Terrible tsarinas

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The Extravagant Anna was to destroy the country’s noblest families), the empire was heading straight for a catastrophe.

The day after Anna Ivanovna’s death, Buhren became regent by the grace of the recently departed, with a baby as his mascot and as the living guarantee of his rights. He immediately set himself to clearing the ground around him. In his view, the first essential move would be to get rid of Anna Leopoldovna and Anthony Ulrich, little Ivan’s parents. If he could send them far enough from the capital - and why not abroad? - he would have his free hands until the imperial brat attained his majority. Studying the new political aspect of Russia, Baron Axel of Mardefeld, Prussian Minister to St. Petersburg, summarized his opinion on the future of the country in a dispatch to his sovereign Frederick II, saying: “Seventeen years of despotism [the legal duration of the minority of the tsar] and a nine-month-old child who, by the way, could die, yielding the throne to the regent.”8 Mardefeld’s letter is dated October 29, 1740, the day following the death of the tsarina. Less than a week later, events suddenly took a turn in a direction that the diplomat had not foreseen. Despite the future tsar Ivan VI’s being transferred to the Winter Palace amid great pomp and celebration, in an extravagant ceremony followed by all the courtiers swearing their oath and kissing the hand of the regent, his enemies had not given up.

The new English minister in St. Petersburg, Edward Finch, declared that the change of reign “has made less noise in Russia than the changing of the Guard in Hyde Park”; but Field Marshal Munnich warned Anna Leopoldovna and Anthony Ulrich against the tortuous machinations of Buhren, who he suggested was intending to throw them both out in order to keep himself in power.

Even though he had been allied with the regent in the very recent past, he said that he felt morally obliged to prevent him from going any further to the detriment of the legitimate rights of the