Privately, Peter compensated for his inability to take part in the war on the Prussian side by bolstering his military persona. His rooms, which had been cluttered with toy soldiers defending miniature fortresses, now became arsenals stocked with muskets, swords and pistols. Every summer his Holstein troops overran Oranienbaum in growing numbers, attracting hordes of camp-followers from Petersburg and turning the palace grounds into an open-air military camp complete with taverns and whorehouses. Hosting feasts for these boisterous guests was among Peter's chief pleasures; he and Elizabeth Vorontzov presided over long trestle tables where the wine flowed freely and entertainment was offered by singers and dancers from Peter's own opera company.
When the Holsteiners returned home in the fall, Peter continued to surround himself with military men, having none but common soldiers serve him in his chamber, and going nowhere without his coterie of two dozen Holstein officers, headed by the offensive Brockdorff Brockdorff and Catherine were more than ever at odds. According to Catherine, who gave her husband and all his low-life companions a wide berth and retired to her apartments when their coarseness was at its loudest and most unruly, Brockdorff was a magnet for adventurers and tavern scum from all over, Germans and Petersburgers both, men who "had no faith, obeyed no law, did nothing but drink, eat, smoke and talk crude nonsense."
Without Catherine's influence to restrain him, Peter let his imagination fly, and began telling stories about how, as a boy in Kiel, hardly out of childhood, he had been sent by his father to fight bands of murderous gypsies and had vanquished them in mighty combats. In his darker moods, he went to Ivan Shuvalov and begged him to persuade Elizabeth to let him go abroad for a while, until the painful conflict with Prussia was over. When she refused, he began drinking more heavily than ever, and stumbled about the palace shouting wild threats in slurred German.
Poniatowski, who returned to the Russian court in January of 1757, looked on Peter as a farcical bumpkin too far gone in his cups to be taken very seriously. The Shuvalovs too laughed at the grand duke behind his back, dismissing him as a hopeless inebriate who could not live long. But Catherine, who was only too aware of the atmosphere of "extreme dissipation" in which her husband lived, was wary of him nonetheless. The empress hovered between life and death; every few months she had a relapse, which sent the entire court into a panic and unleashed a fresh scramble for influence with the Young Court. Peter could become emperor at any time. And Catherine knew, through her spies, that Peter had confided to the new British ambassador Lord Keith that he intended to divorce her and marry his mistress.
Peter had a plan, of that she was certain. He no longer looked to her for information, advice, consolation in times of crisis. His visits to her rooms were far less frequent than they had been, and although he appeared to be affable toward Poniatowski, liking the multilingual Pole because he could converse with him and confide his troubles to him in German, Catherine was suspicious of this surface congeniality. She was convinced that Peter was only biding his time, waiting until the empress was out of the way before he rid himself of her. The strident Elizabeth Vorontzov and her ambitious uncle were now giving the grand duke all the advice he craved, telling him to send his meddling wife away and make Elizabeth his consort.
On one point at least Peter needed no advice. He knew well, as Catherine did, that the church not only permitted divorce, it provided another convenient option to husbands desiring to disentangle themselves from unwanted marital unions. An irksome wife could be sent to a convent, where, with or without her consent, she would be immured with other rejected women—and wives who had run away from their husbands to the safe haven of the church. There she would be stripped of all that had bound her to the world, her possessions taken away, her head shaved, her body swathed in somber black. Never again to see her children or her other relatives, she would spend her life among those dead to the world like herself, without hope of rejoining the living.
Every time Catherine encountered the foul Elizabeth Vorontzov, or heard Peter carrying on with his low-life intimates, she shuddered. Peter was nearly always irritable with her, and though she knew that at least some of his irritability was the result of his being heartsick over the Prussian losses on the battlefield, she could not help but be aware that his attitude toward her had changed, probably permanently. In all likelihood, while Peter lived she could never again count on being safe from humiliation and the enduring threat of harm.
