The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300-1800

by William Monter

  Catherine II lived very well indeed. In a letter of 1790 to her old friend Baron Frederick Grimm, she described her surroundings in her Winter Palace: “My collections, not including the pictures and Raphael's Loggia, consist of 38,000 books, four rooms filled with books, prints, 10,000 engraved stones, about 10,000 drawings, and a natural history section housed in two large rooms; all this is accompanied by a charming theatre … to go to and from my room takes three thousand paces, there I walk among a mass of things I like and enjoy, and these winter strolls are what keeps me healthy and active"—she forgot to mention her 16,000 coins and medals.45 She had already published a three-volume catalogue of her paintings in 1785, which contained information about 2,658 items, including 58 by Rembrandt and 87 by Rubens. A truly attractive side of Catherine II emerges from her rules of conduct for visitors to this palace, which can still be found there (now in Russian and English). They begin with “Leave your rank at the door.” Her self-confidence extended to the point of having herself painted in traditional Russian headgear, and even as a casually dressed old lady out walking in her garden with one of her dogs (see fig. 16). One cannot imagine a greater departure from the idealized late portraits of her most illustrious female predecessor, Elizabeth I.

  Catherine II's panache extended even to her tableware. Her Green Frog Wedgwood service for fifty people took its name from its original destination, a minor palace outside Petersburg, a place whose Finnish name meant “frog marsh” (Catherine called it La grenouillière). Shipped from England to Russia in 1774, it included a 680-piece dinner service and 264-piece dessert service; the decoration of each piece contained both a green frog and a view of some English subject. Wedgwood's plates also had practical advantages: lacking heavy gilding or ornaments, they were surprisingly light and stacked well. Most of them have survived: the Hermitage still holds 1,025 of the original 1,222 views.46

  As is all too well known, Catherine II's love life kept pace with her other forms of acquisitiveness, even (or especially) in her old age. She was the first female monarch since Urraca in the early twelfth century to acknowledge an illegitimate son, and, like Urraca, she neither disowned him nor showered him with privileges. The two most important men of her reign followed the same pattern as that of her immediate predecessor, Elisabeth: first, a handsome man her own age with little interest in affairs of state (Orlov), then a brilliant younger man full of political advice (Potemkin). But Orlov managed some important public tasks—his service in Moscow during the plague of 1771–72 was exemplary—and Potemkin's record as a statesman completely dwarfs Shuvalov's. Catherine II's reputation for promiscuity rests largely on the officially acknowledged bedmates who followed Potemkin in relatively rapid order; on average, they were almost thirty years younger than she.47 Her most illustrious female predecessor, Elizabeth I of England, spent all but two of her last sixteen years acting out a romance with a man thirty-three years younger than herself.

  Catherine's most important official by far, Potemkin, was also a former lover whom, as noted earlier, she may well have secretly married in 1774. But Potemkin, accompanied by a small harem that included some of his married nieces, exercised his vast responsibilities as a de facto viceroy at the opposite end of the Russian Empire from the woman in St. Petersburg whom he called his mother-sovereign. None of Catherine's other sexual partners exercised any political influence except the last one, Platon Zubov, and her leading biographer suggests that his “rapid rise is the measure of Catherine's own decline.”48

  Catherine's fear and loathing of revolutionary France also darkened the final years of her reign. An enormous distance separates her discussions with Denis Diderot during Pugachev's revolt from the loyalty oath she imposed on all French subjects in her empire twenty years later. She persecuted enlightened critics ruthlessly and urged unified action by European monarchs against revolutionary France but never committed Russia's formidable army to this cause. She also remained sufficiently acute to predict in 1794 that “France could be reborn more powerful than ever if some providential man, adroit and courageous, arose to lead his people and perhaps his century.”49 A few years after her death Napoleon seized power, and the French repaid her by publishing various legends about her sexual behavior.

