Great Catherine

by Erickson, Carolly, 1943-

  Diderot, for his part, had admired Catherine from a distance as a ruler who had her subjects' best interests at heart and whose breadth of knowledge and thoughtful approach to governing were bound to lead to beneficial changes in Russia. He was charmed by Catherine when he met her, impressed by her curiosity and intellectual rigor yet put at his ease by her informality. She combined, he wrote, "the soul of Brutus with the charms of Cleopatra," and he looked forward to his late afternoon visits with her.

  Both the philosopher and the empress had strong personalities, neither was the least bit diffident or inclined to false flattery. They soon sized one another up, and approvingly. Diderot told his family and others in France that in Catherine's stimulating company he felt a wonderful freedom to vent his opinions, and that he found Russia to be quite liberating. "In the so-called land of free men I had the soul of a slave," he wrote, "and in the so-called land of barbarians, I have found in myself the soul of a free man."

  "His is an extraordinary brain," Catherine wrote to Voltaire of Diderot. "One does not encounter such every day." Indeed the Frenchman was extraordinary in many ways. His manner was impassioned, at times almost frenzied. When carried away by a thought he talked louder and louder and faster and faster until, rising from his seat, he paced the room, waving his arms and shouting. He had a habit of snatching off his wig and flinging it away. Catherine recovered it and handed it to him, whereupon he thanked her and stuffed the unwanted wad of powdered horsehair into his pocket.

  Catherine looked past Diderot's frenetic intensity and applauded his wide-ranging, searching genius. She found him incomparably more worthwhile than the only other philosophe she had so far encountered, Mercier de la Riviere, who had bored her on his visit to Petersburg six years earlier by "spouting nonsense" and babbling on egotistically until she was ready to throw him

  out. Even though Diderot had a disconcerting tendency to emphasize his points by grasping his imperial companion's arm or thumping her on the knee—Catherine took to sitting behind a table when the Frenchman came to visit, for protection—he continued to make himself welcome, week after week, and to delight his hostess with his inexhaustible imagination and his wealth of words. His curiosity more than matched her own. He wanted to know everything about Russia, and eagerly took in all that she told him. Indeed, he not only took it in, he wrote it down, making written notes from memory of all that he and Catherine said to one another and adding his own commentary.

  One snowy afternoon in November a messenger rode up to the palace gates, dismounted and hurried inside. He carried vital news, from the region of the Cossack revolt.

  The situation had grown radically worse. The government forces had been unable to stop the advance of the rebels. The impostor who called himself Emperor Peter Federovich now had an army of his own, a force of ten thousand men, and with it he had laid siege to the town of Orenburg. There were four garrison battalions defending the town, and seventy cannon, but the rebels too had guns, and the soldiers of the garrison were ill prepared to face a long siege.

  And there was more. The imposter was said to have sent emissaries to the Bashkirs who lived in the vicinity of Orenburg, and to discontented laborers in the Urals. In village after village he was being proclaimed as the true emperor, come to save his people from the false Empress Catherine and her high taxes, her wars, her invasive laws. Soon, it was said, the imposter would have twenty thousand men in his army, or even thirty thousand, and then, with such a huge massed force at his command, nothing short of a miracle could stop him.

  Chapter Twenty - Three

  EMELIAN PUGACHEV WAS A SHORT, HEAVILY MUSCLED ex-soldier, combative and untamed, a Don Cossack from the village of Zimoveisk who had fought in the imperial army before being discharged because of poor health. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, the skin of his face and chest mottled with white patches where he had suffered from scrofula, he was an unprepossessing figure on first glance, but he had the power to engage and hold the attention of his Cossack comrades, and he was always watchful for opportunities.

  Abandoning his wife and children Pugachev drifted among the discontented Cossack hosts, and spent some time in a monastery of Old Believers. He observed, and perhaps participated in, the rising of 1772, and was imprisoned for a time but escaped. He also acquired a new wife, a Yaik woman, and began to formulate an audacious plan.

