Great Catherine

by Erickson, Carolly, 1943-

  Yet though she was never haughty or formal, she retained her dignity. She tried not to let herself be perceived as vulnerable. That, she had learned, was essential to retaining power.

  In subtle ways she kept people at a distance, careful to preserve a perceptible distinction between the monarch and those who were under her control, however lightly exercised or benevolent. Her bearing was commanding. Except in the privacy of her apartments or with those she trusted, she acted as if she expected to be obeyed. She rarely allowed herself to form a close bond with any of the court women, and when she did, it lasted only a short time.

  Princess Dashkov, with whom she had once seemed on sisterly terms, soon lost her favor and was ordered to leave the court. The princess worked off her disappointed vanity and ongoing ambition by visiting the guardsmen's barracks and dressing in uniform, as she had on the day of the coup. Princess Dashkov was succeeded in the empress's favor by Countess Matushkin, who lasted less than a year before being turned aside. Catherine complained that the countess was meddlesome and unsettled. Countess Bruce (the former Praskovia Rumyantsev, Catherine's girlhood companion), a talented, soignee and worldly beauty, quickly took Countess Matuschkin's place, but she remained the empress's malleable, amenable follower, not her confidante; she was adroit at catching Catherine's moods and preferences and imitating them, even to the point of becoming the mistress of Gregory Orlov's brother Alexis.

  Though she surrounded herself with a circle of lively, active young people, and liked nothing better than to be among them, playing silly games, doing her animal imitations, romping and singing and telling stories, Catherine was always conscious of wanting to remain the puppet-master, with the court her stage.

  All the courtiers, even the elderly ones, were expected to take part in frequent performances. Gala concerts, ballets, and plays were staged, and for weeks the talented (and not so talented) amateurs rehearsed their parts, under the critical eye of the empress. Gentlemen were expected to play in the orchestra, ladies to learn elaborate dances. Preference in stage roles was given to Catherine's favorites.

  One of the empress's pet projects was the production of a Russian tragedy, performed in a magnificent hall on a specially built stage. Gregory Orlov took a principal part, and "made a striking figure," as one who saw the performance wrote. Countess Bruce took the lead, acting with a degree of spirit and skill a professional actress might envy. No doubt professional musicians were sprinkled in among the dilettantes in the orchestra, and at least a dozen of the dancing ladies went lame. Still, the overall effect was dramatic, and the court troupe went on to further triumphs.

  The most recalcitrant of Catherine's performing courtiers was Orlov, who by the time she had ruled for several years had begun to sulk and imagine himself ill-used. When Catherine, for sound political reasons, made her former lover Stanislaus Poniatowski King of Poland, Orlov was aggrieved. Why should Poniatowski receive a kingdom when he, who had made Catherine empress, remained only a count? She would not marry him, she was always attempting to instruct him on some issue or other. He found her love of learning tiresome. In fact Orlov confided to Buckingham that he was suspicious of learning and the arts. He thought that creative and intellectual pursuits tended to enervate the body and weaken the mind.

  Catherine continued to enrich Orlov and to offer him important posts and opportunities to exercise his gifts, but he chafed under her efforts to mold him into something he was not and never could be. The English ambassador noted a change in him, an air of "stiffness and surliness" that replaced his natural affability, a peevish and rebellious side to him that showed itself in sloppiness of dress and inattentiveness to Catherine. He was often away at the hunt, and when he was present at court he neglected his appearance and flirted shamelessly.

  Buckingham recorded a telling incident. A young woman of the court, much younger than Catherine, confided to the ambassador that Orlov had been pursuing her for some time but that she resisted his pursuit, not only because he was the empress's lover but because she was in love with someone else. One day when a group of the courtiers, including the young woman, Orlov and Catherine, were visiting a country estate Orlov renewed his advances. All of a sudden Catherine entered the room where Orlov and his beloved were having a tete-a-tete.

  The young woman "was a little confused," Buckingham recalled her saying, "upon which the empress came behind her and leaning upon her shoulder whispered 'Don't be embarrassed; I am convinced of your discretion and your regard for me. You need not fear making me uneasy; on the contrary, I think myself obliged to you for your conduct.' "

  Catherine, always busy, frequently too preoccupied with her own concerns to gratify her lover's whims and demands, was relieved that someone else was keeping Orlov amused. Besides, they had begun to quarrel; observers noticed "little differences" between the empress and Orlov, and remarked that even in public, Orlov was "wanting in due respect and even in common attention to her." Some of the courtiers took this want of respect and attention to mean that Catherine and Orlov were secretly married; everyone knew married men tended to neglect their wives. Others interpreted it more astutely, as "the folly of a vain young upstart and the weakness of a woman in love."

  Catherine was still in love with the churlish Orlov. She wanted and needed him. She was unwilling to face the increasingly difficult challenges of reigning Russia without an emotional partner beside her, though she knew better than to marry that partner.

  Hemmed in by criticism, menaced at every turn by traps laid to ensnare her, Catherine needed to be able to lean on Orlov—now more than ever.

