Empress Elizabeth died. A few minutes later, Prince Nikita Trubetskoy, the president of the Senate, opened the double doors of the bedroom and announced to the waiting crowd, “Her Imperial Majesty, Elizabeth Petrovna, has fallen asleep in the Lord. God preserve our gracious sovereign, the Emperor Peter III.”

42

The Brief Reign of Peter III

THE ARCHBISHOP OF NOVGOROD blessed Peter as the new gosudar (autocrat), the Senate and the heads of the Colleges of State (government ministries) took the oath of allegiance, and the cannon of the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul thundered the proclamation of the accession of the new monarch. Peter rode out into the Palace Square to receive the oaths of the regiments of Foot Guards, the Preobrazhensky, Semyonovsky, and Izmailovsky; the Horse Guards; the line regiments; and the Cadet Corps. When the figure of the new emperor, wearing the bottle-green uniform of the Preobrazhensky Guards, appeared, illuminated by torches, the regimental standards dipped in salute. Delighted, Peter returned to the palace and told the Austrian ambassador, Count Mercy, “I did not think they loved me so much.” That evening, he presided over a supper for 150 people who had been instructed to dress in light colors to celebrate Peter’s accession rather than the usual black customary for mourning. At the table, Catherine sat on one side of the emperor. Ivan Shuvalov, Elizabeth’s favorite, in tears at the empress’s bedside, stood behind Peter’s chair, laughing and joking. The following night, Peter gave another banquet for which ladies were commanded to come “richly dressed.” Princess Dashkova refused to attend these festivities, pleading illness. As the evening progressed, she received a message from her sister saying that the new emperor was annoyed by her absence and did not believe her excuse, and that it might go hard with the princess’s husband, Prince Dashkov, if she did not appear. Dashkova obeyed. When she appeared, Peter approached and said in a low voice, “If, my little friend, you will take my advice, pay a little more attention to us. The time may come when you will have good reason to repent of any negligence shown your sister. Believe me, it is for your interest alone I speak. You have no other way of making yourself of consequence in the world than by seeking her protection.”

Ten days before the funeral, the body of Empress Elizabeth was moved to the Kazan Cathedral, where, in a silver embroidered robe, it was placed in an open coffin, surrounded by candles. A stream of mourners, flowing past the coffin in semidarkness, could not help seeing a veiled figure, draped in black, wearing neither crown nor jewelry, kneeling on the stone floor beside the bier, apparently lost in grief. All knew that this was the new empress, Catherine. Catherine was there in part out of respect but also because she understood that there was no better way to appeal directly to the people than with this demonstration of humility and apparent devotion. Indeed, she played the part so well that the French ambassador reported to Paris that “more and more, she captures the hearts of Russians.”

Peter’s behavior in the presence of Elizabeth’s body was in stark contrast. Through the weeks of public mourning, the new emperor acted out his joy at being released from eighteen years of political and cultural imprisonment. Intoxicated by his new freedom, he resisted conforming to the customs of the Orthodox Church regarding death. He refused to stand in respectful vigil or to kneel beside the coffin. On the few occasions he appeared in the cathedral, he paced restlessly, talking loudly, making jokes, laughing, pointing, and even sticking out his tongue at the priests. Most of the time, he remained in his own apartment, drinking and shouting with an excitement he seemed unable to control.

The climax to this display of mockery came on the day Elizabeth’s body was moved from the Kazan Cathedral, across the Neva River bridge, to the mausoleum on the island fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. Peter, conspicuously alone, walked immediately behind the coffin. He wore a black mourning robe with a long train, carried by elderly noblemen. The new emperor’s prank was to lag behind, then stop completely until the coffin had advanced thirty feet ahead of him. Then, with long strides, he would hurry forward to catch up. The older men, unable to manage the emperor’s pace, were forced to let go of his train and let it flap wildly in the wind. Delighted by their embarrassment, Peter repeated this sequence over and over. This grotesque buffoonery by a man almost thirty-four years old, walking at the funeral of the woman who had made him an emperor, shocked everyone: the noblemen walking in the procession, the officers and soldiers lining the route, and the crowds of people watching.

Despite this flamboyantly inappropriate behavior, Peter followed a moderate political path in the early weeks of his reign. Michael Vorontsov, restored to the chancellorship after Bestuzhev’s fall, retained that post, although in Elizabeth’s last years he had sided with the anti-Prussian, pro-French Shuvalovs. Peter immediately recalled long-banished officials. Ernst Johann Biron, Empress Anna’s German chancellor and lover and the father of the Princess of Courland, was permitted to exchange his retirement in Yaroslavl for a comfortable residence in Petersburg. Lestocq, Elizabeth’s French physician and counselor, and old Field Marshal Münnich, another German, were pardoned and brought back from exile. Nothing was done, however, to ameliorate the disgrace of Alexis Bestuzhev, the former chancellor, who had always supported Austria and opposed Prussia. His exclusion from the general amnesty made a painful impression on many Russians. It seemed that political offenders with foreign names were being allowed to return, but this Russian statesman, who had worked so long for his country’s secure position in Europe, remained in disgrace.

A stream of popular administrative changes followed these amnesties. Whether these efforts stemmed from a planned effort to win public favor or were simply an extension of Peter’s unpredictable behavior, no one knew. On January 17, he pleased the entire population by reducing the government tax on salt. On February 18, he delighted the nobility by issuing a manifesto ending compulsory service to the state. This obligation was a legacy from the reign of Peter the Great, who, after declaring that he, as tsar, was “the first servant of the state,” had then decreed that all landowners and other noblemen owed a similar duty. The result had created a permanent officer corps for the army and navy and a permanent administration staff for the Russian bureaucracy. Now, the descendants of these noblemen were freed from all military and civil obligations; they would no longer be compelled to perform years of state service. They were also granted freedom to travel abroad and, except in wartime, to remain as long as they liked. On February 21, Peter abolished the Secret Chancellery, the dreaded investigative chamber that dealt with those accused of treason or sedition. At the same time, Russian religious dissenters, the Raskolniki, were permitted to return, with full liberty of worship, from the countries to which they had fled to avoid persecution by the the Orthodox Church.

In March, Peter visited the grim Schlüsselburg Fortress, where the former emperor, Ivan VI, deposed by Empress Elizabeth, had been confined for eighteen years. Peter, certain that his own place on the throne was secure, thought of giving Ivan an easier life, perhaps even of releasing him and appointing him to a military post. The condition of the man he found made these plans impossible. Ivan, now twenty-two, was tall and thin, with hair to his waist. He was illiterate, stammered out disconnected sentences, and was uncertain about his own identity. His clothes were torn and dirty, his bed was a narrow pallet, the air in his prison room was heavy, and the only light came from small, barred windows high up in the wall. When Peter offered to help, Ivan asked whether he could have more fresh air. Peter gave him a silk dressing gown, which the former emperor hid under his pillow. Before leaving the fortress, Peter ordered a house to be built in the courtyard where the prisoner might have more air and more room to walk.

Peter rose at seven o’clock and dressed with his adjutants standing by, reading reports and receiving orders. From eight to eleven he consulted his ministers and made a round of public offices, often finding only junior clerks on duty. At eleven, he appeared on the parade ground, where he conducted a rigorous inspection of uniforms and weapons and drilled the troops, assisted by his Holstein officers. At one o’clock, he dined, inviting to his table anyone to whom he wished to speak, regardless of rank. His afternoons often included a nap, followed by a concert in which he played his violin. Then came supper and a party, which sometimes lasted late into the night. Most of these evenings involved heavy smoking, drinking, and carousing. Peter always carried a pipe and was followed by a servant carrying a large basket filled with Dutch clay pipes and a variety of tobaccos. The room quickly filled with smoke, and through this haze, the emperor strutted up and down, loudly talking and laughing. The company, sitting at long tables covered with bottles, and understanding that Peter hated ceremony and liked to be treated as a comrade, let themselves go. Presently, they would all get up and stagger into the courtyard, where they played hopscotch like children, hopping on one leg, butting their comrades, and kicking them from behind. “Imagine our feelings to see the first men of the empire, covered with ribbons and stars, behaving this way,” said a onetime guest. When one of the Holsteiners fell to the ground, the others would laugh and clap until the servants came and carried him away. But Peter was always up again at seven o’clock.

This frantic energy displayed little organization or purpose. “The moderation and clemency of the emperor’s acts,” Count Mercy wrote to Vienna, “do not indicate anything fixed or definite. He has a mind but little exercised in affairs, little given to solid considerations, and continually occupied by prejudices. His natural disposition is heady, violent, and irrational.” A few days later, Mercy added, “I can find nobody here of sufficient zeal and courage energetically to resist the vehement and obstinate temper of the monarch. They all flatter his stubbornness for their own private ends.”