Partly to placate her choleric husband, and partly to impress her rivals and observers watchful for signs that the Young Court might be in eclipse, Catherine gave a grand ball in July of 1757. Entertainments of this sort were always looked on favorably by the empress, who had herself wheeled in, coughing and clutching her side, to watch the festivities from behind a screen.
Catherine outdid herself in planning her fete, and nature cooperated. It was the season of the long "white nights," and on the appointed evening the air was balmy. Long supper tables were laid in the sweetly scented garden, and the hundreds of guests arrived to find the Great Walk lit by thousands of lanterns, brightening the twilit night with such a blaze of illumination that objects appeared with the clarity of day. At the end of the first course a wide curtain was drawn back to reveal, in the distance, an immense wheeled vehicle pulled by twenty garlanded oxen. Seated on the huge cart were sixty musicians and singers, performing music and poetry specially commissioned for the occasion from the court poet and the singing master of the imperial chapel. Hundreds of dancers capered along beside the musicians as the cart rolled majestically toward the gathered company. Just as it reached the vicinity of the supper tables, the huge yellow moon rose behind it, as if orchestrated to match the unfolding spectacle.
Later in the evening, a fanfare sounded and the diners were invited to help themselves from little shops giving away fans, gloves, sword-knots, ribbons and china—fripperies each worth less than a hundred rubles, Catherine wrote in her memoirs, but which gave the recipients great delight. Still later, when vast quantities of wine had been served and the risen moon flooded the grounds of the mansion with silvery light, the dancing began. Forgetting for the moment all but their pleasure, intoxicated by the wine, the warmth and the moonlight, the guests whirled and stomped and gyrated until long after cockcrow the following morning.
The fete was a huge success, untarnished by spiteful carping or petty intrigues. In its immediate aftermath everyone, from the empress to the lowest servitor, lavished praise on the grand duchess and professed to be ecstatically happy with the fine wines, the excellent food, the entertainment and generous gifts. Even Peter, his rowdy Holsteiners and Catherine's bitterest enemies were temporarily won over by the great banquet and ball, and displayed their souvenirs proudly.
"This was given to me by Her Imperial Highness the Grand Duchess," people told one another, holding up their trophies. "She is goodness itself, she gave everyone presents." "How charming she is; she smiled at me quite pleasantly." "It pleased her to see us dance and eat and enjoy ourselves."
The talk went on for days, reported to Catherine by her informants and recorded by her later in her memoirs. Her good cheer and good humor were remarked on. It was noted that she went out of her way to make a place at her ball for everyone, even those with little or no social standing. A thousand new virtues were discovered in her.
"I disarmed my enemies," Catherine wrote. "That was my goal. But it was not to be for long." She spent a sum equal to nearly half her annual income on the entertainment—relying on money given her by England, through the good offices of Charles Hanbury-Williams, to make up the deficit. Yet her political cause was all but lost. Her great friend and mentor Sir Charles was recalled to England a month after Catherine's extravagant ball, his mission a failure, and was replaced by the mediocre diplomat Lord Keith who from Catherine's point of view could not even begin to take his place. Catherine wrote Sir Charles a tender letter, thanking him for all that he had taught her and for his invaluable support. "Farewell," sh
e wrote, "my best, my dear Friend."
English influence was at its nadir; instead, the French had moved into preeminence at the Russian court. A new French ambassador, the Marquis de L'Hopital, arrived at Petersburg in the summer of 1757, bringing with him not only a large staff and household but a host of spies. Now that Russia was allied with France against the Prussians, and with Russian arms proving to be victorious in the field, the political interests of the Young Court were in decline. Catherine, Peter and the Chancellor Bestuzhev continued to look to England as Russia's staunchest and most advantageously placed friend, but the Shuvalovs and their ally Michael Vorontzov sided with the French, and they had the empress's ear. Elizabeth had always hated Prussia and the Prussians, and she had never really liked Bestuzhev; she despised Peter, and while she had from time to time shown affection for Catherine, it was nearly always barbed and at best intermittent. Clearly the political shift toward France was a threat to Catherine's security, no matter how many balls she gave.
