Terrible tsarinas

«102»

One Anna after Another stead. Barely out of sickbed, Munnich tried to take control again - but it was too late. Ostermann was well-entrenched. He was not about to let go of anything, and Anna Leopoldovna, advised by Julie Mengden, decided that the moment had come for her to assert all her rights, with Ostermann standing behind her like a guardian angel. He proposed looking for international backing and even subsidies to support a “cleansing of the monarchy.” Confused negotiations were initiated in St. Petersburg with England, Austria, and Saxony for alliances that would go nowhere. But let’s admit it: nobody among the European diplomats had faith in Russia any more, caught as it was in cross currents.

The ship had no captain. Even in Constantinople, an unforeseen collusion between France and Turkey hinted at the possible recrudescence of bellicose inclinations.

Although they had been kept ignorant of developments in the sphere of foreign relations, the army officers suffered nonetheless from their fatherland’s obliteration and even humiliation, in international confrontations. The insolence and the whims of the Count of Lynar, who allowed himself every license since his marriage with Julie Mengden was concocted in the back rooms of the palace, finished off any little sympathy the regent might have preserved among the people and the middle nobility. The gvardeitsy (the men of the imperial guard) reproached her for scorning the military, and her humblest subjects were astonished that she was never seen walking freely about the city as all the other tsarinas had done. She was said to dislike the barracks as much as the street, and that she only had time for the salons. She was also said to have such an appetite for pleasure that she never bothered to fasten her clothes unless she was attending a reception; that way, she could get out of them more quickly when her lover came to visit her.

On the other hand, her aunt Elizabeth Petrovna, although