Severe conflict arose when Peter attempted to impose change on some of the deep-rooted institutions of the Russian empire. His goodwill did not extend to the Orthodox Church. Since coming to Russia eighteen years before, he had hated his adopted form of Christianity. He believed its doctrines and dogmas to be sheer superstition, its services ludicrous, its priests contemptible, and its wealth obscene. The religion he had brought with him from Holstein was Lutheran. Now, as emperor and the official head of the Orthodox Church, he decided that this age-old pillar of Russian life and culture must be remade on the Protestant model practiced in Prussia. Frederick II was a freethinker who sneered at priests and religious belief; why should he, Peter, not do the same? On February 16, a decree secularized all church property, placing it in the hands of a new governmental department. Dignitaries of the Orthodox Church were to become salaried officials paid by the state. When the higher clergy expressed indignation and dismay, Peter bluntly announced that the veneration of icons was a primitive practice that must be eliminated. All icons except those of Jesus Christ—all of the painted and carved renditions of the saints who were a part of Russian history—were to be removed from churches. Then, striking directly at the Russian clergy themselves, he demanded that priests shave off their beards and abandon the long brocaded robes that reached to the floor; in the future, he said, they must wear black cassocks like Protestant pastors. The archbishops replied that if the clergy obeyed these commands, they would be murdered by their flocks. That Easter, the usual open-air religious processions were banned, spurring talk among the people that the emperor was a pagan—or, worse, a Protestant. Indeed, Peter told the archbishop of Novgorod that he meant to establish a Protestant chapel in the new Winter Palace. When the archbishop protested, Peter shouted that the prelate was an old fool and that a religion good enough for the king of Prussia should be good enough for Russia.

To change the beliefs and practices of the Orthodox Church would require a sustained effort, but the clergy and the millions of faithful would have difficulty forming an effective opposition. The army, the other pillar of the Russian state and autocracy, posed a different problem. He considered himself a soldier and was keenly aware of the importance of possessing a loyal, efficient army. Nevertheless, from his first days on the throne, Peter managed to offend the institution that he most needed for support. He was determined to reorganize the Russian army on the Prussian model. Everything was to be reformed or replaced: uniforms, discipline, drill, battlefield tactics, even its commander—all were to be Prussianized. Peter liked neatness and smartness and wanted his soldiers to wear close-fitting German uniforms. He took away the long, loose coats of Russian soldiers, useful in the cold of a northern winter, and put them into lighter, thinner, tight-fitting German uniforms. Before long, some could scarcely recognize the newly costumed, powdered men of the Russian Imperial Guard. Russian officers were expected to appear in new uniforms garnished with shoulder straps and gold knots. Peter himself began wearing the blue uniform of a Prussian colonel. At the beginning of his reign, he was content to wear the broad blue ribbon of the Russian Order of St. Andrew; then he switched to the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle. He often showed off a ring containing a miniature portrait of Frederick, which he announced was his most precious possession.

Peter had never been near a battlefield, but he was an excellent drillmaster, and on the parade ground he made Russian soldiers practice Prussian exercises for hours, enforcing his commands with a little cane. No officer was excused from these drills, and fat, middle-aged generals were obliged to turn out at the head of their regiments and do parade ground drill on their stiff, gouty limbs.

The antics of old generals trying to carry out Prussian exercises gave Peter amusement, but dressing his soldiers as Germans and teaching them Prussian drill was only the beginning. He replaced the traditional Russian sovereign’s personal bodyguard, drawn from the Preobrazhensky regiment—a unit founded by Peter the Great and of which Peter III was honorary colonel—with a Holstein Cuirassier Regiment to which he gave the name of Body Guard of the Imperial Household. This created intense indignation in the Guards and in the army generally. He announced that he intended to disband and abolish the regiments of the Russian Imperial Guard altogether and distribute the men among the regular line regiments. As a culminating insult, he placed his uncle, Prince George Lewis of Holstein, who had no military experience, in command of the Russian army.

At the moment Peter was proclaimed emperor in December 1761, Frederick of Prussia was in a precarious position. Nearly a third of his dominions were in enemy hands. The Russians had occupied East Prussia and part of Pomerania; the Austrians had regained most of Silesia: Berlin, his capital, had been pillaged and lay half in ruins. His army now was composed mostly of young recruits, and the king himself resembled “a demented scarecrow.” To rid himself of Russia as an enemy, he was prepared to sign a treaty, permanently sacrificing East Prussia. Then came Empress Elizabeth’s death and Peter’s accession to the throne. When Frederick learned that the new emperor had ordered a cessation of hostilities, he responded by ordering the immediate release of all Russian prisoners and sent a twenty-six-year-old officer, Baron Bernhard von Goltz, to St. Petersburg to negotiate peace. Meanwhile, Prussia’s interests were in the care of the English ambassador, Sir Robert Keith, who had followed Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams’s practice of sending military information to Frederick in Berlin. Now that Peter was on the throne, Keith’s influence was at a peak. The Austrian ambassador, Count Mercy, called him “the chief instrument of the Prussian party. Not a day passes that the emperor does not see Mr. Keith, or send him fruit, or pay him other attentions.” Keith’s own dispatches also reveal this closeness. Only three days after Peter’s accession, Keith informed London that “at a dinner, His Imperial Majesty, with whose good graces I have always been honored, came up to me and smilingly told me in my ear that he hoped I would be pleased with him as the night before he had sent couriers to the different corps of his army with orders not to advance further into Prussian territory and to cease all hostilities.” Three weeks later, when Keith was supping with the emperor in Elizabeth Vorontsova’s apartment, Peter told him that he wanted to settle matters with the king of Prussia as soon as possible and was “resolved to get free of all commitments to the Court of Vienna.”

On February 25, Count Mercy was present at a banquet given by Chancellor Vorontsov for the emperor and for all foreign ambassadors; three hundred people were in the hall. Mercy found Peter uneasy. At nine o’clock the company sat down. During the meal, which lasted four hours, Peter drank Burgundy, became excited, and, at the top of his voice, proposed a toast to the king of Prussia. At two in the morning, the diners rose from the table, baskets of clay pipes and tobacco were brought, and the men began to smoke. Peter, pacing up and down the room, pipe in hand, confronted the new French ambassador, Baron de Breteuil: “We must make peace,” he said. “For my part, I have declared it.”

“And we, too, sire, would have it,” the ambassador replied, then added, “honorably, and in agreement with our allies.”

Peter’s face darkened. “Just as you please,” he said. “For my part, I have declared it. You can do as you please. I am a soldier and I don’t joke.”

“Sire,” said Breteuil, “I will report to my king the declaration Your Majesty has been pleased to make to me.”

Peter turned and walked away. The following day, the ambassadors of Russia’s allies, Austria and France, were handed an official document which declared that the war had been going on for six years to the detriment of all. Now, the new Russian emperor, anxious to terminate so great an evil, had decided to announce to all the courts in alliance with Russia that in order to restore the blessings of peace to his own empire and to Europe, he was ready to sacrifice all the conquests made by Russian arms. He believed that the allied courts would also prefer restoration of general tranquillity and would agree with him. After reading the declaration, Count Mercy declared to Chancellor Vorontsov that he found the declaration obscure and impertinent. Writing to his own court in Vienna, he described it as venomous; as an effort to avoid the most solemn treaty obligations; and as an excuse to save the king of Prussia from impending destruction.

For Mercy and Austria, worse was to come. Peter’s declaration of peace turned out to be a preliminary to the signing of a formal alliance between Russia and Prussia. On March 3, the new Prussian envoy, young Baron von Goltz, arrived in St. Petersburg, where Peter received him enthusiastically. Goltz scarcely had time to congratulate the new monarch on his accession when Peter overwhelmed him with ardent assurances of his own admiration for the king of Prussia. He had a great deal to talk to him about in private, he whispered. Immediately after the audience, Peter thrust his arm through that of this new friend and carried him off to dinner, talking incessantly about the Prussian army and amazing Goltz with his intimate knowledge of the subject, including the names of almost every senior officer of every Prussian regiment. Goltz was provided with a mansion in which Peter visited him twice a day. Within a week, Goltz had completely eclipsed Keith, his English colleague, and, henceforth, until the end of Peter’s reign, Prussian influence dominated at the Russian court.

Goltz’s mission was to speed the end of the war and the detachment of Russia from her allies. To achieve this, he told Peter that Frederick was willing to consent to the permanent cession of East Prussia. Peter did not require this. On the contrary, he was willing to sacrifice everything to please Frederick. He let Frederick set the terms. When the king sent to St. Petersburg a draft treaty for an eternal peace between Prussia and Russia, it did not go through the normal channel; it was not submitted, or even shown, to Chancellor Vorontsov. Instead, Goltz simply read the text to Peter in private without witnesses, and on April 24, Peter signed it without comment, sending it to Vorontsov for confirmation. By this stroke of a pen on a secret treaty, the new emperor not only restored to Prussia all the territory won from her by Russia during five years of war but contracted an “eternal” alliance with Prussia.

Six days after the signing, the emperor celebrated the peace treaty with a banquet at which every guest was seated according to rank, the first time this precedence had been observed during his reign. Peter and his chancellor, Vorontsov, both wore the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle. The banquet lasted for four hours and four toasts were drunk: an expression of joy at the restoration of peace with Prussia; personal congratulations to Frederick II; a toast to perpetual peace between the two powers; and a toast to the “honor of all the valiant officers and soldiers of the Prussian army.” Each toast was accompanied by a triple salvo from the guns of the fortress of Peter and Paul, as well as from fifty cannon planted in the square outside the palace. There was no mention of the achievements, bravery, or losses of the Russian army, and, said Count Mercy, “nothing was omitted in the way of indecency and offensiveness in regard to his ancient ally, Austria.”

