Catherine the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  From Perova, the imperial party went to a hunting ground belonging to Elizabeth forty miles from Moscow. Because there was no house, the imperial party camped in tents. The morning after their arrival, Catherine went to the empress’s tent and found her shouting at the man who administered the estate. She had come to hunt hares, she was saying, and there were no hares. She accused him of accepting bribes to permit neighboring noblemen to hunt on her estate; if there had been no such hunting, there would certainly be many hares. The man was silent, pale, and trembling. When Peter and Catherine approached to kiss her hand, she embraced them, and then quickly turned back to continue her diatribe. From her youth in the country, she said, she perfectly understood the administering of country estates; this enabled her to see every detail of the administrator’s incompetence. Her tirade lasted three-quarters of an hour. Finally, a servant approached, bringing a baby porcupine, which he presented to her in his hat. She went over to look at it, but the instant she saw the little animal, she screamed. She said that it looked like a mouse and fled to her tent. “She was mortally afraid of mice.” Catherine observed. “We saw no more of her that day.”

  That summer, Catherine’s principal pleasure was riding:

  I rode constantly all day; no one stopped me and I could break my neck if I wished. But because I had spent the spring and part of the summer constantly outdoors, I had become very tanned. The empress, seeing me, was shocked by my cracked, red face and told me that she would send me a rinse to get rid of my sunburn and make my face soft again. She sent me a bottle with a liquid composed of lemon juice, egg white and French brandy. In a few days my sunburn disappeared and since then I have always used this mixture.

  One day, Catherine and Peter dined with Elizabeth in the empress’s tent. The empress sat at the end of a long table, Peter was on her right, Catherine was on her left, next to Catherine was Countess Shuvalova, and next to Peter was General Buturlin. Peter, with the help of General Buturlin—“himself no enemy of wine,” Catherine said—drank so much that he became completely drunk:

  He did not know what he was saying or doing, slurred his words, made horrible grimaces, and cut ridiculous capers. He became such a disagreeable sight that my eyes filled with tears for in those days I always tried to conceal or disguise what was reprehensible in my husband. The empress was sensitive and grateful for my reaction and she got up and left the table.

  Meanwhile, Catherine unknowingly attracted another admirer. Kyril Razumovsky, the younger brother of Elizabeth’s favorite, Alexis Razumovsky, was living on the other side of Moscow, but he came to visit Catherine and Peter every day.

  He was very cheerful and we liked him very much. Since he was the brother of the favorite, the Choglokovs were glad to receive him. All summer long, his visits continued. He would spend the whole day with us, dine and sup with us, and after supper always returned to his estate; consequently, he traveled twenty-five or thirty miles every day. Twenty years later [in 1769, when Catherine was on the throne], I happened to ask him what could have made him come to share the boredom of our stay. He replied unhesitatingly, “Love.” “But my God,” I said, “who on earth could you have found to love at our place?” “Who?” he asked. “You, of course.” I burst out laughing because I had never suspected it. Truly, he was a fine man, very pleasant and far more intelligent than his brother, who nevertheless equaled him in beauty, and surpassed him in generosity and kindness.

  In mid-September, as the weather grew colder, Catherine suffered a severe toothache. She developed a high fever, slipped into delirium, and was moved from the country back to Moscow. She remained in bed for ten days; every afternoon at the same time, the pain in her tooth returned. A few weeks later, Catherine was ill again, this time with a sore throat and another fever. Madame Vladislavova did what she could to distract her: “She sat by my bed and told me stories. One concerned a Princess Dolgoruky, a woman who used to get up often at night and go to the bedside of her sleeping daughter whom she idolized. She wanted to make sure that the daughter was asleep and had not died. Sometimes, to be absolutely certain, she shook the young woman hard and woke her up just to convince herself that slumber was not death.”

  23

  Choglokov Makes an Enemy and Peter Survives a Plot

  IN MOSCOW at the beginning of 1749, it appeared to Catherine that Monsieur Choglokov remained intimate with the chancellor, Count Bestuzhev. They were constantly together, and, to hear Choglokov talk, “one would have thought that he was Bestuzhev’s closest adviser.” For Catherine, this was hard to believe, because “Count Bestuzhev had too much intelligence to allow himself to be guided by an arrogant fool like Choglokov.” In August, whatever intimacy existed abruptly ceased.