  In September of 1773 Pugachev appeared near the town of Yaitsk in a new guise. He wore a long red caftan and a velvet cap, the cap of a nobleman, and he had an entourage of a hundred men—Cossacks, Kalmuks and Tatars—who paid reverence to him and called him Emperor Peter. His wife, who had with her a circle of reverential peasant girls, was addressed as empress.

  The parade of self-proclaimed dignitaries passed through village after village, and in each Pugachev paused long enough to be presented to his subjects as the long lost emperor and to display his "tsar's marks"—the scrofula scars on his chest—for the benefit of the skeptical. Banners displaying the symbols of the Old Believers brought many followers to his side, for the "new" faith was still regarded with distaste (though it had been in force for a century) and there were many who associated it with the imposition of devilish European forms of thought and government from Petersburg.

  With surprising rapidity the counterfeit Peter III gathered a horde of followers. Word spread from village to village that the emperor had returned, and that he was bringing back the old faith and the old ways. Pugachev enlarged his entourage. He now had a secretary of state—a local Russian landowner who, though he knew the dark, stocky Cossack to be a fraud, nonetheless saw in him great promise as a lightning rod of dissent and a galvanizer of rebellion. Pugachev's wife Yustina, who posed as his true empress (not as Empress Catherine, for Catherine was said to be the villain in the drama, having deposed her husband), had a group of maids of honor who followed her everywhere she went. A Cossack youth dressed like the son of a noble family played the role of Grand Duke Paul. There were secretaries, clerks, even courtiers to whom Pugachev gave the names Orlov, Vorontzov and Panin.

  Wherever he appeared, Pugachev trailed clouds of majesty and mock authority. His entourage lent him dignity, and formed a backdrop for his imposture. He was a persuasive actor; he could cry at will, one who saw him remembered afterwards, and he had the gift of making his hearers believe whatever he said. When he stood before the people in his velvet caftan and cap and wept, assuring them that he was the true emperor and that he cared for them as Christ had cared for his own, he stirred their hearts and won their loyalty. He knew well what his own Cossacks and the non-Russian peoples among whom they lived wanted to hear. Surrounded by his sham court, with priests waving incense and embroidered banners bearing the symbols of the Old Belief gleaming in the autumn sunshine, he made extravagant promises and aroused extravagant hopes.

  All those who joined his "great order," Pugachev said, would enjoy "the freedom of the rivers from their sources to their mouths, and the land and the growth thereon and payment in money, and lead and powder and supplies of corn." If only they would help him to regain the throne from which he had been unjustly driven by the power-mad usurper Catherine, he would not only reward them but put an end once and for all to the harmful sway of Petersburg over the free-ranging, untamed Cossack way of life.

  Plenty, wealth, the restoration of the old customs and the old belief: these made up the false Peter's platform. He knew how to cloak his message, and his person, in semimystical rhetoric. "Those who are lost, worn out and in sadness," he proclaimed, "who long for me and who wish to be my subjects and under my orders, hearing my name, should come to me." He was the Christlike, all-forgiving, loving Russian father who offered his children not only absolution but victory over the faroff false empress and her rules and demands.

  Pugachev presented himself as a martyred saint, the hallowed emperor chosen by God to lead his people but wronged and wounded by those who had snatched his powers from him. He told all who would listen that he had been away from Russia
for many years, wandering in Egypt and the Holy Land, in mourning for his lost birthright. Now that he had returned, he tearfully asked for help in retaking what was his. Hundreds, then thousands, of peasants, laborers, soldiers, and townspeople knelt before him reverently and swore to do whatever he asked.

  The first military effort of the rebels failed. When Pugachev led his army against the town of Yaitsk, they were beaten back, although many of the imperial troops defending the town abandoned their posts and joined the rebel army. But by the time the counterfeit emperor and his horde reached the key fortress town of Orenburg, and set siege to it in October of 1773, their numbers had reached ten thousand. Emissaries of the false Peter III were sent out to carry his message into the mining regions and factory towns of the southern Urals and beyond. And the imposter's success was emboldening him to employ coercion.