This sensational diplomatic and military volte-face startled the chancelleries of Europe. When Maria Theresa’s government in Vienna learned that the Russian emperor meant to sacrifice all his conquests “in the interests of peace,” the Austrian reply was guarded, asking for details as to how this was to be achieved. The Russian explanation, arriving in April, was pretentious and pompous: to make peace, it declared, one belligerent must step forward as a general proponent and agent of peace; Russia had chosen this role “out of compassion for suffering humanity and from personal friendship for the king of Prussia. The Austrian court is therefore invited to follow our example.” To Vienna, the message was menacing; the threat became real when Peter signed the treaty of alliance with Frederick. Peter explained this by saying that inasmuch as his good offices had proved useless, he found himself regretfully compelled to resort to the extreme measure of assisting the king of Prussia with his army as being the quickest way to restore to humanity the blessings of peace. He ordered General Zakhar Chernyshev, the commander of a Russian corps attached to the Austrian army in Silesia (and Catherine’s ardent admirer fourteen years earlier) to join the Prussian army with his force of sixteen thousand infantry and a thousand Cossacks to fight against Austria. At this betrayal and the collapse of all his years of diplomatic effort in Russia, Count Mercy asked to be recalled to Vienna. He recommended sending a third-rank diplomat as his replacement.

With Russia defecting from the alliance and switching sides, France and Austria had no alternative except to negotiate with Prussia. The French were outraged. The Duc de Choiseul, Louis XV’s foreign minister, said to the Russian ambassador, “Sir, the maintenance of solemn engagements ought to override every other consideration.” Louis himself declared that while he was willing to listen to overtures for a durable and honorable peace, he must act in full accord with his allies; he would consider himself a traitor if he took part in secret negotiations; he would stain the honor of France if he deserted his allies. The result was a rupture of Russian diplomatic relations with France and the recall of ambassadors from both St. Petersburg and Paris.

Peter had provoked and insulted the Orthodox Church, infuriated and alienated the army, and betrayed his allies. Nevertheless, effective opposition still needed a specific cause around which to rally. Peter himself supplied this by endeavoring to impose on his exhausted country a frivolous new war—against Denmark.

As Duke of Holstein, Peter had inherited the grievances of his duchy against the Danish monarchy. In 1721, the small province of Schleswig, then a hereditary possession of the dukes of Holstein, had been seized and handed over to Denmark by England, France, Austria, and Sweden. No sooner was Peter on the Russian throne than he proceeded to insist upon “his rights.” As early as March 1, even before peace with Prussia was settled, he demanded to know whether Denmark was prepared to satisfy his claims to Schleswig; if not, he said he would be compelled to take extreme measures. The Danes proposed a conference and the English ambassador recommended negotiations; why should the mighty emperor of Russia make war with Denmark over a few villages? But everyone soon discovered that on the Holstein question, Peter meant to have his way and that even the advice of his new ally, Frederick of Prussia, was powerless to restrain him. Hitherto, Peter had proved pliable in Prussian hands; now even these hardheaded Germans learned about his obstinacy. Ultimately, on June 3, Peter agreed to a conference in Berlin to be mediated by Frederick, but he stipulated that the Russian propositions were to be regarded as an ultimatum to Denmark and that rejection meant war.

Redressing a perceived wrong against his duchy was one motive for provoking a war, but Peter had a second. Having idealized the warrior king of Prussia, having bragged that he had defeated “gypsies” when he was a boy in Kiel, having marched paste soldiers across a tabletop in a palace room and ordered real soldiers around a parade ground, he wanted now to be a hero on a real battlefield. Peter had just proclaimed to his allies and to Europe his passion for peace; now he was preparing to attack Denmark. The Russian army, deprived of its hard-won victory over Prussia, now learned that it was to spill its blood in a new campaign that had nothing to do with the interests of Russia.

Unable to dissuade Peter from undertaking this new war so soon after his accession, Frederick II urged his admirer to take precautions before his departure from Russia. “Frankly, I distrust these Russians of yours,” he said to Peter. “What if, during your absence, a cabal were formed to dethrone Your Majesty?” He advised Peter to have himself crowned and consecrated in Moscow before leaving, to lock up all unreliable persons, and to leave St. Petersburg garrisoned by his faithful Holsteiners. Peter refused to be persuaded; he saw no need. “If the Russians had wanted to do me harm,” he wrote to Frederick, “they could have done it long ago, seeing that I take no particular precautions, going freely about the streets on foot. I assure Your Majesty that when one knows how to deal with the Russians, one can be quite sure of them.”

A Russian army of forty thousand veterans was already assembled in occupied Prussian Pomerania, and Peter, without waiting to arrive himself, ordered these troops to advance. The Danes reacted by moving first and met the Russians in Mecklenburg. Then, to the astonishment of Danish commanders, the Russians in front of them began to retreat.

The riddle was solved a few days later. There had been a coup d’état in St. Petersburg. Peter III had been overthrown, had abdicated, and was a prisoner. Peter’s wife, now styled Catherine II, had been proclaimed empress of Russia.

43

“Dura!”

NO ONE KNOWS EXACTLY when the plot to remove Peter III from the throne first took shape in Catherine’s mind. As Peter’s consort, she had become empress of Russia. Politically, however, this meant little; from the beginning of her husband’s reign, her position was one of isolation and humiliation. “It does not appear that the empress is much consulted,” Ambassador Keith reported to London, adding that he and his fellow diplomats “think it not the likeliest way of succeeding to make any direct or particular address to her Imperial Majesty.” Breteuil, the French ambassador, wrote, “The empress is abandoned to grief and dark forebodings. Those who know her say she is scarcely recognizable.”

Her position was particularly delicate since she was pregnant. With her physical activity severely restricted, there was little she could do to lead, or even encourage, the overthrow of her husband. The more she examined her situation, the greater appeared the risks, and she concluded that her best course was to withdraw completely from court life, do nothing, and wait to see how Peter managed his role as emperor. Catherine never gave up her ambition; instead, she simply allowed it to be guided by patience.

As she had imagined might happen, Peter’s errors and the insults he heaped upon her made her more popular. On February 21, Peter’s birthday, Catherine was forced to pin the ribbon of the Order of St. Catherine on Elizabeth Vorontsova’s gown, an honor previously conferred only on empresses and grand duchesses. Everyone understood that this was intended as a public insult to Catherine, and it won her increased sympathy. Breteuil, the French ambassador, wrote, “The empress bears the emperor’s conduct and the arrogance of Vorontsova nobly.” A month later he reported that she was “putting a manly face on her troubles; she is as much loved and respected as the emperor is hated and despised.” One factor in Catherine’s favor was that the court and the foreign ambassadors all regarded the emperor’s choice of a mistress—now the presumed empress-to-be—as farcical. Breteuil described Elizabeth Vorontsova as “having the appearance and manners of a pot-house wench.” Another observer described her “broad, puffy, pock-marked face and fat, squat, shapeless figure.” A third reported that “she was ugly, common and stupid.” Everyone who tried to understand her appeal to the emperor failed.

In her secluded apartment, Catherine’s third child, Gregory Orlov’s son, was born in secrecy on April 11. Named Alexis Gregorovich (son of Gregory) and later titled Count Bobrinksy, the infant was swaddled in soft beaver skin and spirited out of the palace to be cared for by the wife of Vasily Shkurin, Catherine’s faithful valet. Shkurin himself was responsible for the ruse that ensured that the birth would not be noticed. Knowing that the emperor loved fires, Shkurin waited until Catherine’s contractions became severe and then set fire to his own house in the city, trusting that Peter and many in the court would rush to watch the blaze. His guess was correct, the fire spread to other houses, and Catherine was left alone with a midwife to bear her child. She recovered quickly. Ten days later, in blooming health, she received dignitaries who came to pay their respects on her thirty-third birthday. Free of the pregnancy that had curtailed her ability to speak publicly and act, she told Count Mercy, the Austrian ambassador, that she heartily detested the new treaty her husband had made with their hated mutual enemy, Prussia.

Through May, tension mounted in St. Petersburg. Preparations for Peter’s Danish campaign went forward and some line regiments had moved to Narva, the first stage on the road to the battlefield. With every step in the direction of this unwanted war, resistance grew more intense. The Guards regiments, officers and men, tormented by increasing Prussian influence on their lives, were infuriated by the prospect of a distant, meaningless campaign against Denmark. Peter ignored their opposition.

The poisonous relationship between Peter and Catherine was made unmistakably clear at the end of April when Peter presided over a state banquet to celebrate the alliance with Prussia. Four hundred guests were in the hall. The emperor, wearing a blue Prussian uniform with the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle hanging from an orange ribbon around his neck, sat at the head of the table. The Prussian ambassador was on his right; Catherine was far away. Peter began by proposing three toasts. The first was to the health of the imperial family. The guests pushed back their chairs, rose, and drank. Catherine remained seated. As she put down her glass, Peter flushed with anger, sent his adjutant to ask why she had not risen to her feet. Catherine sent back word that, as the imperial family consisted only of her husband, her son, and herself, she did not think her husband would feel it necessary or appropriate for her to rise. The adjutant returned from Peter to say that the emperor said that she was a fool and ought to have known that the emperor’s two uncles, both princes of Holstein and both present, were also members of the imperial family. Then, fearing that his messenger might be softening his message, Peter stood and bawled a single word, “Dura!” (“fool”). As this insult reverberated around the room, Catherine burst into tears. To recover, she turned to Count Stroganov, sitting next to her, and asked him to tell a funny story.

Peter had made clear to everyone not only the contempt he felt for his wife but that he scarcely regarded Catherine as his wife any longer. That same night, reeling with drink, he ordered Catherine arrested and taken to the Schlüsselburg Fortess. This command was rescinded on the urgent plea of Catherine’s uncle, Prince George of Holstein, the new commander in chief of the Russian army.^* After becoming emperor, Peter had brought this Holstein cousin to Russia to command the army in the Danish campaign. In this capacity, George pointed out to Peter that the arrest of the empress would arouse violent indignation in the army. Peter backed away and canceled the order, but the episode was a warning to Catherine. “It was then,” she wrote later to Poniatowski, “that I began to listen to the proposals [to depose Peter] which people had been making to me to me since the death of the empress.” Of course, she had been listening long before.