And she had another grave concern. She was nearly five months pregnant with Poniatowski's child, and on the afternoon of the day she gave her ball, while riding in a carriage to inspect the preparations, she suffered a jarring fall. All that evening, while entertaining her guests and impressing them with her affability, she was afraid that she might miscarry. Fortunately she escaped danger, yet her hidden worries must have been great as she moved among her guests, choosing carefully which ones to caress and which to snub, the image of regal serenity.
Her pregnancy advanced smoothly, though the court plunged from rejoicing at the summer's military victories to anxiety when the empress had another stroke—a more severe one—in September. Since Catherine had already'borne a son, her second pregnancy was not looked on as crucial to the succession. Yet precisely because of this, the issue of the child's paternity was an uncomfortable one. Peter, perhaps out of pride, refused to swear that the child was not his, but everyone at court knew that Poniatowski was the father.
Beyond this, Catherine had another worry. What if the empress died while she was in labor, or in the first few weeks after her delivery, when she would be too weak to defend her interests and put into effect the contingency plan she had been polishing for several years? Her enemies might then take advantage of her—or Peter might choose that time, when she was at her weakest, to declare her an adulteress and order her removed to a convent.
It was in the fall of 1757, Catherine wrote in her memoirs, when the empress was bedridden in the aftermath of her stroke, that she began clearly to perceive her choices for the future. Peter was angry at her during October and November, for her increasing heaviness made it difficult for her to preside at public functions—which meant that he was pestered by the court officials to do the honors. He disliked having his desires thwarted; when he was preoccupied with arranging his private arsenal or drinking with his mistress he hated having to be interrupted to do something else. Catherine saw him, and her own situation, through new eyes in those tense months.
"Three routes, all of them equally dangerous, lay open to me," she wrote. "First, I could share His Imperial Majesty's fortunes, whatever they might prove to be. Second, I could make myself vulnerable to whatever fate it pleased him to accord to me. Third, I could chart my own course, no matter what happened. Put more clearly, I could perish with him, or at his command, or else save myself, my children and perhaps the state from the shipwreck which threatened."
Only the third course made sense, though it took all of Catherine's vaunted daring to adhere to it. She resolved, in the final months of her pregnancy, to continue to advise Peter on those increasingly rare occasions when he came to her, but not to offer any views which might offend him, and for the most part to wrap herself in what she called "a doleful silence" and look out for her own interests and those of her children as best she could.
During the night of December 8 Catherine's labor pains began. She sent Madame Wladislava to announce the fact to Peter and, through Alexander Shuvalov, to the empress. The midwives assembled and the "bed of misery" was prepared. After several hours, with Catherine suffering intense but infrequent contractions, Peter entered the birth chamber.
He was in full battle dress, wearing his Holstein uniform, booted and spurred and with a sash across his thin chest holding his gleaming medals. An immense sword hung at his waist.
Astonished at his appearance, Catherine forgot her pains and asked her husband why he had gone to such trouble with his toilette at two-thirty in the morning.
"Only in times of need do we know our true friends," he answered in a dull monotone. "In this uniform I am ready to do my duty, and the duty of a Holstein officer is to obey his oath and defend the ducal house against all its enemies. As you are ill, I have come to offer you my aid."
Catherine had to look twice to make certain Peter was not speaking in jest. He was a pathetically comic figure, standing there in his polished boots, his long sword at the ready, amid the heaped towels and steaming bowls of the birth chamber. Then Catherine saw his glazed eyes, and realized that he was so drunk he could barely stand. She urged him to go away and lie down, lest the empress see him and be offended both by his uniform— Elizabeth detested the sight of the Holstein uniform—and by his drunkenness. He was reluctant to go, but with the help of Madame Wladislava and the midwife, who assured Peter that his wife would not give birth for several hours at least, Catherine finally persuaded him to leave.
