Secret Lives of the Tsars

by Michael Farquhar

  Alone and in despair, Catherine retreated to a small, drafty room where she would remain through the winter, nursing her sorrow while the rest of the world celebrated the birth of her son. “This was the worst, cruelest, indeed the most devastating period of her whole life,” wrote her biographer Robert Coughlan. “During it she arrived at the edge of emotional collapse and perhaps even of lifelong emotional invalidism. She survived. And in surviving became a different person.”

  Catherine emerged from isolation transformed indeed. No longer would she be the compliant, eager-to-please young woman she had been, but instead a fierce advocate of her own interests and an instrument of her own advancement. “I drew myself up,” she wrote. “I walked with my head held high, more like the leader of a great faction than like one humiliated and crushed.”

  For too long Catherine had endured Peter’s folly and neglect. Now the two were emerging as mortal enemies. Still, the grand duke continued to consult his wife on many matters—from wooing his mistresses to ruling his duchy of Holstein from afar. “Madam Resourceful,” he called her. “No matter how angry or sulky he might be with me,” she wrote, “if he was in distress on any point whatever, he would come running to me as fast as his legs would carry him, as was his wont, to snatch a word of advice and, as soon as he had it, would run off again as fast as he had come.”

  Yet despite his reliance on “Madame Resourceful,” Peter ignored her counsel when it came to his overt allegiance to his native Holstein. At one point he even imported into Russia a large contingent of soldiers from his native land, which only served to antagonize his future subjects, especially the army, and added to the mounting evidence that he would serve only German interests when he became tsar.

  “The Grand Duke had an extraordinary passion for the little corner of the earth where he was born,” Catherine wrote. “It constantly occupied his mind though he had left it behind at the age of thirteen; his imagination became heated whenever he spoke of it, and, as none of the people around him had ever set foot in what was, by his account, a marvelous paradise, day after day he told us fantastical stories about it which almost put us to sleep.”

  Peter’s pro-German proclivities were becoming an increasing liability, particularly after Russia went to war with Prussia in 1756. Recognizing her own fortunes were inexorably tied to her foolish husband’s, Catherine began to forge secret political alliances—including one with her erstwhile enemy Chancellor Bestuzhev-Ryumin—that would better position her for the future should Peter succeed in completely destroying his own credibility, which he seemed determined to do. “It was a question of either perishing with him or through him,” she wrote, “or else saving myself, my children and perhaps the State, from the shipwreck that was foretold by every moral and physical attribute of this Prince.”

  Catherine’s concerns took on a new urgency when Empress Elizabeth suffered a series of strokes and her survival appeared uncertain. Disaster loomed in the person of her husband, and her political maneuvering reflected the profound ambition she had long maintained to rule Russia without him, whatever the cost. “There is no woman bolder than I,” she declared to a French diplomat. “I have the most reckless audacity.” Yet it was just this quality that nearly destroyed her.

  Meanwhile, though preoccupied in the forging of her own destiny, Catherine didn’t neglect her love life. She began an affair with the young protégé of her political ally the British ambassador Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams. His name was Count Stanislaus Poniatowski, and unlike his predecessor Sergei Saltykov, he was entirely in love with his mistress, particularly since it was she who first introduced him to sex. “My whole life was devoted to her,” he wrote, “much more sincerely than those who find themselves in such a situation can usually claim.”

  The affair took a rather awkward turn when Peter caught Poniatowski, in disguise, sneaking into the palace. The cuckolded husband wasn’t in the least bit angry, however. Rather, he took a perverse delight in dragging his wife out of bed and insisting that she and her lover join him and his mistress for dinner. This was followed by more intimate soirees among the four, during which Peter developed an attachment to his wife’s bedmate—just as he had earlier with Saltykov. “Nature made him a mere poltroon,” Poniatowski wrote of Peter. “He was not stupid, but mad, and as he was fond of drink, this helped to addle his poor brains even further.”

