At the end of April we went to Oranienbaum.137 Before our departure we learned that Prince Charles of Saxony would join the Russian army as a volunteer. Before leaving for the army, he went with the Empress to Peterhof and was feted there and in the city. We did not attend these festivities, but stayed at our country house, where he took leave of us on July 4. The Grand Duke was almost always very ill-tempered with me, and I knew of no other reason for this than that I would receive neither Monsieur Brockdorff nor Countess Elizabeth Vorontsova, who again had become the favorite of his harem. I decided to throw a party for His Imperial Highness in my garden at Oranienbaum in order to calm his anger, if this were possible. Any party was always appreciated by His Imperial Highness. Therefore, in a remote spot I had an Italian architect, Antonio Rinaldi, whom I had in my service at the time, build a large wooden cart on which one could place an orchestra of sixty musicians and singers. I had verses composed by the court’s Italian poet and music by the choirmaster Araya. We placed decorative illuminations in the garden’s grand avenue, which we hid behind a curtain, across from which the dinner table was set up. At dusk on July 17, His Imperial Highness, everyone at Oranienbaum, and numerous spectators from Kronstadt and Petersburg went to the garden, which they found illuminated. We sat at the table, and after the first course the curtain that hid the grand avenue was raised and we saw arriving in the distance the rolling orchestra, pulled by twenty oxen decorated with garlands and surrounded by all the male and female dancers I was able to find. The avenue was illuminated so brightly that one could see everything in it. When the cart stopped, chance had it that the moon hung precisely over the cart, which made an admirable impression and greatly astonished the whole company. Moreover, the weather was the finest it could have been. Everyone jumped up from the table to enjoy the beauty of the symphony and the spectacle up close. When it was over the curtain was lowered and we returned to the table for the second course. At the end of this we heard trumpets and drums, and a mountebank cried out, “Gentlemen and ladies, come, come see me, you will find in my booths free lottery tickets.” On either side of the large curtain, two small curtains were raised and we saw two brightly lit booths, one of which distributed free tickets for the porcelain lottery, which this booth contained, and the other tickets for flowers, ribbons, fans, combs, purses, gloves, sword knots, and other finery of that sort.138 When the booths were empty we went to eat dessert, after which we danced until six in the morning. To top it all off, no scheming or ill will interfered with my party, and His Imperial Highness and everyone else were ecstatic and did nothing but praise the Grand Duchess and her party. Indeed, I had spared no expense. My wine was found delicious, my banquet the best possible, everything was at my own expense, and the banquet cost me between ten and fifteen thousand rubles. Note that I had only thirty thousand per year. But this party ended up costing me much more dearly because on July 17, having gone out in a cabriolet with Madame Naryshkina to see the preparations, when I wanted to get out of the cabriolet and my foot was already on the step, the horse jerked and made me fall to the ground on my knees; I was four or five months pregnant.139 I acted as if nothing had happened and stayed until the end of the party, doing the honors. Nevertheless I greatly feared a miscarriage. However, nothing happened to me and I got off with a scare. For several days, the Grand Duke, all those in his entourage, all his Holsteiners, and even my fiercest enemies did not stop singing praises for me and my party. There was neither a friend nor an enemy who had not taken away some bauble to remember me by, and at this party, which had been masked, there were a great many people of all stations and the company in the garden was very mixed. Among others there were, moreover, many women who did not appear at court, and in my presence all these women boasted and displayed my gifts, which were basically trifles, for I think that there were not any that cost more than a hundred rubles. But they were given by me, and people were very happy to say, “This was given to me by Her Imperial Highness, the Grand Duchess. She is kindness itself, she gave presents to everyone, she is charming, she looked at me affably with a laugh on her face. She took pleasure in having us dance, eat, and promenade. She found seats for all those who had no place to sit. She wanted us to see what there was to see. She was joyful.” In short, on that day people discovered qualities in me that they had not known I possessed, and thus I disarmed my enemies. This was my goal, but it did not last long, as we will see later.
After this party Lev Naryshkin again began to visit me. One day, wanting to use my study, I found him there impertinently lying on a couch and singing a song that made no sense. Seeing this, I left, closing the door behind me, and I immediately went to find his sister-in-law, to whom I said that we had to go get a good handful of nettles and whip this man who had behaved with such insolence toward us for so long, so as to teach him respect. His sister-in-law agreed heartily and we immediately had sturdy sticks wrapped in nettles brought to us. We were accompanied by a widow, Tatiana Iurevna, who was among my ladies, and all three of us went to my study, where we found Lev Naryshkin singing his song at the top of his lungs. When he saw us he tried to escape, and we gave him so many blows with our nettle sticks that his legs, hands, and face swelled up for two or three days, so that on the following day he could not go to Peterhof with us for a day of court, but was obliged to remain in his room. Moreover, he took care to keep quiet about what had just happened to him because we assured him that at the slightest impolite act, or if he gave us any reason to complain about him, we would recommence the same operation, seeing as this was the only way to get through to him. All this was treated as a pure joke and without anger, but our man felt it sufficiently to remember it and did not invite it again, at least not to the degree that he had previously.
