by Will Durant
VI. PETER III: 1762
He astonished everyone by the generosity of his measures. The good nature that had been blurred by coarse and thoughtless manners came to the fore in a burst of gratitude for his peaceful accession to power. He pardoned enemies, he retained most of Elizabeth’s ministers, and he tried to be kind to Catherine. In the royal palace he allowed her comfortable quarters at one end, housed himself at the other, and assigned to his mistress the intermediate rooms; it was a mortal affront, of course, but Catherine was secretly pleased to be at a distance from him. He provided her with an ample allowance, and paid her extensive debts without inquiring into their origin.65 In official ceremonies he gave her equal standing with himself, sometimes yielded her precedence.66
He recalled from exile the men and women whom previous rulers had sent to Siberia; now Münnich returned, aged eighty-two, to be welcomed by thirty-two grandsons; Peter restored him to his rank as field marshal; Münnich vowed to serve him to the end, and did. The happy Emperor freed the nobles from the obligation that Peter the Great had laid upon them to give many years of their lives to the state; they proposed to build a statue of him in gold; he bade them use the metal more sensibly.67 A decree of February 21 abolished the universally hated secret police, and forbade arrest on political charges until these had been reviewed and sanctioned by the Senate. On June 25 Peter issued a ukase that adultery should henceforth be exempt from official censure, “since in that matter even Christ had not condemned”;68 the court was delighted. Merchants were pleased by a lowering of export dues; the price of salt was reduced; the buying of serfs for factory labor was stopped. Old Believers, who had fled from Russia to avoid persecution under Elizabeth, were invited to return and enjoy religious freedom. The clergy, however, was incensed by decrees of February 16 and March 21 nationalizing all the lands of the Church, and making all Orthodox clergymen salaried employees of the government. The serfs on these secularized domains were freed, and serfs on the estates of the nobility expected that they too would soon be freed. Amid all these reforms—suggested to him by various ministers—Peter continued to drink heavily.
The most startling of his measures, and the one that gave him the greatest happiness, was his termination of the war with Prussia. Even before his accession he had done much to help Frederick, secretly transmitting to him the military plans of Elizabeth’s Council; now he boasted of having done this.69 On May 5 he bound Russia with Prussia in defensive and offensive alliance. He instructed the commander of the Russian forces then with the Austrian army to put them at the service of “the King my master.”70 He donned a Prussian uniform, and ordered the local soldiery to do the same; he established Prussian discipline in the army; he organized military exercises every day for his court, and compelled every male courtier to participate regardless of age and gout.71 He gave his own “Holsteiner Guard” precedence over the proud regiments of the capital.
The Russian army was not averse to peace, but it was shocked by Russia’s precipitate desertion of her French and Austrian allies, and her surrender of all terrain won from Prussia during the war. It was alarmed when Peter announced that he proposed to send a Russian host against Denmark to recover that duchy of Schleswig which Denmark had taken from the dukes of Holstein, who included Peter’s father. The troops made it clear that they would refuse to fight such a war; when Peter asked Kirill Razumovsky to lead an army to Denmark, the general answered, “Your Majesty must first give me another army to force mine to advance.”72
Suddenly, despite his brave and remarkable reforms, Peter found himself unpopular. The army hated him as a traitor, the clergy hated him as a Lutheran or worse, the unfreed serfs clamored for emancipation, and the court ridiculed him as a fool. Upon all this came the general suspicion that he intended to divorce Catherine and marry his mistress.73 “That young woman” (according to Castéra), “destitute of everything like address, but stupidly proud, … had the art of obtaining from the Czar—sometimes by flattery, sometimes by chiding, and sometimes even by beating him—a renewal of the promise he had made her, … to marry her and place her, instead of Catherine, upon the throne of Russia.”74 As power and liquor went more and more to his head, he treated Catherine harshly, even to publicly calling her a fool.75 The Baron de Breteuil wrote to Choiseul: “The Empress [Catherine] is in the cruelest state, and is treated with the utmost contempt.... I should not be surprised, knowing her courage and violence, if this were to drive her to some extremity … Some of her friends are doing their best to pacify her, but they would risk everything for her if she required it.”76
St. Petersburg and its environs were full of Catherine’s partisans. She was popular with the army, the court, and the populace. Next to her ladies in waiting and Grigori Orlov, her closest intimate in these critical days was Ekaterina Romanovna, Princess Dashkova. This bold and enterprising lady was only nineteen years old, but, as niece to Chancellor Vorontsov and sister to Peter’s mistress, she was already prominent in the affairs of the court. Peter, in his simplicity or his cups, had revealed to her his intention to depose Catherine and enthrone Elizaveta Vorontsova.77 Dashkova carried the news to Catherine, and begged her to join in a plot to put Peter aside. But Catherine had already organized a conspiracy with Nikita Panin, tutor to her son Paul, and Kirill Razumovsky, hetman of the Ukraine, and Nikolai Korff, head of the police, and the Orlov brothers, and P. B. Passek, an officer in a local regiment.