  Catherine was certain that something Peter had said was responsible. After the affair of Maria Kosheleva’s pregnancy, Choglokov had become less flagrantly offensive to the young court. He knew that the empress continued to bear him a grudge; his relationship with his wife had deteriorated; and he sank into depression. One day, Peter, drunk, met Count Bestuzhev, himself tipsy. In this encounter, Peter complained to Bestuzhev that Choglokov was always rude to him. Bestuzhev replied, “Choglokov is a conceited fool with a swollen head, but leave it in my hands. I will see to it.” When Peter told Catherine about this conversation, she warned him that if Choglokov heard what Bestuzhev had said, he would never forgive the chancellor. Nevertheless, Peter decided that he could win over Choglokov by confiding in him how he had been described by Bestuzhev. The opportunity soon presented itself.

  Soon after, Bestuzhev invited Choglokov to dinner. Choglokov grimly accepted, but remained silent during the meal. Bestuzhev, himself half-drunk after dinner, tried to talk to his guest, but found him unapproachable. Bestuzhev lost his temper and the conversation became heated. Choglokov reproached Bestuzhev for having criticized him to Peter. Bestuzhev rebuked Choglokov for his adventure with Maria Kosheleva and reminded his guest of the support he, Bestuzhev, had given him in surviving this scandal. Choglokov, the last person to listen to anything critical about himself, flew into another rage and decided that he had been unforgivably insulted. General Stepan Apraksin, Bestuzhev’s lieutenant, who was present, tried to make peace, but Choglokov became even more belligerent. Feeling that his services were uniquely valuable; that, whatever he did, everyone would run after him, he swore that he would never again set foot in Bestuzhev’s house. From that day on, Choglokov and Bestuzhev were bitter enemies.

  With his jailors quarreling, Peter should have been cheerful. Instead, during the autumn of 1749, Catherine found him in a state of intense anxiety. He had stopped training his hunting dogs and he came into her room many times a day with a distracted, even frightened, look. “As he could never keep what was bothering him to himself for long, and had no one to confide in but me, I waited patiently for him to tell what the problem was. At last, he told me and I found the matter more serious than I had supposed.”

  Through the summer in and around Moscow, Peter had spent most of his time hunting. Choglokov had acquired two packs of dogs, one of Russian dogs, the other of foreign dogs. Choglokov managed the Russian pack and Peter assumed responsibility for the foreign pack. He took charge in minute detail, going frequently to his pack’s kennel or having his huntsmen come to talk to him about the pack’s condition and needs. Peter became intimate with these men, eating and drinking as well as hunting with them.

  At this time, the Butirsky Regiment was stationed in Moscow. In this regiment there was a headstrong lieutenant named Yakov Baturin, a gambler, deeply in debt. Peter’s huntsmen lived near the regimental camp. One day, one of the huntsmen told Peter that he had met an officer who expressed great devotion for the grand duke and who had said that, with the exception of the senior officers, his entire regiment agreed with him. Peter, flattered, wanted more details. Eventually, Baturin asked the huntsman to arrange a meeting between himself and the grand duke during a hunt. Unwilling at first, Peter eventually agreed. On the day arranged, Ba
turin waited in an isolated spot in the forest. When Peter appeared on horseback, Baturin fell to his knees, swearing to recognize no other master and to do whatever the grand duke commanded. Peter later told Catherine that on hearing this oath, he was alarmed and, fearing connection to any sort of plot, had spurred his horse, leaving the other man on his knees in the woods. He also said that none of the huntsmen had heard what Baturin had said. Since then, Peter claimed, he and his huntsmen had had no contact with Baturin. Peter had since learned that Baturin had been arrested for interrogation. Peter feared that his huntsman or even he himself might have been compromised. His fear increased when a number of the huntsmen were, in fact, arrested.

  Catherine attempted to calm her husband, telling him that if he had not entered into any discussion beyond what he had told her, then guilty as Baturin might be, she did not believe that anyone could find much to criticize in what he, Peter, had done except the imprudence of speaking to an unknown man in the woods. She could not say whether her husband was telling the truth; in fact, she believed that he was playing down the extent of the discussions. Sometime later, Peter came to tell her that some of his huntsmen had been released and that they had told him that no one had mentioned his name. This reassured him, and there was no more discussion of the matter. Baturin was put on the rack and found guilty. Catherine learned later that he had admitted to planning to kill the empress, set fire to the palace, and, amid this confusion, place the grand duke on the throne. He was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in the Schlüsselburg Fortress. In 1770, during Catherine’s reign, he tried to escape, was recaptured, and was sent to the Kamchatka Peninsula, on the Pacific. He escaped again and eventually was killed in a petty fracas on the island of Formosa.