The “Dura!” episode turned all eyes on Catherine. Outwardly, she bore this public humiliation with dignity and resignation. But this was a façade; Catherine had never willingly resigned herself to such treatment. It was obvious to her that Peter’s hostility had evolved into a determination to end their marriage and remove her from public life. She held positions of strength, however. She was the mother of the heir; her intelligence, competence, courage, and patriotism were widely known; and while Peter was piling blunder on top of blunder, her popularity was soaring. The moment to act was approaching.

On June 12, Peter left St. Petersburg for Oranienbaum to drill his fourteen hundred Holstein soldiers before sending them off to war. Rumors of restlessness in the capital reached him, but his only precautionary response was to order Catherine to leave the city. He instructed her to take herself not to Oranienbaum, where she had spent sixteen summers; (Oranienbaum was now the domain of Vorontsova, the empress-to-be) but to Peterhof, six miles away. Catherine traveled to Peterhof on June 17. As a precaution, she left Paul behind in the capital with Panin. Meanwhile, the Orlov brothers, circulating among the Guards, speeded the flow of money and wine to the men in the barracks—all of these good things passed out in the name of the Empress Catherine.

Panin, the Orlovs, and Dashkova understood that the crisis was near. Panin’s support was firm. What rapport could there be between a feather-brained, garrulous monarch, pretending to be a soldier and affecting the language of the barracks, and a highly educated statesman, elegant, naturally reserved, of fastidious taste, who had spent half his life at courts, wearing a powdered wig and an elaborate, brocaded costume? There was more than a difference in style. Peter had spoken openly of sending Panin back to Sweden, where his task as Russian ambassador would be to work in the interests of Frederick and Prussia—in direct contradiction to Panin’s own political views. This cautious diplomat never intended to be a principal leader in a revolution, but Panin had now become not only the guardian of Catherine’s son and heir but also her chief ministerial counselor during this critical moment in her life. He was well qualified.

Another powerful figure had joined the empress. This was Count Kyril Razumovsky, who, twelve years before, had ridden forty miles every day to visit Catherine. Well educated and genial, a court figure whom everyone admired, he was chafing under the regime of Peter III. Razumovsky, grown plump, knew how absurd he looked in a tight-fitting Prussian uniform and that his clumsiness on the parade ground offended as well as amused the emperor. When Peter had boasted to him that King Frederick had made him a colonel in the Prussian army, Razumovsky caustically replied, “Your Majesty can have your revenge by making him a field marshal in the Russian army.” Razumovsky had already cast his lot with Catherine and could help in many ways. Besides being hetman of the Cossacks, he was colonel of the Izmailovsky Guards Regiment and president of the Russian Academy of Sciences. At a critical moment, Razumovsky told the director of the academy printing press to begin secretly printing copies of a manifesto, written by Panin and approved by Catherine, declaring that Peter III had abdicated and that Catherine had assumed the throne. Frightened, the director protested that this was premature and dangerous. Razumovsky fixed him with a stare. “You already know too much,” he said. “Now your head, as well as mine, is at stake. Do as I say.”

Nothing, however, could be done without the Guards. By chance, Gregory Orlov had been appointed paymaster of the Guards Artillery, giving him access to substantial funds, which he used to pay for the wine he distributed to the soldiers. By the end of June, he and his brothers had won the support of fifty officers, and, they believed, thousands of the rank and file. One of the most enthusiastic officers was a Captain Passek of the Preobrazhensky Guards.

Thus, while Peter at Oranienbaum was preparing his military campaign against Denmark, the conspirators were planning their coup against him. Their first idea had been to seize Peter in his room in the palace and declare him incompetent to rule, just as Empress Elizabeth had seized Ivan VI and his mother while they were asleep, twenty-one years earlier. The departure of Peter for Oranienbaum, where he would be surrounded by hundreds of loyal Holstein soldiers, had thwarted this plan. To replace it, they had agreed to Panin’s proposal that Peter be arrested when he returned to the capital to witness the departure of the Guards regiments for the Danish campaign. The Guards, still in the capital and primed by the Orlovs, would depose Peter and swear allegiance to Catherine.

On June 7, members of the emperor’s retinue were told to be ready to start within ten days. The Preobrazhensky Guards were ordered to prepare to leave for Germany on July 7. Foreign embassies were informed that when the emperor left to command his armies, he wished all foreign ambassadors to accompany him. But Mercy of Austria had already left for Vienna; Breteuil of France departed quickly for Paris; of the prominent diplomatic envoys in the capital, only Keith of England packed his trunks. The Russian naval squadron at Kronstadt was ordered to be ready to sail. Unfortunately, the admiral reported that many sailors were sick; Peter responded by issuing a decree commanding the sailors “to get well immediately.”

The atmosphere at Oranienbaum remained remarkably peaceful. Peter seemed almost reluctant to leave. On June 19, an opera was performed during which Peter played his violin in the court orchestra. Catherine was invited and came from Peterhof. This was the last time husband and wife were to see each other.

On the evening of June 27, one of the conspirators, Captain Passek of the Guards, was accosted by a soldier who asked him whether the rumor was true that the empress had been arrested and a conspiracy discovered. Passek dismissed the story, whereupon the soldier went to another officer, this one ignorant of the conspiracy, and repeated his question and Passek’s reaction. This officer promptly arrested the soldier and reported the matter to his superior. The senior officer then arrested Captain Passek and sent a report to the emperor at Oranienbaum. Peter disregarded the warning. He considered the presence of the principal ministers of state with their wives at Oranienbaum to be a guarantee of the good behavior of the capital. He dismissed the idea that Russians would prefer Catherine to himself as ruler. When he was given a second report describing the increasing restlessness in St. Petersburg, Peter, who was playing his violin and resented interruptions, impatiently ordered the note left on a small table nearby so he could read it later. He forgot it.

In the capital, news of Passek’s arrest alarmed the leading conspirators. When Gregory Orlov hurried to Panin to ask what should be done, he found the older man with Princess Dashkova. Panin recognized the possibility that Passek might be tortured and that the conspirators could be sure of their freedom for only a few hours. They must act quickly. Catherine must be brought back to the capital and proclaimed empress without waiting for the arrest and deposition of the emperor. Panin, Dashkova, and Orlov agreed that Gregory’s brother, Alexis, should hurry to Peterhof and bring Catherine back to the city. The other brothers were to circulate through the barracks of the Guards, sounding the alarm that the empress’s life was in danger and preparing the regiments to support her. Gregory himself was to go to the barracks of Kyril Razumovsky’s Izmailovsky Guards, which lay at the city’s limits on the western road to Peterhof and Oranienbaum. This unit would be the first Guards regiment Catherine would reach when she was escorted back from Peterhof. Alexis Orlov arrived at the meeting, was told what had happened, and immediately went down to the street and hired an ordinary Petersburg street carriage. In this shabby rig, he set off through the luminous, silvery night on the road to Peterhof, twenty miles away.

The next morning, Friday, June 28, Catherine was asleep in Peter the Great’s small waterside pavilion of Mon Plaisir in the gardens of Peterhof. Built in the Dutch style, this little building sat on a narrow terrace only a few feet above the gently lapping waves of the Gulf of Finland. At five o’clock, the empress was awakened by a maidservant. The next moment Alexis Orlov, arriving from St. Petersburg, quietly entered the room and whispered, “Matushka, Little Mother, wake up! The time has come! You must get up and come with me! Everything is ready for your proclamation!”

Startled, Catherine sat up in bed. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Passek is arrested,” Orlov explained. Wordlessly, the empress arose and put on a simple black dress. Without arranging her hair or powdering her face, she accompanied Orlov out the door and through the gardens to the road where his hired carriage was waiting. Catherine got in, accompanied by her maid and her servant Shkurin, while Orlov sat up on the box next to the driver. They set off to return to the capital, twenty miles away, but the two horses, which had already traveled twenty miles that night, were exhausted. Fortunately, a peasant cart drawn by two farm horses appeared on the road. Persuaded by arguments and coins, the peasant driver agreed to exchange his two fresh farm horses for the tired city horses and, in this rustic style, the empress-to-be proceeded toward her destiny. Halfway to the city, they met Catherine’s hairdresser on his way to Peterhof to prepare her hair for the day. The empress turned him around, saying that she would not need him. Then, nearing the capital, they encountered another carriage, bringing Gregory Orlov and Prince Bariatinsky to meet them. Gregory took Catherine and Alexis into his carriage and drove directly to the barracks of the Izmailovsky Guards.

It was nine in the morning when they reached the barracks courtyard. Gregory Orlov leaped from the carriage and ran to announce Catherine’s arrival. A drummer boy came tumbling out a door, followed by a dozen solders, some half-dressed, others fastening on their sword belts. They pressed around Catherine, kissed her hands, feet, and the hem of her black dress. To a gathering, larger crowd of soldiers, the empress said that her life and that of her son had been threatened by the emperor, but that it was not for her own sake, but for that of her beloved country and their holy Orthodox religion that she was compelled to throw herself on their protection. The response was enthusiastic. Kyril Razumovsky, the regiment’s popular colonel and Catherine’s supporter, arrived, bent his knee before the empress, and kissed her hand. On the spot, the regimental chaplain, holding a cross before him, administered an oath of allegiance to “Catherine II of Russia.” It was the beginning.