  Before then, the unprecedented turbulence of the French Revolution inspired the last notable eighteenth-century dialogue of the dead, composed by an unidentified French émigré and printed in southern Germany in 1797.50 As it opens, Charon ferries Catherine II's shadow across alone because she was “a colossus in a century of pygmies” who risked sinking his boat—something he says has happened about twenty times in the previous six thousand years with the very greatest poets, scientists, and statesmen. Catherine II was already called the Semiramis of the North. But in 1797 her semilegendary predecessor, here called the Catherine of Asia, had a positive reputation; as Charon told Catherine, “Semiramis … effaced [her usurpation of power] by forty consecutive years of glory.” Upon arrival, Catherine, “with the title of a great king,” is taken to a special space reserved for sovereigns, where she converses first with Peter the Great. When he asks if his “barbarous and Asiatic subjects have become civilised Europeans,” she replies, “At least they now have its laws and will soon have its manners.” She boasts, “I have reigned as a woman of genius” and, echoing the author's view of Semiramis, says, “Thirty-four years of clemency and justice are the only abuse I have made from one day of hope and audacity.” Omitting Pugachev, she concludes by listing her political and cultural achievements, noting that “one or two of the pages I have furnished to history I would like removed one day.” The dialogue's agenda emerges after Catherine II upbraids Louis XVI for seeking approval from his subjects and even offers grudging praise for revolutionary France: “It is impossible to defend a worse cause with more energy and sometimes with more talent.” Her dialogue with Frederick II, whom Charon also ferried across alone, mixes astute remarks about flattery with analysis of Europe's current situation. Catherine tells Frederick, “I fear it is we who have prepared all this disorder.”

  Seventeen years earlier, Catherine herself had composed a more original dialogue of the dead that said a great deal about modern female monarchs. The central hall and ten surrounding rooms of one of her palaces (renamed Chesmensky in commemoration of Russia's great naval victory over Turkey) contained portraits of all reigning European royalty as well as marble bas-reliefs of all Russian rulers from Rurik to Tsarina Elisabeth, as usual omitting Peter III and Ivan VI. Inspired by this setting and informed by personal experience and her vast reading, in 1780 Catherine composed a wickedly malicious private satire mocking both her fellow west European monarchs and her Russian predecessors through imaginary dialogues between their representations.51

  It began with Maria Theresa complaining to her son Joseph II about the scandalous behavior of her daughters, among whom Marie Antoinette was far from the worst. The Habsburg matriarch then complains that Catherine II's palace “needs a crucifix. My old eyes are accustomed to always having one around, and I've always put my entire hopes in the miracles of Christ Jesus.” Joseph II, with whom Catherine got along much better, comments, “Yes, mom, but nevertheless we've still lost Silesia. All we need is money, troops, and a good general to work the miracle that will get it back for us.” His antique mother then comments, “I want to die in peace. Another war would be a burden on my conscience, and I can't decide anything without asking my confessor. Besides, my good friend Empress Elisabeth is no longer on earth, except as a medal.” On this cue, Catherine II's predecessor remarks, “And this medal, I believe, is as unflattering as every other extant portrait of me.” Their dialogue spins along, with Elisabeth remarking, “Empress is a title that includes the privilege of doing whatever you like without being bothered by it,” to which Maria Theresa responds, “That's just what I've often thought, but I only said so in secret.” Elisabeth is then mocked by her predecessor Anna for wasting her authority on trivialities. Catherine concluded the satire by
mocking her illustrious contemporary Frederick II, to whom she had previously admitted that she felt herself inferior as a ruler.52 Her distant Russian predecessor St. Alexander Nevsky tells Frederick II, “I never undertook any unjust wars.” When Frederick insists, “Let's see more closely how much merit hides behind your beard,” St. Alexander replies, “My dear colleague, it's not enough to be clever,” adding that the Prussian philosopher wastes his time composing mediocre French poetry and doesn't know him “any better than you know German literature.” Catherine II also dropped hints about Frederick's rumored homosexuality. She expected, correctly, that these remarks would remain unknown for a century after her death.

