Catherine the Great

All the attention which the grand duke had previously showed me ceased. He sent me word through a servant that he lived too far away to come and visit me. I was well aware of his lack of eagerness and affection; my pride and vanity suffered, but I would not have dreamed of complaining. I would have felt humiliated if anyone had shown any sign of sympathy which might be interpreted as pity. But when I was alone, I shed many tears, then wiped them away and went to romp with my maids.

That summer, the court moved to the palace and estate of Peterhof on the Gulf of Finland, nineteen miles west of the capital. Catherine described their activity:

We spent our time walking, riding, or driving. I saw then, clear as day, that the grand duke’s retinue, and especially his tutors, had lost all authority over him. His military games, which he had kept secret, now went on practically in their presence. Count Brümmer could now only observe him in public; the rest of the time he spent entirely in the company of servants in childish pursuits incredible for someone his age; he even played with dolls. The grand duke found great amusement in instructing me in military exercises, and owing to him, I can handle a rifle with the precision of an experienced grenadier. He made me stand at arms with my musket, on duty at the door of the room between his and mine.

In many ways, Catherine also remained a child. She loved what she called “romping” with the young women of her small court; together they still played games of blindman’s buff. Underneath, however, she was approaching her marriage with apprehension.

As my wedding day came nearer, I became more melancholy, and very often I would weep without quite knowing why. My heart predicted little happiness; ambition alone sustained me. In my inmost soul there was something that never for a single moment allowed me to doubt that, sooner or later, I would become the sovereign Empress of Russia in my own right.

Catherine’s premarital nervousness did not come from fear of the nocturnal intimacies that marriage would demand. She knew nothing about these things. Indeed, on the eve of her marriage, she was so innocent that she did not know how the two sexes physically differed. Nor had she any idea what mysterious acts were performed when a woman lay down with a man. Who did what? How? She questioned her young ladies, but they were as innocent as she. One June night, she staged an impromptu slumber party in her bedroom, covering the floor with mattresses, including her own. Before going to sleep, the eight flustered and excited young women discussed what men were like and how their bodies were formed. No one had any specific information; indeed, their talk was so ill-informed, incoherent, and unhelpful that Catherine said that in the morning she would ask her mother. She did so, but Johanna—herself married at fifteen—refused to answer. Instead, she “severely scolded” her daughter for indecent curiosity.

Empress Elizabeth was aware that all was not well in the relationship between Catherine and Peter, but she assumed that the trouble was temporary. The grand duke might be immature for his age, but marriage would make a man of him. For this, she counted on Catherine. Once the young woman was in his bed, applying her charm and freshness of youth, she would make him forget about playing games with his servants. In any case, the feelings of the nuptial couple about each other mattered only peripherally; the reality was that neither of the two adolescents had a choice; they were to be married, like it or not. The betrothed pair knew this, of course, and faced the prospect differently. Peter fluctuated between deep depression and petty revolt. Sometimes he would grumble that Russia was an accursed country. At other times, he would lash out angrily at everyone around him. Catherine’s response was different. Despite her apprehensions, there was no turning back. She had come to Russia, she had learned Russian, she had resisted her father and converted to Orthodoxy, she had worked hard to please the empress, she was ready to marry Peter despite his flaws. Having made all these concessions and sacrifices, she was not going to throw it all away, go home, and settle down with Uncle George.

Meanwhile, the vast extent and complexity of the wedding preparations had forced even an impatient Elizabeth to postpone the marriage ceremony, not once but twice. Finally, it was set for August 21. On the night of August 20, the city was rocked by salvos of artillery and the pealing of bells. Catherine sat with her mother and, for a while, they put aside their misunderstandings and animosities. “We had a long, friendly talk, she exhorted me concerning my future duties, we cried a little together and parted very affectionately.”

At this moment, mother and daughter shared a common, humiliating disappointment. By now, Johanna, having incurred the anger and contempt of the empress, was barely tolerated at court. Johanna knew this and had no illusions about the advantages she herself might gain from her daughter’s marriage. Her last hope was that her husband, the father of the bride, would be invited to the wedding. Behind this desire lay no overwhelming affection for Christian Augustus, but her own pride. She well understood that Elizabeth’s continuing refusal to invite him was a slap at her as well as at her husband; it made plain to Johanna—and to the world—where she stood.

Explaining this to her husband had not been easy. For months, Christian Augustus had been writing from Zerbst, begging Johanna to obtain from the empress the invitation to which he was obviously entitled. Johanna had long held out hope for this invitation, telling her husband to be ready, that the invitation was on the point of being dispatched. But no invitation came. In the end, it was explained to Christian Augustus that the empress did not dare invite him out of consideration for Russian opinion, which, he was told, was strongly opposed to “German princes”—despite the fact that a prince of Hesse, the Duke of Holstein, and other German noblemen were then living at the Russian court. Further, among those invited were two of Johanna’s brothers, both German princes, Adolphus Frederick, now heir to the throne of Sweden, and Augustus, who had succeeded him as prince-bishop of Lübeck. Thus, two of Catherine’s uncles were to be present at her wedding, but her father was not. It was a flagrant insult, but there was nothing Johanna could do.

