Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  Catherine was content with her new status (never at any stage of her astonishing ascent did she push to go higher), but as she continued to bear his children and attach herself more deeply in his affections, Peter continued to worry about her. In March 1711, before leaving with Catherine on the Pruth campaign against the Turks, the Tsar summoned his sister Natalya, his sister-in-law, Praskovaya, and two of Praskovaya's daughters. Presenting them to Catherine, he told them that she was his wife and should be considered the Russian Tsaritsa. He planned to marry her in public as soon as he could, but if he were to die first, they were to accept Catherine as his legal widow.

  In February 1712, Peter kept his word and married Catherine again—this time with drums and trumpets playing, with the diplomatic corps in attendance, with a magnificent banquet and a show of fireworks in celebration. Before the ceremony, Catherine had been publicly received and baptized into the Russian church with her stepson, the Tsarevich Alexis, acting as her godfather. Thereafter, the publicly proclaimed Tsaritsa was called Catherine Alexeevna.

  His new wife had qualities which Peter had never found in another woman. She was warm, merry, compassionate, kind-hearted, generous, adaptable, comfortable, robustly healthy and possessed of great vitality. Among all of Peter's followers, she and Menshikov came closest to keeping up with the Tsar's phenomenal energy and compulsive drive. Catherine had an earthy common sense which immediately saw through flattery and deceit. The language she spoke, like Peter's own, was simple, direct and honest. In private, she alone could indulge her playful humor and treat Peter like an overgrown boy; in public, she had the tact to remain in the background. She had enough intelligence and sympathy to understand Peter's burdens as well as his character. With her own good nature, she did not take offense, no matter how gloomy his mood or outrageous his behavior. Alexander Gordon, son-in-law of Patrick Gordon, explained that "the great reason why the Tsar was so fond of her was her exceeding good temper; she was never seen peevish or out of humor; obliging and civil to all and never forgetful of her former condition."

  Better than anyone else, Catherine could deal with Peter's convulsive fits. When the first symptoms of these attacks appeared, the Tsar's attendants would run for Catherine, who would come at once and firmly lay him down, take his head in her lap and gently stroke his hair and temples until the convulsions abated and he fell asleep. While he slept, she would sit silently for hours, cradling his head, soothingly stroking it when he stirred. Peter always awakened refreshed. But his need for her went far deeper than mere nursing. Her qualities of mind and heart were such that she was able not only to soothe him, play with him, love him, but also to take part in his inner life, to talk to him about serious things, to discuss his views and projects, to encourage his hopes and aspirations. Not only did her presence comfort him, but her conversation cheered him and gave him balance.

  Peter was never greatly interested in women for their special and mysterious female elixir. He had no time for dallying with delicious, witty ladies in a context of court life, like Louis XIV, and he was far too busy with war and government to undertake epic campaigns of sheer physical conquest similar to those which occupied Augustus of Saxony-Poland. After his marriage to Catherine, Peter had occasional mistresses, but they barely entered his thoughts and counted for nothing. In his life, Peter cared deeply for only four women: his mother, his sister Natalya, Anna Mons and Catherine. Of these, his mother and Catherine ranked highest, and Catherine achieved this in part by becoming his second mother. The total, uncritical love she gave to Peter was similar to a mother's, constant even when the child is behaving horribly. Because of this, he trusted her completely. She—like Natalya Naryshkina or, to a lesser extent, Lefort, who also loved him without question—could approach him even in moments of ungovernable rage to quiet and soothe him. In her arms, he was able to pass peaceful nights. Often, especially in their early years, she appears in his letters as "Moder" or "Moeder." Later, she becomes his Katerinushka. Thus, gradually, Catherine filled a larger and larger place in Peter's life and heart. There might be an occasional infidelity with some young beauty, but Catherine, quiet and secure in the knowledge that she was indispensable, only smiled.

