Terrible tsarinas

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Terrible Tsarinas having a “European” outlook. The mindset promulgated in foreign capitals and bolstered by international alliances between great families encouraged an elegant and tolerant lifestyle straddling several borders, so that certain courtiers scoffed at those who only wished for a solution that would be fundamentally Russian. First among the partisans of Frederick II was, as always, the Grand Duke Peter, who no longer hid his cards. He claimed to be communicating to the king of Prussia (through the intermediary of England’s new ambassador to St. Petersburg, George Keith, who had succeeded Williams) everything that the tsarina was saying in her secret war councils. Elizabeth did not want to believe that her nephew was receiving money as a price for his treason; but she was informed that Keith had received from his minister, Pitt (who also idolized the king of Prussia), instructions to encourage the grand duke to use all his influence with the empress to spare Frederick II from disaster.

Once upon a time, the Germanophiles could also count on Catherine and Poniatowski to support them. But, after the openhearted conversation that she had had with her daughter-in-law, Elizabeth felt sure that she had definitively defeated her. Folding in on herself, retreating inward to simmer over her sentimental sorrows, the young woman now spent her time only weeping and dreaming. Since she had voluntarily removed herself from the game board, she had lost any importance on the international level. To ensure that she had been rendered harmless, Elizabeth dispatched Stanislaw Poniatowski on a foreign mission. Her Majesty then went one step further and, asking him to relinquish his passport, let him know that henceforth his presence in St. Petersburg would be deemed undesirable.

After having disarmed her daughter-in-law, the Empress thought that she had only to disarm one other adversary, who was hateful in a different way: Frederick II. She was set against the