The Izmailovskys, with Razumovsky riding at their head with a drawn sword, escorted Catherine to the nearby barracks of the Semyonovsky Guards. The Semyonovskys rushed to meet Catherine and swear allegiance. She decided to enter the city immediately. Preceded by chaplains and other priests and followed by a mass of cheering Guardsmen, she rode to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan on the Nevsky Prospekt. There, flanked by the Orlov brothers and Razumovsky, she stood before the iconostasis (icon screen) while the archbishop of Novgorod solemnly proclaimed her Gosudarina (sovereign autocrat) Catherine II and her son, Paul Petrovich, heir to the throne.

Surrounded by a cheering crowd, with church bells ringing across the city, the empress walked down the Nevsky Prospect to the Winter Palace. There, an obstacle arose. The senior regiment of the Guards, the Preobrazhensky, had wavered. The majority of the soldiers favored Catherine, but some of the officers, having sworn an oath to defend the emperor, were uncertain. After a debate among themselves, the soldiers buckled on their swords, snatched up their muskets, tore off their tight-fitting Prussian uniforms, and dressed in as many of their old bottle-green jackets as they could find. Then, more like a mob than a military body, they hurried to the Winter Palace, which they found surrounded and guarded by the Izmailovsky and Semyonovsky regiments. The Preobrazhenskys shouted to Catherine, “Matushka, forgive us for coming last. Our officers held us back and, to prove our zeal, we have arrested four of them. We wish the same thing as our brothers.” The empress responded by nodding, smiling, and sending the archbishop of Novgorod to administer the oath of allegiance to the latecomers.

Soon after the empress entered the Winter Palace, an older man and a young boy, still in his nightdress, arrived. It was Panin, holding Paul in his arms. On the palace balcony, Catherine presented her eight-year-old son to the crowd as heir to the throne. At this moment, Panin abandoned his thought that Catherine should act as regent for a boy emperor; Catherine now was God’s anointed, the sovereign autocrat. Soon, another late arrival came on the scene. Princess Dashkova had been at home that morning when she learned that Catherine had returned to the city in triumph. She had started immediately to join her idol, but was forced to abandon her carriage when it was immobilized by the dense crowd on the Nevsky Prospect. Squirming and elbowing, she made her way through the mass of bodies in Palace Square. In the palace itself, she was recognized by members of her husband’s regiment, who lifted her small figure above their heads, and passed her, hand over hand, up Rastelli’s magnificent white marble staircase. She landed at Catherine’s feet, crying, “Heaven be praised.”

In the palace, members of the Senate and the Holy Synod waited to greet the new empress and listen to her first imperial manifesto. It declared that Catherine, moved by the perils threatening Russia and the Orthodox religion, eager to rescue Russia from a shameful dependence on foreign powers, and sustained by divine providence, had yielded to the clear wishes of her faithful subjects that she should ascend the throne.

By early evening Catherine was in a commanding position in the capital. She was sure of the Guards, the Senate, the Holy Synod, and the crowds in the street. Calm prevailed in the city and no blood had been shed. But, as she knew, if she was mistress of St. Petersburg, acclaimed by the regiments there and by the political leaders and the leaders of the church, Peter was unaware of this. He still believed he was emperor. Possibly he still possessed the allegiance of the army in Germany and the fleet at Kronstadt. The Holstein soldiers at Oranienbaum would certainly support their master. To confirm her victory, Catherine must locate Peter and persuade him to abdicate, the Holsteiners must be disarmed, and the fleet and all Russian soldiers near the capital must be persuaded to join her. The key to success was Peter himself; he remained free and had neither abdicated nor been deposed. If he made his way to the Russian army in Germany, calling on the king of Prussia to support him, a civil war was inevitable. Accordingly, he must be found, seized, and forced to accept what had happened.

After this tumultuous, triumphant day, Catherine was exhausted, but, sustained by excitement and ambition, she decided to finish what she had begun. A strong force of the Guards pledged to her must march to Oranienbaum to arrest Peter III. Here, Catherine made another dramatic decision: she would lead this march herself. First, she had herself proclaimed colonel of the Preobrazhensky Guards; this was the traditional privilege and rank of a Russian sovereign. Borrowing different parts of the bottle-green Preobrazhensky uniform from various obliging young officers, she dressed and put on one of their black, three-cornered hats crowned with oak leaves. Still, one piece of equipment was missing. A twenty-two-year-old subaltern of the Horse Guards rode out of the ranks to hand to the empress the sword knot her uniform was lacking. His officers frowned on the impertinence, but his proud, confident bearing pleased the empress, who accepted the gift with a smile. She asked his name; it was Gregory Potemkin. His face, his name, and his action would not be forgotten.

By then, it was ten o’clock at night. Catherine mounted a white stallion, placed herself at the head of the three Guards regiments, the Horse Guards, and two infantry regiments of the line, and led fourteen thousand men out of St. Petersburg to Oranienbaum. It was a dramatic sight, the slim figure of Catherine, a superb horsewoman, at the head of a long column of marching men. At her side rode Kyril Razumovsky, colonel of the Semyonovsky Guards, and Princess Dashkova, also dressed in a Preobrazhensky uniform, which she had borrowed from a young lieutenant. This was her moment of glory, riding beside her beloved empress, and looking—as she described herself—“like a fifteen-year-old boy.” She saw herself that night as the central figure in the great adventure. Eventually, this presumption was to lose her the friendship she valued so highly, but on this night nothing clouded her relationship with Catherine. Despite the enthusiasm of their departure, everyone on the march—the empress, the princess, the officers, and the men—all were exhausted. When the column reached a wooden hut on the road to Peterhof, Catherine called a halt. The soldiers watered their horses and bivouacked in the open fields. Catherine and Dashkova, both fully clothed, lay down in the hut, side by side on a narrow bed, but both women were too excited to sleep.

Before leaving St. Petersburg, Catherine had sent off messages. One was to the Kronstadt island fortress and the ships waiting there, informing them of her accession. A special courier was dispatched to the army in Pomerania authorizing Nikita Panin’s brother, General Peter Panin, to take over as commander. Another courier went to General Zakhar Chernyshev in Silesia ordering him to bring his army corps back to Russia immediately. If the king of Prussia tried to prevent this, Chernyshev was to “join the nearest army corps of her Imperial Roman Majesty, the empress of Austria.” Before leaving, she also wrote to the Senate, “I go now with the army to secure and safeguard the throne and leave in your care as my highest representatives with fullest confidence, the fatherland, the people, and my son.”

• • •

That morning of June 28, even as Catherine was being proclaimed Autocrat of All the Russias in the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg, Peter III, wearing his blue Prussian uniform, was drilling his Holstein soldiers on the parade ground at Oranienbaum. This concluded, he ordered six large carriages to carry him and his entourage to Peterhof, where, he had informed Catherine, he would celebrate his name day, the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul. In the emperor’s party were Elizabeth Vorontsova; her uncle, Chancellor Michael Vorontsov; the Prussian ambassador, Baron von Goltz; Count Alexander Shuvalov; the elderly Field Marshal Count Münnich; and the senior senator, Prince Trubetskoy. Many of these dignitaries were accompanied by their wives, and there were also sixteen young maids of honor who served the presumed empress-to-be. This cavalcade started without the usual escort of hussars; Peter had forgotten to order it.

In high spirits, the company arrived at Peterhof at two in the afternoon. The carriages pulled up in front of the Mon Plaisir pavilion, where Catherine was supposed to be waiting to congratulate her consort on his name day. When they arrived, the doors and windows were tightly closed and no one came out to greet them. No one, in fact, was there at all except a frightened servant, who could tell them only that the empress had left early that morning and that he did not know where she had gone. Refusing to believe what he had seen and been told, Peter rushed inside the empty house, running from room to room, peeping under beds, lifting mattresses, and finding nothing except the gala dress laid out the night before for Catharine to wear at Peter’s name day celebration. Infuriated that Catherine had spoiled his moment and his day, he screamed at Vorontsova, “Didn’t I always tell you she was capable of anything?” After an hour of tumult and dismay, the chancellor, Michael Vorontsov, volunteered to go to back to St. Petersburg, where Catherine was presumed to have gone, to seek information and “speak seriously to the empress.” Alexander Shuvalov and Prince Trubetskoy offered to accompany him. At six o’clock, when they reached the city, Catherine was still there and Vorontsov made an effort to tell her that she should not be taking up arms against her husband and sovereign. Catherine’s response was to lead him onto a palace balcony and point to the cheering crowd below. “Deliver your message to them, sir,” she said. “It is they who command here. I only obey.” Vorontsov was taken to his house where, that evening, he wrote to Catherine as his “most gracious sovereign, whom the inscrutable decree of Providence has raised to the Imperial throne.” He asked to be relieved of all his offices and duties and allowed to pass the rest of his days in seclusion. Before nightfall, Alexander Shuvalov swore allegiance to Catherine.

At three in the afternoon, after these three emissaries had departed from Peterhof, Peter received the first sketchy information about the coup. A barge, traveling across the bay from the city, carried the fireworks intended for use that night in the name day celebration. The lieutenant in charge, a specialist in fireworks, told Peter that at nine that morning, when he had left the capital, there was great excitement in the barracks and the streets because of a rumor that Catherine had arrived in the city and that some of the troops had proclaimed her empress. He knew no more because, given orders to deliver fireworks to Peterhof, he had departed.