  During her affair with Poniatowski, Catherine found herself pregnant. And once again, the paternity of the child she was carrying was in question. “Heaven alone knows how it is that my wife becomes pregnant,” Peter exclaimed. “I have no idea whether this child is mine and whether I ought to recognize it as such.”*3

  Though Catherine’s affair with Poniatowski, and the pregnancy that may have resulted, ultimately had few consequences (save for the tedious occasions the couple had to spend with Peter), her political dabbling had far more significant ramifications when some of her allies, including Bestuzhev-Ryumin, began to topple. Trouble began when one of Catherine’s known associates, General Stefan Apraksin, commander of the Russian forces against Prussia, suddenly retreated after an impressive victory over Frederick II’s army. Treason seemed to be afoot, and, as an investigation was pursued, Catherine fell under suspicion. After all, she had written to Apraksin, despite the fact that such correspondence was strictly forbidden her.

  Feeling a noose tightening around her neck, Catherine made a bold move. She wrote a letter to the empress, “making it as moving as I could,” in which she expressed sentiments quite the opposite of what she really desired—which was to remain in Russia and ultimately rule: She asked to be sent home.

  When her letter failed to get a response, Catherine intensified the pathos, feigning illness and calling for the empress’s own confessor, who promised he would go to Elizabeth right away and urge her to receive the unfortunate young woman. On April 13, 1759, the fateful meeting took place. Catherine performed brilliantly, summoning the perfect mixture of despair and servility while spiritedly defending her loyalty to the empress. Peter, who had been watching the proceedings from behind a curtain, popped out at one point and began to cruelly berate his wife, which served only to make Catherine seem all the more sympathetic. All the while, Elizabeth’s anger slowly melted away.

  “I could see that my words made a strong and favorable impression on her,” Catherine wrote. “Tears stood out in her eyes and to conceal how much she was moved, she dismissed us.”

  Catherine’s Memoirs stop abruptly as she begins to relate the details of a second, more private interview with the empress. Nevertheless, it is clear that while she emerged chastened, she was unbroken. Now all she had to do was survive the rest of Elizabeth’s reign, and her husband’s malevolent hatred.

  On January 5, 1762, Empress Elizabeth died of a massive stroke at the age of fifty-three. Peter was now emperor, and, as such, immediately set about alienating his new subjects. After six years of bloody warfare, Russia was poised to finally crush the Prussian forces of Frederick the Great. But Peter III wasn’t about to let his idol Frederick go down in such ignominious defeat. Instead, he simply canceled the war, snatching certain victory away from his own armies. It was an outrage, compounded by the new emperor’s insistence that the elite Guard units start wearing Prussian-style uniforms.

  Having essentially routed his own military, Peter began an assault on the Orthodox faith—one of the pillars of Russian society. Although he had officially converted upon being designated as Elizabeth’s heir, the emperor held the Russian religion in total contempt, clinging stubbornly to the Lutheran tradition with which he had been raised. In a move almost perfectly designed to estrange himself from the Orthodox hierarchy, he ordered sacred icons removed from places of prayer and even went as far as to confiscate church property.

  “Do you know that your emperor must be mad as a hatter?” a foreign diplomat remarked to a lady of the court. “No man could behave as he does otherwise.”

  Peter III was making powerful enemies
with his galling behavior, but perhaps none greater than his own wife. The couple had grown to truly loathe each other, and the emperor made no secret of his desire to rid himself of his detestable wife and marry instead his ugly mistress, Elizabeth Vorontzova.*4 He installed Elizabeth in his own apartments and made her head of the household while relegating Catherine to a distant side of the palace. As an additional humiliation, he ordered his wife to attend a public ceremony in which he awarded to his mistress one of Russia’s highest honors for women, the Order of St. Catherine, created by Peter the Great in tribute to his wife Catherine’s heroism during the Pruth River campaign against the Turks in 1711 (see Chapter 3). The bestowal of such an award to Elizabeth Vorontzova had a certain menacing significance, since it was given automatically to those who married into the royal family.