  Their comradeship and love, as well as Catherine's strength and endurance, were manifested by the birth of twelve children, six sons and six daughters. Ten of these died in infancy or after only a few years of life. There is pathos in reading the names and dates, for Peter and Catherine used the same names several times, hoping that the new little Peter or Paul or Natalya would be luckier than the buried namesake.* The two of their children who lived to adulthood were Anne, born in 1708, who became the Duchess of Holstein and mother of Emperor Peter III, and Elizabeth, born in 1709, who ruled as empress from 1740 to 1762. Although infant deaths were all too normal for the age, it did not lighten the burden of grief for a mother who so often endured pregnancy, labor, early hope and then a funeral.

  In every arena of life, Catherine was the opposite of a terem or boudoir princess. Merging the physical stamina of a hardy peasant woman with her keen desire to stay close to her lord, she traveled constantly with Peter through Russia, to Poland, Germany, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. Twice—first against the Turks on the Pruth and then against the Persians along the Caspian—she accompanied Peter on military campaigns, enduring without complaint the hardships of the march and the noisy violence of battle. Riding two or three days on horseback, sleeping in a tent on bare ground close to the thunder of artillery, even seeing a bullet strike one of the men attending her, left Catherine unperturbed.

  She was neither prudish nor delicate but a man's companion whom Peter wanted at his side even in the middle of his drunken revels. Catherine amiably obliged, although when she could do so without angering her husband, she exercised an influence for moderation. During one such orgy of excessive drinking, Catherine knocked on the door of the room in which Peter was locked with a few of his inebriated cronies. "It is time to come home," she said. The door opened and the obedient Tsar followed her home.

  But Catherine was not so hardy and mannish as to lack all feminine interests. She learned to dance and executed the most complicated steps with precision and grace, a talent which she passed along to her daughter Elizabeth. Catherine loved clothes and ornamental pomp. She could be Peter's soldier-wife and sleep in a tent, but once the campaign was over, she liked to wear jewels and magnificent gowns and to live in palaces. Peter's own tastes were simple; the smaller his house and the lower the ceiling, the happier he was. But for Catherine he built palaces and gardens in St. Petersburg, at Peterhof and in Reval. Here, at her court, the cloth tunics trimmed with simple braid which served for Peter were insufficient. Catherine's courtiers wore silk, velvet and

  *Here is the melancholy list:

  Peter (b. 1704, d. 1707);

  Paul (b. 1705, d. 1707);

  Catherine (b. 1707, d. 1708);

  Anne (b. 1708, d. 1728);

  Elizabeth (b. 1709, d. 1762);

  Natalya (b. 1713, d. 1715);

  Margarita (b. 1714, d. 1715);

  Peter (b. 1715, d. 1719);

  Paul (b. and d. 1717);

  Natalya (b. 1718, d. 1725);

  Peter (b. and d. 1723);

  Paul (b. and d. 1724).

  brocade embroidered in gold and silver with delicate lace ruffles at the sleeves and diamond and pearl buttons. Most portraits of her painted after she was thirty and had been publicly acknowledged as tsaritsa show a robust, white-bosomed lady with jet-black hair, dark, almond-shaped eyes, heavy eyebrows and a winsome, well-shaped mouth. Usually, she is wearing a diadem of pearls and rubies, a brocade dress edged with lace, a lavish, ermine-tailed cape casually slipping off her right shoulder and the red sash of the Order of St. Catherine, which Peter created in her honor.

  Yet, despite her love of pomp, Catherine never pretended that her origins were anything but lowly, and even as Peter's wife and tsaritsa, she always deferred to foreign royalty. A German diplomat, describing
Catherine in 1717, touches on both her appearance and her manner:

  The Tsaritsa was in the prime of life and showed no signs of having possessed beauty. She was tall and strong, exceedingly dark, and would have seemed darker but for the rouge and whitening with which she covered her face. There was nothing unpleasant about her manners, and anyone who remembered the Princess's origins would have been disposed to think them good. . . . She had a great desire to do well. ... It might fairly be said that if this Princess had not all the charms of her sex, she had all its gentleness. . . . During her visit to Berlin, she showed the Queen the greatest deference, and let it be understood that her own extraordinary fortune did not make her forget the difference between that Princess and herself.