On June 14 Peter ordered Catherine’s arrest; he canceled the order, but bade her retire to Peterhof, twelve miles west of the capital. Peter himself withdrew to Oranienbaum with his mistress. He left instructions that the army should prepare to sail for Denmark, and promised to join it in July. On June 27 Lieutenant Passek was arrested for making derogatory speeches against the Emperor. Fearing that he would be tortured into confessing the plot, Grigori and Alexei Orlov decided that they must act at once. Early on the twenty-eighth Alexei rode in haste to Peterhof, roused Catherine from her sleep, and persuaded her to ride back with him to St. Petersburg. On the way they stopped at the barracks of the Ismailovsky Regiment; the soldiers were summoned by a drum roll; Catherine appealed to them to save her from the threats of the Emperor; they swore to protect her; “they rushed to kiss my hands and feet, the hem of my dress, calling me their savior” (so Catherine wrote to Poniatowski78)—for they knew that she would not send them to Denmark. Escorted by two regiments and the Orlovs, she proceeded to the Kazan Cathedral, where she was proclaimed autocrat of Russia. The Preobrazhensky Regiment joined her there, and begged her to “forgive us for being the last to come.”79 The Horse Guards fell in, and fourteen thousand troops accompanied her to the Winter Palace; there the Church Synod and the Senate officially announced the dethronement of Peter and the accession of Catherine. Some high dignitaries protested, but the army frightened them into swearing allegiance to the Empress.
She donned the uniform of a captain of the Horse Guards, and rode at the head of her troops to Peterhof. Peter had come there that morning to see her; informed of the revolt, he fled to Kronstadt; Münnich offered to go with him to Pomerania and organize an army to restore him; Peter, unable to decide, returned to Oranienbaum. When Catherine’s forces approached he spent a day in pleas for a compromise; then, on June 29 (O.S.), he signed his abdication; “he allowed himself to be overthrown,” said Frederick, “as a child lets himself be sent to bed.”80 He was imprisoned at Ropsha, fifteen miles from St. Petersburg. He begged Catherine to let him keep his Negro servant, his lapdog, his violin, and his mistress. He was allowed all but the last. Elizaveta Vorontsova was banished to Moscow, and disappeared from history.
CHAPTER XVIII
Catherine the Great
1762-96
I. THE AUTOCRAT
CATHERINE was victorious, but exposed to all the hazards of a chaotic change. To reward the soldiers who had escorted her to power, she ordered the drinking establishments of the capital to supply them with beer and vodka free of charge; the result was a general
drunkenness that for a time almost dissolved the military basis of her power. At midnight of June 29-30 Catherine, who was having her first sleep in forty-eight hours, was awakened by an officer who told her, “Our men are terribly drunk. A hussar has shouted to them, ‘To arms! Thirty thousand Prussians are coming to take away our mother [Catherine]!’ So they have armed themselves, and are coming here to see how you really are.” Catherine dressed, went out, denied the rumor about the Prussians, and persuaded her warriors to go to bed.1
Her son Paul, now eight years old, endangered her. Panin, many nobles, and most of the clergy felt that legitimacy required the coronation of Paul as emperor, with Catherine as regent. She feared that this would put the government in the hands of an aristocratic oligarchy, which would seek to depose or dominate her. She officially declared Paul heir to the throne, but his supporters continued their agitation; and the son grew up to hate his mother as having cheated him of the crown.