  All the power of the imperial image was summoned to curse those who refused to join the growing army of Emperor Pugachev. Anyone who remained faithful to the government of Catherine in Petersburg was threatened; "they will soon feel," the rebel leader warned, "how many cruel tortures are prepared for traitors to me." Strewn along the trail of the rebels were the corpses of those who resisted joining the rebellion—dozens of hanged soldiers, officers and Cossacks, even executed priests. Now terror was added to Pugachev's tearful persuasion, and many joined the rebels out of fear alone. Month after month, as the siege of Orenburg continued and winter closed in, Pugachev's ragtag army grew.

  The empress, with the concurrence of her advisers, sent three thousand troops against Pugachev, commanded by General Kar. Other provincial troops marched toward the rebel stronghold as well. But Pugachev, with his swelling horde, was too strong for them. Kar was defeated and forced to retreat, and all other attempts to assault the rebel camp at Berda just outside Orenburg were repulsed. Survivors of these assaults who made their way back to the capital toward the end of November painted a gruesome picture of violence and anarchy. The sham emperor had ignited class hatred in his followers, they said. Not only were all imperial officers being murdered but manor houses were being burned, landowners and their wives and children executed. Pugachev had declared war on the elite of the Russian Empire.

  Catherine had her hands full. Russia was still at war with Turkey, thousands of soldiers and sailors were dying every month and thousands more being recruited to replace them at their deadly work from among the beleaguered serfs. And the Russian economy was once more in grave peril. The government had begun printing paper money, secured against an ever-dwindling treasury. Abundant assignats replaced scarce rubles, and the resulting inflation, coupled with several years of poor harvests, sent prices so high that Catherine and her councillors feared riots in the cities. With resentment against the war and its toll in lives reaching a peak, with the country once again facing the threat of severe economic instability, if not outright bankruptcy, and with Russia's rivals only too eager to exploit Pugachev's rebellion to weaken Catherine's government, it was imperative that the threat to internal order be controlled. The rebels had to be crushed. The false emperor had to be destroyed.

  The empress acted decisively. With characteristic thoroughness she informed herself, through maps and the reports of provincial authorities and informants, about the regions threatened by the rebels and satisfied herself that the town of Orenburg could withstand a winter siege. She prepared a new manifesto denouncing Pugachev and ordered it to be read publicly by every village priest. She chose a capable commander, General Bibikov, to replace the overly cautious Kar. Most important, she did not give way to fears, and she remained consistently, firmly vigilant. Having sent Bibikov to oppose Pugachev and his horde, she awaited news of his success; day by day, hour by hour, she was master of the situation, and her calm clear head and unwavering vigilance lent ballast to the volatile discussions of her advisers.

  Catherine remained steady as Moscow became infected with the Pugachev heresy. Emissaries of the false Peter III brought his message to the recalcitrant, disaffected city and soon the Cossack rebel was the talk of every tavern. Some Muscovites believed that Emperor Peter had indeed come back to claim the allegiance of his people; many more, knowing or suspecting the rebellion to be based in imposture, nonetheless expressed support for the enigmatic figure who appealed to them for loyalty against the European, warmongering Catherine.

  The state police tried to suppress all dangerous talk about Emperor Peter, arresting and beating those guilty of seditious murmurings, reading all mail and forcing those suspected of sympathizing with Pugachev to swear allegiance to the empress— something only the most irreligious would do cynically. But the appeal of the false tsar was seductive; Moscow dreamed romantic dreams of subversion, nobles longed for a savior emperor who would oust Catherine, traditionalists hoped for the restoration of the old customs and the old belief, servants imagined that the man who called himself Peter III, once restored, would give them their freedom.

  Outbreaks of hysteria, random gunshots, rumors of a rising on behalf of the "true emperor" became a predictable part of Moscow life in the winter of 1773-1774. One dark evening in early March, people rushed into the streets in every suburb of the city shouting "Long live Peter III and Pugachev!" So sudden was the onset of the tumult, and so widespread, that ordinary citizens panicked. Surely the shouts were a signal. Dreading riot, revolution, massacre, or worse, they armed themselves, gathered their valuables, and took refuge where they could, embattled against the mayhem to come. The police tried in vain to isolate the troublemakers and restore calm, but the pandemonium went on for hours, until at last the comforting presence of Prince Volkon-sky, visiting each suburb and assuring the residents that the shouting had been nothing more than the work of mischief-makers, brought an uneasy peace.

