The Memoirs of Catherine the Great

by Catherine the Great

  Toward spring, Monsieur Pechlin, the Grand Duke’s Minister for Holstein, died.128 Grand Chancellor Count Bestuzhev, foreseeing his death, had advised that I ask the Grand Duke to name a certain Monsieur de Stambke, who was sent for to replace Monsieur Pechlin. The Grand Duke gave him signed permission to work with me, which he did. By this arrangement I had unfettered communication with Count Bestuzhev, who trusted Stambke. At the beginning of spring we went to Oranienbaum.129 Here our lifestyle was as it had been in previous years, except that the number of soldiers from Holstein and fortune hunters who were stationed there as officers increased from year to year, and as lodging could not be found for this crowd in the little village of Oranienbaum, where at first there had been only twenty-eight huts, these troops were made to set up camp, their number never exceeding thirteen hundred men. The officers ate dinner and supper at the court. But as the number of women from the court and of gentlemen’s wives did not exceed fifteen or sixteen, and as His Imperial Highness passionately loved grand meals, which he frequently gave both in his camp and in all the nooks and crannies at Oranienbaum, he invited not only the female singers and dancers from his opera to these meals, but many very vulgar, bourgeois women, who were brought to him from Petersburg. As soon as I learned that the singers etc. would be invited to these meals, I refrained from going, at first under the pretext that I was taking the waters, and most of the time I ate in my room with two or three people. Later I said to the Grand Duke that I was afraid that the Empress would find it improper for me to appear in such mixed company, and in truth, I never went when I knew that the hospitality was indiscriminate, so that when the Grand Duke wanted me to come, only the ladies from the court were invited. I went to the masquerades that the Grand Duke gave at Oranienbaum only in very simple outfits, without jewelry or finery. This made a very good impression on the Empress, who neither liked nor approved of these parties at Oranienbaum, where the meals became veritable bacchanalia, but nevertheless she tolerated them or at least did not forbid them. I learned that Her Imperial Majesty said, “These parties please the Grand Duchess no more than they do me. She goes there dressed as simply as she can and never has supper with all who come.” At the time, I busied myself at Oranienbaum with building and planting what was called my garden, and the rest of the time I took walks, went riding, or drove in a cabriolet, and when I was in my room, I read.

  In the month of July we learned that Memel had agreed to surrender to Russian troops on June 24. And in the month of August we received the news of the battle of Gross Jägerndorf, won by the Russian army on August 19. The day of the Te Deum130 I gave a large banquet in my garden for the Grand Duke and all of the most important people at Oranienbaum, and at it the Grand Duke and the entire company seemed as joyful as they were satisfied. This momentarily diminished the pain that the Grand Duke felt over the war that had just been declared between Russia and the King of Prussia, of whom he had been extremely fond since childhood. What was at first in no way excessive degenerated into mania later on.131 The public joy over the Russian military’s success at that time forced the Grand Duke to dissimulate his true thoughts, because he regretted the defeat of the Prussian troops, whom he had regarded as invincible. I had a roast ox given to the masons and workers at Oranienbaum on that day.

  A few days after this banquet, we returned to the city, where we went to reside in the Summer Palace. Here Count Alexander Shuvalov came to tell me one evening that the Empress was in his wife’s room and was summoning me there to speak with her as I had desired the previous winter. I immediately went to Count and Countess Shuvalov’s apartment, which was at the end of my apartment. I found the Empress there alone. After I had kissed her hand and she had kissed me as was her custom, she did me the honor of telling me that having learned that I wished to speak with her, she had come today to learn what I wanted to say. Now, at that time it had been eight months and more since my conversation with Alexander Shuvalov about Brockdorff. I replied to Her Imperial Majesty that the previous winter, seeing Monsieur Brockdorff ’s conduct, I had believed it indispensable to speak about it with Count Alexander Shuvalov, so that he could inform Her Imperial Majesty. He had asked me if he could quote me, and I had said to him that if Her Imperial Majesty wished it, I would repeat to her myself everything I had said and knew. Then I recounted the story of d’Elendsheim as it had happened. She appeared to listen to me with great coldness, then asked me for details about the Grand Duke’s private life and his entourage. With the greatest truthfulness I told her everything I knew. When I gave her several details concerning the affairs of Holstein that made her see that I knew them quite well, she said, “You seem well-informed about this country.” I replied simply that it was not difficult to be informed, the Grand Duke having ordered me to learn about it. I saw from the Empress’s face that this confession made an unpleasant impression on her. In general she seemed to me to be extremely reserved the entire conversation, during which she questioned me so as to make me speak and hardly said a word, so that this interview seemed to me more a kind of interrogation on her part than a confidential conversation. Finally she dismissed me as coldly as she had received me, and I was perplexed by my audience, which Alexander Shuvalov suggested I keep very secret, and I promised him this. In any case there was nothing to boast about. Back in my apartment, I attributed the Empress’s coldness to the antipathy that the Shuvalovs had provoked in her against me, about which I had long been warned. We will see later the detestable use, if I may say so, that she was persuaded to make of this conversation between her and me.