That afternoon at Peterhof was warm and sunny, and the lesser members of Peter’s entourage remained on the terraces near the cool spray of the fountains or wandered through the gardens under the cloudless summer sky. Peter and his primary counselors gathered near the main canal, where Peter paced back and forth, listening to advice. An officer was sent to Oranienbaum to order the Holstein regiments stationed there to march to Peterhof, where, Peter declared, he would defend himself to the death. When the Holstein soldiers arrived, they were posted on the road to the capital, but, not understanding that they might be ordered to fight, they had brought only their wooden parade ground rifles. Another officer was sent to Kronstadt, five miles across the bay, to order three thousand men of the island garrison to come by boat to Peterhof. A uniform of the Preobrazhensky Guards was found so that Peter might replace the Prussian uniform he was wearing. The old soldier Münnich, in an effort to put some steel into Peter, urged him to put on this uniform, ride straight to the capital, show himself to the people and the Guards, and remind them of their oath of loyalty. Goltz offered different advice: he counseled going to Narva, seventy miles to the west, where part of the army destined for the Danish war was assembling; at the head of this force, Peter could march on St. Petersburg and retake his throne. The Holsteiners, knowing their master’s character best, advised him bluntly to flee to Holstein, where he would be safe. Peter did nothing.

Meanwhile, the officer sent to Kronstadt arrived at the island fortress and found the commandant of the garrison unaware of any of the turmoil either in the capital or at Peterhof. Soon after, another messenger dispatched by Peter arrived and countermanded the order to send three thousand men to Peterhof, telling the island commander simply to secure the Kronstadt fortress in the emperor’s name. Subsequently, he returned to Peterhof to report to the emperor that the fortress was being held for him. Shortly thereafter, Admiral Ivan Talyzin, commander of the Russian navy, who that morning had sworn allegiance to Catherine, arrived at Kronstadt from St. Petersburg and took command of the fortress himself in the name of the new empress. The soldiers of the garrison and the crews of the naval vessels in the harbor swore allegiance to Catherine.

At ten that night, Peter’s last envoy returned from Kronstadt to Peterhof with what he thought was good news, although by now it was inaccurate: that the fortress was secure for the emperor. During this messenger’s six-hour absence, the situation at Peterhof had deteriorated. Members of Peter’s suite were aimlessly walking about or had stretched out to sleep on benches in the park. The Holstein troops, fresh from Oranienbaum but possessing no weapons, now were deployed “to repel attack.” Peter, told that Kronstadt was secure, decided to go to the island. A large galley, anchored offshore, was brought alongside the quay and he boarded, taking many of his officers with him. He refused to leave Elizabeth Vorontsova behind and insisted on taking along her sixteen frightened maids of honor.

Out on the bay in the silvery brightness of the White Nights, visibility was almost as clear as daylight. The wind was favorable, and at about one o’clock in the morning, the crowded galley approached Kronstadt Harbor. The entrance was closed by a boom. The vessel dropped anchor outside the walls. Peter climbed down into a small boat and was rowed toward the fortress to command that the boom be raised. The young officer on duty on the ramparts shouted down that the boat should keep away or he would open fire. Peter stood up, throwing aside his cloak in order to display his uniform and the broad blue ribbon of the Order of St. Andrew. “Don’t you know me?” he shouted. “I am your emperor!”

“We no longer have an emperor!” came the reply. “Long live the Empress Catherine II! She is now our empress and we have orders to admit nobody within these walls. Another move forward and we fire!” Frightened, Peter hurried back to the galley, clambered aboard, and rushed into the stern cabin, where he collapsed into the arms of Elizabeth Vorontsova. Münnich took charge and and gave the order to steer for the mainland. At four in the morning the galley reached Oranienbaum, which he considered safer than Peterhof.

On disembarking, Peter learned that the empress, at the head of a large military force, was marching toward him. Hearing this, he gave up. He dismissed everyone. In tears, he told Goltz to go back to St. Petersburg because he could no longer protect him. He sent away as many of the women as the carriages could hold, but Elizabeth Vorontsova refused to abandon him. He lay down on a couch, refusing to speak. A little later, he sat up, sent for pen and paper, and wrote a letter to Catherine in French, apologizing for his behavior toward her, promising to do better, and offering to share his throne with her. He gave this letter to the vice-chancellor, Prince Alexander Golitsyn, to deliver to his wife.

At five o’clock in the morning, twenty-four hours after Alexis Orlov had awakened her at Mon Plasir, Catherine and her army had resumed their march. On the road to Peterhof, Prince Golitsyn met Catherine and handed her Peter’s letter. Reading it, and understanding that it offered only half of what she already possessed, she remarked that the welfare of the state now demanded other measures and that there would be no reply. Golitsyn’s immediate response was to take the oath of allegiance to Catherine as empress.

After waiting in vain for a reply to his first letter, Peter wrote a second, this time offering to abdicate if he could take Elizabeth Vorontsova with him to Holstein. Catherine told his new messenger, General Izmailov, “I accept the offer but I must have the abdication in writing.” Izmailov returned to Peter and, finding the despairing emperor sitting with his head in his hands, said to him, “You see, the empress wants to be friendly with you, and if you will voluntarily resign the Imperial crown, you may retire to Holstein unmolested.” Peter signed an abdication written in the most abject terms. He declared himself entirely responsible for the decay of the realm during his reign and utterly incapable of ruling. “I, Peter, of my own free will hereby solemnly declare, not only to the whole Russian empire, but also to the whole world, that I forever renounce the throne of Russia to the end of my days. Nor will I ever seek to recover the same at any time or by anybody’s assistance, and I swear this before God.”

The six-month reign of Peter III was over. Years later, Frederick the Great said, “He allowed himself to be dethroned like a child being sent to bed.”

44

“We Ourselves Know Not What We Did”

RIDING AHEAD of Catherine’s advancing army, a group of horsemen led by Alexis Orlov galloped into the Peterhof park and set about disarming the helpless Holstein soldiers. Then, learning that Peter himself had left Peterhof, first for Kronstadt and then for Oranienbaum, Alexis hurried on to the second estate, six miles away, to seize the former emperor. At Oranienbaum, he found Peter with Elizabeth Vorontsova. A small carriage, unused for years and covered with dust, was brought out. Surrounded by an escort of mounted guards commanded by Alexis Orlov, the little carriage with Peter and Elizabeth inside started back for Peterhof.

Simultaneously, Catherine’s regiments were arriving at Peterhof. At eleven, the empress, in her uniform of the Preobrazhensky Guards and riding her white horse, reached Peterhof and dismounted into a sea of cheering men. Between noon and one o’clock, the carriage bringing Peter drove into the palace grounds. There was a profound silence. Peter had been warned not to show himself or speak a word to the men through whose ranks his carriage passed. When he stepped out of the carriage, his first request was that he be allowed to see Catherine. It was refused. Not knowing when he would see Vorontsova again, believing that their parting would be temporary, he turned to say goodbye. They were never to see each other again. The former emperor was led up a stairway to a little room in the palace, where he surrendered his sword and the blue ribbon of the Order of St. Andrew. He was stripped of his high black boots and his green Preobrazhensky Guards uniform and left standing in his shirt and stockings, a pathetic, trembling figure. Eventually, an old dressing gown and a pair of slippers were provided.

Later that afternoon, Nikita Panin arrived from St. Petersburg and was sent by Catherine to see her husband. Panin found himself profoundly moved by the former emperor’s appearance. Years later, Panin said, “I count it the greatest misfortune of my life that I was forced to see Peter III that day under these conditions.” Panin’s message was that the former emperor was now a state prisoner and that his future would include “decent and convenient rooms” in the fortress of Schlüsselburg—where Peter had visited Ivan VI three months earlier. It was implied that from Schlüsselburg he would eventually be allowed to return to his duchy of Holstein. While the rooms in the fortress were being prepared, Peter was permitted to choose a place of temporary confinement. He selected Ropsha, a lonely but pleasant summerhouse and estate, fourteen miles away.

Catherine had no wish to add to her husband’s humiliation. She did not even trust herself to see him, uncertain whether she would see the boy who had been her friend eighteen years before when she first arrived in Russia or the drunken bully who had just shouted “Fool!” at her across a crowded room and threatened her with prison. Her concern was not to lose her grip on what, after years of waiting, she had finally achieved. Peter would have to be rendered harmless. It was impossible to send him back to his native Kiel, although he remained Duke of Holstein. In Holstein, he would always be an attraction to anyone wishing to use him as a rallying point against her. The king of Prussia would be nearby; why should Frederick not employ Peter as a pawn who might be converted back into a king? Her conclusion was that Peter, like Ivan VI, would have to be imprisoned in Russia.

Even in the countryside at Ropsha, Peter would remain a potential threat. To be certain that he would be guarded adequately, she appointed as chief jailer the stern, rough soldier Alexis Orlov, who already had done much to ensure the success of the coup. Along with Orlov, three other officers and a detachment of a hundred soldiers were given orders to make Peter’s life “as agreeable as possible and to provide what he wished for.” At six o’clock that evening, Peter left Peterhof for Ropsha in a large six-horse carriage with the blinds down, surrounded by an escort of Horse Guards. Inside the carriage with the former emperor were Alexis Orlov, Lieutenant Prince Bariatinsky, Captain Passek, and another officer.

