Terrible tsarinas

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III

Terrible Tsarinas that the young lady enjoyed reading, serious conversations and studying foreign languages. She spoke German and French as fluently as Russian. What was she doing with all that twaddle?

Wasn’t it the role of a woman, by the age of 15 or 16, to enjoy herself, entertain others and seduce every worthy man who passes by? Peter teased her about her excessive application and she tried to discipline him by cajoling him with a softness to which he was not accustomed. What a pity that she was not prettier! But maybe it was better that way? What lessons might he not have given in to if, in addition to her sparkling spirit, she had had a desirable physique? Just as she was, she helped him to bear with his situation as a false sovereign whom everyone honored and whom nobody obeyed. Since his advent, Menshikov had relegated him to the rank of imperial figurehead. True, to mark his supremacy, he had arranged that at state dinners Menshikov should be seated to his left, whereas Natalya was to his right; and certainly, it was he who, installed upon a throne between his two aunts, Anna and Elizabeth, chaired the meetings of the Supreme Privy Council; true, he was soon to marry Menshikov’s daughter, and Menshikov, once he became his father-in-law, would no doubt hand over the reins of power. But at present the young Peter was aware that he was only the shadow of an emperor, a caricature of Peter the Great, a masquerade-Majesty subjected to the will of the producer of the brilliant Russian spectacle. No matter what he was doing, Peter had to give in to the wishes of Menshikov, who had foreseen all and arranged all in his own way.

This omnipotent character had a palace located in the heart of St. Petersburg, situated in a superb park on Vasilievsky Island.

While he waited for a bridge to be constructed for his personal use, Menshikov crossed the Neva in a rowing galley, the interior of which was hung with green velvet. Disembarking on the opposite bank, he would ride in a carriage with a gilded cab, embla«34»

Machinations around the Throne zoned on the doors and the pediment with a princely crown. This masterpiece of craftsmanship and comfort, this heavenly chariot, was drawn by six horses harnessed in purple velvet, embroidered in gold and silver. Many heralds preceded Menshikov’s every move about town. Two pages on horseback followed, two gentlemen of the court bounced along at the carriage doors, and six dragoons closed the parade and chased away the curious.1 Nobody else in the capital surrounded his activities with such magnificence.

Peter suffered in silence from this ostentation that was putting the true tsar more in the shade with every passing day, so that even the people apparently no longer thought of him. To cap it all off, Menshikov waited until the emperor had taken his oath before the Guard to announce that, from now on, as a security measure, His Majesty would reside not at the Winter Palace but in his own palace, on Vasilievsky Island. Everyone was stunned to see the tsar thus placed “under the bell,” but no one spoke up to protest. The principal opponents, Tolstoy, Devier and Golovkin, already had been exiled by the new master of Russia.

Having installed Peter - superbly, it is true - in his own residence, Menshikov kept close watch over the company he kept.

The barricades that he placed at the doors of the imperial apartments were insuperable. Only the tsar’s aunts, Anna and Elizabeth, his sister Natalya and a few trusted friends were allowed to visit him. Among the latter were the vice-chancellor Andrei Ivanovich Ostermann, the engineer and general Burkhard Christoph von Munnich (master of so many great works), Count Reinhold Loewenwolde (a former lover of Catherine I and paid agent of the duchess of Courland), the Scottish General Lascy (who was working for Russia and managed to stay out of trouble during the disorder that came on the heels of the empress’s death), and finally and inevitably, the incorrigible Duke Charles Frederick of