Catherine, too, had hoped that her father would be invited. She had not seen him for a year and a half. She knew that he cared for her, and she believed that, in his simple, honest way, he might give her useful advice. But Catherine’s wishes and feelings on this matter interested no one. Her position, in its way, was as clear as her mother’s: beneath her title and her diamonds, she was only a little German girl brought to Russia for the sole purpose of providing the son of the house with an heir.

On August 21, 1745, Catherine rose at six o’clock. She was in her bath when the empress arrived unexpectedly to examine, unclothed, the virginal bearer of her own dynastic hopes. Then, as Catherine was being dressed, the empress and the hairdresser discussed what coiffure would best hold in place the crown the bride was to wear. Elizabeth supervised everything, and Johanna, allowed to be present, subsequently described the scene for her German relatives:

Her silver brocade wedding gown was of the most shimmering cloth I have ever seen, encrusted with glittering embroidery of silver roses. It had a wide skirt, a seventeen inch waist, and a tight bodice with short sleeves. [She wore] superb jewels: bracelets, drop earrings, brooches, rings.… The precious stones with which she was covered, gave her a charming appearance.… Her complexion has never been lovelier.… Her hair was a bright, lustrous black, slightly curled, which set off her air of youthfulness even more.

Because she was pale, a little rouge was added to her cheeks. Then, a cloak of silver lace, so heavy that Catherine could scarcely move, was attached to her shoulders. Finally, the empress placed on her head the diamond crown of a Russian grand duchess.

At noon, Peter arrived dressed in a suit made of the same cloth of silver as Catherine’s dress and train. He, too, was smothered with jewels; his buttons, his sword hilt, and his shoe buckles were encrusted with diamonds. Then, together, in matching silver and diamonds, holding hands as the empress instructed, the young couple left to be married.

A blare of trumpets and the thunder of drums signaled the start of the wedding procession. Twenty-four elegant carriages rolled down the Nevsky Prospect from the Winter Palace to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan. The bridal pair sat with Elizabeth in the empress’s state coach, “truly a little castle,” drawn by eight white horses, their harness adorned by silver buckles, the huge wheels of the coach shining with gilt, the side panels and doors covered with paintings of mythological scenes. “The procession infinitely surpasses anything I have ever seen,” reported the English ambassador. Inside the cathedral, Catherine was surrounded by a sea of jeweled icons, lighted candles, clouds of incense, and rows of faces. The service, conducted by the bishop of Novgorod, lasted three hours.

For Catherine, her wedding ceremony, with its chanted liturgy and magnificent a cappella hymns, was a physical ordeal. Her beautiful gown was “horribly heavy”; the weight of the crown crushing her forehead produced a terrible headache, and there still remained the banquet and the ball to follow. Once the wedding ceremony in the cathedral was over, she asked permission to remove the crown, but Elizabeth refused. Catherine persevered through the banquet in the Long Gallery of the Winter Palace, but just before the ball, with her headache worsening, she begged to have the crown lifted for a few minutes. Reluctantly, the empress consented.

At the ball, only the highest male dignitaries, burdened with years as well as honors, were privileged to dance with the sixteen-year-old bride. Fortunately for her, after half an hour the ball was cut short by Elizabeth’s impatient desire to get the young bride and groom to bed. Preceded by a train of court officials and ladies- and gentlemen-in-waiting, Elizabeth escorted the seventeen-year-old husband and his wife, again holding hands, to their nuptial chamber.

The apartment consisted of four large, elegantly furnished rooms. Three were hung with cloth of silver; the bedroom walls were covered with scarlet velvet, trimmed with silver. An enormous bed, covered with red velvet embroidered with gold and surmounted by a crown embossed with silver, dominated the middle of the room. Here, the bride and groom separated and the men, including the new bridegroom, withdrew. The women remained to help the bride undress. The empress removed Catherine’s crown, the Princess of Hesse helped to free her from her heavy dress, a lady-in-waiting presented her with a new, pink nightgown from Paris. The bride was placed in bed, but then, just as the last person was leaving the room, she called out. “I begged the Princess of Hesse to stay with me a little while, but she refused,” Catherine said. The room was empty. Wearing her pink nightgown, she waited alone in the enormous bed.