  That autumn, Catherine developed another severe toothache accompanied by another high fever. Her bedroom adjoined Peter’s apartment, and she suffered from the racket made by his violin and his dogs. “He would not have sacrificed these amusements even if he had known they were killing me.” she said. “I therefore succeeded in getting Madame Choglokova’s consent to having my bed moved out of reach of the dreadful sounds. The [new] room had windows on three sides and there were fierce drafts but they were preferable to my husband’s noise.”

  On December 15, 1749, the court’s year in Moscow came to an end and Catherine and Peter left for St. Petersburg, traveling in an open sleigh. During the journey, Catherine’s toothache returned. Despite her pain, Peter would not agree to have the sleigh closed. Instead, grudgingly, he allowed her to draw a little curtain of green taffeta to protect herself from the icy wind blowing directly into her face. When they finally reached Tsarskoe Selo, on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, she was in agony. As soon as she arrived, Catherine sent for the empress’s chief physician, Dr. Boerhave, and begged him to extract the tooth that had been tormenting her for five months. With extreme reluctance, Boerhave consented. He sent for the French surgeon Monsieur Guyon to do the extraction. Catherine sat on the floor with Boerhave on her right and Choglokov on her left, holding her hands. Then, Guyon came from behind, reached around, and twisted the tooth with his pliers. As he wrenched and pulled, Catherine felt that her jawbone was breaking. “I have never in my life felt anything like the pain of that moment,” she said. Instantly, Boerhave shouted at Guyon, “Clumsy fool!” and having been handed the tooth, he said, “It is just as I feared. This is why I did not want this tooth to be pulled.” Guyon, in pulling the tooth, “had pulled out a piece of my lower jaw, to which the tooth had been attached. At this moment, the empress came into the room and, seeing me suffer so terribly, she wept. I was put to bed and was in great pain for four weeks, not leaving my room until the middle of January. Even then, on the lower part of my cheek, I still had in the form of blue and yellow bruises, the imprint of Guyon’s five fingers.”

  24

  A Bath Before Easter and a Coachman’s Whip

  THE TRANSFER OF THE COURT to Moscow for a year left St. Petersburg socially and culturally as well as politically deserted. Because there were so few horses and almost no carriages in the city, grass grew in the streets. The truth was that most residents of Peter the Great’s new capital on the Baltic lived there by necessity, not choice. Once back in Moscow during one of Peter’s daughter’s yearlong visits, the old families of the nobility were reluctant to leave. Moscow was the place their ancestors had lived for generations, and they cherished their palaces and homes in the old capital. When the time came to return to the new city rising from a northern marsh, many courtiers rushed to ask for leaves of absence from court—for a year, six months, or even a few weeks—in order to remain behind. Government officials did the same, and when they feared they were not succeeding, there came a torrent of illnesses, pretended or real, followed by a stream of lawsuits and other business affairs, all supposedly indispensable, which could be settled only in Moscow. The return to St. Petersburg, therefore, was gradual, and it took months for the entire court to drag itself back.

  Elizabeth, Peter, and Catherine were among the first to return. They found the city practically empty and those who were there lonely and bored. In this dreary setting, the Choglokovs invited Catherine and Peter every afternoon to play cards. They included the Princess of Courland, the daughter of the Protestant Duke Ernst Johann Biron, the former lover and minister of Empress Anne. On taking the throne, Empress Elizabeth had recalled Biron from Siberia, where he had been exiled during the regency of Anna, the mother of the child tsar Ivan VI. Elizabeth did not want Biron completely reinstated, however; she preferred not to see him. Rather than bring him back to St. Petersburg or Moscow, Elizabeth had ordered him and his family to live in the city of Yaroslavl on the Volga.

