Terrible tsarinas

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Terrible Tsarinas most of the time confined in a kind of semi-voluntary, semiimposed exile far from the capital, had more taste for human interactions, simple and direct relations, and even reached out to the masses. Taking full advantage of her rare visits to St. Petersburg, this true daughter of Peter the Great was quick to show herself in public, traveling about on horseback or in an open carriage in the city; and she would respond to the public’s greetings with a gracious wave of the hand and an angelic smile. Her approach was so natural that, when she was passing by, everyone felt authorized to shout out his joy or his sorrow to her, as if she were a sister of charity. It was said that soldiers on leave would go up to the sides of her sleigh to murmur a compliment in her ear. Among themselves, they called her Matushka, “little mother”; she knew that, and was proud to consider it an additional title of nobility.

One of the first to have detected the tsarevna’s discreetly rising star among the ordinary people and the middle aristocracy was the French ambassador, the marquis de La Chetardie. He very quickly understood the advantages he could derive for his country and himself by winning Elizabeth Petrovna’s confidence, and even friendship.

He was assisted in this campaign of diplomatic seduction by the princess’s designated doctor, a Hanoverian of French origin, Armand Lestocq, whose ancestors had settled in Germany after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This man, about 50 years old, skilled in his art and absolutely amoral in his private conduct, had been introduced to Elizabeth Petrovna when she was only an obscure young girl, flirtatious and sensual. The marquis de La Chetardie often called upon him to try to penetrate the tsarevna’s varying moods and the shifting public opinion in Russia. What stood out, in Lestocq’s comments, was that unlike the women who had preceded her at the head of the country, this one found France very attractive. She had learned French and even “danced