Terrible tsarinas

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One Anna after Another Elizabeth Petrovna. Suddenly shaken, Anna Leopoldovna decided to clear the air. Seeing that her aunt was seated nearby, playing cards with some of the courtiers, she walked over, drew her aside, and asked her to follow her to a private room. Once alone with her, she spelled out the accusation that she had so recently heard.

Elizabeth was thunderstruck - she blenched, panicked, protested her innocence, swore that Anna had been misinformed, odiously misled - and threw herself at her niece’s feet, in tears.

Anna, upset by Elizabeth’s apparent sincerity, burst into tears, herself. Thus, instead of clashing, the two women embraced each other in a mingling of sighs and promises of good feelings. By the end of the evening, they parted like two sisters who had been brought closer by a shared danger.

But, as soon as the incident became known among their supporters, it took on the significance of a call to action. A few hours later, dining in a famous restaurant where oysters from Holland were sold as well as wigs from Paris, and which was moreover a meeting place for some of the best-informed men in the capital, Lestocq learned, via well-placed informers, that Ostermann had given orders for the Preobrazhensky Regiment (which was entirely behind the tsarevna) to move away from St. Petersburg. The pretext for this abrupt troop movement was the unexpected outbreak of war between Sweden and Russia; actually, it was as good a means as any other to deprive Elizabeth Petrovna of her surest allies in the event of a coup d’etat.

The die was cast. They had better move quickly. Ignoring protocol, an impromptu meeting was held clandestinely, right in the palace, in the tsarevna’s apartments. The principal conspirators were all there, surrounding Elizabeth Petrovna, who was more dead than alive. At her side, Alexis Razumovsky gave his opinion on the question, for the first time. Summarizing the general opinion, he declared in his beautiful, deep voice, “If we drag