  Sometime later we learned that Marshal Apraksin, far from taking advantage of his successes after the capture of Memel and the victory at the battle of Gross Jägerndorf and advancing, withdrew with such speed that this retreat resembled a rout because he discarded and burned his equipment and spiked his cannons. Nobody understood the reasons for this operation. Even his friends did not know how to defend him, and as a result people looked for the hidden motives. Although I myself do not know exactly how to explain the Marshal’s precipitous and incoherent retreat, having never seen him again, nevertheless I think that the cause could have been that he received quite precise news about the Empress’s health, which was going from bad to worse, from his daughter, Princess Kurakina, still linked by politics though not by inclination to Peter Shuvalov; from his son-in-law, Prince Kurakin; and from his friends and relatives. At the time most people had begun to believe that every month she was regularly having very strong convulsions, that these convulsions visibly weakened her organs, and that after each convulsion she was in such a state of weakness, diminished mental ability, and abnormal drowsiness for two, three, or four days that during this time no one could talk or discuss anything at all with her. Marshal Apraksin, perhaps believing that the danger was more pressing than it was, had not judged it the right moment to drive farther into Prussia, but had believed he should fall back to be nearer the Russian border under the pretext of a lack of provisions, foreseeing that in the event of the Empress’s death this war would end immediately. It is difficult to justify Marshal Apraksin’s actions, but such may have been his views, especially since he believed himself needed in Russia, as I said earlier in discussing his departure. Count Bestuzhev sent Stambke to tell me about the way Marshal Apraksin had conducted himself; the Imperial Ambassador and the French Ambassador were complaining loudly about it. Bestuzhev begged me to write the Marshal as his friend and to join my entreaties to his own to make him turn his march around and put an end to a retreat that his enemies were interpreting in an odious and sinister way. I did indeed write a letter to Marshal Apraksin in which I warned him of the harmful rumors in Petersburg and how his friends had had great trouble in defending the speed of his retreat, begging him to turn his march around and to fulfill the orders he had from the government. Grand Chancellor Count Bestuzhev sent him this letter. Marshal Apraksin did not reply to me.

  Meanwhile, we saw the Empress’s director general of construction, G
eneral Fermor, leave Petersburg and take his leave of us. We were told that he was departing to take a post in the army. He had formerly been the quartermaster general for Marshal Münnich. General Fermor’s first request was to retain the brigadiers Riazanov and Mordvinov, his employees or superintendents of construction, and with them he left for the army. They were military men who had done almost nothing but execute building contracts. As soon as he arrived, he was ordered to take command from Marshal Apraksin, who was recalled, and when he returned, he found an order at Triruki to remain there and await the Empress’s orders. These were a long time in coming because his friends, his daughter, and Peter Shuvalov did everything in the world they could, moving heaven and earth, to calm the Empress’s anger, which had been fomented by the Vorontsovs, Count Buturlin, Ivan Shuvalov, and others, who were pushed by the ambassadors from the courts of Versailles and Vienna to bring Apraksin to trial. Finally a commission was named to investigate him. After the first interrogation, Marshal Apraksin was seized by a bout of apoplexy, from which he died within about twenty-four hours.132 General Lieven must certainly have been involved in this trial as well. He was Apraksin’s friend and confidant. I would have been grieved even more at this because Lieven was very sincerely devoted to me. But whatever friendship I felt for Lieven and Apraksin, I can swear that I was perfectly unaware of the reason for their conduct, and of their conduct itself, although some tried to spread the rumor that it was to please the Grand Duke and myself that they had retreated instead of advancing. At times Lieven made quite singular shows of his devotion to me. For example, one day when the Ambassador from the Viennese court, Count Esterhazy, was giving a masquerade, which the Empress and the entire court attended, Lieven saw me cross the room and said to his neighbor, who at that moment was Count Poniatowski, “There is a woman for whom an honest man would suffer a few blows of the knout without regret.” I heard this anecdote from Count Poniatowski himself, since made King of Poland.133

  1758

  Lev Naryshkin forsakes Catherine for her enemies; Prince Charles

  of Saxony visits Russia; Catherine’s pregnancy; her elaborate party

  for Peter; her punishment of Naryshkin; Russian losses against

  Prussia; Elizabeth’s convulsions; birth and baptism of Anna

  As soon as General Fermor had taken command, he hastened to carry out his instructions to advance, which were precise, for despite the harsh weather he seized Königsberg, which capitulated and sent deputies to him on January 18, 1758.134