  Peter’s malignant feelings toward Catherine were made viciously apparent during a banquet celebrating a treaty with Prussia, in which the two nations, only recently enemies, agreed to ally themselves in an ill-advised war against Denmark. The emperor proposed a toast “to the imperial family,” after which all the guests rose, except Catherine. When Peter sent an adjunct to his wife’s end of the table to inquire why she remained seated, Catherine sent word back explaining that as a member of the imperial family being toasted, it would be improper for her to stand. For some reason this enraged the emperor. “Fool!” he screeched at his wife from across the table, shocking those in attendance into silence. A drunken Peter ordered Catherine’s arrest, but he was finally dissuaded from this course by the unhappy couple’s mutual relative, Prince George of Holstein, whom the emperor had placed in command of the Russian army.

  “Peter III’s barbarous, senseless ferocity made it seem quite possible that he intended to eliminate his wife,” the French chargé d’affaires wrote afterward. The emperor was in essence declaring war upon Catherine, but in this he woefully underestimated his enemy.

  “The Empress [Catherine] is in the most cruel situation and is treated with the most marked contempt,” the French ambassador Baron de Breteuil wrote to the French foreign minister, the Duc de Choiseul, early in 1762. “I have told you, Monseigneur, that she sought to fortify herself with philosophy, and I have said how ill this nourishment consorted with her character. I have learned since, beyond any doubt, that she is already very impatient with the Emperor’s conduct toward her and of the arrogance of Mademoiselle Vorontzova. Knowing as I do the courage and violence of this Princess, I cannot imagine that she will not sooner or later be moved to some extreme. I know that she has certain friends who are trying to calm her but who would risk everything for her, if she required it.”

  Indeed, while the emperor was charting his own self-destructive course, Catherine had been nourishing this circle of devoted allies. Among them was her new lover, Gregory Orlov, a handsome, battle-hardened Guards officer whose child Catherine secretly carried,*5 along with his four brothers—all of whom were well respected in the Russian military and would be instrumental in garnering its support. Catherine even had on her side the sister of her husband’s mistress, who had valuable contacts in the government and a shared revulsion to Peter III’s policies.

  The scorned, mistreated wife certainly had plenty of support, but she and her backers, biding their time, had no real plan of attack—that is, until one of their number, Captain Passek, was arrested on June 27, 1762, after drunkenly disparaging the emperor in public. With the very real danger that he might betray them under torture, the plotters leapt to action. Meanwhile, the unwitting emperor, who left St. Petersburg several weeks before to prepare his troops for the upcoming war against Denmark, had ordered his wife to take up residence at the palace of Peterhof, where, he informed her, he would arrive on June 29, to celebrate his name day. No one knew what else he might have in store for Catherine.

  Thus, in the early morning hours of June 28, Gregory Orlov’s brother Alexis arrived at Mon Plaisir, a summerhouse on the grounds of Peterhof, where Catherine was staying. Urgently, he roused her out of bed. “It’s time to get up,” he said. “Everything is ready to proclaim you Empress.” With barely time to dress, Catherine was hustled out into a waiting carriage that immediately raced off toward St. Petersburg.

  At just past seven in the morning, Catherine arrived at the headquarters of the first of three Guards regiments. The Orlovs had already prepared her way, and the reception she received there was rapturous. “Hurrah for our Little Mother Catherine!” the ranks cheered, with some kneeling before her and kissing the hem of her skirt. Also kneeling was the commander of the regiment, Cyril Razumovsky (brother of Empress Elizabeth’s lover), who proclaimed Catherine sovereign and, in the name of all the soldiers, swore allegiance to her. The group, now swelled by elated officers and soldiers riding along with Catherine’s carriage, next proceeded to the second Guards regiment, where the new empress was welcomed with equal enthusiasm. Finally, after a tense period of uncertainty, Peter the Great’s elite Preobrazhensky unit rose up for Catherine as well.