Soon afterwards the empress arrived, and demanded to know why her nephew was not present at his wife's bedside. She was placated with lies and, after satisfying herself that the birth was not imminent, she too left.
Exhausted, her pains subsiding, Catherine managed to sleep until the following morning, when she got up and dressed as usual. Apart from an occasional twinge, she felt well, and decided that the previous night's episode had been false labor. She ate a hearty dinner, and the midwife, sitting beside her as she ate, urged her to eat still more, saying it would do her good. Then, just as she rose from the table, a new and terrible pain gripped her and she screamed. At once the midwife and Madame Wladislava seized her arms and took her back to the birth chamber, and Peter and the empress were summoned once more. Within a very short time Catherine was delivered of a daughter, and the empress, who barely managed to arrive in time to witness the birth, was informed that the baby was a girl.
Catherine asked to be allowed to give the baby the empress's name, but Elizabeth refused. She had already decided on a name: Anna Petrovna, after her own late sister, Peter's mother. So Anna Petrovna it was. Catherine barely had time to glimpse her daughter before she was snatched up and installed in the empress's apartments, along with little Paul.
Once again, in the aftermath of her delivery, Catherine was ignored and neglected. The empress gave orders that no one was to go near her. Madame Wladislava waited on her, but no one else came to inquire after her welfare or to congratulate her. "I was abandoned, left all alone like some poor wretch," Catherine wrote. "As before, I suffered a great deal from that abandonment." This time, however, she had taken precautions to remove herself from drafts and had arranged her bedchamber so that she had a great deal of privacy.
After a few weeks she discovered a way to circumvent the empress's ban on visitors and entertain her preferred companions—Poniatowski and several of her ladies—by concealing them behind a screen. When Peter Shuvalov, whom Catherine called "the court oracle," came in to spy on the grand duchess, he found her alone. (Her friends, holding their breaths and smothering their giggles, stayed hidden and afterwards laughed uproariously at how they had fooled the wisest man at the court.) With her pronounced taste for intrigue and adventure, Catherine loved these clandestine parties, yet at the same time she felt left out, knowing that, night after night, balls and feasts were being held to celebrate tiny Anna Petrovna's birth and she was not able to attend them. Peter and his mistress were prominent among the revelers, however, and Peter had an additional cause to celebrate; the empress
sent him a gift of sixty thousand rubles—the same amount she sent to the new mother.
Now Catherine was the mother of two children whom she never saw. She seems to have accepted this unnatural and no doubt saddening situation as part of the high cost of her lofty position. One day, if the succession went as she hoped it would, her son would rule Russia; her daughter would enjoy a destiny nearly as exalted. Safe under the empress's care, the children were protected; should Catherine herself suffer disgrace, they would not be tarnished by it. That knowledge must have given her some comfort as the winter days wore on and she began once more to feel the noose of conspiracy tightening around her.
In February of 1758 a tremor shook the court. Chancellor Bestuzhev was placed under arrest, along with three others closely connected to him and to Catherine—the jeweler Bernardi, who had carried secret messages for Catherine and was privy to her political dealings, Ivan Elagin, a friend of Poniatowski's and a staunch supporter of Catherine's who believed that she and not her husband should succeed Elizabeth, and Vasily Adadurov, Catherine's former Russian tutor and for several years a close confidant of the chancellor. Bestuzhev's arrest was secret, but Poniatowski learned of it and managed to warn Catherine.
She knew at once that she was in great danger. Not only had she carried on a secret correspondence with Bestuzhev, but they had discussed at length the question of the succession—perfectly understandable in the circumstances yet treasonable nonetheless. Bestuzhev had sketched out an ambitious plan under which, when the empress died, Catherine would rule with the chancellor himself as her chief mainstay, holding most of the principal government offices. Catherine had not given her approval of this plan— in fact she had disapproved of it, showing more circumspection and caution than the aging chancellor. Still, the very existence of a secret correspondence between the grand duchess and Bestuzhev gave grounds for her arrest.
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