Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  Peter was treading on dangerous ground. Catherine was a Lithuanian servant girl who had come to Russia as a captive. Was she now to wear the imperial crown and sit on the throne of the Russian tsars? Although the manifesto proclaiming the coronation did not specifically name Catherine as heir, on the night before the coronation Peter told several senators and a number of important church dignitaries at the house of an English merchant that Catherine was being crowned in order to give her the right to rule the state. He waited for objections; he heard none.

  The coronation ceremony was to be on the grandest scale. Peter, who was always careful about spending money on himself, commanded that no expense be spared. An imperial coronation mantle was ordered from Paris, and a St. Petersburg jeweler was commissioned to make a new imperial crown more magnificent than any previously worn by a Russian sovereign. The ceremony would be held not in Peter's city, the new capital of St. Petersburg, but in Holy Moscow, inside the Kremlin, according to the traditions of the ancient tsars. Stephen Yavorsky, president of the Holy Synod, and the indefatigable Peter Tolstoy were sent to Moscow six months early with orders to make the ceremony glorious. The Senate, the Holy Synod and every official and nobleman of rank was commanded to be present.

  Peter was delayed by a bout of strangury at the beginning of March 1724 and went to Olonets to drink the waters and try to improve his health. By March 22, he was sufficiently recovered, and he and Catherine set out together for Moscow. At dawn on May 7, a signal cannon was fired from the Kremlin. The procession outside the Kremlin included 10,000 soldiers of the Imperial Guard and a squadron of booted horse guards whose passage was watched somewhat sourly by certain Moscow merchants whose noblest steeds had been appropriated by Tolstoy for the ceremony. At ten o'clock, as every bell in Moscow pealed and every cannon in the city thundered, Peter and Catherine appeared at the top of the Red Staircase, escorted by all the officials of the realm, the members of the Senate, generals of the army and great officers of state. The Empress was dressed in a purple gown embroidered in gold, and needed five ladies in waiting to carry her train. Peter was wearing a sky-blue tunic embroidered in silver and red silk stockings. Together, the couple stood looking out over the crowd in Cathedral Square from exactly the spot where, forty-two years before, ten-year-old Peter and his mother had looked over the raging Streltsy and their forest of glittering halberds. Then, they descended the Red Staircase, walked across Cathedral Square and entered the Cathedral of the Assumption. In the center, a platform had been constructed, and on it, beneath a canopy of velvet and gold, two chairs encrusted with precious stones waited for Peter and Catherine.

  At the door of the cathedral, Yavorsky, Feofan Prokopovich and the other high clergymen, dressed in their clerical robes, met the imperial couple. Yavorsky presented the cross for them to kiss, then conducted them to the thrones. The service began while Peter and Catherine sat side by side in silence. At the climax of the ceremony, Peter rose and Yavorsky presented him with the new imperial crown. Peter took it and, turning to the audience, declared in a loud voice, "It is our intention to crown our beloved consort." Peter himself placed the crown on Catherine's head. He then handed her the orb, but, significantly, he kept the scepter, the emblem of ultimate power, in his own hand. The crown was studded with 2,564 diamonds, pearls and other precious stones, and an enormous ruby as large as a pigeon's egg was set immediately beneath a cross of diamonds at the apex of the crown.

  As Peter placed the crown on her head, Catherine, overcome with emotion, tears streaming down her cheeks, knelt before him and tried to kiss his hand. He pulled it away and she tried to embrace him around his knees, but Peter lifted her up. Then, prayers were solemnly chanted, cannon thundered and the bells of Moscow pealed.

  After the service, Peter returned to the palace to rest, but Catherine, wearing her crown, walked alone at the head of a procession from the Assumption Cathedral to the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael to pray at the tombs of the tsars, according to custom. The imperial mantle, made in France and encrusted with hundreds of golden double-headed eagles, was now on her shoulders, and its great weight, even borne in part by attendants, forced her to stop and rest several times. As she walked, Menshikov followed slightly behind, scattering handfuls of gold and silver among the watching crowd. At the foot of the Red Staircase, the Duke of Holstein waited to conduct her to the Terem Palace, where a magnificent banquet had been prepared. During the banquet, Menshikov distributed medals bearing a portrait of Peter and Catherine on one side and, on the reverse, a depiction of Peter placing the crown on Catherine's head and the words "Crowned in Moscow in 1724." The feasting and celebration went on in the city for days. In Red Square, two huge oxen had been roasted and stuffed with game and poultry, while two fountains, one running with red wine and the other with white, splashed nearby.