  The most graphic embodiment of the attachment between Peter and Catherine and its deepening strength as the years went by appears in their letters. Whenever they were apart, Peter wrote to her every third or fourth day, describing his loneliness, worrying about her health and reassuring her about his, sharing his anxiety when the news is bad and his elation when it is good. His only grumble is that she does not reply as often or as quickly as he would like. Catherine's answers, which had to be dictated through

  a secretary and therefore were not as effortlessly composed as his, are filled with cheerful affection, concern for his health, and news of their children. She never complains and never offers advice either on policies or personalities. The tone on both sides is good-natured, concerned and tender, with private mischievous jokes, amused chiding about other romances and amorous promises between themselves. ("If you were here," Catherine writes to her husband, "there soon would be another little Shishenka [a

  nickname for one of their small sons]." Almost always, the letters on both sides were accompanied by small parcels of fruit, salted fish, new shirts or dressing gowns for Peter, or oysters, which she loved, for Catherine.

  Peter from Lublin, August 31, 1709

  Moeder: Since I left you I have no news of what I want to know, especially how soon you will be in Vilna. 1 am bored without you and you, I think, are the same. King Augustus has come. . . . The Poles are constantly in conference about the affairs of Ivashka Khmelnitsky [i.e., they are drinking].

  —Warsaw, September 24, 1709

  . . . Thanks for your package. I send you some fresh lemons. You jest about amusements [with other women]; we have none, for we are old and not that kind of people. Give my regards to Aunty [Darya]. Her bridegroom [Menshikov] had an interview day before yesterday with Ivashka [i.e., got drunk], and had a bad fall on the boat and now lies powerless; which break gently to Aunty that she does not go to pieces. . . .

  —Marienwerder, October 16, 1709

  . . . Give my regards to Aunty. That she has fallen in love with a monk I have already told her bridegroom, about which he is very sad, and from grief wishes to commit some follies himself.

  —Carlsbad, September 19, 1711

  We, thank God, are well, only our bellies are swelled up with water, because we drink like horses, and we have nothing else to do. . . . You write that on account of the cure I should not hurry to you. It is quite evident that you have found somebody better than me. Kindly write about it. Is it one of ours or a man of Thorn? I rather think a man of Thorn, and that you want to be avenged for what I did two years ago. That is the way you daughters of Eve act with us old fellows.

  —Greifswald, August 8, 1712

  I hear that you are bored and I am not without being bored, but you can judge that business does not leave me much time for boredom. I don't think I can get away from here to you quickly, and if the horses have arrived, come on with the three battalions that are ordered to go to Anclam. But, for God's sake, take care not to go a hundred yards from the battalions, for there are many enemy ships in the Haff and the men constantly go into the woods in great numbers and through those woods you must pass.

  —Berlin, October 2, 1712

  Yesterday I arrived here and I went to see the King. Yesterday morning, he came to me and last night I went to the Queen. I send you as many oysters as I could find. I couldn't get any more because they say the plague has broken out in Hamburg and it is forbidden to bring anything from there.

  —Leipzig, October 6, 1712

  I this moment start for Carlsbad and hope to arrive tomorrow. Your clothes and other things were brought, but I couldn't get any oysters. With this I confide you to God's keeping.

  In 1716, Peter received a pair of spectacles from her. He wrote back:

  Katerinushka, my heart's friend, how are you? Thanks for the present. In the same way I send you something from here in return. Really on both sides the presents are suitable. You sent me wherewithal to help my old age and I send you with which to adom your youth.

  —Pyrmont, June 5, 1716

  I received your letter with the present, and I think you have a prophetic spirit that you sent only one bottle, for I am not allowed to drink more than one glass a day, so that this store is quite enough for me. You write that you don't admit my being old. In that way you try to cover up your first present [the spectacles] so that people should not guess. But it is easy to discover that young people don't look through spectacles. I shall see you soon. The water is acting well, but it has become very tiresome here.

  —Altona, November 23, 1716

  Petrushka has cut his fourth tooth; God grant he cut all so well, and that we may see him grow up, thus rewarding us for our former grief over his brothers.

  Two years later, Catherine writes to Peter about this same son.