  Catherine II always managed several projects simultaneously, and some were left unfinished because of her death. Militarily, a Russian army commanded by the brother of her current lover was at Baku, preparing to invade Persia. Domestically, she had been constructing a building to house the newly created Imperial Public Library on the widest boulevard of her capital, close to its busiest shopping complex. Pace Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, the evil that women rulers do need not live after them, nor is the good interred with their bones. After Catherine II's death Russia's army was immediately recalled from Persia, while both her shopping center and her national library continue to fulfill their original purposes on Nevsky Prospect. Catherine II was also the only female ruler of Europe who kept all government business out of the hands of her son and heir. Rumors abounded that the old empress wished to pass over Grand Duke Paul in favor of her beloved older grandson Alexander, whom she had trained from infancy to be a model ruler; but for once Europe's customary rules of succession held firm in Russia. Paul's first public act was to rebury his father at a solemn state funeral and place his bones next to his mother's, where they rest today. Another of his early acts was to decree a law of succession that explicitly barred any woman from ever inheriting Russia's throne. An era ended in 1796: Europe would not see another woman governing a major state for almost two centuries.

  8

  Female Rule After 1800

  Constitutions and Popular Culture

  Republics are as detrimental to [women's] ambition as monarchies are favorable to them.

  —Alexandre-Joseph-Pierre de Ségur, Women, Their Condition and Influence in Society

  What Happened to Female Rule in Europe After 1800?

  The most important change to female rule in Europe after 1800 is that opportunities for women to control governments—the essential thread of this story—ceased for a very long time after Catherine II died. At the same time, revolutionary France, the enemy of all monarchs, succeeded in durably smudging the posthumous image of the last and most spectacular female ruler of the old regime—not by denying her political accomplishments, but by depicting her as a sexual monster even more depraved than the daughter of Maria Theresa whom they had guillotined. The greatest damage was inflicted by a Swiss writer named Charles-François-Philibert Masson, who had served in Russia during the final decade of Catherine II's reign before being expelled soon after her death. When his Secret Memoirs on Russia first appeared anonymously at Paris, the author (now a French citizen) had just published a long and deservedly ignored epic poem praising the military prowess of democratic Switzerland. However, his Secret Memoirs enjoyed great notoriety. Rapidly translated into German, English, and Dutch, it had several reprintings after Masson had been exposed as the author, and it laid the groundwork for Catherine's durable posthumous reputation as sexually insatiable.1

  Masson began by praising Catherine II as “the most powerful and most famous woman who has occupied a throne since Semiramis” and predicted that “her sex, giving a new context to the great qualities which she deployed on her throne, will put her above any comparison in history.” Catherine, he thought, had surpassed even Europe's best-known male absolutist: “The dazzle of her reign, the magnificence of her court, her institutions, her monuments, her wars, are for Russia what the century of Louis XIV was for Europe.” But her achievement was greater because “the French made Louis glorious, while Catherine made Russia glorious.” Masson's preface ended with the assessment that “she astonished the world by her various talents, wrote like a sage, and reigned like a king.” However, the prevailing atmosphere in France at this time was extremely hostile both to autocracy and to women in politics, and the author's praise for her vanished quickly, never to return. Refusing to decide “if she was truly great,” he expressed grave reservations about Catherine II's place in history. “Usurping a throne which she wished to keep,” he continued, “she was obliged to protect her accomplices, who bought impunity through their crimes. A foreigner in the empire where she reigned, she tried to identify herself with the nation by adopting and even flattering its tastes and prejudices. She sometimes knew how to reward but never knew how to punish, and it was only by letting her authority be abused that she was able to conserve it. She had two passions,” Masson continued, “her love for men, which degenerated into libertinage, and her love for glory, which degenerated into vanity.” The first, he admitted, “never dominated her, although she often prostituted her glory and her body,” while the second “made her undertake things which were rarely accomplished.”2

  Masson devoted his next chapter to examining Catherine's sex life. Although “all the Russian empresses and the majority of women with genuine independence have all had male favorites and lovers … only Catherine II, realizing the ancient fables of a queen who subordinated the love, sentiment, and modesty of her sex to her imperious physical needs, profited from her power to give the world a unique and scandalous example.” Behaving rather like Louis XIV (but with the sexes reversed), she “had the impudence to make [sexual service] into a specific court function with an official apartment, titles, honors, prerogatives, … and of all the offices at court, this one was fulfilled most scrupulously.” Masson concluded by trying to make her a lesbian: “At the end of her life, Catherine became so masculinized that she required women: her tribadism with Dashkova, Protasova and Brantiska was known everywhere, and the last favorite only served to hold the candles.”3 Despite such grotesque exaggerations, some of Masson's mud stuck, pushing Catherine II's posthumous reputation from panegyrics toward pornography.

