Terrible tsarinas

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Terrible Tsarinas only woman who now had the right to sit on it.

The religious ceremonies relating to the coronation were followed by the traditional rejoicing. For eight days, illuminations, feasts and free wine were given to the crowds, while the more distinguished guests dashed from ball to banquet to masquerade.

Carried away by the atmosphere of sincere cordiality with which she was surrounded, Elizabeth distributed further benefices to those who had served her so well. Alexander Buturlin was named a general and governor of Smaller Russia, while shimmering titles - count, chamberlain - rained down upon obscure relatives belonging to the maternal branch of the empress’s family. The Skavronskys, Hendrikovs, and Yefimovskys were elevated from the status of wealthy peasants to newly-recognized nobles. It was as if Elizabeth, to excuse her own very great pleasure, were trying to make everyone, each in his own corner, as happy as she was on this wonderful day.

However, in Moscow such festivities and the accompanying fireworks significantly increased the risk of fire. Thus it was that one fine evening the Golovin Palace, where Her Majesty had elected to reside temporarily, caught fire. By chance, only the walls and the furniture were burned. This little accident didn’t slow the revelers down one bit. A new structure was immediately raised on the half-charred ruins and while it was hastily being rebuilt and refurnished, Elizabeth moved to another house that she maintained in Moscow, at the edge of the Yauza River, and then to another of her houses in the village of Pokrovskoye, five versts away, which had belonged to an uncle of Peter the Great. Some 900 people would gather on a daily basis to celebrate with her, dancing, feasting and laughing, and the theaters did not go dark for a single night.

However, while the court was applauding an opera, The Clemency of Titus, by the German director Johann-Adolf Hasse, and an