Terrible tsarinas

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Another Catherine! would not be such a cad!

It is true that the king of Prussia was counting on the grand duke to bring Russia back to its senses. Elizabeth would prefer to be damned by the Church than to accept such a humiliation! To prove that she was still in charge, on November 17 she took measures to reduce the very unpopular tax on salt and, in a belated burst of leniency, she published a list of prisoners condemned for life whom she suggested should be released. A short time later a hemorrhage, more violent than usual, curtailed all her activity.

With every coughing fit, she vomited blood. The doctors stayed by her bedside now and acknowledged that they had given up all hope.

On December 24, 1761, Elizabeth received extreme unction and summoned up the strength to repeat, after the priest, the words of the prayer for the dying. As she slid toward the great void, she guessed how pathetically agitated must be those, in this world that was receding from her little by little, who would have to carry her out to be buried. It was not she who was dying, but the universe of the others. Having failed to make a decision about her succession, she relied on God to settle Russia’s fate after she heaved her last sigh. Didn’t He know better than anyone down here what was appropriate for the Russian people? For a few more hours, the tsarina held off the night that was invading her brain. The following day, December 25 - the day Christ was born - at about 3:00 in the afternoon, she ceased breathing and a great calm spread across her, where traces of make-up still remained. She had just reached the age of 53.

When the double doors of the death chamber opened wide, all the courtiers assembled in the waiting room knelt down, crossed themselves and lowered their heads to hear the fateful announcement uttered by old prince Nikita Trubestkoy, Procurator General of the Senate: “Her Imperial Majesty Elizabeth Pet«233»

Terrible Tsarinas rovna sleeps in the peace of the Lord,” adding the consecrated formula, “She has commanded to us to live long.” Lastly, in his powerful voice, doing away with any possible ambiguity, he said, “God keep our Very Gracious Sovereign, the Emperor Peter III.”

After the death of Elizabeth “the Lenient,” her associates piously inventoried her wardrobes and trunks. They found 15,000 dresses, some of which Her Majesty had never worn.

The first to bow down before the trimmed and made-up corpse were, as expected, her nephew Peter III (who found it difficult to disguise his joy) and her daughter-in-law Catherine (already preoccupied with how to play this new hand of cards).

The cadaver, embalmed, scented, hands crossed and head crowned, remained on exhibit for six weeks in a room in the Winter Palace. Among the crowd that filed past the open casket, many unknown individuals wept for Her Majesty who had so loved the ordinary people and who had not hesitated to punish the faults of the mighty. But the visitors irresistibly shifted their gaze from the impassive mask of the tsarina to the pale and serious face of the grand duchess, who knelt by the catafalque. Catherine seemed to have sunk into a never-ending prayer. Actually, while she may have been murmuring interminable prayers, she must in fact have been thinking about how to conduct herself in the future, to thwart the hostility of her husband.

The presentation of the late empress to the people, in the palace, was followed by the transfer of the remains to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan. There again, during the religious ceremonies (which lasted ten days), Catherine astonished those in attendance by her demonstrations of grief and piety. Was she trying to prove how Russian she was, whereas her husband, the Grand Duke Peter, never missed an occasion to show that he was not? While the coffin was being solemnly transported from the Kazan Cathedral to that of the Peter and Paul Fortress, for burial