  All of St. Petersburg seemed to turn out in celebration as the smiling empress made her way first to the Church of Our Lady of Kazan, where she received the priests’ blessings amid holy icons and pealing bells, then to the Winter Palace to be greeted by the various ranks of Russian society who wished to pay homage. It had been a heady day, for sure, yet there remained the problem of Peter III, who still remained at large, with a formidable force at his disposal.

  After securing St. Petersburg and issuing a manifesto that detailed Peter’s crimes against Russia, as well as her justification for usurping his crown, the empress rode out on horseback to Peterhof, there to confront whatever forces her husband had managed to rally (which were none, as it turned out). Dressed smartly in the uniform of one of the Guard regiments, sword in hand, her hair flowing freely under an oak leaf crown she had fashioned around her hat, Catherine was the very image of the warrior queen leading her loyal troops into battle. It was an awesome sight that left all who witnessed it cheering wildly for her success.

  As his wife was being proclaimed in St. Petersburg, the fallen emperor—having no idea that he had in fact fallen—arrived at Peterhof as planned, mistress in tow. But, of course, Catherine wasn’t there. Incensed by her defiance of his orders, Peter began a frenzied search for his recalcitrant spouse, checking under beds and inside closets. Then he received word of what had happened that morning in the capital. It was a crippling blow, but rather than rally himself to confront Catherine, Peter collapsed in despair.

  “Courage, Majesty! Courage!” one of his ministers counseled the sobbing ex-sovereign. “One word from you, one imperious glance, and the people will fall on their knees before the Tsar! The men of Holstein are ready! This moment we march on St. Petersburg!”

  But there would be no such movement. Peter was a frantic mass of indecision. Between fainting spells, gasping sobs, and heaping gulps of brandy, he issued desperate orders and limpid manifestos, all without accomplishing anything. The ministers he sent to St. Petersburg to confront Catherine never returned, either joining her cause or put under arrest.

  With few options remaining, the deposed emperor was finally persuaded to sail to the island fortress of Kronshtadt, from where he might be able to rally those forces still loyal to him. But there was no succor to be found there. Catherine’s delegate, Admiral Talysin, had already persuaded the fortress’s commander that Peter III was no more. Accordingly, booms were set up to block his way.

  “It is the emperor,” Peter cried out upon reaching the blockade.

  “There is no emperor,” came the response from the fortress; “there is only the empress!”

  Peter might have courageously forged on, as his officers urged him to do, but instead he joined the ladies aboard the schooner in their pitiful wails. He then ordered the ship to set sail for his summer residence, Oranienbaum, where, depleted, he fell into bed with Elizabeth Vorontzova—and left himself to the mercy of Empress Catherine II.

  The ex-emperor was tak
en to Peterhof, but Catherine refused to see him. She had already obtained what she wanted from him, which was Peter’s signature on the letter of abdication she had drafted. It read: “During the brief period of my absolute rule over the Empire of Russia [six months], I have recognized that my strength was not sufficient to bear such a burden.… For this reason, after mature reflection, I solemnly declare, of my own free will, to all Russia and to the entire universe, that I renounce the government of the said Empire for as long as I shall live.” As it turned out, that would be a week.

  Peter had allowed himself to be dethroned, King Frederick II later wrote, “like a child being sent to bed.” Now all he wanted was mercy, the company of his dog and mistress, as well as a ticket back to Holstein. And for that, the onetime commander of all those toy soldiers—stripped of his uniform, decorations, and sword—fell to his knees and groveled. The sight of Peter the Great’s grandson in such a pathetic state was too much for Count Nikita Panin, one of Catherine’s coconspirators, who later wrote, “I consider it one of the greatest misfortunes of my life to have been obliged to see Peter at that moment!”

  Ultimately it was decided that the former emperor would be sent to the island fortress of Shlisselburg, where the deposed Ivan VI still languished (see footnote on this page) and where, ironically, Peter III had only recently gone to visit him. But while his accommodations at Shlisselburg were being prepared, Peter was sent to a summer estate at Ropsha. There he spent the last week of his life, writing a series of pitiful letters to his estranged wife, now celebrating her glorious triumph in St. Petersburg.