Terrible tsarinas

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The Extravagant Anna the Congress of Belgrade, in 1739, he even asked France to mediate - meanwhile trying to bribe the envoy from Versailles - but the results he obtained were contemptible: he managed to hang onto Russia’s rights in the Azov peninsula, with the proviso that the area not be fortified, and he gained a few acres of steppe between the Dniepr and the southernmost Bug. In exchange, Russia promised to demolish the fortifications at Taganrog and to give up its merchant fleet and warships in the Black Sea, leaving all free navigation to the Turkish fleet. Russia’s only territorial gain during Anna’s reign was the effective annexation of Ukraine, which was placed under Russian control in 1734.

Internationally, Russia was seen as a weak and disoriented nation, but inside the country new and absurd aspirants to the throne were cropping up everywhere. This phenomenon was nothing new. Since the epidemic of false Dmitris appeared at the death of Ivan the Terrible, the obsession with miraculously resurrected tsareviches had become an endemic and national disease.

Nevertheless, this turmoil in public opinion, however ludicrous it might be, was starting to disturb Anna Ivanovna. She saw the trend as an increasingly specific threat to her legitimacy, and Buhren encouraged that view.

She feared above all that her aunt Elizabeth Petrovna might have a belated renewal of popularity, since she was the sole living daughter of Peter the Great. There was a chance that among the nobility the same specious arguments that (thankfully) had failed to compromise her own coronation might enjoy a resurgence, and not so innocuously this time. Moreover, she found her rival’s beauty and natural grace intolerable. It was not enough for her to eject the tsarevna from the palace in the hope that the court, and everyone else, would end up forgetting all about this spoilsport.

To forestall any attempt to transfer power to another lineage, she even thought, in 1731, of an authoritative modification of the fam«87»

Terrible Tsarinas ily rights in the house of Romanov. Having no child of her own and being extremely concerned over the future of the monarchy, she adopted her young niece, the only daughter of her elder sister Catherine Ivanovna and Charles Leopold, prince of Mecklenburg.

The little princess was brought to Russia in the twinkling of an eye. The gamine was only 13 years old at the time. Lutheran by confession, she was re-baptized as an Orthodox and had her first name changed from Elizabeth to Anna Leopoldovna; she became the second most eminent figure in the empire, after her aunt Anna Ivanovna. She grew into an insipid teenager with a fair complexion; there wasn’t much sparkle in her eye, but she had enough brains to manage a conversation (provided that the subject was not too serious). As soon as she reached the age of 19, her aunt, the tsarina, who was a good judge of a woman’s physical and moral resources, decreed that she was ready for marriage. Suitable prospects were hastily sought.

Of course, Anna Ivanovna turned her attention first toward what she liked to think of as her homeland, Germany. That land of discipline and virtue was the only place to find husbands and wives worthy of reigning over barbarian Muscovy. Charged with discovering a rara avis amidst the flocks of crowing roosters, Karl Gustav Loewenwolde went out to see what he could see. Upon his return, he recommended either Margrave Charles of Prussia or Prince Anthony Ulrich of Bevern, of the house of Brunswick, brother-in-law of the crown prince in Prussia. Personally, he was inclined in favor of the second candidate, whereas Ostermann, with his special interest in foreign relations, was inclined toward the first. The advantages and disadvantages of the two champions were debated before Anna Ivanovna, without consulting the interested party who would, however, have her word to say, for she was already over the age of 20.

To tell the truth, the empress had only one goal in all this