Terrible tsarinas

1725.”3

The publication of this document aroused no serious opposition among the notables nor the general public; and Catherine began to breathe more easily. The deal was done. For her, it was a second birth. When she thought back to her past as a soldiers’ whore, she was dizzied by her elevation to the rank of legitimate wife, then of sovereign. Her parents, simple Livonian farmers, had died of the plague one after the other, when she was still very young. After wandering through the countryside, famished and all in tatters, she was taken in by the Lutheran pastor Gluck, who employed her as a maidservant. But, an orphan with a tempting figure, she quickly betrayed his tutelage and ran off, sleeping in

Terrible Tsarinas the camps of the Russian army that had come to conquer Polish Livonia. She rose in rank from one lover to another, until she became the mistress of Menshikov, then of Peter himself. If he enjoyed her, it was certainly not for her education, for she was practically illiterate and she spoke execrable Russian; but he had many occasions to appreciate her valiancy, her spirit and her great allure. The tsar had always sought out women who were wellendowed in flesh and simple in spirit. Even if Catherine was often untrue to him, even if he was fed up with her betrayals, he returned to her even after the worst quarrels. The notion that the “break up” was final, this time, left her feeling both punished and relieved.

The fate that was in store for her seemed extraordinary, not only because of her modest origins but because of her gender, which historically had been relegated to secondary roles. No woman before her had ever been empress of Russia. From time immemorial, the throne of that immense land had been occupied by males, according to the hereditary line of descent. Even after the death of Ivan the Terrible and the confusion that followed, neither the impostor Boris Godunov nor the shaky Fyodor II nor the theory of the false Dmitris that plagued the “Time of Troubles” had changed anything in the monarchical tradition of virility.

It took the extinction of the house of Rurik, the founder of old Russia, for the country to resign itself to having a tsar elected by an assembly of boyars, prelates and dignitaries (the “Sobor”).

Young Mikhail Fyodorovich, the first of the Romanovs, was chosen. After him, imperial power was transmitted without too many clashes for nearly a century. It was only in 1722 that Peter the Great, breaking with tradition, decreed that the sovereign should thenceforth designate an heir however seemed best to him, without regard for the dynastic order. Thus, thanks to this innovator who had already upset his country’s ways from top to bot«10»

Catherine Shows the Way tom, a woman of no birth or political qualification had the same rights as a man to assume the throne. And the first to benefit from this inordinate privilege would be a former servant, a Livonian by origin and a Protestant at that, who became Russian and Orthodox late in the game and whose only claims to glory were acquired in the sack. Is it possible that the hands that had so often washed the dishes, made the beds, bleached the dirty linen and prepared the swill for the army rabble would be the same ones that tomorrow, scented and bearing rings, would sign the ukases upon which hung the future of million subjects, frozen with respect and fear?

Day and night, the idea of this formidable promotion haunted Catherine’s mind. The more she wept, the more she felt like laughing. Official mourning was to go on for forty days. All the ladies of quality vied in prayers and lamentations; Catherine held her own superbly in this contest of s ighing and sobbing. But suddenly, another grief struck her heart. Four weeks after the demise of her husband, while the entire city was preparing his sumptuous funeral, her younger daughter Natalya (six and a half years old) succumbed to measles. This inconspicuous, almost insignificant death, coming on top of the tremendous impact of the death of Peter the Great, fully convinced Catherine that her fate was exceptional, in suffering as well as in success. She immediately decided to bury on the same day the father, wreathed in glory of historic proportions, and the little girl who had never had time to taste the happiness and the constraints of a woman’s life.

Announced by heralds at the four corners of the capital, the double funeral was to take place on March 10, 1725, in the Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul.

All along the route of the procession, the facades of the houses were draped in black. Twelve colonels of high stature bore His Majesty’s imposing coffin, which was sheltered to some extent from the gusts of snow and hail by a canopy of gilt brocade