In the month of August, we learned at Oranienbaum that on the fourteenth of August the battle of Zorndorf had occurred, one of the bloodiest of the century; each side counted more than twenty thousand men killed and lost. Our loss among officers was considerable and numbered more than twelve hundred. We were told that this battle was a victory for us, but it was whispered that the loss was equal on both sides, that for three days neither of the two armies had dared to claim victory, and that finally on the third day the King of Prussia in his camp, and Count Fermor on the battlefield, had both had the Te Deum sung. The Empress’s sorrow and the city’s consternation were great when we learned all the details of that bloody day, on which many people lost family, friends, and acquaintances. For a long time one heard only laments. Many generals were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. Eventually it was conceded that Count Fermor’s conduct had been anything but skillful and military. The army detested him and had no confidence in him. The court recalled him, and General Count Peter Saltykov was named to command the army in Prussia in General Fermor’s place. To this end, Count Saltykov was brought from Ukraine, where he was in command, and in the meantime command of the army was given to General Frolov-Bagreev, but with a secret order to do nothing without Lieutenant Generals Count Rumiantsev and Prince Alexander Golitsyn, the brother-in-law of Rumiantsev. The accusation was made that Rumiantsev had been a short distance from the battlefield with a corps of ten thousand men on heights from which he heard the cannonade, and that it had been up to him to make the attack more decisive by advancing against the rear of the Prussian army while it was engaged with ours. Count Rumiantsev did not do this, and when his brother-in-law Prince Golitsyn came to his camp after the battle and recounted to him the butchery that had occurred, Rumiantsev took it very badly, said all kinds of harsh things to him and afterward did not want to see him, treating him like a coward, which however, Prince Golitsyn was not. The entire army is more convinced of the courage of the latter than that of Count Rumiantsev, despite his present glory and his victories.
At the beginning of September the Empress was at Tsarskoe Selo, where on the eighth of the month, the day of the Nativity of the Virgin, she went on foot from the palace to the parish church, which is only a stone’s throw
from the north gate, to hear mass.140 The divine service had only just begun when the Empress, feeling unwell, left the church, descended the little flight of steps that lead at an angle toward the palace, and, having reached the bend at the corner of the church, fell unconscious onto the grass in the middle of, or rather, surrounded by, the crowd of people who had come from all the surrounding villages to hear mass for the feast day. No one in the Empress’s entourage had followed her when she left the church, but having been quickly alerted, the ladies of her entourage and her most trusted intimates ran to her aid and found her still and unconscious in the middle of the crowd, which was looking at her without daring to approach. The Empress was very tall and strong, and the sudden fall alone must have hurt her badly. She was covered with a white shawl, and doctors and a surgeon were sent for. The surgeon arrived first and could do no better than bleed her there on the ground amid and in the presence of all these people. But she did not wake up. The doctor took a long time in coming, being sick himself and unable to walk. He had to be carried in a chair. He was the late Kondoïdi, of Greek nationality, and the surgeon was Fousadier, a French refugee. Finally screens were brought from the court and a sofa, upon which she was placed, and by virtue of medicine and ministrations she somewhat came to, but upon opening her eyes she did not recognize anyone and asked almost unintelligibly where she was. All this lasted more than two hours, at the end of which the decision was made to carry Her Imperial Majesty on the sofa into the palace. One can imagine the consternation of all those who were attached to the court. The publicity of the affair added even more to the anxiety. Up until now, her state of health had been kept very secret, and in this one moment the illness had become public. The following morning I learned of these circumstances at Oranienbaum from a note that Count Poniatowski sent to me. I immediately went to tell the Grand Duke, who knew nothing of it, because everything was always kept from us with the greatest care, and more particularly, anything regarding the Empress personally. It was usual, however, that when we were not in the same location as the Empress, every Sunday one of the gentlemen from our court was sent to inquire about her state of health. We did not fail to do this the following Sunday and we learned that for several days the Empress had not recovered full use of her tongue and that she continued to speak with difficulty. It was said that during her fainting attack, she had bitten her tongue. All of this made us think that her weakness was due more to convulsions than to fainting.
