Terrible tsarinas

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Another Catherine! wish: the peaceful transfer of power, over the head of Peter, to his son, young Paul, who would be assisted by a regency council.

Admittedly, Elizabeth could have proclaimed this change in the dynastic order, right then. However, such an initiative inevitably would have entailed skirmishes between rival factions, revolts within the family and perhaps in the street. Wouldn’t it be better to leave things as they were, for the time being? There was no need to rush; Her Majesty still had a clear head; she might live on a few more years; the country needed her; her subjects would not understand her suddenly ignoring current issues to deal with the succession.

As though to encourage her in maintaining the status quo, the “Conference,” the supreme political council created at her initiative, was considering a march on Berlin by the combined allied armies. However, Field Mars hal Saltykov being ill, General Fermor hesitated at the idea of such a large-scale action. Then, in a daring move, the Russian general Totleben launched an attack on the Prussian capital, surprised the enemy, penetrated the city and accepted its surrender. Although this “raid” was too fast and too poorly exploited to lead Frederick II to give up his entire territory, the king was sufficiently shaken that one might reasonably expect the ensuing negotiations to be highly profitable.

In such a context, Elizabeth felt that France should set an example of firmness. Ivan Shuvalov was so much persuaded of that, that his mistress would laugh and say that he was more French than the French. In addition, she believed that Catherine was on good terms with the baron of Breteuil only insofar as the politics of France did not contradict too directly that of Russia.

However, Breteuil, obeying his principal, the duke of Choiseul, advised the tsarina that Louis XV would be grateful to her if, exceptionally, she would agree to sacrifice “her particular interests to the common cause.” In short, he asked her to settle