  In July of 1764 a young officer at Schlusselburg, Lieutenant Vasily Mirovich, attempted to rescue the ex-emperor Ivan from his imprisonment in the fortress with the intention of making him emperor. Catherine had left Petersburg for a three-week tour of the Baltic provinces. Unfortunately for Ivan, and unknown to Mirovich, the ex-emperor's guards had orders to murder their prisoner should any attempt be made to liberate him. The guards did their duty, foiling the coup attempt, but Ivan's death gave rise to a fresh wave of accusations against the empress.

  Now, it was said, Catherine had murdered two emperors, Peter and Ivan. It was widely assumed that she had been in collusion with Mirovich, and that the alleged conspiracy was nothing more than a ruse to justify Ivan's murder. That Mirovich was tried, condemned and ultimately executed did not stanch the flood of abusive letters reaching the palace and satirical publications circulated in the capital. All said the same thing, that Catherine, an adulteress, was also a murderer twice over. For good measure, debauchery was now added to the list of her sins.

  The pleasures of the Baltic journey, though gratifying and diverting, did not compensate for the fear that the incident at Schliisselburg aroused in Catherine. To be sure, she enjoyed the naval parades and the pageantry each city mounted to honor her, the shouting crowds and speeches of praise, the rash young men who impulsively unhitched the horses of her carriage and drew it themselves. Catherine had launched immense building projects along the Baltic littoral, dockyards, shipyards, improved roads. To view these undertakings at first hand was satisfying, even if the experts cautioned her that the Russian ships were greatly in need of work and the dockyards were behind schedule. Still, when she received word that Ivan was dead and Mirovich arrested, Catherine was much alarmed.

  She made an effort to appear calm. She did not suddenly cancel her trip and hurry back to Petersburg at once, to avoid giving the impression that the events at Schliisselburg were grave. But in truth she felt shaken, and the most perceptive of those around her saw clear evidence of her careworn state.

  "Her face and figure are greatly altered for the worse since her accession," Buckingham wrote of Catherine. "It is easy to discover the remains of a fine woman, but she is now no longer an object of desire." His words were blunt, even brutal, but their meaning was unmistakable. The skin around the empress's eyes was becoming thin and lined, her cheeks had begun to sag, her waist, once tiny, was thic
kening. Though she tried her best to hide her anxieties she had a wary look, and when startled or caught off guard by some unfamiliar sound or action, she showed naked fear.

  "The least sinister appearance causes cruel alarms to the empress," wrote one ambassador. "But she often mistakes shadows for substance. It takes long and precise investigation to calm her fear and disperse her illusions." Twice Buckingham saw Catherine "very much afraid without reason." Once she was stepping from a small rocking boat onto a ship; her foot slipped, she gasped and went into a panic. Another time a slight noise coming from an antechamber frightened her, and she started nervously, clearly terrified.

  That a woman bold and daring by nature should be reduced, however infrequently, to sheer terror was a measure of the heavy burden of rule. Time would tell whether Catherine had the fortitude to shoulder the burden, or whether, as many predicted, she would falter, stumble, and eventually fall prey to the many snares and dangers that threatened to bring her down.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  IN THE SPRING OF 1767, EMPRESS CATHERINE II MADE A GREAT journey through the heartland of western Russia. She traveled down the Volga River in great splendor, with a fleet of a dozen galleys, taking with her hundreds of court officials, government staff and servants who made up the gigantic imperial household. Though a number of people had urged her not to undertake the vast expedition, reminding her that the last time she left Petersburg there was an attempt to overthrow her and that she ought not to risk her safety on the flood-swollen river during the chill, uncertain weather of April, Catherine dismissed the warnings and went anyway.

  She had been planning the journey for months. She wanted to show herself to her subjects and to see for herself the life along the mighty river. And how better to do it than with an imposing fleet, decorated with her insignia and manned by sailors from the imperial navy. It was to be a waterborne caravan, a spectacle never before seen in Russia, in keeping with Catherine's idea of her own grandeur and the exceptional significance of her reign.

  The galleys set forth, and almost at once frigid winds whipped up the water and freezing rain beat down on the decks of the vessels, sending the passengers into shelter. To amuse themselves they played cards—no small feat in the rolling and pitching ships—joined the empress in game-playing and conversation, ate, smoked, flirted, and read. Catherine had brought along a number of books, including a French novel set in the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. To pass the time, she translated part of it into Russian.

  By the time the imperial fleet had been on the river a week, the empress and her companions, including Gregory Orlov and his handsome younger brother Vladimir, were bored and restless, chilled to the bone and tired of the stormy Volga. The carefully planned itinerary Catherine had drawn up was not being followed. Bad weather and mishaps slowed the pace of the journey, and it was proving to be difficult, if not impossible, for the empress to remain in daily contact with the government offices in Moscow via couriers. Still, Catherine could not admit that her project had been ill-advised. She drew up a new schedule, wrote letters, read, chatted with the sailors, and when all else failed, stood on deck watching the turbulent green river flow past, judging it to be more majestic and more pleasing to the eye than the Neva.