  Catherine's powers and the Emperor's long-range intent were unspecified. As a sign that she exercised some aspects of sovereignty, Peter allowed her to create old Peter Tolstoy a count, a title which all his descendants, including the great novelist Lev Tolstoy, have worn. By her command, Yaguzhinsky was made a Knight of the Order of St. Andrew, and Prince Vasily Dolgoruky, disgraced and exiled in the affair of the Tsarevich Alexis-, was allowed to return to court. But her powers even in this respect were limited. She pleaded in vain for a pardon for the exiled former Vice Chancellor Shafirov. What Peter actually intended, no one was sure. It is possible that he had not made up his mind even as he lay on his deathbed. But it is certain that he wanted to ensure Catherine's importance—perhaps to act as regent for one of his daughters if not actually to wear the crown. Peter knew that the throne of Russia could not be bestowed simply as a reward for faithful and loving service. The wearer of the crown had to be a person of energy, wisdom and experience. Catherine's qualities were somewhat different. Still, she had been anointed, and Campredon, the French envoy, concluded that Peter wanted her thus to be "recognized as regent and sovereign after the death of her husband."

  After her coronation, more than ever the path to favor lay through Catherine. Yet, within a few weeks of this triumph, Catherine found herself teetering on the brink of personal disaster, looking down at the possibility of utter ruin. Among Catherine's attendants was a handsome young man named William Mons, the younger brother of Anna Mons, who had been Peter's mistress twenty-five years earlier. Mons was a foreigner, a German born in Russia with one foot well placed in each world. Elegant, gay, clever, ambitious and opportunistic, he had chosen his patrons shrewdly, worked hard and risen to the rank of chamberlain and the post of secretary and confidant to Catherine. The Empress enjoyed his company, for he was, in the words of a French observer, "One of the best-made and most handsome men that I have ever seen." Mons' sister Matrena had achieved equal success. She was married to a Baltic nobleman named Fedor Balk, a major general who was Governor of Riga, while she herself was a lady in waiting and the closest confidante of the Empress Catherine.

  Gradually, between them, on the pretense of assisting the Empress and looking after her interests, brother and sister contrived to gain control of access to Catherine. Through Mons and Matrena Balk, messages, petitions and appeals were most likely to be presented favorably to Catherine; indeed; without their help, such messages were unlikely to reach her at all. And since Catherine's influence over her husband was known to be great, the Mons channel became immensely valuable. Government ministers, foreign ambassadors, even foreign princes and members of the Emperor's family approached the zealous and handsome German with a petition in one hand and a bribe in the other. No personage was too august—the Tsaritsa Praskovaya and her daughters, the Duke of Holstein, Prince Menshikov, Prince Repnin and Count Tolstoy—or too humble—a peasant who was supposed to return to his village bribed Mons to arrange permission to remain in Petersburg. Mons arranged his "fees" according to the importance of the service and the wealth of the petitioner. Besides the wealth gained by these activities, Mons and his sister received estates, serfs and money dire
ctly from the Empress. Deferred to by the highest in Russia, with Menshikov calling him "brother," Mons concluded that "William Mons" was too simple a name for such a magnifico, and changed his name to Moens de la Croix. Obligingly, everyone called him by his new name—except Peter, who did not know either of the transformation or of the reason for the new importance of the former William Mons.