  During that winter I suddenly noticed a great change in Lev Naryshkin’s behavior. He started to become uncivil and crude. He came to see me only reluctantly and made remarks that showed that someone was filling his head with ill will against me, his sister-in-law, his sister, Count Poniatowski, and all those in my circle. I learned that he was almost always at Monsieur Ivan Shuvalov’s home and I easily guessed that he was being turned against me to punish me because I had prevented him from marrying Mademoiselle Khitrova, and they would surely do everything to elicit indiscretions from him that could become harmful to me. His sister-in-law, his sister, and his brother were as angry with him as I was, and he literally behaved like a fool and willingly offended us as much as he could, and did this while I was furnishing, at my expense, the house where he was supposed to live after his marriage. Everyone accused him of ingratitude, while he said that he did not have a self-serving nature. In short, he had no reason to complain in any way, and people saw clearly that he served as an instrument for those who had taken control of him. He paid his respects to the Grand Duke more regularly than ever and amused him as much as he could and urged him more and more to do what he knew I disapproved of. Sometimes he carried his incivility to the point that when I spoke to him he would not reply to me. To this day I do not know what bee he had in his bonnet, when I had literally showered him with presents and friendship, along with all his family, ever since I had known them. I think that he also took to cajoling the Grand Duke because of the advice of the Shuvalovs, who told him that the Grand Duke’s favor for him would always be more valuable than mine because the Empress and Grand Duke disapproved of me, that neither liked me, that he would undermine his prospects if he did not disassociate himself from me, that as soon as the Empress was dead the Grand Duke would put me in a convent, and other similar remarks, which the Shuvalovs made and were reported to me. Moreover, they raised the prospect of his receiving the Order of St. Anna as a token of the Grand Duke’s esteem for him. With the help of these arguments and promises, they had all the little betrayals they wanted from this weak and feckless mind, and they pushed him as far as they wanted him to go, and even further, although at times he had small pangs of regret. As we will see later, at the time, he applied himself as much as he could to distancing the Grand Duke from me, so that the Grand Duke ignored me almost without interruption and was again on familiar terms with Countess Vorontsova.

  Toward spring of that year, word spread that Prince Charles of Saxony, son of King August III of Poland, was going to come to Petersburg. This did not please the Grand Duke for various reasons, the chief one being that he feared this visit would inconvenience him because he did not want the life that he had arranged for himself to be in the least disturbed. The second reason was that the House of Saxony was aligned against the King of Prussia. The third reason may have been that he feared to lose out in comparison.135 He was being very modest, to say the least, because this poor Prince of Saxony was nothing without his title and had no education at all. Except for hunting and dancing, he knew nothing, and he told me himself that he had never held a book in his hands in his life, except for prayer books given to him by the Queen, his mother, who was a very sanctimonious Princess.136 Prince Charles of Saxony indeed arrived on April 5 of that year in St. Petersburg, where he was received with much ceremony and a great display of magnificence and splendor. His entourage was very large. Many Poles and Saxons accompanied him, among whom were a Lubomirski, a Potocki, Pizarc, Count Rzewuski, who was called “The Handsome,” two Princes Sulkowski, a Count Sapieha, the Count Branicki, since made Grand General, a Count Einsiedel, and many others whose names I no longer remember. He had a kind of assistant tutor with him, named Lachinal, who managed his conduct and his correspondence. The Prince of Saxony was lodged in Chamberlain Ivan Shuvalov’s recently finished house, into which the master of the house had poured all his taste, despite which the house was tasteless and quite ugly, though very richly appointed. There were many paintings, but most were copies. One room had been decorated with chinar wood, but since chinar does not shine, it had been covered with varnish, from which it became yellow, but an unpleasant yellow that made the room look ugly. To remedy this the room was covered in a very heavy and richly carved wood painted silver. The exterior of the house was imposing, but was so heavily decorated that its ornamentation resembled ruffles of Alençon lace. Count Ivan Chernyshev was named to attend Prince Charles of Saxony, and he was served and provided everything at the expense of the court and waited on by the court servants. The night before Prince Charles came to our residence, I came down with such severe colic and diarrhea that I had to go to the toilet more than thirty times. Despite this and the fever that seized me, I dressed the following day to receive the Prince of Saxony. He was taken to the Empress’s residence around two in the afternoon, and after leaving her, he was brought to my residence, where the Grand Duke was supposed to enter a moment after him. For this meeting, three armchairs had been placed against the same wall. The one in the middle was for me, the one to my right for the Grand Duke, and the one to my left for the Prince of Saxony. It was I who led the conversation because the Grand Duke hardly wanted to speak and Prince Charles was not talkative. Finally, after half a quarter hour of conversation, Prince Charles rose to present his immense entourage to us. I believe he had more than twenty people with him to whom that day were added the envoy from Poland and that of Saxony, who resided at the Russian court with their employees. After a half hour of
conversation, the Prince left, and I undressed to get in bed, where I remained for three or four days with a very high fever, after which I had new signs of pregnancy.