  When the flotilla reached Yaroslavl Catherine's mood brightened. The townspeople celebrated her arrival with exuberance, and the town dignitaries and notables from the surrounding regions paid their respects to the empress and escorted her on a tour of the most important local factories and landmarks. It was the same at Kazan two months later, where Catherine encountered the exotic world of the Tatars (known to Europeans as Mongols) and felt as if she had entered Asia. Here mosques outnumbered churches, and some tribal groups were so far from the sphere of either Christian or Muslim influence that they worshipped the spirits of trees and rejected all orthodoxies.

  Fascinated by the varied pageant of costumes, the wild dancing of the tribesmen and the babel of tongues in Kazan, Catherine was at the same time uneasy. How would it be possible, she wondered, to impose on so varied a people a single set of laws and governing principles?

  For that was what she was about to do. Over the past three years the empress had been working at the mountainous task of compiling a set of instructions to be followed in drawing up a law code for her empire. Hundreds of hours of reading, study and thought had gone into the instructions; though the empress had incorporated much material from the writings of her favorite political author Montesquieu, and from the Italian jurist Beccaria, the instructions were a distillation of her own best thoughts and highest ideals. They encapsulated her hopes for Russia.

  "The Christian law teaches us to do mutual good to one another, as much as possibly we can," the instructions began. "Laying this down as a fundamental rule, prescribed by that religion . . . we cannot but suppose that every honest man in the community is, or will be, desirous of seeing his native country at the very summit of happiness, glory, safety and tranquillity."

  To see her realm and its population at the apex of happiness was Catherine's sincere aim. To achieve it, she envisioned a government headed by a European-style monarch, not a capricious despot but a benign, wise ruler whose principal goal was to guide her subjects toward their "supreme good." Believing that "it is moderation which rules a people, and not excess of severity," Catherine attempted not only to define sound legal principles but to look beyond them to the wellsprings of human behavior and social peace or unrest. Thus in her view the death penalty ought to be meted out to murderers, not merely as a just punishment for a grave crime but because "capital punishment is the remedy for a distempered society." The laws, in her view, and those who enforce them, ought to have as their primary goal the reform and re-education of the public, so that in time punishment of all kinds would no longer be necessary.

  "The people ought not to be driven by violent methods," the empress wrote, "but we ought to make use of the means which nature has given us, with the utmost care and caution, in order to conduct them to the end we propose." Nature has provided every man and woman with a conscience, she believed, and makes each one feel accountable to the community; the primary disincentive to crime ought to be the desire to avoid being shamed in the eyes of others.

  Catherine's instruction covered a wide range of themes, from the promotion of population increase to the recommended abolition of maiming and torture of prisoners. Humane treatment, lenience wherever possible, were her guiding principles. "Unhappy is that government which is compelled to induce severe laws," she wrote. "To prevent crime, reward virtue." On the subject of serfdom and slavery, Catherine wrote a great deal. Government, she wrote, should "shun all occasions of reducing people to a state of slavery." Serfs were not slaves, yet they often lived in conditions virtually indistinguishable from slavery. She was concerned about abusive landlords who looked on their serfs as property, treating them punitively and often cruelly. In her instructions she made clear her own views—which, she knew, differed from those of many serf owners—that serfs should be provided for in old age or if they became incapacitated; that they ought to be allowed to acquire possessions, and even to buy their freedom; that their bondage should be only for a limited term, and that the amount of work they were required to perform should also have fixed limits.

  Where serfdom was concerned Catherine reworked her instructions substantially after giving them to her advisers, members of the Senate and others whose views she respected. But on other matters she did not let herself be swayed. "No man ought to be looked upon as guilty before he has received his sentence," she wrote, in a startling departure from conventional practice. Judges should not take bribes. Defendants ought to be able to speak on their own behalf in court. No one ought to be taxed so heavily that he is reduced to bare subsistence.

  Page after page, Catherine poured her best judgment and the wisdom of her mentors into over five hundred separate nuggets of political counsel, grouped under twenty headings. Guided by her "heart and reaso
n," as she later wrote, she brought her best judgment to bear on what she saw as the central task of rule: to teach and educate her people to pursue their own betterment.

  Catherine's view of human nature was emphatically optimistic. It was in full accord with the prevailing view among the French encyclopedistes and philosophes, one that saw humanity as intrinsically good or at worst redeemable, and institutions such as the law, the state and the church as instruments of corruption and repression. As both philosophe and monarch, Catherine was in a unique position to try to put the tenets of Enlightenment thought into practice by enshrining them in law. It was with this noble endeavor very much on her mind that she undertook her journey down the Volga, knowing that soon after its completion she would convene a great assembly where delegates chosen from among her subjects would draft legislation based, she expected, on her voluminous instructions.

  In her instructions she had stated confidently that "Russia is a European country." Now, in Kazan, feeling very much as if she were in Asia, not Europe, Catherine began to perceive the limitations of her own knowledge. Kazan was a little universe in itself, with a distinctive cultural profile and distinctive needs and problems. Each town she visited was unique. Beneath the very thin veneer of European-style government, ancient traditions lingered and ancient feuds simmered. There was an immemorial quality to Russian provincial life that defied change of any sort, a primordial resistance, like the resistance of a stubborn beast. Catherine felt it, and observed it, and found it humbling to her understanding.