As news of the coup d’état spread through Russia it became evident that public opinion outside the capital was hostile to Catherine. The capital had known Peter’s faults at first hand, and generally agreed that he was unfit to rule; but the Russian people outside St. Petersburg knew him chiefly through the liberal measures that had given some nobility to his reign. The populace of Moscow, too distant to feel Catherine’s charm, remained sullenly opposed to her accession. When Catherine took Paul to Moscow (the stronghold of orthodoxy), Paul was fervently applauded, Catherine was coolly received. Many provincial regiments denounced the Petersburg soldiery as usurpers of national power.
We do not know if the wide sympathy for Peter was a factor in his death. Broken in spirit, the fallen Czar sent humble petitions to his wife to “have pity on me, and give me my only consolation”—his mistress—and to let him return to his relatives in Holstein. Instead of receiving such comfort he was confined to a single room, and was always under surveillance. Alexei Orlov, chief of those who guarded him, played cards with him, and lent him money.2 On July 6, 1762 (N. S.), Alexei rode in haste to St. Petersburg and informed Catherine that Peter had quarreled with him and other attendants, and in the ensuing scuffle had died. As to the mode of his death history has only rumors, none confirmed: that he was poisoned or strangled,3 that he was fatally beaten,4 that he died of “inflammation of the bowels and apoplexy”;5 “the details of the murder,” the latest historian concludes, “were never fully revealed, and the part played in it by Catherine remains uncertain.”6 It is improbable that Catherine ordered the deed,7 but she punished no one for it, concealed it from the public for a day, went through two days of visible weeping, and then reconciled herself to the fait accompli . Nearly all Europe held her guilty of murder, but Frederick the Great, who had so much to lose by Peter’s dethronement, exonerated her: “The Empress was quite ignorant of this crime, and she heard of it with a despair which was not feigned, for she justly foresaw the judgment that everybody passes upon her today.”8 Voltaire agreed with Frederick. Catherine’s son Paul, after reading the private papers left by his mother at her death, concluded that Alexei had killed Peter without any order or request from Catherine.9
The event created, as well as solved, problems for Catherine: it inspired a succession of conspiracies to depose her, and left her harassed and imperiled amid the administrative chaos that surrounded her. She later wrote of this period: “The Senate remained lethargic and deaf to the affairs of state. The seats of legislation had reached a degree of corruption and disintegration that made them scarcely recognizable.”10 Russia had just emerged from a victorious but costly war; the treasury owed thirteen million rubles, and was running a deficit of seven million rubles per year; the condition of the fisc had been signalized by the refusal of Dutch bankers to lend Russia money. The pay of the troops was many months in arrears. The army was so disorganized that Catherine feared at any moment an invasion of the Ukraine by the Tatars of South Russia. The court was agitated with plots and counterplots, with dread of losing, or hope of gaining, offices of profit or power. Shortly after Peter’s fall, the Prussian ambassador considered it “certain that the reign of the Empress Catherine is not to be more than a brief episode in the history of the world.”11 This was wishful thinking, for Frederick deplored the death of his worshipful ally, and Catherine was annulling Peter’s orders to help Frederick.
The Empress sought to quiet ecclesiastical opposition by deferring the operation of Peter’s ukases for the secularization of Church lands. She warmed the ardor of her partisans with rich rewards; Grigori Orlov received fifty thousand rubles, and access to the royal bed. Bestuzhev was recalled from exile and restored to comfort but not to office. Those who had opposed her were treated leniently. Münnich made his submission, was readily forgiven, and was appointed governor of Esthonia and Livonia. These measures may have helped to keep her on her slippery seat, but the chief factors were her own courage and intelligence. Seventeen years as the neglected wife of the heir to the throne had taught her, against her youthful vivacity, a degree of patience, prudence, self-control, and statesmanly dissimulation. Now, defying Panin’s advice, and suspicious of the Senate’s loyalty, integrity, and competence, she decided to center all rule in herself, and to face the absolute monarchs of Europe with an absolutism that would rival Frederick’s combination of militarism with philosophy. She took no husband. Since the nobility controlled the Senate, the choice was between the autocracy of the sovereign and the fragmentary absolutism of feudal lords—precisely the choice faced by Richelieu in seventeenth-century France.
