Terrible tsarinas

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An Autocrat at Work and Play whipped, himself. He died there a few years later in a state of total abandonment. As for the Bestuzhevs, Madame lingered on for many miserable years in Yakutsk, suffering a life of hunger, cold and the indifference of her neighbors (who were reluctant to compromise themselves by looking after someone who had been rejected) while, in St. Petersburg, her husband Mikhail Bestuzhev (brother of Chancellor Alexis Bestuzhev) went on with his diplomatic career, and their daughter was a reigning beauty at Her Majesty’s court.

In settling the Botta matter, Elizabeth thought she had gained control over the volatile situation within her empire.

Alexis Bestuzhev, having preserved his ministerial prerogatives in spite of the disgrace that had befallen most of his kin, had reason to think that his prestige had even been enhanced. However, in Versailles, Louis XV persisted in his intention to send La Chetardie on a reconnaissance mission to the tsarina, who (according to his advisors) would not mind engaging in a playful new fencing bout with a Frenchman whose gallantries she had once found amusing. But she was so flighty that, according to the same “experts on the Slavic soul,” she was liable to be upset over a trifle and to over-react to any misstep. To spare the sensitivities of this sovereign so susceptible to changing humors, the king gave La Chetardie two letters of introduction to Her Majesty. In one, Versailles’s emissary was presented as an ordinary person interested in everything that related to Russia, and in the other, as a plenipotentiary delegated to represent the king to “our very dear sister and absolutely perfect friend Elizabeth, empress and autocrat of all the Russias.”5 La Chetardie could decide on the spot which formula was best suited to the circumstances. With this double recommendation in his pocket, how could he help but succeed?

Traveling as quickly as possible, he arrived in St. Petersburg on the very same day when the empress was celebrating the tenth