Terrible tsarinas

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Machinations around the Throne Oranienbaum, he questioned them avidly on how the Serene One had seemed during the festivities. Pressed to speak their minds, they told him everything, in detail. They insisted, in particular, on the fact that Menshikov had pushed his insolence to the point of sitting, in their presence, on the throne prepared for Peter II. To hear them tell it, their host, consumed with pride, conducted himself in every way as though he were the master of the empire. Ostermann declared that he was offended as much as if it had been him that the Serene One had slighted. The next day, taking advantage of an absence of Peter II, who had gone out hunting with Elizabeth, Ostermann received Menshikov at Peterhof and reproached him, in a dry tone, in the name of all the sincere friends of the imperial family, for his unseemly conduct towards His Majesty. Piqued by these remonstrances from a subordinate, Menshikov took umbrage and returned to St. Petersburg, contemplating a revenge that would forever remove the desire to plot against him from this scheming band.

Arriving at his palace on Vasilievsky Island, he was stunned to see that all of Peter II’s furniture had been removed and transported to the Summer Palace (Peterhof) where the tsar, he was informed, intended to reside from now on. Outraged, the Most Serene Prince rushed to the headquarters of the Guard to demand an explanation from the officers charged with keeping watch over the tsar. All the sentinels had already been relieved and the station chief announced, with an air of contrition, that he was only following imperial orders. Apparently, there was another hand pulling the strings. What might have looked, at first, like the whim of a prince seemed, in fact, to signal a final breakdown. For Menshikov, this was the collapse of an edifice that he had been building for years and that he had believed to be as solid as the granite of the quays along the Neva.

What a catastrophe! Who was behind it? There could be no