Terrible tsarinas

«39»

Terrible Tsarinas implacable enemy of their family. Because of his giant size and his broad shoulders, he was called the “proud Goliath,” and Anna beseeched Heaven that Peter II, a new David, should bring down the monster of pride and spite that had such a hold on the empire.

After her sister departed for Holstein, Elizabeth tried at first to forget her sorrows and her fears in a swirl of romance and intrigue. Peter assisted her in this distracting enterprise by inventing new excuses for fooling around and intoxicating themselves every day. He was only 14 years old, yet he felt the desires of a man. To secure greater freedom of movement, Elizabeth and he emigrated to the old imperial palace of Peterhof. For a moment, they could believe that their secret vows were about to be fulfilled; for Menshikov, although he enjoyed an iron constitution, suddenly had a fainting spell and was spitting blood. He had to be confined to bed. According to the echoes that reached Peterhof, the doctors considered that the indisposition could be long lasting, if not fatal.

During this vacuum of power, the usual advisers met to comment on current matters. In addition to the illness of His Most Serene, another event of importance occurred meanwhile, and an embarrassing one, at that. Peter the Great’s first wife, the Tsarina Eudoxia, whom he had imprisoned in the convent at Suzdal and then transferred to the fortress at Schlusselburg, had suddenly resurfaced. The emperor had repudiated her in order to marry Catherine. An old woman, weak but still valiant after thirty years of reclusion, Eudoxia was the mother of the Tsarevich Alexis who had died under torture and the grandmother of Tsar Peter II who, by the way, had never met her and did not see any need to do so.

Now that she was out of prison and Menshikov, her sworn enemy, was tied to his bed, the other members of the Supreme Privy Council thought that the grandson of this martyr, so worthy in her effacement, should pay her a visit of homage. They considered