Her eyes were fixed on the door through which her new husband would come. Minutes passed and the door remained closed. She continued to wait. Two hours went by. “I remained alone not knowing what I ought to do. Should I get up again? Should I remain in bed? I had no idea.” She did nothing. Toward midnight, her new principal lady-in-waiting, Madame Krause, came in and “cheerfully” announced that the grand duke had just ordered supper for himself and was waiting to be served. Catherine continued to wait. Eventually, Peter arrived, reeking of alcohol and tobacco. Lying down in bed beside her, he laughed nervously and said, “How it would amuse my servants to see us in bed together.” Then he fell asleep and slept through the night. Catherine remained awake, wondering what to do.

The next day, Madame Krause questioned Catherine about her wedding night. Catherine did not answer. She knew that something was wrong, but she did not know what. In the nights that followed, she continued to lie untouched at the side of her sleeping husband, and Madame Krause’s morning questions continued to go unanswered. “And,” she writes in her Memoirs, “matters remained in this state without the slightest change during the following nine years.”

The union, although unconsummated, was followed by ten days of court rejoicing in the form of balls, quadrilles, masquerades, operas, state dinners, and suppers. Outside, for the public, there were fireworks, banquet tables set in Admiralty Square, and fountains spurting jets of wine. Catherine, who usually loved to dance, hated the way she spent these evenings because young people her own age were excluded. “There was not a single man who could dance,” she said. “They were all between sixty and eighty years old, most of them lame, gouty or decrepit.”

In the meantime, a change for the worse had taken effect in the circle of women around Catherine. On her wedding night, she had discovered that the empress had assigned Madame Krause as her new principal lady-in-waiting. “The following day,” Catherine said, “I noticed that this woman had already struck fear in all my other ladies because when I went to talk to one of them in my usual manner, she said to me, ‘For God’s sake, do not come near me. We have been forbidden even to whisper to you.’ ”

Nor had marriage improved Peter’s behavior. “My dear husband did not pay the slightest attention to me,” she said, “but spent all his time playing soldiers in his room with his servants, drilling them or changing his uniform twenty times a day. I yawned and yawned with boredom, having no one to speak to.” Then, two weeks after their wedding, Peter finally had something to say to Catherine: with a broad smile, he announced that he had fallen in love with Catherine Karr, one of the empress’s ladies-in-waiting. Not content with passing this news to his young wife, he also went out and confided his new passion to his chamberlain, Count Devier, telling him that the grand duchess was in no way to be compared with the enchanting Mlle Karr. When Devier disagreed, Peter exploded with anger.

Whether Peter’s passion for Mlle Karr was genuine or whether he had merely concocted this story to explain to Catherine (and perhaps also to himself) his lack of sexual interest in his wife, he was aware that he was subjecting her to insult and humiliation. Years later, in her Memoirs, Catherine described the situation she found herself in, and the course she chose to take in dealing with it:

I would have been ready to like my new husband had he been capable of affection or willing to show any. But in the very first days of our marriage, I came to a sad conclusion about him. I said to myself: “If you allow yourself to love that man, you will be the unhappiest creature on this earth. With your temperament, you will expect some response whereas this man scarcely looks at you, talks of nothing but dolls, and pays more attention to any other woman than yourself. You are too proud to complain, therefore, attention, please, and keep on a leash any affection you might feel for this gentleman; you have yourself to think about, my dear girl.” This first scar made upon my impressionable heart remained with me forever; never did this firm resolution leave my head; but I took good care not to tell anybody that I had resolved never to love without restraint a man who would not return this love in full; such was my disposition that my heart would have belonged entirely and without reserve to a husband who loved only me.

This was the voice of an older, wiser Catherine, looking back on the difficulties of the young woman she had been many years before. But whether or not her description accurately reflects her thoughts at the earlier time, she was, at least, always more honest and realistic than her mother. Johanna was never able to leave her fantasy world or stop describing life as she wished it were. Writing to her husband to describe their daughter’s wedding, she told him that it “was the gayest marriage that has perhaps ever been celebrated in Europe.”

13

Johanna Goes Home

THE END OF THE wedding celebrations meant the end of Johanna’s misadventure in Russia. She had hoped, in coming to that country, to employ her connections and charm and become a significant figure in European diplomacy. Instead, her political plotting had infuriated the empress, her treatment of her daughter had alienated the court, her purported love affair with Count Ivan Betskoy had provided her enemies with titillated gossip. Her reputation was in ruins, but Johanna never seemed to learn. Even now, on the brink of departure, she continued to write to Frederick II. Her letters, however, were no longer secretly intercepted, read, copied, resealed, and sent along. Instead, by command of the empress, they were simply opened, read, and placed in a folder.

Soon after their arrival in Russia, Catherine had become aware that her mother was making mistakes. Because she did not want to provoke Johanna’s temper, she had never spoken a word of reproach. But the experience of her wedding night and Peter’s “confession” of his love for Mlle Karr had warmed Catherine’s feelings about Johanna. It was to her mother that she now looked for companionship. “Since my marriage, being with her had become my greatest solace,” Catherine wrote later. “I jumped at every opportunity to go to her rooms, particularly as my own offered but little joy.”