  Catherine heard of the uproar in Moscow, and of the many Muscovites who hoped for the success of the impostor, and it took all her fortitude to carry on as if General Bibikov's success was assured. "As far as possible," she wrote to Bibikov, "don't lose time, and try to end this ugly and degrading mess before spring." She knew that Pugachev had been joined by thousands of followers from among the non-Russian peoples of the area— Tatars, Bashkirs, Kirghiz, Mordvins and others—and that he had at his disposal heavy guns supplied by the foundries of the Urals. He was becoming bolder and more aggressive, conscripting men to fight under his banners, killing those who refused to swear loyalty to him.

  Pugachev was undergoing a change. No longer a Christlike martyr, he now held court in a lace-trimmed red coat and displayed himself to his followers holding a scepter and a silver axe. He surrounded himself with tinsel and mock ceremony in a caricature of court life. He issued orders, and had his secretaries seal them with an official-looking seal bearing the imperial double eagle. He continued to assure his followers ("my children, my bright falcons," as he called them) that he would look after them, and promised the peasants their freedom, but he demanded that they play a bloody role in bringing the new order into being. Peasants were ordered to kill their landlords, in return for a fee. "He who kills a landowner and destroys his house will be given a wage of a hundred rubles," one of Pugachev's orders read. "He who kills ten landowners and destroys their houses will get a thousand rubles and the rank of general." From his camp at Berda Pugachev commanded thousands of would-be assassins, all loyal to the man they had begun to call Nadezha Gosudar, the "Tsar of our Hopes."

  As if the specter of Pugachev and his wild-eyed assassins were not enough, Catherine was aggravated just at this time by a tart memorandum from her son—his first recorded attempt to influence his mother's governance. Paul drew up a long analytical document, which he called "Considerations about the State in General, Relative to the Number of Troops Needed for its Defense and Regarding the Defense of All Borders." Despite the cumbersomely military title, it was in fact less a document about the military than a persuasion to peace. The Turkish war, Paul argued, with its attendant costs and sacrifices, had led Russia into internal dissension and n
ear ruin; only many years of peace, with lower taxes and a smaller, dispersed, less oppressive army could restore the empire to her natural condition of prosperity and harmony.

  That her son should propose weakening the army at a time when the eastern part of the realm had burst into rebellion— a rebellion that was spreading virtually unchecked—must have galled Catherine and soured her opinion of her son's judgment. She was annoyed by her critics: it was not only Paul who took her to task but Diderot as well, who questioned her closely about her governmental methods and hinted broadly that she had crossed the line separating benign monarchy from tyranny. She needed friends and allies, not critics. Only Melchior Grimm, a visiting Parisian with whom Catherine felt immediately at ease and whose worldliness and sympathetic intelligence made him a delightful companion for her, gave her the diversion and friendly support she craved.

  Catherine was in need of support just then, as she had embarked on uncertain waters in her emotional life. She had discarded her longtime partner Orlov in order to gain independence, yet Orlov's replacement, the boyish, correct, vapid Vassilchikov, bored her to tears and beyond. At forty-five, gray-haired and heavy-footed, disappointed in her son and greatly beleaguered by the cares of state, Catherine needed a helpmeet—a lover, yes, but also a friend and colleague who could ease her burdens by sharing them.

  She had tried to accustom herself to Vassilchikov, but she soon became scornful of him, and she could not hide her scorn; he withdrew, she cried, he clutched his chest in pain, she cried still more. (She was later to remember her time with Vassilchikov as the most tearful of her life.) She had become habituated to the tedious young man, yet she feared that she had made a bad bargain. Would she become so emotionally bonded to him that she couldn't bear to send him away? Was she destined to be miserable with him for the rest of her life?