Nikita Panin, Alexis and Gregory Orlov, and Kyril Razumovsky had all played significant roles in the coup that brought Catherine to power. Princess Dashkova, on the other hand, had been superfluous. She had ridden to Peterhof beside the empress and shared a narrow bed with her during a few hours of rest, but she had played no part in any of the critical decisions or actions. She was aware of the Orlovs but had no knowledge of Gregory’s particular role and status. This changed suddenly. After Peter had been driven off to Ropsha, Dashkova happened to enter the empress’s private apartment in the Peterhof Palace. She was surprised to find Lieutenant Orlov stretched out full-length on a couch, resting a leg that had been injured in a struggle with some of Peter’s Holsteiners. Orlov had before him a heap of sealed official papers which he was opening and reading. Catherine Dashkova, wholly unaware of the empress’s relationship with Gregory—whom the princess considered to be far beneath both the empress and herself in social class and intelligence—was infuriated at seeing the soldier so obviously at ease, reading state documents. “By what right are you reading papers which are no concern of yours?” she asked. “No one has a right to read them except the empress and those whom she especially appoints.”

“Exactly,” Orlov replied, smiling. “The empress asked me to open them.”

“I doubt that,” Dashkova replied. “They could have waited until Her Majesty had appointed someone who was qualified to read them. Neither you nor I are sufficiently experienced in these matters,” she said, and left the room.

Returning later, she found Orlov still reclining on the couch, and, this time, the empress, relaxed and happy, was sitting beside him. A table set for supper for three was drawn up beside the couch. Catherine welcomed Dashkova and invited her to join them. During the meal, the princess noted the deference with which the empress treated the young officer, nodding and laughing at whatever he said, making no effort to hide her affection for him. It was at that moment, Dashkova wrote later, that “I realized with unspeakable pain and humiliation that a liaison existed between the two.”

The long day was not over. Catherine was exhausted, but the officers and men of the Guards wanted to return to St. Petersburg to celebrate, and she wished to please them. Accordingly, the victorious empress left Peterhof that same night to return to St. Petersburg. She halted briefly for a few hours of sleep, and on Sunday morning, June 30, still in uniform and still riding her white horse, she made a triumphant entry into the capital. The streets were crowded with excited people; church bells pealed, drums rolled. She attended a mass and a solemn Te Deum—and went to bed. She slept until midnight, when a rumor that the Prussians were coming spread among the Izmailovsky Guards, many of them tipsy from the generous amounts of alcohol they had been drinking. Fearing that she had been kidnapped or assassinated, they left their barracks, marched to the palace, and demanded to see the empress. She rose, put on her uniform, and went out to reassure them that all was well: she was safe, they were safe, the empire was safe. Then she went back to bed and slept another eight hours.

At eight o’clock that night, Peter arrived at Ropsha. The stone house, built during the reign of Peter the Great, was surrounded by a park with a lake in which Empress Elizabeth had liked to fish. She had given it to Peter, her nephew. Alexis Orlov, responsible for the prisoner, lodged him in a small ground-floor room containing little more than a bed. The window blinds were kept closely drawn so that the soldiers posted around the building could not see in. Even at midday, the room remained in twilight. An armed sentry stood guard at the door. Peter, shut up inside, was not permitted to walk in the park or to take the air on the terrace outside. He was permitted, however, to write to Catherine, and over the next days, he wrote three letters to her. The first:

I beg Your Majesty to have confidence in me and to have the goodness to order the guards removed from the second room as the one I occupy is so small that I can hardly move in it. As Your Majesty knows, I always walk about in the room and my legs swell if I cannot do so. Also I beg you to order that no officers should remain in the same room with me since I must relieve myself and I cannot possibly do that in front of them. Finally, I beg Your Majesty not to treat me as a criminal as I have never offended Your Majesty. I commend myself to Your Majesty’s magnanimity and beg to be reunited in Germany with the person named [Elizabeth Vorontsova]. God will repay Your Majesty.

Your very humble, devoted servant,

Peter

Your Majesty can rest assured that I will not think or do anything against Your Majesty’s person or reign.

The second letter:

Your Majesty:

If you do not wish to destroy a man already sufficiently miserable, have pity on me and send me my only consolation, Elizabeth Romanovna [Vorontsova]. It would be the greatest act of charity of your reign. Also, if Your Majesty would grant me the right to see you for a moment, my highest wishes would be fulfilled.

Your humble servant,

Peter

The third letter:

Your Majesty:

Once again, I beg you, since I have followed your wishes in everything, to allow me to leave for Germany with the persons for whom I have already asked Your Majesty to grant permission. I hope your magnanimity will not permit my request to be in vain.

Your humble servant,

Peter

Catherine left the letters unanswered.

The first full day of Peter’s imprisonment was Sunday, June 30. The next morning, he complained that he had suffered a bad night and would never be able to sleep properly until he could sleep in his own bed from Oranienbaum. Catherine immediately had the bed, a large four-poster with a white satin coverlet, sent to him by wagon. Next, he asked that his violin, his poodle, his German doctor, and his black servant be sent to him. The empress ordered that all of these requests be granted; in fact, only the doctor arrived. Whenever the prisoner asked permission to take the air outside, Alexis opened the door, pointed to the armed sentry barring the way, and shrugged his shoulders.

Catherine and her advisers were still uncertain what to do with the former emperor. The original plan of imprisoning Peter in Schlüsselburg now seemed inadequate. Schlüsselburg was only forty miles from the capital and he would become the second deposed emperor imprisoned in this bastion. Sending him back to Holstein had been ruled out. But if not to Schlüsselburg or Holstein, where was he to go?

There is no evidence that Catherine ever concluded that Peter’s death was necessary to her own political—and perhaps physical—survival. She did agree with her advisers that he must be rendered “harmless.” Catherine was determined to take no risks, and her friends were aware of this determination. She was, on the other hand, too prudent to hint at the desirability of an unnatural death. It is possible, however, that the Orlovs had already guessed her inner thoughts and persuaded themselves that, as long as their mistress was not admitted into their confidence or given foreknowledge of their plans, they might safely rid her of this danger. Certainly, the Orlovs themselves had a strong motive for ending Peter’s life. Gregory Orlov was hoping to marry his imperial mistress, and Peter stood in his way. Even dethroned and imprisoned, Peter still would be, in the eyes of God, Catherine’s lawful husband; nothing but death could sever a marriage bond that had received the blessing of the Orthlodox Church. If, on the other hand, the former emperor were to die, there would be no religious bar to a marriage between Catherine and Gregory. Empress Elizabeth had married Alexis Razumovsky, a Ukranian peasant; he, Gregory, an officer of the Guards, was of a higher class and rank.

At Ropsha, mental confusion and fear of the unknown plagued Peter’s health. Alternately, he lay prostrate on his bed and rose to pace the small room. On Tuesday, the third day of his captivity, he was stricken by acute diarrhea. On Wednesday evening, he suffered a headache so violent that his Holstein physician, Dr. Luders, was brought from St. Petersburg. On Thursday morning, the former emperor seemed no better, and a second doctor was summoned. Later that day, the two doctors pronounced their patient recovering and, having no desire to share his incarceration, returned to the capital. On Friday, all was quiet. Then, early Saturday morning, Peter’s seventh day at Ropsha, while the prisoner still slept, his French valet, Bresson, who had been allowed to stroll in the park, was abruptly seized, gagged, thrust into a closed carriage, and driven away. Peter was not told and did not know. At two o’clock, Peter was invited to dinner with Alexis Orlov, Lieutenant Bariatinsky, and the other officers of his guard.

The only eyewitness to describe the subsequent event confessed to the empress herself. At six o’clock on Saturday evening, a rider galloping from Ropsha reached St. Petersburg and Catherine was handed a note from Alexis Orlov. It was written in Russian on a sheet of dirty gray paper. The handwriting was scrawled and almost illegible; its message verged on incoherence. The letter seemed to have been written by a man shaking from drink or frantic with worry. Or both.

Matushka, Little Mother, most merciful Gosudarina, sovereign lady, how can I explain or describe what happened? You will not believe your faithful servant, but before God I speak the truth, Matushka. I am ready for death, but I myself know not how it came about. We are lost if you do not have mercy on us. Matushka, he is no more. But no one intended it so. How could any of us have ventured to raise our hands against our Gosudar, sovereign lord. But, Gosudarina, it has happened. At dinner, he started quarreling and struggling with Prince Bariatinsky at the table. Before we could separate them, he was dead. We ourselves know not what we did. But we are all equally guilty and deserve to die. Have mercy on me, if only for my brother’s [Gregory’s] sake. I have confessed my guilt and there is nothing further for me to tell. Forgive us or quickly make an end of me. The sun will no longer shine for me and life is not worth living. We have angered you and lost our souls forever.

What had happened? The circumstances and cause of death, and the intentions and degree of responsibility of those involved, can never be known, but perhaps one can merge what is known and what can be imagined:

On Saturday, July 6, Alexis Orlov, Prince Theodore Bariatinsky, and others invited the prisoner to join them for midday dinner. It may be that they had spent the week wondering how long they were to be separated from their fortunate comrades celebrating in St. Petersburg while they were assigned to remain watching over this wretched, contemptible man. During the meal, everyone drank heavily. Then, because they had planned it, or because there was quarreling that soared out of control, they fell on Peter and attempted to suffocate him by placing him under a mattress. He struggled and escaped. They pinioned him, wrapped a scarf around his neck, and strangled him.