  Gossip said there were other things that Peter did not know about William Mons. It was whispered in Petersburg, and soon after in Europe, that the Empress had taken the handsome young chamberlain as a lover. Lurid stories circulated, including one that Peter had found his wife with Mons one moonlit night in a compromising position in her garden. No evidence of any kind was cited. The moonlit-garden tale is disposed of by the fact that Peter first learned of Mons' fiscal offenses in November, when the moonlit garden would have been deep in snow. More important, the nature of Catherine's character argues against such a liason. The Empress was generous, warm-hearted and earthy, but she was also intelligent. She knew Peter. Even if her own affection for him had cooled (which is unlikely, especially at the moment when he had just crowned her empress), she certainly understood the impossibility of keeping an intrigue with Mons a secret and the horrible consequences when it was found out. That Mons, following an ancient tradition of bold and successful adventures, may have wished to seal his success by presuming on the Emperor's marital rights is possible; that Catherine would have become involved in such folly is not.

  Even without this ultimate insult, it seems strange that Peter should so long have remained ignorant of Mons' corruption. It is a sign of his growing weakness, abetted by illness, that Peter did not know what was an open secret to everyone else in Petersburg. When the Emperor did discover the truth, retribution was swift and deadly. Exactly who told Peter is unknown. Some believe that it was Yaguzhinsky, who had been stung by Mons' pretensions. Others say that the informer was one of Mons' own subordinates. Once he knew, Peter's first move was to forbid anyone to petition him for a pardon on behalf of criminals. Then, while the suspense and alarm stimulated by this decree began to mount, he waited. On the evening of November 8, he returned to the palace without a sign of anger, supped with the Empress and his daughters and had a trivial conversation with William Mons. Then, saying that he felt tired, he asked Catherine the hour. She looked at a Dresden watch which he had given her and replied, "Nine o'clock." Peter nodded and said, "It is time for everyone to go to bed." All rose and went to their rooms. Mons went home, undressed and was smoking his pipe before retiring when General Ushakov entered and arrested him on a charge of receiving bribes. Mons' papers were seized, his room was sealed and he himself was taken away in chains.

  The following day, Mons was brought into Peter's presence. According to the official minutes of the inquiry, he was so frightened that he fainted; once revived, he confessed to everything he was accused of. He admitted taking bribes, he admitted taking revenue from the Empress' estates for his own use and he admitted that his sister Matrena Balk was involved. He did not confess to any improper relations with Catherine because he was not asked any such questions—further evidence, it would seem, of the groundlessness of the rumors. Nor did Peter seek to conduct the inquiry in private. On the contrary, he issued a proclamation ordering that everyone who had given a bribe to Mons or knew of such a bribe should step forward. For two days, a town crier walked through the streets of Petersburg calling out this proclamation and threatening dire punishment to those who withheld information.

  Mons was doomed—any one of the charges against him was enough to condemn him—and on November 14 he was sentenced to death. Catherine did not believe, however, that he would die. Confident of her power to influence her husband, she first sent word to Matrena Balk not to worry about her brother, and then she went to Peter to ask for pardon for her handsome chamberlain. Here, she misjudged her husband. The avenging fury that had struck down a Gagarin and a Nesterov and humbled a Menshikov and a Shafirov would not rum aside to spare a William Mons. Mons received no reprieve, but the night before his death Peter went to his cell to say that he was sorry to lose such a talented man, but that the crime demanded the punishment.

  On November 16, 1724, William Mons and Matrena Balk were taken in sledges to the execution site. Mons behaved courageously, nodding and bowing to friends he saw in the crowd. Mounting the scaffold, he calmly took off his heavy fur coat, listened to the reading of the sentence of death and laid his head on the block. After his death, his sister received eleven blows of the knout, very lightly administered so that not much harm was done, and was exiled for life to Tobolsk in Siberia. Her husband, General Balk, was given permission to marry again if he wished.

  Not surprisingly, this ordeal strained the relations between Peter and Catherine. Although her name had never been mentioned either by Mons or his accusers and no one dared charge her with taking bribes herself, it was widely suspected that she had known what Mons was doing and had ignored it. Peter himself seemed to link her with Mons by issuing on the day of the execution a decree addressed to all officers of state. Written in his own hand, it declared that because of abuses which had taken place in the Empress' household without her knowledge, they were forbidden to obey any future order or recommendation she might make. Simultaneously, the conduct of her financial affairs was removed from her control.