Catherine surrounded herself with able men, and won their loyalty, frequently their love. She made them work hard, but she paid them well, perhaps too well; the splendor and luxury of her court became a major drain upon the revenues. It was a heterogeneous court, rooted in barbarism, veneered with French culture, and ruled by a German woman superior to her aides in education and intellect. Her lavish rewards for exceptional service begot emulation without checking corruption. Many members of her entourage took bribes from foreign governments; some achieved impartiality by accepting bribes from opposite sides. In 1762 Catherine issued to the nation a remarkable confession:
We consider it as our essential and necessary duty to declare to the people, with true bitterness of heart, that we have for a long time heard, and now in manifest deeds see, to what degree corruption has progressed in our Empire, so that there is hardly an office in the government in which … justice is not attacked by the infection of this pest. If anyone asks for place, he must pay for it; if a man has to defend himself against calumny, it is with money; if anyone wishes falsely to accuse his neighbor, he can by gifts insure the success of his wicked designs.12
Of the conspiracies that multiplied around her, some aimed to replace her with Ivan VI. Deposed by the coup d’état of December, 1741, he had now suffered twenty-one years of imprisonment. In September, 1762, Voltaire voiced apprehension that “Ivan may overthrow our benefactress”;13 and he wrote, “I am afraid that our dear Empress will be killed.”14 Catherine visited Ivan, and found him “a human derelict reduced to idiocy by long years of incarceration.”15 She left orders with his guards that if any attempt, not authorized by herself, should be made to release him, they should put Ivan to death rather than surrender him. At midnight of July 5-6, 1764, an army officer, Vasili Mirovich, appeared at the prison with a paper purporting to be an order of the Senate that Ivan should be turned over to him. Supported by several soldiers, he knocked at the door of the cell in which two guards slept with Ivan, and demanded entrance. Refused, he ordered cannon to be brought up to demolish the door. Hearing this, the guards slew Ivan. Mirovich was arrested; a document found on him declared that Catherine had been deposed, and that Ivan VI was henceforth czar. At his trial he refused to reveal the names of his accomplices. He was put to death. Public opinion generally accused Catherine of murdering Ivan.16
Conspiracies continued. In 1768 an officer named Choglokov, asserting that he had been commissioned by God to ave
nge the death of Peter III, armed himself with a long dagger, found entry to the royal palace, and hid himself at the turn of a passage where Catherine usually passed. Grigori Orlov heard of the plot, and arrested Choglokov, who proudly confessed his intent to kill the Empress. He was banished to Siberia.
II. THE LOVER
Surrounded by nobles whom she could not trust, and harassed by intrigues that disordered administration, Catherine invented a new form of rule by making her successive lovers the executives of the government. Each of her lovers was, during his ascendancy, her prime minister; she added her person to the emoluments of the office, but she exacted competent service in return. “Of all places in the government,” wrote Masson (one of Catherine’s many French enemies), “there was not one of which the duties were so scrupulously fulfilled. … Nor, perhaps, was there any post in which the Empress displayed more choice and discernment. I believe no instance occurred of its having been filled by a person incapable of it.”17 It would be a mistake to think of Catherine as a debauchee; she observed all the external amenities, never indulged in risqué conversation, never allowed it in her presence.18 To most of her lovers she gave a faithful—to some a tender—attachment; her letters to Potemkin are almost girlishly devoted, and the death of Lanskoi afflicted her with a desolating grief.
She approached with both art and science the task of choosing a new favorite. She watched for men who combined political with physical capacity; she invited a prospect to dinner, sampled his manners and mind; if he passed this scrutiny she had him examined by the court physician; if he survived this test she appointed him her aide-de-camp, gave him a succulent salary, and admitted him to her bed. Being quite devoid of religious belief, she allowed no Christian ethic to interfere with her unique manner of choosing ministers. She explained to Nikolai Saltykov: “I am serving the Empire in educating competent youths.”19 The treasury paid heavily for these favorites—though probably much less than France paid for the mistresses and concubines of Louis XV. Castéra reckoned that the five Orlovs received seventeen million rubles, Potemkin fifty million, Lanskoi 7,260,000. Some of this outlay came back to Russia in effective service; Potemkin, the most pampered of her lovers, added lucrative territory to the empire.