  The Princess of Courland was twenty-five years old. She was not handsome—indeed, she was short and hunchbacked—but she had, according to Catherine, “very beautiful eyes, fine chestnut brown hair, and great intelligence.” Her father and mother were not fond of her, and the princess complained that she was mistreated at home. One day in Yaroslavl, she ran away to the household of Madame Pushkina, wife of the governor of Yaroslavl, explaining that her parents had refused her to permit her to embrace the Orthodox faith. Madame Pushkina brought the princess to Moscow and introduced her to the empress. Elizabeth encouraged the young woman, stood as godmother at her conversion to Orthodoxy, and gave her an apartment among her maids of honor. Monsieur Choglokov cultivated the princess because in his youth, when her father was in power, her older brother had boosted his career by promoting him into the Horse Guards.

  Having made her way into the company of the young court and playing cards for hours every day with Peter and Catherine, the Princess of Courland conducted herself with discretion. She spoke to each person in a manner carefully designed to please that person, and, Catherine said, “her wit made one forget the disagreeable nature of her figure.” In Peter’s eyes, she had the additional merit of being German, not Russian. She preferred speaking German, and she and Peter spoke only that language together, excluding the people around them. This made her even more attractive to him, and he began to pay her special attention. When she dined alone, he sent her wine from his table; when he acquired some new grenadier’s hat or military shoulder belt, he sent them for her to admire. None of this was done in secret. “The Princess of Courland cultivated a faultless attitude towards me and never for one moment forgot herself,” said Catherine. “Therefore, this relationship continued.”

  The spring of 1750 was unusually mild. When Peter, Catherine, and their young court—now including the Princess of Courland—went to Tsarskoe Selo on March 17, it was so warm that the snow had melted and the carriages stirred up clouds of dust from the road. In this rural setting, the group amused itself by riding and hunting during the day and playing cards in the evenings. Peter openly displayed his interest in the Princess of Courland; he was never more than a step away from her. Eventually, with this relationship blossoming before her eyes, Catherine’s vanity was stung. Despite her previous di
smissal of jealousy as undignified and unproductive, she admitted that she did not like “seeing myself slighted for the sake of this deformed little figure who was preferred over me.” One evening, she could no longer control her feelings. Pleading a headache, she rose and left the room. In her bedroom, Madame Vladislavova, who had witnessed Peter’s behavior, told her that “everyone was shocked and disgusted that this little hunchback was preferred over me. With tears in my eyes, I replied, ‘What can I do?’ ” Madame Vladislavova criticized Peter for his bad taste in women and his treatment of Catherine. Her tirade, although uttered for Catherine’s benefit, made Catherine weep. She went to bed and had just fallen asleep when Peter arrived, drunk. He woke her and began to pour out a description of the qualities of his new favorite. Catherine, hoping to escape this slurred monologue, pretended to fall back asleep. Peter began to shout. When she gave no sign of listening, he clenched his fist and hit her hard, twice. Then he lay down beside her, turned his back to her, and fell asleep. In the morning, Peter had either forgotten or was ashamed of what he had done; he did not mention it. To avoid further trouble, Catherine pretended that nothing had happened.

  As Lent approached, Peter and Madame Choglokova collided over taking a bath. Russian religious tradition required that in the first week of Lent, religious believers bathe in preparation for communion; for most of the population, public baths were communal and men and women bathed naked together. Catherine was prepared to bathe at the house of the Choglokovs, and the evening before she was to do so, Madame Choglokova came and told Peter that it would please the empress if he, too, would go to the baths. Peter, who disliked all Russian customs, especially bathing, refused. He had never been to a communal bath before, he said; further, the bath was a laughable ceremony to which he attached no importance. Madame Choglokova told him that he would be disobeying a command of Her Imperial Majesty. Peter declared that whether he went to the bath or not had nothing to do with the respect he owed the empress, and that he wondered how she, Madame Choglokova, dared say that kind of thing to him; he ought not be required to do what was repugnant to his nature and would be dangerous to his health. Madame Choglokova retorted that the empress would punish his disobedience. At this, Peter became angrier and said, “I would like to see what she can do to me. I am not a child any more.” Madame Choglokova threatened that the empress would send him to the fortress. Peter asked whether the governess was saying this on her own or in the name of the empress. Then, striding up and down the room, he said that he would never have believed that he, a Duke of Holstein, a sovereign prince, would be exposed to such shameful treatment; if the empress were not satisfied with him, she needed only to release him to go back to his own country. Madame Choglokova continued to shout, the two hurled insults back and forth, and, said Catherine, “both took leave of their senses.” Finally, Madame Choglokova departed, announcing that she was on her way to report this conversation to the empress, word for word.