At the end of September we returned to the city. As I began to grow heavy because of my pregnancy, I appeared no more in public, believing that I was closer to giving birth than I really was. This annoyed the Grand Duke, because when I did appear in public, very often he claimed to be unwell so as to stay in his apartment, and since the Empress too appeared rarely, the court days, parties, and balls at the court fell to me. But when I was not there, His Imperial Highness was harassed to go so that someone could fulfill the official duties. His Imperial Highness therefore resented my pregnancy and, one day in his room in the presence of Lev Naryshkin and several others, got it in his head to say, “God knows where my wife gets her pregnancies. I really do not know if this child is mine and if I ought to recognize it.” Lev Naryshkin ran to my room to share this remark with me immediately. I was naturally alarmed and said, “You are all impudent fools. Make him swear that he has never slept with his wife and tell him that if he makes this oath, you will go immediately to share it with Alexander Shuvalov and the grand inquisitor of the empire.” Lev Naryshkin indeed went to His Imperial Majesty and asked him for this oath, to which he received the response, “Go to the devil and do not speak to me anymore about this.” The Grand Duke’s remark, made so imprudently, angered me greatly, and from that moment I saw that I had a choice among three equally dangerous paths: primo, to share the Grand Duke’s fortune, whatever it might be; secondo, to be exposed constantly to everything it might please him to devise for or against me; tertio, to take a path independent of all events. To put it more clearly, it was a question of perishing with him, or by him, or else of saving myself, my children, and perhaps the state from the disaster that all this Prince’s moral and physical faculties promised. This last choice seemed to me the surest. I therefore resolved to continue, as much as I could, to give him all the advice I could summon for his well-being, but never to be stubborn to the point of angering him as I had done before when he did not follow my advice; to open his eyes to his true interests every time the occasion would present itself, and the rest of the time, to shut myself up in a very dull silence, and at the same time to cultivate my reputation with the public so that it would see in me the savior of the commonweal if the occasion arose.
In October I received notice from Bestuzhev that the King of Poland had sent letters of recall to Count Poniatowski. Count Bestuzhev had a heated argument about this with Count Brühl and the Saxon cabinet and was angered that he had not been consulted as previously about this matter. He finally learned that it was the Vice Chancellor Count Vorontsov and Ivan Shuvalov who, through Monsieur Prasse, the resident minister of Saxony, had plotted the whole affair. Indeed, this Monsieur Prasse often seemed informed about numerous details, which astonished people, who wondered where he had learned them. Several years later the channel was discovered. He was the very secret and very discreet lover of the wife of the Vice Chancellor Count Vorontsov, Countess Anna Karlovna, née Skavronskaya. She was very close to the wife of the master of ceremonies, Samarin, and it was at the wife’s home that the Countess would see Monsieur Prasse. Chancellor Bestuzhev seized the letters of recall that had been sent to Count Poniatowski and sent them back to Saxony under the pretext that certain formalities had not been observed.
In the night of December 8 to 9, I began to feel labor pains. I sent Madame Vladislavova to inform the Grand Duke as well as Count Alexander Shuvalov, so that he could inform the Empress. After some time, the Grand Duke came into my room dressed in his Holstein uniform, in boots and spurs, with a sash around his waist, with an enormous sword at his side, and immaculately groomed. It was about half past two in the morning. Quite amazed by this costume, I asked him the reason for such exquisite finery. He replied that it was only in times of need that one knew one’s true friends, that in this outfit he was ready to act according to his duty, that the duty of an officer of Holstein was to defend according to his oath the ducal house against all its enemies, and that as I found myself in difficulty, he had run to my aid. One might have thought that he was joking, but not at all; what he said was very serious. I easily understood that he was drunk and I advised him to go to bed so that the Empress, when she came, would not have the double displeasure of seeing him drunk and armed from head to toe in his Holstein uniform, which I knew she detested. I had a great deal of trouble making him leave, but Madame Vladislavova and I persuaded him with the help of the midwife, who assured him that I would not give birth quite yet. Finally he left, and the Empress arrived. She asked where the Grand Duke was. We told her that he had just left and would certainly return. When she saw that the labor pains were coming less often and the midwife said that this could last for several more hours, she returned to her apartment and I went to bed, where I slept until the following day. I got up at my usual time, here and there feeling labor pains, after which I would be without pains for whole hours. Toward dinner time I was hungry and had some dinner brought to me. The midwife was seated next to me, and seeing my voracious appetite, she said, “Eat, keep eating. This dinner will bring us good luck.” Indeed, having finished the meal, I arose from the table, and the very moment that I got up, I was seized by such a pain that I let out a great cry. The midwife and Madame Vladislavova seized me under the arms and put me on the sickbed, and we sent for the Grand Duke and the Empress. They had hardly entered my room when I gave birth on December 9 between ten and eleven at night to a girl, and I begged the Empress to permit us to give the child her name.141 But she decided that the child would have the name of Her Imperial Majesty’s older siste
r, the Duchess of Holstein Anna Petrovna, the Grand Duke’s mother. He seemed very happy about the birth of this child. In his apartment, he had grand celebrations for it and had others held in Holstein, and received all the congratulations that were made to him with shows of happiness. Six days later the Empress held this child over the baptismal font, and she brought me an order to the cabinet to give me sixty thousand rubles. She sent the same amount to the Grand Duke, which increased his satisfaction even more.
The Memoirs of Catherine the Great Page 32