Whether Peter’s death was accidental, the result of a drunken scuffle after dinner that got out of control, or a deliberate, premeditated murder will never be known. The frantic, semicoherent tone of Orlov’s scribbled letter, seeming to betray fear of repercussion as well as horror and remorse, suggests that he had not planned to go that far. When he arrived in the capital that night, he was disheveled, bathed in sweat, and covered with dust. “His face,” said someone who happened to see him “wore an expression that was frightful to see.” Orlov’s pleas to Catherine for mercy—“We ourselves know not what we did” and “Forgive us or quickly make an end of me”—suggest that, while admitting that he was present when Peter died, this was not what he had planned.

In either case, whether the death was unintended or was planned in advance by the officers, Catherine herself would seem to have been innocent. However, she was not blameless. She had placed her husband in the hands of Alexis Orlov, knowing that Alexis was a soldier untroubled by violent death and that he hated Peter. But Orlov’s letter shocked Catherine. Its frantic language and desperate pleas make it almost impossible to believe that Catherine had previous knowledge of any intent to murder and had given her consent. Nor was Alexis Orlov the kind of sophisticated, duplicitous writer who could manage to concoct so frenzied and abject a story. In the mind of Princess Dashkova, Orlov’s letter exonerated Catherine of all suspicion of complicity. When Dashkova visited her friend on the following day, she was greeted by Catherine’s words, “My horror at this death is inexpressible. This blow strikes me to the earth!” The princess, still equating her role in events with that of the empress, could not refrain from saying, “It is a death too sudden, Madame, for your glory and for mine.”

Whatever happened, Catherine had to deal with the aftermath. Her husband, the former emperor, was dead in the custody of her friends and supporters. Would she arrest Alexis Orlov and the other officers at Ropsha? If she did so, how would Gregory, the father of her three-month-old child, react? How would the Guards react? How would the Senate, St. Petersburg, and the Russian people react? Her decision, made, perhaps, on Panin’s recommendation, was to treat the death as a medical tragedy. To deal with the widespread knowledge that the officers guarding her husband were known to have hated him, she ordered a postmortem examination. She had the body dissected by doctors who could be trusted to clear Orlov. The doctors opened the body, and, as they were told to do, looked only for evidence of poisoning. Reporting that there was no such evidence, they declared that Peter had died of natural causes, probably an acute hemorrhoidal attack—a “colic”—which had affected his brain and brought on an apoplectic stroke. Catherine then issued a proclamation, composed with Panin’s assistance:

On the seventh day of our reign we received the news to our great sorrow and affliction that it was God’s will to end the life of the former emperor Peter III by a severe attack of hemorrhoidal colic. We have ordered his mortal remains to be taken to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. We ask all our faithful subjects to bid farewell to his earthly remains without rancor and to offer up prayers for the salvation of his soul.

Panin also advised that the body be exhibited in as nearly normal a fashion as could be managed; he believed it wiser to display a dead Peter than to risk fostering the belief that he was still alive, hidden away somewhere, and might reappear. The former emperor’s body, lying in state in St. Petersburg’s Alexander Nevsky Monastery, had been forced into the blue uniform of a Holstein cavalry officer, apparel that Peter had delighted in wearing when he was alive but which, on this occasion, was intended to draw attention to his foreign origins and preferences. On his chest, he wore no medal or ribbon. A three-cornered hat, a size too large, covered his forehead, but the part of his face remaining uncovered and visible was black and swollen. A long, wide cravat was wound around his neck up to his chin around what—had the dead man been throttled—must have been a bruised and discolored throat. His hands, which it was the custom of the Orthodox Church to leave bare and holding a cross, were encased in heavy leather riding gloves.

The body was placed on a bier with candles at the head and feet. The line of viewers, kept moving quickly by soldiers, saw no Catherine kneeling and praying over her husband as she had done for Empress Elizabeth. Her absence, it was explained, was a result of an appeal from the Senate that she not attend, “so that Her Imperial Majesty might spare her health out of love for the Russian Fatherland.” The site of Peter’s interment was also unusual. Although he was the grandson of Peter the Great, the dead Peter III had not been crowned, and therefore could not lie in the fortress cathedral with the remains of consecrated tsars and empresses. On July 23, Peter’s remains were placed in the Nevsky Monastery alongside the body of Regent Anna Leopoldovna, mother of the deposed and imprisoned Ivan VI. Here Peter was to lie throughout his wife’s thirty-four-year reign.

Catherine’s explanation of this sequence of events was conveyed in a letter to Stanislaus Poniatowski, written two weeks after her husband’s death:

Peter III had lost the few wits he had. He wanted to change his religion, break up the Guards, marry Elizabeth Vorontsova, and shut me up. On the day of celebrating the peace with Prussia, after publicly insulting me at dinner, he ordered my arrest the same evening. The order was retracted, but from that time I listened to proposals [that she replace Peter on the throne] that had been made to me since the death of Empress Elizabeth. We could count on many captains of the Guards. The secret was in the hands of the Orlov brothers. They are an extremely determined family and much loved by the common soldiers. I am under great obligation to them.

I sent the deposed emperor to a remote and very agreeable spot called Ropsha, under the command of Alexis Orlov with four officers and a detachment of picked, good-natured men, while decent and convenient rooms were being prepared for him at Schlüsselburg. But God disposed otherwise. Fear had caused a diarrhea which lasted three days and ended on the fourth when he drank excessively.… A hemorrhoidal colic seized him and affected his brain. For two days he was delirious and then delirium was followed by extreme exhaustion. Despite all the help the doctors could give him, he died while demanding a Lutheran priest. I feared that the officers might have poisoned him so I had him opened up, but not the slightest trace of poison was found. The stomach was quite healthy, but the lower bowels were greatly inflamed and a stroke of apoplexy carried him off. His heart was extraordinarily small and quite decayed.

So at last God has brought everything to pass according to His designs. The whole thing is rather a miracle than a pre-arranged plan, for so many lucky circumstances could not have coincided unless God’s hand had been over it all. Hatred of foreigners was the chief factor in the whole affair and Peter III passed for a foreigner.

Most of Europe held Catherine responsible. Journals and newspapers across the continent wrote of a return to the days of Ivan the Terrible. Many were cynical about the officially proclaimed explanation that the emperor had died of “colic.” “Everyone knows the nature of colic,” quipped Frederick of Prussia. “When a heavy drinker dies from colic, it teaches us to be sober,” deadpanned Voltaire. Frederick nevertheless believed that Catherine herself was innocent. In his memoirs, he wrote:

The empress was quite ignorant of this crime and learned of it with an indignation and despair which was not feigned. She correctly foresaw the judgment which all the world now passes on her. An inexperienced young woman, on the point of being divorced and shut up in a convent, she had committed her cause to the Orlov brothers. And, even so, she had known nothing of the intention to murder the emperor. Left to herself, she would have kept Peter alive, partly because she thought that once she was crowned, all would be well, and that so cowardly an enemy as her husband would not be dangerous. The Orlovs, more audacious and clear-sighted, foreseeing that the ex-emperor might be turned into a rallying point against them, had been made of sterner stuff and had put out him of the way. She has reaped the fruits of their crime and has been obliged, in order to secure their support, not only to spare, but even to retain about her person, the authors of that crime.

Catherine, however much she might pretend to ignore foreign comment and gossip, was never at ease about Europe’s reaction to her husband’s death. Years later, in conversation with the French Enlightenment figure and Encyclopedist Denis Diderot, her guest in St. Petersburg, she asked, “What do they say in Paris of the death of my husband?” Diderot was too embarrassed to answer. To relieve his discomfort, she turned the conversation in another direction.

There was another interested party in the matter of Catherine’s possible involvement, who, years later, after reading Alexis Orlov’s letter, exonerated the empress of guilt in the death of Peter III. Having received and read Orlov’s letter, Catherine locked it away in a drawer. For the rest of her life, she kept the letter hidden. After her death, her son, Emperor Paul, was told that the letter had been discovered and that the handwriting had been identified as that of Alexis Orlov. Paul read the letter. It convinced him that his mother was innocent.

None of the participants was ever punished. Although, by proceeding against them, she could have established or at least powerfully reinforced her own innocence, Catherine could hardly have punished them. It was to Alexis Orlov and his brothers that she owed her throne. It was Alexis who had come to awaken her at dawn at Mon Plaisir and bring her to St. Petersburg. He and his brothers had risked their lives for her; in return, she was obligated to protect them. She therefore declared that Peter had died of natural causes. Some in Russia believed her; some did not; many did not care.

It was a death she had not planned, but it suited her purpose. She was free of her husband, but had acquired another burden: the shadow over her character and over Russia remained for the rest of her life. This was not the first time in history—nor would it be the last—that this kind of mixed blessing has befallen the ruler of a nation. Henry II of England appointed his former friend and protégé Thomas à Becket, to be archbishop of Canterbury. When, later, Becket confronted and opposed the king on many issues regarding the church, Henry believed himself betrayed. “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” he burst out in a moment of frustration. Whereupon four of his household knights spurred their horses to Canterbury and murdered the archbishop in front of his cathedral altar. In penance for this act that he did not specifically intend, Henry walked barefoot down miles of dusty roads to the cathedral, where he kneeled before the altar and asked forgiveness. Catherine, less secure on her throne, could not risk a similar gesture.

The dream of the child in Stettin who wanted to be a queen, and the ambition of the grand duchess who knew that she was better suited than her husband to rule, were achieved. Catherine was thirty-three. Half of her life lay ahead of her.

*George Lewis was Catherine’s mother’s younger brother, and Peter’s second cousin. This was the young man who had believed himself in love with Catherine—then Sophia, a girl of fourteen.