Terrible tsarinas

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Terrible Tsarinas asking his opinion. He put up with her and tried to stay away from her during the day - and especially at night. She, for her part, feared that Poniatowski, the child’s natural father, would be dispatched to the end of the world by the tsarina. At her request, Alexis Bestuzhev interceded with Her Majesty to persuade her to delay Poniatowski’s “new assignment” (to Poland) until the birth of the child. He managed to convince her; and Catherine, relaxed, prepared for the event.

Significant contractions gripped her during the night of December 18, 1758. Alerted by her groans, the grand duke was first at her bedside. He was dressed in a Prussian uniform, with boots and sword, spurs at the heels and a commander’s sash across his chest. Staggering and mumbling, he declared in a wine-soaked voice that he had come with his regiment to defend his legitimate wife against the enemies of the fatherland. He quickly departed, not wishing to have the Empress discover him in such a state, and went off to ferment in his alcohol. Her Majesty arrived soon after, just in time to see her daughter-in-law delivered by the midwife.

Taking the baby in her arms, she examined it like a connoisseur.

It was a girl. Too bad - they would have to make do. This was not the end of the world, since the succession was ensured by little Paul. Catherine, seeking to sweeten up her mother-in-law, proposed naming her daughter Elizabeth. But Her Majesty was in no humor for flattery. She said that she preferred to name the child the child Anna, after her elder sister and the grand duke’s mother. Then, having had the baby baptized, she savagely took it away, as she had done four years earlier with the brother of this useless infant.

Having gotten past this family episode, Elizabeth devoted herself to settling the Apraxin affair. The Field Marshal, discredited and dismissed after his incomprehensible reversal vis-a-vis the Prussian army that he had just conquered, was struck by a