  After 1800 Catherine the Great had no female successors for the simple reason that Europe's principal autocratic states now excluded women from ruling. The Russian Empire remained autocratic until 1917 (and Russia remained so long afterward), but Catherine's son ensured that it now had its own version of female exclusion. The second German Empire also adopted female exclusion at its creation in 1871, influencing its imperial Japanese ally to act similarly in 1889. Meanwhile, nineteenth-century western Europe preferred constitutional monarchies, dominated by representative assemblies which denied electoral rights to women. This situation prolonged the record of Europe's old republics, including Venice, the Swiss Confederation, and the Dutch, all as totally masculine as the College of Cardinals or the Arab Ulama. Writing at the same time as Masson, the Vicomte de Ségur observed that republics were far more detrimental to politically ambitious women than monarchies; two centuries later, academic scholarship confirms that republics continue to restrict female political participation significantly more than constitutional monarchies.4

  As monarchs ceased to govern arbitrarily, women's dynastic position was at first unclear. In 1830 a new west European constitutional monarchy, Belgium, adopted the French Salic law; but in the same year, Spain's Bourbon monarch replaced his kingdom's version of it with a Spanish Pragmatic Sanction. During the next decade three young women inherited European monarchies. Unlike their youthful medieval predecessors, each of them had at least nine children, but, like nearly all of their youthful medieval predecessors, they did not govern their kingdoms. Their fates differed greatly. Queen Victoria of Great Britain reigned far longer than any of her female predecessors, while Maria II of Portugal died at thirty-four and Isabel II of Spain was compelled to flee abroad at the age of thirty-eight.


  At her father's death in 1833, Isabel II, the three-year-old heiress, became “by the grace of God Queen of Castile, León, Aragon, the Two Sicilies, Jerusalem, Navarre, Granada,” and much else, including “the Eastern and Western Indies and the Islands and Lands of the Ocean.” Four years later, during a civil war against the adherents of her paternal uncle, who opposed female inheritance, Spain acquired a constitution, and its child monarch became “Queen of the Spains by the grace of God and the Constitution of the Spanish monarchy.” In 1843 Isabel II was declared of age and required to marry a first cousin, who proved personally disastrous and politically useless. Finally forced into exile in 1868 after bearing many children of dubious paternity, she abdicated in 1870 and died at Paris in 1904. Maria II of Portugal, born in 1819, was twice made a constitutional monarch by her father. Restored to her throne in 1834, she became Europe's first female monarch since the fourteenth century to die from postnatal complications after giving birth to her eleventh child in 1853.5

  The better-known and better-educated contemporary of these two monarchs, Victoria, inherited the British monarchy at the age of eighteen in 1837 and lived until 1901. Hers was the longest female reign in European history, and during it she became Europe's first female monarch promoted to the rank of empress (of India, in 1876). However politically astute she was, Victoria possessed much less personal authority than her constitutional predecessor, Queen Anne, who could still veto legislation and exercise supernatural powers by touching her subjects for the king's evil. Moreover, provisions of German Salic law removed Britain's last continental possession by preventing Victoria from inheriting the kingdom of Hanover, which had been united with the English crown for over 120 years. Like Isabel II, Victoria married her first cousin—with the significant difference that Victoria chose him herself. Like Maria II, Victoria found an extremely satisfactory consort by marrying a nephew of King Leopold I of Belgium, who was also Victoria's uncle and her first political mentor. Victoria survived five assassination attempts in the first dozen years of her reign and had nine children. A recent poll ranked her as Britain's eighteenth most popular personality.