Two weeks after the marriage, the empress sent Catherine, Peter, and Johanna to the country estate of Tsarskoe Selo, outside St. Petersburg. The September weather was superb—an intense blue autumn sky and the birch leaves turning to gold—but Catherine was miserable. As her mother’s departure approached, her own ambition seemed to waver. Sharing memories with Johanna became a pleasure and, for the first time since coming to Russia, Catherine was homesick for Germany. “At that time,” Catherine wrote later, “I would have given much if I could have left the country with her.”

Before going, Johanna requested and was granted an audience with the empress. Johanna gave her version of the meeting to her husband:

Our farewell was very loving. For me, it was almost impossible to take leave of Her Imperial Majesty; and this great monarch, on her side, paid me the honor of being so deeply moved that the courtiers present were also deeply affected. Farewell was said innumerable times and finally this most gracious of rulers accompanied me to the stairway with tears and expressions of kindness and tenderness.

A different description of this interview came from an eyewitness, the English ambassador:

When the princess took leave of the empress, she fell at Her Imperial Majesty’s feet and implored her in floods of tears to forgive her if she had in any way offended Her Imperial Majesty. The empress replied that it was late to talk about such considerations, but that if the princess had had such wise thoughts earlier, it would have been better for her.

Elizabeth was determined to send Johanna away, but she also wanted to appear magnanimous and the princess departed with a cartload of gifts. To console the long-neglected Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, Johanna carried home diamond shoe buckles, diamond coat buttons, and a diamond-studded dagger, all described as presents from the prince’s son-in-law, the grand duke. In addition, before leaving, Johanna was given sixty thousand rubles to pay her debts in Russia. After her departure, it turned out that she owed more than twice that sum. To shield her mother from further shame, Catherine agreed to pay the arrears. Having only her personal allowance of thirty thousand rubles a year, this obligation was beyond her means and helped create a debt that dragged on for seventeen years until she became empress.

When the moment of departure arrived, Catherine and Peter accompanied Johanna on the short first stage of her journey, from Tsarskoe Selo to nearby Krasnoe Selo. The next morning, Johanna left before dawn without saying goodbye; Catherine assumed that it was “not to make me any sadder.” Waking up and finding her mother’s room empty, she was distraught. Her mother had vanished—from Russia and from her life. Since Catherine’s birth, Johanna had always been present, to guide, prompt, correct, and scold. She might have failed as a diplomatic agent; she certainly had not become a brilliant figure on the European stage; but she had not been unsuccessful as a mother. Her daughter, born a minor German princess, was now an imperial grand duchess on a path to becoming an empress.

Johanna would live another fifteen years. She died in 1760, at the age of forty-seven, when Catherine was thirty-one. Now, she was leaving behind a sixteen-year-old daughter who would never see any member of her family again. The daughter was under the control of a temperamental, all-powerful monarch, and was lying in bed every night beside a young man whose behavior was increasingly peculiar.

Traveling slowly, Johanna took twelve days to reach Riga. There, Elizabeth’s delayed punishment caught up with her ungrateful, duplicitous guest. Johanna was handed a letter from the empress commanding her to tell Frederick of Prussia, as she passed through Berlin, that he must recall his ambassador, Baron Mardefeld. The letter was phrased with cool, diplomatic politeness: “I consider it necessary to enjoin you to impress upon His Majesty the King of Prussia when you arrive in Berlin, that it would please me if he were to recall his plenipotentiary minister, Baron Mardefeld.” The choice of Johanna to deliver this message was a slap at both the princess and the king. La Chétardie, the French ambassador, had been given twenty-four hours to leave Moscow after the scene at Troitsa Monastery; Mardefeld, the Prussian ambassador, who had served in Russia for twenty years, had been spared for an additional year and a half, but now he, too, was to be sent home. And Elizabeth’s choice of Johanna to carry the news was explicit recognition of the fact that, while in Russia, the princess had conspired on behalf of the Prussian king to overthrow the empress’s chief minister, Bestuzhev. There is no proof that this painful assignment was the work of Bestuzhev—but it sounds like him. If so, Elizabeth had concurred.

Certainly, the letter, its content and its means of delivery, made plain to Frederick how greatly he had overrated Johanna. Regretting his own misjudgment, he never forgave her. Ten years later, after her husband had died and Johanna was acting as regent for her young son, Frederick suddenly reached out and peremptorily incorporated the principality of Zerbst into the kingdom of Prussia. Johanna was forced to take refuge in Paris. There, she died on the fringe of society two years before her daughter became empress of Russia.