  Catherine bore these blows with courage. On the day of Mons' execution, she summoned her dancing master and, with her two eldest daughters, practiced the minuet. Knowing now that any expression of interest in Mons could dangerously affect herself, she steeled her emotions. But she did not easily forgive Peter, and a month after the execution an observer noted, "They hardly speak to each other; they no longer eat or sleep together." By mid-January, however, the tension was ebbing away. "The Empress has made a long and ample genuflection before the Tsar to obtain remission of her faults," wrote the same observer. "The conversation lasted three hours and they even supped together."

  Whether this reconciliation would have been permanent, we can never know. Throughout the affair of William Mons the Emperor was ill, and he had grown worse. Less than a month after Catherine's genuflection, Peter was dead.

  After the Peace of Nystad and the coronation of Catherine, Peter, in the eyes of the world, stood at the summit of his power. Yet to those inside Russia, and especially those close to the Emperor, there were disquieting signs. The harvest was poor two years in a row; grain was bought from abroad, but not enough to make up the deficit. New accusations of corruption had been brought against the highest in the land. Shafirov had been condemned, reprieved and exiled, and now Menshikov was removed as president of the College of War. Nothing seemed to move unless Peter was there personally to make certain that it did. In the palace at Preobrazhenskoe the servants even neglected to bring in wood to burn in the fireplaces in winter until the Emperor commanded them to do it.

  This gradual decline in the general condition of the state was paralleled by a deterioration in Peter's health and state of mind. Sometimes, he worked with his customary energy and enthusiasm. One of his last projects was the planning of a large new building to house his project Academy of Science, and he was also thinking of establishing a new university in the capital. But, more often, he was moody and apathetic. In these periods of depression, he would let things slide, sitting and sighing, and refusing to act until the last minute. When the Emperor was so withdrawn and aloof, few of those around him dared speak to him even when matters were pressing. Reflecting this atmosphere, Mardefelt, the Prussian minister, wrote to his master, King Frederick William, "No expressions are strong enough to give Your Majesty a just idea of the unendurable negligence and confusion with which the most important affairs are treated here, so that neither foreign envoys nor Russian ministers are only sighs, and they confess themselves in despair-about the difficulties that they have with regard to every proposition. This is no feint but the real truth. Here nothing is considered important until it stands on the edge of the
precipice."

  What lay behind all this, only gradually realized even by those who were close to him, was the fact that Peter was seriously ill. His previous disorder still afflicted him, the tremors still shook his giant but weakening frame, and only Catherine, taking his head in her lap, could bring him peace. In recent years, he had suffered from a new, troublesome malady. As Jefferyes described it to London:

  His Majesty has for some time had a weakness in his left arm which was occasioned at first by his being let blood by an unskilled surgeon, who, missing the vein, made an incision in the nerve that lies by it. This accident has obliged him ever since to wear a furred glove on his left hand, in which, as well as in the arm, he is often troubled with pains, and sometimes loses feeling in it.

  And the years had taken their toll. In 1724, Peter was only fifty-two, but his huge exertions, his ceaseless motion, the violent excesses of drink in which he had indulged in his youth, had severely undermined his once magnificent constitution. At fifty-two, the Emperor was an old man.

  Beyond these afflictions, he had a new illness, the one which eventually was to kill him. For some years, he had suffered from an infection of the urinary tract, and in 1722, during the summer heat of the Persian campaign, the symptoms reappeared. His doctors diagnosed strangury and stone, a blockage in the uretha and bladder caused by muscle spasms or infection. During the winter of 1-722-1723, the pain in the uretha returned. At first, Peter mentioned it to no one except his valet, and continued to drink and carouse in his normal way but soon the pain grew stronger and he had to consult his doctors. For the next two years, he was constantly in and out of pain. He followed the doctors' advice, swallowing their drugs and limiting his drinking to a little kvas and a very occasional glass of brandy. Some days he suffered and could scarcely attend to business; then for a while he would enjoy a period of respite when he could resume his normal activity.