  —July 24, 1718

  I and the children, thank God, are in good health. Although on my way back to Petersburg, Petrushka was a little weak with his last teeth, yet now with God's help he is quite well and has cut three back teeth. I beg you. little father, for protection against Petrushka, for he has no little quarrel with me about you; namely, because 394 when I tell him that Papa has gone away he does not like it, but he likes it better and becomes glad when I say that Papa is here.

  —Reval, August 1, 1718

  Thanks, my friend, for the figs, which came safely. I have had myself shorn here and send you my shorn locks, though I know they will not be received.

  In July, 1723, only eighteen months before he died, Peter wrote again from Reval, where he had built himself a small white stucco house and Catherine an ornate pink palace.

  The garden planted only two years ago has grown beyond belief, for the only big trees which you saw have in some places stretched their branches across the walk. . . . The chestnuts all have fine crowns. The house is being plastered outside, but is ready within and, in one word, we have hardly anywhere such a handsome house. I send you some strawberries which ripened before our arrival, as well as cherries. I am quite astonished that things are so early here, when it is in the same latitude as Petersburg.

  It is reassuring to read these letters. Not many parts of Peter's life were as unblemished and happy as his relationship with Catherine. Through these letters, we have the satisfaction of knowing that a man whose childhood was stained with horror, whose public life was filled with struggle, and whose family life saw the appalling tragedy of the Tsarevich Alexis, did at least have some moments of felicity. In Catherine, Peter found an island amidst the storms.

  29

  THE HAND OF THE AUTOCRAT

  In the early years of war—indeed, throughout his reign—Peter was constantly on the move. Nine years passed between the battles of Narva and Poltava; during this time, the Tsar was never more than three months in a single place. Now in Moscow, now in St. Petersburg, now in Voronezh; then on to Poland, Lithuania and Livonia, Peter traveled incessantly, everywhere inspecting, organizing, encouraging, criticizing, commanding. Even in his beloved Petersburg, he hurried back and forth between houses in different parts of the city. If he stayed under one roof for more than a week, be became restless. He ordered his carriage—he would go to see how a ship was building, how a canal was proceeding, what was being accomplished with t
he new harbor at Petersburg or Kronstadt. Traveling back and forth over the immense distances of his empire, the Tsar broke every precedent before the eyes of his astonished people. The time-honored image of a distant sovereign, crowned, enthroned and immobile in the white-walled Kremlin, bore no resemblance to this black-eyed, beardless giant dressed in a green German coat, black three-cornered hat and high, mud spattered boots, stepping down from his carriage into the muddy streets of a Russian town, demanding beer for his thirst, a bed for the night and fresh horses for the morning.

  Overland travel in this time was a trial for the spirit and a torment for the body. Russian roads were little more than rutted tracks across meadows or through forests. Rivers were crossed by dilapidated bridges, crude ferries or shallow fords. The human beings one encountered were impoverished, frightened and sometimes hostile. In winter, wolves prowled nearby. Because of mud and potholes, carriages moved slowly and often broke down; over some stretches, five miles was all that could be covered in a day. Inns were rare and travelers looked for beds in private houses. Horses—even when the driver carried an official order that they must be provided—were difficult to find, and usually could be used over a distance of no more than ten miles, after which they had to be unharnessed and returned to their owner while the traveler and his driver searched for fresh animals. Under such conditions, a journey was often interrupted by long, unexpected delays. When St. Petersburg was rising, Peter ordered a new road, 500 miles long, between the new city and the old capital of Moscow. The trip between the two cities took four to five weeks. Later in his reign, the Tsar demanded a straighter road, along the line of the present railroad, which would have shortened the distance by 100 miles. Eighty miles of this new highway had been completed with the project was abandoned. The lakes, swamps and forests in the area of Novgorod made an impenetrable barrier.

  In fairness, the condition of Russian roads was not unique in the early eighteenth century. In 1703, it took fourteen hours to travel from London to Windsor, a distance of twenty-five miles. Daniel Defoe, writing in 1724, declared of his country's highways, "It is a prostitution of the language to call them turnpikes." One was "vile, a narrow causeway cut into ruts"; others were "execrably broke into holes . . . sufficient to dislocate one's bones." Although stagecoaches were being introduced into Western